ncarver;582208 Wrote: > Unfortunately this was 20 years ago, so a bit hard to recall exactly > what we were testing. But certainly much of our time was directed at > cables, and all three of us decided cables could sound different. We > did both blind testing (e.g., with another person changing cables) as > well as independent listening where multiple people would write down > their impressions of the differences (if any) two cables made in their > systems, for later comparison. Did a lot of reading of the > psychoacoustic literature, plus all three of us were trained > scientists, naturally skeptical and also very methodical.
Well, to my knowledge no one has ever succeeded in hearing differences between cables in a controlled level-matched blind test. If you can do it, you might be able to win $1,000,000 from the James Randi foundation (I'm not kidding). The only exceptions are those very "high-end" cables that include network boxes (which are essentially RLC filters that add significant distortion), and possibly some extremely exotic designs that have extraordinarily high L or C (or R in a non-level matched test). Do you recall if you level matched when you did your testing? If not that could easily account for the differences - if the resistance of the cable was enough to change the volume by a dB or so, it's well known that this will strongly influence the results (for psychological reasons). > So exactly which one am I biased to pick? ... No, the bias argument is > highly exaggerated IMNSHO. I think that's a strawman. The claim isn't that some people are biased to hear certain things, and that explains why they do. That's far too simplistic and naive. All we really know (from generations of experiments in cognitive psychology) is that biases have a very, very strong effect on perception and cognition. But what that effect will be in any given situation, even in what direction it will go, no one can predict with any reliability at all. Psychology is still very far from that level. -- opaqueice ------------------------------------------------------------------------ opaqueice's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=4234 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=82067 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
