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Post by sq225917 on Aug 7, 2019 20:15:50 GMT
Maybe theres better tone controls.
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Post by macca on Aug 7, 2019 20:23:58 GMT
It's a good name for cable though. 'Monster.' Typical yanks. We fought back with QED 79 strand. Their cigarettes and cars always had better names too.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 7, 2019 20:33:23 GMT
It's a good name for cable though. 'Monster.' Typical yanks. We fought back with QED 79 strand. Their cigarettes and cars always had better names too. Oh I don't know? A Dodge Vanquish would sound a bit daft. |
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Post by macca on Aug 7, 2019 20:42:59 GMT
That sort of works though.
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Bigman80
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Post by Bigman80 on Aug 7, 2019 20:57:12 GMT
Here's a question for the panel. I've never really understood this. Some people say 'You should not use speaker cable or interconnects as tone controls.' But why not? Nothing's going to explode. And if you're not trying to change the sound by changing the cables what are you changing them for? I agree. I think it’s pretty much inevitable tbh. |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 7, 2019 21:20:44 GMT
Mr Kipling's IQ has to be slightly above average. S. I gather up to 50% of people may be of below average intelligence. |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 7, 2019 21:21:00 GMT
Another question: What cable effects have you heard?
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Post by antonio on Aug 8, 2019 4:53:47 GMT
Here's a question for the panel. I've never really understood this. Some people say 'You should not use speaker cable or interconnects as tone controls.' But why not? Nothing's going to explode. And if you're not trying to change the sound by changing the cables what are you changing them for? And I've also seen it said, that is exactly what they can be used for.  |
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Post by macca on Aug 8, 2019 7:23:43 GMT
Another question: What cable effects have you heard? Good question, I'd be interested to know what other people hear.
For me really two types of effect.
1) More or less bass, more or less top end.
2) harder sounding transients - e.g snares hit you between the eyes. Or softer sounding transients, where snares seem to have no impact, like drummer was hitting a cardboard box rather than a tight drumskin.
When I blind tested these differences were much less noticeable than when I knew I had changed cable. They were still there but I had to focus on a particular bit of music to spot them reliably.
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Post by dsjr on Aug 8, 2019 8:10:03 GMT
And I bet these were all related to price? Maybe?
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Post by Deleted on Aug 8, 2019 9:53:47 GMT
Another question: What cable effects have you heard? Good question, I'd be interested to know what other people hear.
For me really two types of effect.
1) More or less bass, more or less top end.
2) harder sounding transients - e.g snares hit you between the eyes. Or softer sounding transients, where snares seem to have no impact, like drummer was hitting a cardboard box rather than a tight drumskin.
When I blind tested these differences were much less noticeable than when I knew I had changed cable. They were still there but I had to focus on a particular bit of music to spot them reliably.
Blind testing is a double edged sword. You do a comprehensive A/B comparison whilst sighted and you *know* what you hear. Then you do it blind and the same tracks appear harder to differentiate between. I don't think it's the differences that are closer at all. I think its the "I don't want to look like a prat" effect, as I call it. You become less sure of yourself because you don't know what is in the system and therefore less decisive and less able to make the absolutions that you did whilst doing the sighted tests. Only a theory btw |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 8, 2019 9:59:54 GMT
Good question, I'd be interested to know what other people hear.
For me really two types of effect.
1) More or less bass, more or less top end.
2) harder sounding transients - e.g snares hit you between the eyes. Or softer sounding transients, where snares seem to have no impact, like drummer was hitting a cardboard box rather than a tight drumskin.
When I blind tested these differences were much less noticeable than when I knew I had changed cable. They were still there but I had to focus on a particular bit of music to spot them reliably.
Blind testing is a double edged sword. You do a comprehensive A/B comparison whilst sighted and you *know* what you hear. Then you do it blind and the same tracks appear harder to differentiate between. I don't think it's the differences that are closer at all. I think its the "I don't want to look like a prat" effect, as I call it. You become less sure of yourself because you don't know what is in the system and therefore less decisive and less able to make the absolutions that you did whilst doing the sighted tests. Only a theory btw Pretty sure you're bang on the money here. It's not something I really get into and for the reasons you mention I certainly wouldn't in a group. Because of your theory I also feel that in a lot of cases the "night and day" differences would be far less obvious with the person claiming this put in front of a group blind... That pressure would make folk realise it's not really night and day after all :-) |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 8, 2019 10:31:26 GMT
Blind testing is a double edged sword. You do a comprehensive A/B comparison whilst sighted and you *know* what you hear. Then you do it blind and the same tracks appear harder to differentiate between. I don't think it's the differences that are closer at all. I think its the "I don't want to look like a prat" effect, as I call it. You become less sure of yourself because you don't know what is in the system and therefore less decisive and less able to make the absolutions that you did whilst doing the sighted tests. Only a theory btw Pretty sure you're bang on the money here. It's not something I really get into and for the reasons you mention I certainly wouldn't in a group. Because of your theory I also feel that in a lot of cases the "night and day" differences would be far less obvious with the person claiming this put in front of a group blind... That pressure would make folk realise it's not really night and day after all :-) I think the pressure makes people non committal. I totally believe the differences are still there, just that the victim/listener will be less inclined to make an ultimate decision for fear of being wrong. I said something like this to a member recently regarding amplifiers. If you give an Audiophile a humungousely heavy amplifier, you will get comments like "good iron inside" You could fill it with bricks, they would EXPECT it to sound fabulous because of how heavy the thing Is. It's all in the brain. Alan and I did some blind tests on 6 phonostages a while back. I listened "sighted" first and put them in a rank according to my preferences. I then did it blind and although I called them exactly the same, it was harder to call because I didn't want to look like a tit lol. Hence the theory. |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 8, 2019 10:35:02 GMT
Agree and was sort of what I was trying to say. "Night and day" in the comfort of your own home is harder to spot under pressure, my point being that it shouldn't be if it truly is night and day. I think pressure shows that a lot of this is subtle after all....
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Post by dsjr on Aug 8, 2019 10:58:46 GMT
Honestly chaps, our minds fool our ears so very much and if we know what we're supposed to be comparing, we 'hear' all manner of things we just cannot in a relaxed 'blind' scenario. How are medicines researched for example? They test and test, using placebo's and so on to make the conclusions repeatable. So called 'Top End Audio is one of the only areas where this kind of testing is now dismissed, as 'our ears are the best judge.' Our ears do 'hear' differences as long as our eyes are involved too! Swap expensive and cheap wine into bottles, the cheap one in the expensive bottle and the expensive wine into the 'plonk' bottle and people get totally fooled, the cheap plonk bottle coming out worse whatever wine's inside. Compare two bits of audio gear in a sighted dem and quite often, the second one to be heard comes out as 'better, even if it's a downgrade (ASR reported such, where one set of amps was on fancy foo stands with ott cabling and the other amps were plonked on the floor and with bore simple cabling I gather, two sessions and groups of audiophiles and whatever amps were played secondly came out best...)
Can I give a very crude and extreme example which may or may not translate to the above well. Naim owners (the wealthy ones) start with a basic system, upgrade each part hearing all manner of 'improvements' each expensive step and then reach the first tier of the mega upgrade ladder - Kudos Titan speakers! Passive first, then active, spending more and more each time, ending up with a £100k stereo with Fraims full of black boxes, a rats nest of cables behind and a pair of (to me) ugly wooden lumps nearby. Each 'step' a 'huge' sonic improvement bearing in mind the financial outlay. Just don't get the owner to hear some larger active ATC's at a third of the price which sound better again, or some Kii Three's at an eighth of the price that may lack the rumbles and grumbles, but with sound clearer and sweeter than the £100k behemoth system... (I'm leaving out JBL 4367 speakers macca as apparently despite people loving the sound, very few if anyone in the UK has actually shelled out for a pair, despite them wiping the nose of most UK made big passive boxes  ) What I'm rambling/trying to say is that these 'huge' sonic improvements aren't huge at all to anyone else other than the person spending the money. I didn't really believe it much either until I totally fooled myself a couple of times in the last couple of years. That's all it needs and then it 'all' seems to fall into place. Chunky speaker wires over bell wire? Of course and it's measurable too. Copper clad aluminium over 100% copper? that too, but clean standard copper compared to gawd knows how many 'N's' PCOCC in an audio system? Not sure on that one if the two wires were visually indistinguishable... |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 8, 2019 11:02:13 GMT
Dunno...
When I used to make my own Litz cables the most obvious aspect to them wasn't to do with tonality, soundstage and the like, it was control. With them in place the sound took on some Naim-like control. It was pretty obvious and not what I was expecting.
In the late 70s when I first experimented with bi-wiring I split the speaker crossovers had QED 79 Strand going to the bass drivers and single strand enamel going to the tweeters. The result was pretty weird. The pace slowed down; their was a smoothness and flow that was hard to comprehend from what I had done. It was obvious and again not what I might have expected.
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Post by dsjr on Aug 8, 2019 11:11:19 GMT
Naim? Control? Boppy mid bass and no real extension due to low damping factor and band limiting and hardness up-top more like. That ain't 'control' sir  Bi-amping makes some sense with typical domestic amps without huge power reserves, but 'buy-wiring' only 'worked' if the speaker wasn't so well designed and if the amp had a reaction to the doubled up wiring in my experience. Quite often, a chunkier single speaker cable was better than bi-wired weedy ones.. By the way, the latest QED 79 strand looks beefier than I remember it twenty years ago. Maybe it's just the outer insulation jacket being thicker, I don't know... |
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Post by macca on Aug 8, 2019 11:31:49 GMT
And I bet these were all related to price? Maybe? Actually no. And in any case I was listening blind so I had no idea of price. I thought it would be easier than it was.
The test was between an interconnect retailing at £30 and one retailing at (IIRC) a tenner. Both highly reviewed.
There was no pressure and no 'group'. I was the only person under test and my pal was swapping the cables (or not swapping them based on a coin toss). I left the room for each change. He couldn't care less one way or another and thought I was crackers. I wasn't stressed but I did find it interesting. I was surprised at how much harder it was blind, the difference between the two cables, which was pretty much 'night and day' sighted, became much smaller but it was still there and I could spot it.
I wouldn't expect this test to convince anyone who maintains all bits of wire sound the same and we only did a handful of trials (5 or 6) but it was enough to convince me that SQ differences in cables can exist. It was also enough to convince me that the imagination plays a part in what we hear.
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Post by macca on Aug 8, 2019 11:38:43 GMT
Good question, I'd be interested to know what other people hear.
For me really two types of effect.
1) More or less bass, more or less top end.
2) harder sounding transients - e.g snares hit you between the eyes. Or softer sounding transients, where snares seem to have no impact, like drummer was hitting a cardboard box rather than a tight drumskin.
When I blind tested these differences were much less noticeable than when I knew I had changed cable. They were still there but I had to focus on a particular bit of music to spot them reliably.
Blind testing is a double edged sword. You do a comprehensive A/B comparison whilst sighted and you *know* what you hear. Then you do it blind and the same tracks appear harder to differentiate between. I don't think it's the differences that are closer at all. I think its the "I don't want to look like a prat" effect, as I call it. You become less sure of yourself because you don't know what is in the system and therefore less decisive and less able to make the absolutions that you did whilst doing the sighted tests. Only a theory btw if you know what you are listening to the imagination amplifies the difference. Take that away and yes, there s till might be a difference but it's a shock to realize it was nothing like as obvious as when sighted. Now if I'm comparing I always think to myself would I be able to spot this obvious difference blind? What if there was money riding on it? Then I dial back my 'night and day' proclamation. Most of the time anyway. |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 8, 2019 11:43:06 GMT
Dave, everything's relative. And relative to what was heard previously, with the the homemade Litz, their was more control. Naim-like or not Naim-like.
If QED79 appears thicker now it would either have to be insulation or a larger diameter wire used (otherwise it wouldn't be called 79 Strand and use more strands). Can't remember what it used to use. Might have been 0.2mm. Guess what though? A search of the internet can tell you what it is now! No figure for strand diameter. 2.50mm cross section
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Post by Deleted on Aug 8, 2019 11:46:24 GMT
Would NEVER use the term "Night and Day". I know some people like to use the term. For me I see it as something pretty radical, and I just don't get to hear that sort of difference.
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Post by macca on Aug 8, 2019 13:02:53 GMT
Would NEVER use the term "Night and Day". I know some people like to use the term. For me I see it as something pretty radical, and I just don't get to hear that sort of difference. I think it is a factor of how much people (and I include myself) get into comparing equipment and listening for differences. What might sound identical, or at least so similar as to not worthy of comment to the casual listener could be described as 'night and day' for the obsessive enthusiast. It's a 'wood for the trees' situation.
For example the difference between Geoff's little chip amp (30 quid) and the Krell KSA50S (six grand) would not be described as 'night and day' by someone you dragged off the street. Whereas for the enthusiast, he can appreciate why you would want to spend the additional £5970 and might well describe the difference as 'night and day'.
Most of us would not care that a mate's car can do a lap of the neighborhood half a second faster than our own but in Formula One half a second is a huge gap.
It's all relative to experience, situation and expectations.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 8, 2019 13:51:03 GMT
Too much of a cliche. People pull it out at the drop of a hat!
Over the moon with me amp.
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Post by macca on Aug 8, 2019 14:40:50 GMT
Better than being as sick as a parrot...
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Post by Bigman80 on Aug 9, 2019 14:16:25 GMT
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