Salamander
pfm Member
I'll just assume you are a non believer in cables making a difference.
The best audio system on earth?
- Thread starter karlsushi
- Start date
Salamander
pfm Member
I said "Whose to say without comparing."
Please explain to me then how your null hypothesis has anything to do with with my post.
nostromo
pfm Member
Me too....but it would need to be a blind test somehow.I’d like to go to a ‘David and Goliath’ audio show if it was ever possible. Where you had pairs of matched rooms architecturally, or two systems in one room,(though some would say you can’t make a proper comparison of two pairs of speakers next to each other) one modest system passionately put together, and an all singing dealer system. This would obviously never happen
Last edited:
Somafunk
pfm Member
I'll just assume you are a non believer in cables making a difference.
Cables make a noticeable difference when they are not connected,
Look at it in context with the rest of the discussion.
I am glad you liked the system. But we are still talking about personal preferences. I do not think the impressive kit list (to those who are impressed by that sort of thing) is quite enough to elevate these opinions into facts.
Salamander
pfm Member
That's exactly what I have done and what you haven't. Again you avoid giving answers to your ambiguous posts.
Please just answer the question instead of wriggling like a fish on a line.
Threads like this one: Where for pages a genuine interest in top sound falls silent to either rank opinion or the pseudoscience of such opinion materially overruling actual physics.
If an orchestra sprang fully to life in a hifi space surely the consensus would be to deny it ever happened. One in a hundred would express wonder as to how it happened and how to get more like it.
If an orchestra sprang fully to life in a hifi space surely the consensus would be to deny it ever happened. One in a hundred would express wonder as to how it happened and how to get more like it.
Last edited:
What bit of it isn't true? I think Sir David Brailsford's track record speaks for itself. If you had any idea how to develop a product what ever it was and assuming it was done by engineers and not marketing driven, you would have to use the same, or a similar principle. How do you think the F1 circus works when developing an F1 car to compete. As I said earlier, it is not magic or Foo! Its incremental improvements on every single item.
That's exactly what I have done. There's no bloody ambiguity, do you want it spelling out?
The bit where absolutely everything makes a difference isn't true. I do develop products, it's part of my job. I do it by science and yes, I do use incremental improvements. Only yesterday I was talking a group through a root cause analysis, 5 whys etc. to determine what caused an incident here. Part of that is dismissing the stuff that is just incidental, such as the colour of lacquer used on a bike frame. You talk about F1. An F1 car doesn't use special cables, it uses normal copper, it's reasonable to assume that's because they have looked at the possibility of using them, determined that there is no benefit and moved on. If a hifi needs them, then we need to understand why. You're making the assumption that everything has been considered and measured as making a benefit, and that there's nothing that's just there. I'm saying that I doubt it, there's some stuff that's in there because it's expected by the consumer base. It's marketing driven. F1 cars and racing bicycles have to look pretty. Hifi has to have similar.
Salamander
pfm Member
There must be ambiguity since I don't know exactly what you mean, and since you have not given a straight answer, I should think there are others on here who would agree with me, my brother certainly does.
So give me a straight answer to my question, 'whose to say without comparing', or put it another way, how can you decide which is the best cable without comparing the two different cables.
It's far more true, especially as a scientifically-valid governing principle, than the waves of assertion that because there isn't a handy fleshed-out science it can't exist, never happened, mayn't exist later, or must be inaudible.
The irony of measurist cant and dogma is just how biased and unscientific it is. It needs a refresher course in the nature of knowledge, of evidence, of the state of a science on any one date, and whether or not a phenomenon occurs even when we don't yet have a grasp of it.
Science is only the rigor of established findings. Prior to that point it's a hypothesis, and prior to that point it's a witnessed observation. The high end of audio is far better served by allowing that observation than it is by shouting that it hasn't happened, may not happen, and shall never happen.
Whether or not red paint skews an observer is secondary, and it's a projected value to boot. Whether or not the apparatus improves realism is the only aim.
Last edited:
Yes, the null hypothesis. If you want to say there's a difference, show it. If you want to say that waves and particles have to have duality, and they do, then demonstrate it. It's been done. Many times, it's a staple of A level Physics. We put men on the moon, we design and build microscopic circuits that outperform any one person's rational comprehension, but we understand how they work according to the laws of physics. Done. Peer reviewed papers accept it, hugely complex as it is. Yet we are to give credence to the hypothesis that a mains cable on a DAC makes a difference, without any idea why? Come on.
I'll return to the red paint, it's not secondary if you are the observer who thinks it makes a difference. If you think it does, it does. The placebo effect exists. If I have cancer and they give me an experimental drug that happens to be a placebo, but I get better, do I care? Is the nature of the drug secondary? Not to me! I've been cured of cancer!
OK, here goes. Context:
OK, so we're straight into "cables make a difference" on the basis of listening to this great system that had them. It might also have had imperial nuts and bolts, we don't know, we haven't listened to the system with and without, just with, so we don't know what makes it so good, but the OP is convinced that the cables matter. He's said so.
We then have:
And I replied, as a joke:
And got:
Implication and further context - The Level 4 Akasa cables made a difference to the Wadax server.
I replied:
Implication - I doubt it very much.
What's the evidence? Extraordinary claims need extraordinary proof.
You said:
In the absence of evidence, you can't make extraordinary claims.
Nobody can prove a negative. I can't prove the absence of a god.
I said:
Ans as regards "Who's to say?", I said:
Which is to return to extraordianry claims need extraordinary evidence. You can't go round giving equal credence to my belief that the moon is made of cheese and the conventional belief that it's made of rock just because neither of us have been there so "who's to say?"
Unless you accept that it's all in the mind and if I cure a case of cancer by the power of prayer who gives a f*** what process operated, I'm cured! Sample size of 1, I don't care!
Clarified? If not, I'm done explaining.
Rockmeister
pfm Member
I once had migraine. Serious serious pain.
The doctors gave me 'horsre pills' which knocked me out for 5 hours. When i awoke the pain was gone, but came back.
I didn't believe in doctors.
There was a herbalist living nearby.
Friends said he was amazing and i read his book and was impressed.
He and i talked for an hour and he made me a prescription. I trusted him.
I never had another migraine. Ever. He 'cured me'.
Later I came to understand that I had in fact simply cured myself by believing that what he gave me to to take was going to work.
Later than that i self medicated with the 'medicine' that he had prescribed and
nothing happened. I stayed 'ill'.
Everyone who 'believes'
REALLY believes in something
will be affected by it.
That's how cable salesmen work.
OFC under this there is some sketchy science at work.
Some herbs do relax you
some cable materials do affect sound
but beyond that
it's all in your mind so
you have yourself to thank for how much better your system sounds
and that is true.
The doctors gave me 'horsre pills' which knocked me out for 5 hours. When i awoke the pain was gone, but came back.
I didn't believe in doctors.
There was a herbalist living nearby.
Friends said he was amazing and i read his book and was impressed.
He and i talked for an hour and he made me a prescription. I trusted him.
I never had another migraine. Ever. He 'cured me'.
Later I came to understand that I had in fact simply cured myself by believing that what he gave me to to take was going to work.
Later than that i self medicated with the 'medicine' that he had prescribed and
nothing happened. I stayed 'ill'.
Everyone who 'believes'
REALLY believes in something
will be affected by it.
That's how cable salesmen work.
OFC under this there is some sketchy science at work.
Some herbs do relax you
some cable materials do affect sound
but beyond that
it's all in your mind so
you have yourself to thank for how much better your system sounds
and that is true.
Salamander
pfm Member
@stevec67 The point here is 'you doubt it very much' You haven't heard them.
I will ask you if you have done your homework and know what these cables do and how much the 'basic' and 'deluxe' versions cost. If you are really saying you would not have to compare the two and they would perform the same then you should give up posting speculatively on your own assumptions.
I know I would want to compare the two before spending a not inconsiderable sum.
I will ask you if you have done your homework and know what these cables do and how much the 'basic' and 'deluxe' versions cost. If you are really saying you would not have to compare the two and they would perform the same then you should give up posting speculatively on your own assumptions.
I know I would want to compare the two before spending a not inconsiderable sum.
The null hypothesis says that in the absence of evidence there isn't a difference. Conventional science says that there isn't a difference. This is the same convemtional science that put a man on the moon 50 years ago and that performs miracles every day with computers that are beyond the understanding of amy individual, but they are understood. But here we have a suggestion that a cable, with no electrically active components, improves audio. Go on then, I'm open to it. Show me how. Bearing in mind that I have a phone in my pocket that makes Star Trek look lame, and that doesn't work by magic or anything unknown but by normal, conventional science.
Unless we're working from different definitions, any such null hypothesis has no bearing here. What has bearing, per the usual stages of development and understanding, is if there is a witnessed effect. If I say there isn't and someone is convinced there is a sound to a presumed phenomenon, then without supporting science I certainly cannot claim there is or isn't one.
Don't have to show it. It doesn't need an argument or a substitute aside from just hearing it.
Ah, no. For example, light as a wave and particle hypothesis is anything but materially known. The surrounding field may have a religious following in it, especially among armchair science types, but this phenomenon itself remains a theory. In fact, many long-"established" such theories have fallen. Apparently things are quite mysterious.
Moreover, returning to above, whether a thing can be explained to the satisfaction of all or even if it's ever become a hard science is irrelevant, irrelevant except to argue endlessly about it, which is precursor to denying it can exist. Does science ever deny an unknown thing may not exist and remain a science? Science may only deny the existence of the provably impossible.
Irrelevant. Much of reality is completely unfounded as a universal science, yet in audio it's expected to be a universal science. Again, I do not need to formalize anything to witness its effect. Now if you want to formalize a science and purport to speak for all of material nature, have at it.
Meanwhile any loud assertions, ostensibly in support of an entirely comprehensive audio science that largely doesn't exist (and never exists among biased measurists) just aren't scientific. They're opinion.
There is a hypothesis: That advanced cabling forms a local shield and ground net whose quietness is quite audible, is heard and heard similarly, and that is witnessed by scores, if not thousands. There is no hypothesis I'm aware of that supports cabling fixing the mains, however.
In high end audio the Placebo Effect is an article of bias. It is an assertion that subjectively rules some percentage of phenomena out of bounds because someone wants it there. That's all it ever is; a handy referent with no ascertainable relevance to real events.
Last edited: