USB Cable Poll: Redux

[ItemAudio]

Have you actually tried to present your views on HA?

I think your statement reflects a profound misunderstanding of HA. HA is not a hifi/audiophile site. HA is a site mostly frequented by developers of audio software and codecs. The only relevant criteria for evaluating a perceptual codec is "is there an audible difference between the processed and unprocessed sound?". Thus the obsession with statistically significant, verifiable listening tests.

Indeed I have - and although there is contingent of codec developers (no more than five, I suspect), the remaining 79,055 members are not.

It's a statistically-oriented forum - which is fine, as long as the data is generated by sensibly contrived experiment.

The purpose of a compression codec is to deliver the most recognisable facsimile down a pipe too small for it. It's tempting - but untenable - to leap from there to a definition of 'good enough' that holds for every listener. For the purpose of codec development, dealing with the central chunk of the bell curve is 'good enough'.

 

[Alan Sircom]

I wonder if the explanation is exactly analogous to placebo tests.
Placebos work, in that they actually make some people better even though there is no medicine being administered, i.e. scientifically there is no reason why they work. Placebos work on some people even when they know they have been administered a placebo.
A very expensive placebo pill is more effective than a cheap one, some colours are more effective than others but that varies from location to location.

So maybe some people genuinely do hear a difference in something they expect will work, and is expensive, even if there is no scientific reason why it would.

Placebos do not work on all individuals.
Cables don't sound different to all people.

This is the most reasonable explanation of the observations yet IMHO.

That is a very distinct possibility.

"Hi honey, I'm homeopathic!"

 

[ItemAudio]

I wonder if the explanation is exactly analogous to placebo tests.
Placebos work, in that they actually make some people better even though there is no medicine being administered, i.e. scientifically there is no reason why they work. Placebos work on some people even when they know they have been administered a placebo.
A very expensive placebo pill is more effective than a cheap one, some colours are more effective than others but that varies from location to location.

So maybe some people genuinely do hear a difference in something they expect will work, and is expensive, even if there is no scientific reason why it would.

Placebos do not work on all individuals.
Cables don't sound different to all people.

This is the most reasonable explanation of the observations yet IMHO.

You watched the recent Horizon?! Of course there's bound to be an element of placebo in play here. It occurred to me how hard it would be to devise a test that separated the effect of a placebo from the effect of a drug - because the outcome is often identical.

And, in this case, I wonder if the expectation bias of a higher price tag is greater or less than the expectation bias that digital cables can't possibly sound different?

One key takeaway from the poll so far (it's early days) is that those who have auditioned cables are in a minority. Various motives were earlier imputed to this group, but really none of those hold: the key characteristic of the 'testers' is more likely curiosity than gullibility.

So there's a huge expectation bias out there (76% of non-auditioning PFM voters) that USB cables don't matter. And yet, among the testers, it's 50/50. A plausible interpretation is something genuine is overcoming bias: people are learning by experience - as Alan did - something unexpected.

 

[Chefren]

I don't think that is correct. Part of the SID chip was analog, but the wavetable stuff was low-resolution digital afaik.

Well Wikipedia says this, a bit like MIDI works:

"The SID is a mixed-signal integrated circuit, featuring both digital and analog circuitry. All control ports are digital, while the output ports are analog."

I guess you could call it a digital synthesizer too. But it doesn't to replay, it produces the sounds itself so it always sounds right (since its the original source).

Interestingly a glitch in the chip allowed it to be used to replay 4 bit PCM

"Due to imperfect manufacturing technologies of the time and poor separation between the analog and digital parts of the chip, the 6581's output (before the amplifier stage) was always slightly biased from the zero level. By adjusting the amplifier's gain through the main 4-bit volume register, this bias could be modulated as PCM, resulting in a "virtual" fourth channel allowing 4-bit digital sample playback."

 

[Fox]

Unfortunately English is poorly equipped to report the auditory sense - many terms in use are borrowings from sight or touch. Invention in this area is overdue.

Everyone's entitled to an opinion: but I'm very interested in what others think about this subject - hence the poll.

I'm not against any blind testing per se - having started with Fruit Pastilles in the playground at age eight - but one of several difficulties it presents is exactly that of reporting: as you point out, it's profoundly troublesome to communicate audio sense impressions. Which makes Hydrogen-style obsession with statistical analysis a curious exercise in turd-polishing.

I don't have any problem explaining music or describing it to peers in seminars or reading groups, neither do I have a huge problem pulling out a score and understanding music's construction and methodology: it is a thing that can be unravelled, laid out and systematically deconstructed, and them reassembled in simplified or reconstituted forms. None of this requires anything more than learning. Music can be condensed and shoved into boxes that become a very formal language that I spend most of my later life studying; I had aspirations for so many things That I am clearly not and accepting one's aptitude over ones aspirations is the first step to accepting what it is you are here on this planet to "do"... it means I lose out in life in other ways: I cannot describe things in mathematical terms beyond the most simplistic, or the architectural beyond the most simplistic, or the electronic beyond the most simplistic, or literature beyond the most simplistic, but music, and any audio and sound as it pertains to compositions, songs, scores, sound design and all the little parts that make up an experience we each decide has enough agency to be referred to as "music" I have no problem with -- and neither do the composers programmers, sound designers and musicians I mix with.

It's frustrating reading people write (flail?) about "emotional attachment" as their only connection point to music: there is so much more to it, in the same way I cannot see the beauty of calculus, or tell the difference between things that need training to differentiate, I just know it is there. I just barely make do with addition and subtraction, my engagement with the subject is insufficient to describe calculus fully: Likewise audiophiles and people in general have an insufficient vocabulary to describe what they are experiencing beyond a very limited and limiting palette. Yes that is perhaps an aggressive stance, but it is the abuse of specific musical terminology that forces those of us conversant with that terminology to protect it, otherwise it loses its meaning.

FWIW: There is so much more to Lucier's "I am sitting in a room" it would take about three to four years hard graft to mash through, its one of the trickier 20th C works yet can be replicated in a max/msp patch in 2 minutes and about 12 lines of supercollider code.... although Forced exposure, (the sound of resonance through a wire) is probably his hardest to formally chop up, describe, annotate and really deconstruct, it seems to me the more I know, the more I don't know and the simpler the composition, the deeper you can go. Less reveals more.

Ok medication time! ponies to follow.

 

[merlin]

I wonder if the explanation is exactly analogous to placebo tests.
Placebos work, in that they actually make some people better even though there is no medicine being administered, i.e. scientifically there is no reason why they work. Placebos work on some people even when they know they have been administered a placebo.
A very expensive placebo pill is more effective than a cheap one, some colours are more effective than others but that varies from location to location.

So maybe some people genuinely do hear a difference in something they expect will work, and is expensive, even if there is no scientific reason why it would.

Placebos do not work on all individuals.
Cables don't sound different to all people.

This is the most reasonable explanation of the observations yet IMHO.

Undoubtedly the most plausible explanation IMHO.

Sadly it's difficult for many to accept that. On both sides it should be added but where science says one side is right, it usually is IME.

 

[Robert]

For Gods sake ! ... don't start bringing common sense into the discussion/argument.... they were enjoying themselves before you butted in !

Positive placebo effect is a very likely explanation. There is much research to support it, and on the face of it, what's to worry about?

Problems arise when this phenomenon is placed into the hands of marketing departments where it gets abused. As stated above, expensive placebos work better than cheap ones, and that's the problem when it comes to hi-fi.

Encouraging a culture where placebos effects are embraced also stunts real progress.

 

[Daniel Quinn]

I wonder if the explanation is exactly analogous to placebo tests.
Placebos work, in that they actually make some people better even though there is no medicine being administered, i.e. scientifically there is no reason why they work. Placebos work on some people even when they know they have been administered a placebo.
A very expensive placebo pill is more effective than a cheap one, some colours are more effective than others but that varies from location to location.

So maybe some people genuinely do hear a difference in something they expect will work, and is expensive, even if there is no scientific reason why it would.

Placebos do not work on all individuals.
Cables don't sound different to all people.

This is the most reasonable explanation of the observations yet IMHO.

The situation is not analogous to placebo's . placebo involves unknown efficacy of the taken drug , indeed often you are told it will work .But the taker can not determine the efficacy .

Nobody buys a cable knowing it will work , especially in these days of money back purchases . Thus following your logic cable difference must be by definition self deception.

If you think I am deceiving myself that I can hear a difference in my speaker cable compared to what it replaced , then so be it , but you will have settled on a very poor explanatory thesis .

my explanation involves ways of listening, degrees of difference being irrelevant to some and important to others and differences are time/space context dependant and very few peoples overlap .

 

[darrenyeats]

F1,
Glad you posted, I've been wanting to comment a post you made a while ago that's relevant here.

... don't underestimate the power of expectation bias.
This works in ever field, not just hifi.
I first experienced the power of it when involved for the first time in F1 racing. A driver, who was excellent and went on to be World Champion, wanted an adjustment to his car which wasn't available. One of the mechanics said never mind, I'll go to the truck and modify the part to suit. In fact the mod was impossible with the kit/time available and the mechanic knew this. He took the bit off, went to the truck for a few minutes then came back and re-fitted it. He said to the driver "You should be OK now". The driver went out and went 0.5 secs quicker and came back in to announce that that was exactly what was needed...

This is analogous to someone hearing a difference when expecting to hear expensive DAC A when it's DAC B. Placebo. I know this works because I've experienced similar, most recently at the last bake-off (where the first tranche of six trials were bizarrely all the same source, heads being flipped six times in a row by Vital!)

Changing the mental state of the driver changed the lap time, so I don't see an analogue between lap time and measured distortion of a playback system. Rather, a better analogue is perceived sound quality which, like lap time, depends on BOTH the physical system AND the mental state of the person.

The point here is there are two variables, the system and the person, causing the result (the lap time or perceived sound quality).

Your anecdote shows that changing the person alone changes the result. We all agree.

However, we might change the system, for example, use body panels with a different surface texture, without telling the driver anything positive or negative, and the lap time could stay the same. From this, we might conclude that the change in surface texture of the panels makes no difference.

It's only when you take the panel into the lab and test it in isolation, that you find that is reduces drag. And the reason the lap time didn't change is that the reduction is drag was accompanied by a different air flow which increased drag around certain parts of the car. If you can alter the shape of the car to be compatible with the new air flow, you can realise the improvement from the changed surface texture. Then and only then, the lap time will improve.

However, if you used the new panels AND changed the shape of the car (realised improvement in the physical system) BUT you told the driver the panels have a problem, he might actually get an even worse lap time than before, even though the system is technically better.

If the "mental noise level" is greater than the degree of physical difference being tested, it can make it very difficult to draw hard conclusions from the result (lap time or perceived sound quality).

That doesn't mean we abandon all incremental improvements that are smaller than the mental noise level. Eventually, they feed through in a race situation (or real listening).

Also, unchanged measurable whole-system performance doesn't prove the part being tested couldn't realise an improvement in a slightly different physical system. If the item measures better in isolation, we might still realise better lap time or perceived sound quality if other conditions are met.

Finally, in F1 good enough is never good enough, and that's why objective improvements (maybe shaving a gram in weight) are made one upon another whether they're distinctly detectable in lap time or not. It's only at the end of the season that a small decrease in lap time comes out in the wash. Then it's hard to quantify how much some technical improvements contributed individually - but who cares.

 

[ItemAudio]

Wow - through the postmodern ponyism a glimmer of the real fox appears . . .

To be fair, the language has evolved over thousands of years terminology and notation to describe music; over a century not as far when describing its reproduction. When listening to Record Review on R3, you can't help but be struck by how often they're reaching for nebulous - but meaningful notwithstanding - terms to describe the emotional impact of a particular interpretation or recording. Is it not natural that most listeners will describe their equipment in the same terms - even though, technically, that's incorrect?

 

[ItemAudio]

Positive placebo effect is a very likely explanation. There is much research to support it, and on the face of it, what's to worry about?

Problems arise when this phenomenon is placed into the hands of marketing departments where it gets abused. As stated above, expensive placebos work better than cheap ones, and that's the problem when it comes to hi-fi.

Encouraging a culture where placebos effects are embraced also stunts real progress.

But the expectation bias shown numerically above, and in many forum comments against digital cables 'mattering' is equally - perhaps more - powerful . . .

 

[Daniel Quinn]

And F1eng , in the driver example above quoted by Mr Yates , you have a correlation . And of course correlation does not equal causation .

And there must be a least a 100 variables which could correlate to the improved lap time .

 

[Michael P]

But the expectation bias shown numerically above, and in many forum comments against digital cables 'mattering' is equally - perhaps more - powerful . . .

If you are a shaman, maybe. Some people like scientific progress though.

 

[maxflinn]

Reported subtle audible differences between digital cables is indeed due to the placebo effect, they are real only in the mind of the listener. We know that this MUST be the case because we know that the reported differences are simply not possible due to the technology being used.

I'm glad that this thread has now moved on to exploration of why people perceive these subtle audible differences, and not whether or not the tech actually allows for them, it doesn't!

 

[Fox]

The nebulosity of describing the musical experience on radio 3 is deliberate so it does not become impenetrable, it comes from grasping at inappropriate metaphors to describe an incomplete experience or experts dumbing down to the point of near- meaninglessness. Interpretation is very very tricky and depending on how much or little you know you can choose a point between describing it formally, structurally and within the known nomenclature where facts are facts and inarguable, or tackle the philosophical and emo issues only and find yourself teetering into pseud's corner.

You know, I'm not cynical enough to be postmodern, I wish I were but I cannot keep up the facade... my pony thing is not ironic but what happens when a person gets stripped back, drugged and parts of your brain short out and divert into directions it would not normally go either by discipline, drugs, dysfunction or damage. I have PTSD, I have various forms of damage and I have fat too much Glaxo SmithKline coursing through me most of the time.

Plus ponies are funner than music

 

[ItemAudio]

F1,
Glad you posted, I've been wanting to comment a post you made a while ago that's relevant here . . . It's only at the end of the season that a small decrease in lap time comes out in the wash ... and then it's hard to quantify how much each technical improvement contributed!

Broadly I tend to agree with Darren on this issue - you need large samples, and forensically accurate brain-scan-reporting - to get a handle on this. Anything short of that is personal anecdote or bad practice masquerading as 'science'.

Empirically, the issue is stuck. Which is why it's so divisive. The jury is out - deal with it. Pragmatically, I'm not sure it even matters. People will think what they're going to think.

As a side note: walk a mile in a dealer's shoes - when we get customers calling and saying: “I really want the best USB cable I can afford. I've tried five already, and would rank them thus and thus and thus - what can you recommend or lend me to try?” What are we to do? Let's do another Sircom/Pascal matrix:

If I believe USB cables CAN'T make a difference, and tell him so, I'm honest but arrogant, and lose a sale.
I I believe USB cables CAN'T make a difference and sell him a cable, I'm a crook.
If I believe they matter and don't tell him so, I'm an idiot and lose a sale.
If I believe they matter and sell him a cable he likes, everyone's happy.
If I'm not sure and don't lend him a cable, I'm just stupid.
If I'm not sure whether they matter and let him judge for himself, I'm honest, respectful and may or may not make a sale.

 

[ItemAudio]

And F1eng , in the driver example above quoted by Mr Yates , you have a correlation . And of course correlation does not equal causation .

And there must be a least a 100 variables which could correlate to the improved lap time .

Tru dat also.

 

[ItemAudio]

If you are a shaman, maybe. Some people like scientific progress though.

The point is the expectation bias is more usually negative than positive: the vast majority of first-time listeners are actively expecting 'no difference'. You can't say one kind of expectation bias is influential and not another.

 

[Joe P]

Max,

Are you high on nocebos? They're like placebos from a parallel universe where everything is exactly the same, but opposite.

In some sense they're like placebos with goatees.

Joe

 

[ItemAudio]

Reported subtle audible differences between digital cables is indeed due to the placebo effect, they are real only in the mind of the listener. We know that this MUST be the case because we know that the reported differences are simply not possible due to the technology being used.

I'm glad that this thread has now moved on to exploration of why people perceive these subtle audible differences, and not whether or not the tech actually allows for them, it doesn't!

The thread moved on because it was observed that digital cables do materially differ in measurable ways. Let's keep moving on rather than round in circles . . .