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My system is a mostly "NAIM" collection of seperates at about £11k.
NAIM cable is directional and like everything else they manufacture, is done that way for a good reason. Without going into the technical parameters, the practical upshot is that it sounds better.
I suspect that if a person is installing expensive directional cable into a cheap system they are 1: not going to hear any difference whichever way round they install the cable and most certainly 2: anybody who actually does this is operating under a complete missapprehension of how a Hifi system works and is wasting their money.
I suggest those who have made unhelpfull suggestion re: "pish", "snakeoil" "astrology/astronomy" etc. investigate the subject a little further either on the web or via their pockets before they resume talking b0ll0cks.
😀
Have you investigated it via studying electronics and physics?
If so, please reveal the science.
Mr Woppit, can I suggest that you contact the JREF and apply for their million dollar prize? Once you demonstrate your ability to tell the difference between cables, you'll be able to keep yourself in expensive HiFi equipment for life.
Mr Woppit's right. I'm ashamed to say I've never bought an astrology book (expensive, or otherwise). I feel humiliated by my ignorance.
[i]Without going into the technical parameters, the practical upshot is that it sounds better[/i]
Feel free to go into the technical parameters. My uni job involves performing a fairly wide range of electronics consultancies for external companies, so I reckon I can muddle through providing you don't use too many big words 🙂
No. I investigated it with my ears, although I daresay NAIM would let you know the physics behind their designs if you are really interested.
http://www.naim-audio.com/contacts.html
Demonstrating differences between cables is simple.
Seat the reviewer.
Play a CD using set of cables 1.
Change cables.
Play the same CD with set of cables 2.
Voila.
My system is a mostly "NAIM" collection of seperates at about £11k.NAIM cable is directional and like everything else they manufacture, is done that way for a good reason. Without going into the technical parameters, the practical upshot is that it sounds better.
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😆
Que?
Demonstrating differences between cables is simple.Seat the reviewer.
Play a CD using set of cables 1.
Change cables.
Play the same CD with set of cables 2.
Voila.
Oh dear, never heard of the placebo effect have we ?
As already stated, unless documented evidence can be produced its Hi-Fi 0, Physics 1
[url=
scientific fact[/url]
i have no real interest in HiFi, i'm only reading this so i can rip the pi$$ out of a mate that does. anyway, just read this from one of the links posted earlier and thought it was funny
Interestingly, the New Scientists recently commented on the London Heathrow Hi Fi Show, saying that among the cables selling for up to £30,000 for 6 metres, they found Quad demonstrating their latest speakers to great enthusiasm. The orange cable to the speakers looked oddly familiar. When asked about it, Tony Faulkner, the recording engineer demonstrating them (who'd used the speakers as monitors while recording Saint-Saen's complete works for piano & orchestra, Gramophone's Record of the Year), said of the cables:"Yes, they would look familiar if you have a garden. Before the show opened we went over the road to the DIY superstore and bought one of those £20 extension leads that Black & Decker sells for electric hedge-cutters. They are made from good, thick copper wire, look nice and sound good to me. The show's been running for three days and no one in the audience has noticed..." - New Scientist Magazine
I don't understand why you think that it would be a "placebo" effect. Are you suggesting that cabling with Hifi cable and then with say, telephone wire would sound the same or that all Hifi equipment sounds the same (to extend the analogy)? How peculiar.
That's still a subjective test, which is exactly what the snake-oil salesmen rely on. I'll settle for a good microphone and an audio spectrum analyser thankyou very much.
As glenp said, lets have some engineering details.
>the subject a little further either on the web or via their pockets before they resume talking b0ll0cks.
Oh excuse me.
5 years apprenticeship/technican at BT; degree in Electronics ; 18 months postgrad at B'ham uni on RF comms; about half of the least 20 yrs as an electronic engineer doing highspeed board design (where pcb trace lengths and ground loops *are* significant, depending what you're doing).
LOL Peachos 😀
Now we just need someone to defend pro level HDMI cables!
Mr. Woppit, we're not talking about telephone wire though are we?
No, i am suggesting that if somebody "WANTS" to hear a difference then they will.
If you are so convinced perhaps you could let us all know what the physical and chemical are between 0.5mm sq telephone wire and 0.5mm sq speaker cable ?
"Yes, they would look familiar if you have a garden. Before the show opened we went over the road to the DIY superstore and bought one of those £20 extension leads that Black & Decker sells for electric hedge-cutters. They are made from good, thick copper wire, look nice and sound good to me. The show's been running for three days and no one in the audience has noticed..." -
Notice what? Without that particular system being set up with another type of cabling to compare the results, why would anyone "notice" anything?
The only real way to determine if different speaker/ interconnect cables sound different is through a proper double-blind study. To the best of my knowledge, no such study has ever shown a statistically significant difference.
And you have to laugh at the thought of hifi obsessives spending thousands on cables...to listen to music recorded using bog-standard copper.
NAIM" collection of seperates at about £11k
That's why they sound better! You paid £11k for them. The link is directly between the amount of cash you handed over and what you perceive you can hear. In the same way it's rare to find anyone who has spent £5k on a bike admit that they don't like it.
For the record.. Directional Cables is bollocks. You've been done good and proper if you bought cables and spent that much based on that argument. I say this based on my experience of completing two degrees, one in IT specialising in electronics and CPU design including a large chunk on Analog/digital conversion and a second degree in physics. Of course I now run a bike mag so I've been away from the whole scientific and IT bleeding edge for a few years. I may have missed some groundbreaking, nobel prize winning scientific discoveries in that time. But I don't think so.
But as all good scientists would say.. I'm happy to have my view of science modified at anytime. In fact I welcome that, so PROVE me wrong. Show us the objective evidence. Your ears are subjective - they don't count as evidence.
"Experts" speaking mumbo-jumbo, much like anyone who tells you it's worth spending more than £75 on a mountain bike. 😯
[i]Notice what? Without that particular system being set up with another type of cabling to compare the results, why would anyone "notice" anything?[/i]
Good point. We've got a sound room at work. I can set up a nice test where I can swap between a bit of mains cable driving the speakers, and whatever pixie dust cable you choose to bring along. I'll swap the wires over 10 times an if you can correctly tell me which is which 10 times, and I'll give you £500 quid, you fail, and you give me £500 quid.
What ya got to loose?
>(to extend the analogy)? How peculiar.
It's not extending the analogy. It's two completely different things. The points is what has a *significant* effect (as demonstrated by the Quad guys). Crap decoupling, poor component choice, or designing an earth loop into the innards of an amp or preamp will probably have far more effect than a short run of *screened* telephone wire between and amp and preamp, for example (depending on crapness, of course). Do you even know what the characteristic impendance of a piece of telephone wire is ? No, thought not. If it wasn't for picking up mains hum or noise you'd probably even be able to do without it being screened.
Test bench results do not determine musical quality. Of course it's a subjective experience; my example of different cabling was extreme to indicate that where there is a physical difference in equipment, there will be a different audio outcome.
"Simples",as the meerkat is fond of saying.
I admire the level of engineering expertise on display and am SO SORRY that I may have hurt your feelings after so much hard work and sacrifice to get to where you are today, but the proof of the musical pudding is in the ears eating it, I'm afraid, no matter what the test bench results indicate.
As I say, if you are interested in the physics of how these differences are achieved, you would probably find the NAIM contact a useful source and much better equipped than I to explain it. If you are convinced that you are right, then the only way [b]I[/b] could convince you is to invite you round for a demonstration, bringing a cable of your choice, because obviously nothing I say here will do the job.
Please don't hurt me, I'm only little.
And you have to laugh at the thought of hifi obsessives spending thousands on cables...to listen to music recorded using bog-standard copper.
Not to mention the considerably longer and thiner coils of boring old copper connected to the end of their cables (ie the driver voice coils).
Experts" speaking mumbo-jumbo, much like anyone who tells you it's worth spending more than £75 on a mountain bike.
There are measurable reasons why a more expensive bike is better. Weight, stiffness, strength, durability.
We're too busy laughing at you to have our feelings hurt 🙂
Test bench results do not determine musical quality. Of course it's a subjective experience; my example of different cabling was extreme to indicate that where there is a physical difference in equipment, there will be a different audio outcome.
But there's also evidence that flicking a switch that isn't connected to anything will change your subjective experience - people told that a switch changes between high quality and low quality cable, will be able to hear a significant difference in quality between the two.
If there was a difference that you could hear, you must have better ears than every audio type who has ever done a blind 2 way test, given no-one has ever been able to tell the difference between cables yet in a blind test.
Joe
but the proof of the musical pudding is in the ears eating it, I'm afraid, no matter what the test bench results indicate.
'It's scientific fact, there's no actual evidence for it, but it is a scientific fact'.
but the proof of the musical pudding is in the ears eating it, I'm afraid, no matter what the test bench results indicate.
Absolutely. So long as you can get the results to prove it in a double blind test.
Mr Woppit, I suspect your money could perhaps be a little better spent on something like this:
p.s. Don't think that I'm arguing this just because I have no interest or appreciation of music or hi-fi - I actually have 2 relatively expensive hi-fi systems which I enjoy a lot. However, I also have a degree in physics and electronics, and currently study human perception, so the amount of hi-fi marketing blurb I believe is severely limited!
p.s. if it makes you happy, spend your money on whatever you like 🙂
And you have to laugh at the thought of hifi obsessives spending thousands on cables...to listen to music recorded using bog-standard copper
I think this is a far more relevant point. I used to be into Hi-Fi in the sense that I enjoyed reading about the expensive stuff but couldn't afford it (a bit like MTB mags really!). All the mags wittered on about the Holy Grail of hi-fi making music sound exactly as it was recorded. No thanks. I'd rather not hear the crap that wasn't meant to be picked up by the cheap microphones.
If there was a difference that you could hear, you must have better ears than every audio type who has ever done a blind 2 way test, given no-one has ever been able to tell the difference between cables yet in a blind test.
Well, I suppose I must have magic ears, as you say. Lucky me.
Exit.
Blimey - we seem to be assembling some of the same cast as the Alpha/Atheist thread and nearly as much reasoned discussion.
And again it comes down to objective, scientific evidence vs. how someone feels about something. If you 'upgrade' your speaker cables and you think it sounds better, good for you. It doesn't make it true.
For myself, I believe it is worth spending 'some' money on decent interconnects and cables but this is more to do with consistency of the manufacturing process than having individual copper atoms aligned by a virgin wearing purple. I also believe that the level at which it is not worth spending more on cables etc is quite low. For me to change my view will take randomised double-blind studies which show an effect.
Certainly analogue sensors in sensitive control equipment are generally shielded and that shield is connected to ground at one end only, usually the non-sensor end (to reduce the likelyhood of ground loops) so I suspect this is fairly applicable to hifi seperates. There is also some discussion as to just how the signals flow over/through solid/braided/woven etc cabling, all of which have some measurable effect. However I'm not sure the measurable effect is perceivable to the human ear, I generally think that providing you buy a decent quality, suitably sized cable you will probably not notice any difference at all.
You'd have to run some fairly comprehensive double-blind tests to prove it though. You can show the differences in waveforms fairly easily, but you cannot scientifically link that to what people perceive.
Mr Woppit, presumably you'll be taking this up?
Good point. We've got a sound room at work. I can set up a nice test where I can swap between a bit of mains cable driving the speakers, and whatever pixie dust cable you choose to bring along. I'll swap the wires over 10 times an if you can correctly tell me which is which 10 times, and I'll give you £500 quid, you fail, and you give me £500 quid.
What ya got to loose?
I certainly would be if I had your ability to differentiate interconnects/speaker cable/etc.
Well, I suppose I must have magic ears, as you say. Lucky me.
I bet red placebo pills make you feel better than blue placebo pills.
>admire the level of engineering expertise on display and am SO SORRY that I may have hurt your feelings after so much hard work and sacrifice to get to where you are today, but the proof of the musical pudding is in the ears eating it, I'm afraid, no matter what the test bench results indicate.
I'm not offended - the point was merely that I'm probably one of the more qualified posters on here rather than pulling rubbish out of thin air.
I'm only offended by people's ingnorance and unwillingness to listen to what I'm trying to get over.
In any case, who do you think designs this stuff, the audio-fairy?
No, blokes like me.
Do you think Naim (et al) pull some circuitry out of a hat? .
No.
It'll be designed/built/analysed/redesigned. Listening tests will be part of that, but they'll still measure stuff on a bench. That's how designing electronics works.
If there's a difference, you'll be able to measure it. How much you can relate the measurements to what you hear is another matter, but it *is* quantifiable. If it isn't quantifiable, you're imagining it.
Why do valves sound better than transistors in amps ? Because their non-linearities produce even harmonics, rather than odd harmonics, which 'sound' better. So, yes, the final arbiter is your ear, but it may still be measured.
But as far as interconects are concerned, it's p*ss-simple linear electronics with nothing interesting going on.
For me to change my view will take randomised double-blind studies which show an effect.
In defence of Mr Woppit who has now left the room, can I ask this of all the doubters? If double-blind tests did show a difference - but one that you could not [i]hear[/i] - where would you stand then?
What I find odd with this argument is that it is the total opposite of what is usually dished out on this forum regarding bikes. No matter what people read in reviews or what geometry/spec a bike has, [i]most[/i] people on this forum would recommend someone try a bike before splashing the cash rather than relying on the "facts". Mr Woppit has done just this with his cables and he liked what he heard
How would a double blind test show a difference you couldn't hear?
If it's shows a difference, it's because it was audible. That's what the test is for.
if the tests found a difference but one couldn't hear it, then Mr Woppit would still be deluded...
His overriding point is that he's spent £11k, and we haven't.
Back again.
In any case, who do you think designs this stuff, the audio-fairy?
No, blokes like me.Do you think Naim (et al) pull some circuitry out of a hat? .
No.
It'll be designed/built/analysed/redesigned. Listening tests will be part of that, but they'll still measure stuff on a bench. That's how designing electronics works.
That's an interesting argument and makes sense. However, why would NAIM suddenly suspend their approach with regard to the speaker cable by insisting on it's directionality when (presumably) their test results would show no difference in directional performance?
Anyways, I'm attempting to retrieve some information regarding the scientific/theoretical basis for cable directionality if you give me a few minutes. I can't claim that I'd understand any of it myself, but I daresay you would find it something to chew on.
🙂
A difference you can't hear?
Why would anyone pay extra for hi-fi that provided benefits they couldn't hear?
(as an aside, my view is that a lot of the benefits of posh hi-fi went out the window when people switched to digital recording and playback)
Ah you mean tests with test instruments rather than the human ear?
I'd say he'd have a better place to argue from.
It's an interesting demonstration in faith though. I think Mr. woppit was pretty scathing of people's faith in god recently, but is quite happy to worship naim with the same amount of empirical evidence 🙂
And presumably getting evidence from naim, is equivalent to quoting from the bible to justify it:)
Mr Woppit has done just this with his cables and he liked what he heard
There's a difference between expressing a preference and stating a fact. And it's a fact that bikes do have measurable differences - the subjective question is how this relates to the ride.
The analogy would be if speakers cables did have measurable audible differences, the subjective question being how this would relate to your hifi and your living room.
Nobody has ever managed to demonstrate an audible difference between different brands of hifi cable. It's a scam.