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USB CABLE

Octavian said:
To paraphrase:

"So I guess that as we are saying that we can't yet prove there is no little teapot orbiting the earth, by the same token we are not yet able to prove that there is. Hence my often pilloried statement that the 'jury is still out'!"

See the problem? Try it with the Flying Spaghetti Monster or pink unicorns. Always works.
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I 'think' you may be taking your analogies a bit too far...
Yes, understood that we have to look at 'reasonable probability' but to simply blindly assert that there is no difference between USB cables for no better reason than you don't want there to be is to put it mildly - a bit daft.
There are people who hear sonic differences between cables, they may be imagining it (I'm sure there are plenty of Keith's customers who hear with their eyes rather than their ears when listening to a beautifully made chunk of expensive milled aluminium) but are you suggesting that we stop looking for answers? You have to admit life would become pretty dull if everyone adopted this attitude!
 
Greyandy said:
I 'think' you may be taking your analogies a bit too far...
Yes, understood that we have to look at 'reasonable probability' but to simply blindly assert that there is no difference between USB cables for no better reason than you don't want there to be is to put it mildly - a bit daft.
There are people who hear sonic differences between cables, they may be imagining it (I'm sure there are plenty of Keith's customers who hear with their eyes rather than their ears when listening to a beautifully made chunk of expensive milled aluminium) but are you suggesting that we stop looking for answers? You have to admit life would become pretty dull if everyone adopted this attitude!
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Is the answer to ' live in the moment' I think Keith does..his ' moment ' never alters, doesn't change..unwavering you could say! You could set your clock by Keith's moment..its that steady!
 
Greyandy said:
I 'think' you may be taking your analogies a bit too far...
Yes, understood that we have to look at 'reasonable probability' but to simply blindly assert that there is no difference between USB cables for no better reason than you don't want there to be is to put it mildly - a bit daft.
There are people who hear sonic differences between cables, they may be imagining it (I'm sure there are plenty of Keith's customers who hear with their eyes rather than their ears when listening to a beautifully made chunk of expensive milled aluminium) but are you suggesting that we stop looking for answers? You have to admit life would become pretty dull if everyone adopted this attitude!
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The measurements suggest there will be no difference, you only have the ‘belief’ that there is a difference which you could easily dispel with one unsighted comparison.
I realise there is a huge investment, monetary, belief, ego and it exceptionally difficult to alter long held beliefs, make the unsighted comparison it really is a revelation.
Keith
 
Purité Audio said:
The measurements suggest there will be no difference, you only have the ‘belief’ that there is a difference which you could easily dispel with one unsighted comparison.
I realise there is a huge investment, monetary, belief, ego and it exceptionally difficult to alter long held beliefs, make the unsighted comparison it really is a revelation.
Keith
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Your negative expectation in unsighted tests must surely be as strong of a bias as others' positive expectation in sighted tests. It seems the only proper way to do it is where the subject is not even told what might have changed in the system.

@hc25036, any professional insight?
 
Purité Audio said:
The measurements suggest there will be no difference, you only have the ‘belief’ that there is a difference which you could easily dispel with one unsighted comparison.
I realise there is a huge investment, monetary, belief, ego and it exceptionally difficult to alter long held beliefs, make the unsighted comparison it really is a revelation.
Keith
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I don't have any 'belief' that there is a difference. What I do have is the 'belief' that there may be.
This somewhat differs from those who have a 'belief' that there is no difference.
 
gustav_errata said:
Your negative expectation in unsighted tests must surely be as strong of a bias as others' positive expectation in sighted tests. It seems the only proper way to do it is where the subject is not even told what might have changed in the system.

@hc25036, any professional insight?
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Yep!
Expectational Bias works both ways...
 
gustav_errata said:
As an aside I think it's a bit out-of-order to make someone defend their business in a simple internet argument.
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No ones 'making' anyone do anything. It was a simple question to attempt to draw an analogy to the subject under discussion which Keith has readily answered fully and honestly.
 
As I stated a few posts back, any conscious expectation has no bearing on expectation bias. It is a different thing altogether.

Expectation bias is unconscious, uncontrollable without serious training (airline pilots undergo continuous training and conditioning to minimise it on the flight deck), and comes from the psychology of the individual. You might as well howl at the moon as say ‘I expected the cables to sound no different but instead….’.
 
hc25036 said:
As I stated a few posts back, any conscious expectation has no bearing on expectation bias. It is a different thing altogether.

Expectation bias is unconscious, uncontrollable without serious training (airline pilots undergo continuous training and conditioning to minimise it on the flight deck), and comes from the psychology of the individual. You might as well howl at the moon as say ‘I expected the cables to sound no different but instead….’.
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So to get the terminology correct, Conscious Expectation is a pre determined belief of the result?
 
hc25036 said:
As I stated a few posts back, any conscious expectation has no bearing on expectation bias. It is a different thing altogether.

Expectation bias is unconscious, uncontrollable without serious training (airline pilots undergo continuous training and conditioning to minimise it on the flight deck), and comes from the psychology of the individual. You might as well howl at the moon as say ‘I expected the cables to sound no different but instead….’.
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Thank you for clarifying.
 
Greyandy said:
I 'think' you may be taking your analogies a bit too far...
There are people who hear sonic differences between cables, they may be imagining it (I'm sure there are plenty of Keith's customers who hear with their eyes rather than their ears when listening to a beautifully made chunk of expensive milled aluminium) but are you suggesting that we stop looking for answers?
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What is the question you want answers to? When there is evidence that listeners can distinguish usb cables in a properly controlled blind test, then we have questions needing answers. But we are not there yet.
 
Greyandy said:
So to get the terminology correct, Conscious Expectation is a pre determined belief of the result?
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Conscious expectation is not a scientific term, it is what it is. The issue with explaining expectation bias is that it uses a well understood word but gives it a specific scientific meaning that is more than the normal use of the word. Hence threads like this.

It should be possible to design a study to answer the question of effects of usb cables once and for all, but no-one would be willing to do it or pay for it.
 
As a summary, then, we have:
  • Anecdotal evidence of people hearing differences between USB cables in sighted tests
  • Anecdotal evidence of people not hearing differences between USB cables in unsighted tests
  • Robust, presumably peer-reviewed psychological evidence that sighted tests are subject to expectation bias
  • Non-rigorous, non-peer-reviewed measurements from ASR of one USB cable having no measurable effect on one DAC and of one other USB cable having a measurable effect on a couple DACs and no effect on one DAC, where the "effect" is a reduction in some form of noise on the analogue output of the DAC.
  • Engineering belief that any effect of a USB cable on noise shouldn't matter given a properly engineered DAC
  • A design specification that any in-spec USB cable shouldn't affect the actual digital signal due to exceedingly low error rates (not to mention any way for random digital signal/loss change to make consistent changes to the frequency response of the encoded audio signal)
  • A protocol-based fact that USB cables cannot effect jitter on an asynchronous USB connection to a DAC (but I guess any observed jitter in such is internal to the DAC...can someone confirm that?). What (hopefully exceedingly rare) errors do get through are not re-sent but are handled internally by the DAC.
  • Robust, presumably peer-reviewed psychoacoustic evidence that any of the non-rigorous, non-peer-reviewed measured effects of USB cables on noise are below the threshold of audibility.
  • Lots of firmly entrenched opinions held in good faith, but with varying degrees of understanding of the underlying psychology, psychoacoustics, materials science, digital signal transfer, DAC design and implementation, digital audio measurement and diagnostics, scientific method, etc.
Did I miss anything?
 
gustav_errata said:
As a summary, then, we have:
  • Anecdotal evidence of people hearing differences between USB cables in sighted tests
  • Anecdotal evidence of people not hearing differences between USB cables in unsighted tests
  • Robust, presumably peer-reviewed psychological evidence that sighted tests are subject to expectation bias
  • Non-rigorous, non-peer-reviewed measurements from ASR of one USB cable having no measurable effect on one DAC and of one other USB cable having a measurable effect on a couple DACs and no effect on one DAC, where the "effect" is a reduction in some form of noise on the analogue output of the DAC.
  • Engineering belief that any effect of a USB cable on noise shouldn't matter given a properly engineered DAC
  • A design specification that any in-spec USB cable shouldn't affect the actual digital signal due to exceedingly low error rates (not to mention any way for random digital signal/loss change to make consistent changes to the frequency response of the encoded audio signal)
  • A protocol-based fact that USB cables cannot effect jitter on an asynchronous USB connection to a DAC (but I guess any observed jitter in such is internal to the DAC...can someone confirm that?). What (hopefully exceedingly rare) errors do get through are not re-sent but are handled internally by the DAC.
  • Robust, presumably peer-reviewed psychoacoustic evidence that any of the non-rigorous, non-peer-reviewed measured effects of USB cables on noise are below the threshold of audibility.
  • Lots of firmly entrenched opinions
Did I miss anything?
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I’d maybe add that beliefs and opinions are held in good faith, but in the understandable absence of an appreciation of the psychological effects in play.

Then I could keep a copy to put as the first response to any usb or network cable thread:D
 
hc25036 said:
I’d maybe add that beliefs and opinions are held in good faith, but in the understandable absence of an appreciation of the psychological effects in play.

Then I could keep a copy to put as the first response to any usb or network cable thread:D
Click to expand...

Done, with a slight expansion :cool:
 
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