The Great Cable and Interconnect Swindle: An Etiology

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

9 minutes ago, jabbr said:

 

Its not his original idea, I think I learned this from Ott's textbook, or another high speed digital textbook. I don't fully understand John's thoughts but he might very well have said this. Do you have a quote?

I also read Ott's book but I think it is from JS. I don't have a quote and could be wrong. Others will know like @Superdad

[jabbr]

30 minutes ago, Audiophile Neuroscience said:

I also read Ott's book but I think it is from JS. I don't have a quote and could be wrong. Others will know like @Superdad

I for fact learned this from a textbook — and I have 5 or so — which had a 3D simulation based diagram. I have never seen John nor Alex publish measurements or simulations to that degree.

 

If @marce were still here he would know immediately — his expertise. Let’s see if google knows ...
 

so there’s been a gazillion articles written on various shielding and ground plane topics. I recall a specific 3D diagram that I saw — think Ott but could be another textbook. 

[jabbr]

12 hours ago, PYP said:

 

I have often wondered about the SQ effect, if any, between these different standards.  Objectivists:  what say you?

I suspect you are not the AC power cable skeptic you claim. 

[jabbr]

9 hours ago, Audiophile Neuroscience said:

 

Expectation bias works both ways, as does confirmation bias for that matter.

 

Fair enough. Does it matter? Not really, this question isn’t important enough for anyone to do Science on. The way to try to settle the expectation and confirmation bias rathole is to do measurements and publish the techniques to sufficient detail that the measurements may be independently repeated. No need because people are welcome to do whatever pleases them.

[Richard Dale]

5 hours ago, jabbr said:

 

What is the basis for your claim? The fact that you seem to question the existence of the placebo effect suggests to me that your understanding of this subject is suspect.

 

How about this: Your brain determines what you hear. 

The medical placebo effect is that you take medicines which you believe to be genuine, which are not, but in fact they end up having a measurable effect on your health outcomes.

 

For the HiFi analogy to work you would need to do the equivalent of taking a placebo, which might be substituting a new interconnect cable in your system. Then because your brain thought it should result in an improvement in the resolution of your system, you would actually hear improvements in the resolution of your system, such as finding that the instrument on a particular track was an oboe, when previously you thought it was a flute.

 

But in practice the 'objectivist' use of the term 'placebo effect' just means that you are imagining the sound of your system has changed just because you substituted something new and shiny. There is no analogy, it doesn't have any power to explain, and usually it is used to merely deny experienced listeners that they can't possibly be experienced listeners by people who aren't experienced listeners.

[jabbr]

16 minutes ago, Richard Dale said:

But in practice the 'objectivist' use of the term 'placebo effect' just means that you are imagining the sound of your system has changed just because you substituted something new and shiny. There is no analogy, it doesn't have any power to explain, and usually it is used to merely deny experienced listeners that they can't possibly be experienced listeners by people who aren't experienced listeners.

Not at all. I am saying that if your brain believes that something will make the system sound better, that it *will* actually sound better to you. It has nothing to say about your tastes nor experience. 
 

If an AC power cable were to make a flute sound like an oboe, then NASA we have a problem

[Richard Dale]

Just now, jabbr said:

Not at all. I am saying that if your brain believes that something will make the system sound better, that it *will* actually sound better to you. It has nothing to say about your tastes nor experience. 

I am discussing the 'objectivist' use of the term 'placebo effect', which I am saying has no analogy with the medical use of the term 'placebo effect'. You are discussing something else.

[jabbr]

1 hour ago, Richard Dale said:

1 hour ago, jabbr said:

Not at all. I am saying that if your brain believes that something will make the system sound better, that it *will* actually sound better to you. It has nothing to say about your tastes nor experience. 

I am discussing the 'objectivist' use of the term 'placebo effect', which I am saying has no analogy with the medical use of the term 'placebo effect'. You are discussing something else.

 

Substitute “your pain feel better” for the “system sound better” and you have a direct analogy whether you wish to see it or not.

 

Pain is real, sound perception is real, both are modulated by the brain. 

[Richard Dale]

6 minutes ago, jabbr said:

 

Substitute “your pain feel better” for the “system sound better” and you have a direct analogy whether you wish to see it or not.

 

Pain is real, sound perception is real, both are modulated by the brain. 

No, it isn't about your pain feeling subjectively better in the case of the medical 'placebo effect', it is about your health being measurably better. There is no equivalent to that with the 'objectivist' use of 'placebo effect'.

[jabbr]

7 hours ago, Audiophile Neuroscience said:

Professor Ted Kaptchuk of Harvard-affiliated Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, whose research focuses on the placebo effect.

"Placebos won't lower your cholesterol or shrink a tumor. Instead, placebos work on symptoms modulated by the brain, like the perception of pain. Placebos may make you feel better, but they will not cure you," says Kaptchuk.

I don’t know his work, but we take lots of medicines that do no more than modulate symptoms. Cures are relatively rare. Pain can be disabling. Nonetheless we require that a marketed drug be better than placebo  

 

For power cables there is no such requirement, nor can conclusions be drawn one way or the other. If this were studied you could say, for example: ok 20% of the improvement is attributed to placebo but 80% of the improvement is attributable to the phlogiston 🤷🏻‍♂️

[John Dyson]

15 hours ago, Audiophile Neuroscience said:

 

I almost fully agree with this John except:

 

"psychologically make that fake-fact true in their own minds." presupposes you are absolutely certain they are wrong ...and that it can only be explained by expectation bias

 

and

 

"It is best for the expert to demure even if that true expert REALLY KNOWS what is going on..."

 

If you meant demur (not demure) then I disagree, anyone can object, hesitate or question. As for expert appeal to authority -Science is the organized skepticism in the reliability of expert opinion that... "really knows"

 

People never *really* know if they are actually right or wrong, but an engineer with 40yrs of real experience, honest with themselves about what they do/do not know, and head not in the clouds isn't going to be too far off from reality.  I am assuming that the person isn't crazy or has a delusion, because any of us can be crazy, cant' we?   Metaphysics is not needed -- more like actual learning & education, THAT is what is needed.

 

There is NO leading edge science going on here in audio -- it is all well understood for at least the last 20-30yrs, and fairly well understood for 30yrs before that.  The math has been solid for 20-30yrs before that (Nyquist, sampling theory, statistics -- much from Bell Labs.)   Point being -- there is little room or need for metaphysics in the audio world.   The mathematical understanding and the experience of the actual engineering community is strong enough that silly claims are pretty darned easy to spot.

 

Some assertions made in some audiophile forums are bordering on totally delusional -- there are really competent engineers out there, there is absolutely no need to be a leading edge scientist, some claims are just wrong....   This all means that the observations might have truth in them, but when observations are made with a faulty sensor, and processed with a poorly programmed computer, then the results are likely going to be eccentric, aren't they?  The results are going to have errors.l I can understand the absurd claims, but sometimes very sane explanations and simple questions are answered by something like 'you just dont understand' or 'non-believer'.   I try to hold a very sober attitude, attempting to kindly educate -- note the term KINDLY, instead of being rude.  It can be frustrating to see these odd 'memes' persistently floating around in the hobby realm.

 

I don't do the appeal to authority - I am more into the appeal to reality.  Of course, we can always distract things arguing about the number of angels on the head of a pin.

 

Audio technology itself (inclding transducers, electronics/layout, etc) is NOT pushing the state of the art.  We are talking about 100kHz signal payload  at the most, with people worried about 24bits of resolution (almost achieving that accuracy) not being enough...  There is some real absurdity going on if we are worried about metaphysics in audio -- but a lot of discussions ARE metaphysical, especially when someone starts worrying about the lack of competency available.

 

* the reason why competent engineers don't get involved in discussions with people who aren't intellectually prepared, is that metaphysics bursting forth is so very absurd, it isn't worth wasting their time.   People without enough of a technical background  are sometimes not patient enough to learn actually what is going on -- so they fall back to metaphysics.   I hope that I did my part, trying to make some inroads in the community about the 'ringing' associated with FIR/Brickwall filters -- maybe we can raise the bar (refer to South Park for that allusion.)  I'll bet you that there are some technologists who still don't completely understand the important differences between Gibbs, ringing and actually understanding the mechanisms that can make different kinds of filters potentially audible (and it isn't specifically about phase, but instead the related 'time'.)

 

PS: My spelling sucks -- you wouldn't believe how bad my typing gets, both hands out of sync, three or four characters off ---  it is almost like both sides are disconnected.

 

John

 

[jabbr]

8 hours ago, Audiophile Neuroscience said:

My point was that science expects you to consider how you might be wrong just as much as how you might be right. Its about being impartial and considering all angles.

I think I haven’t explained this in the detail it deserves. I am going to try to make this explanation generally understandable if not mathematically precise:

 

The idea behind the “stressed eye pattern” is to input an Ethernet signal with the maximal amount of allowed noise into the link. Noise can be random or not (eg correlated) but the levels may not exceed the allowed values. The link is then measured and must not exceed the allowed limits of the eye pattern. In this situation if noise were additive then the limits would be exceeded (there will always be noise whether voltage or jitter based). So let’s say you have an RF signal: it cannot “add” to the intrinsic noise otherwise it will exceed the eye-pattern limits — and fail compliance testing. Each link thus “regenerates” the signal (in Ethernet this is called SERDES serialization-deserialization). 
 

In these systems, the error tolerances are very tight: jitter in hundreds of femtoseconds etc, and the system suppresses noise — and compliance testing measures that, to the point that I’m not personally capable of replicating the testing that Mellanox has done: 100Gbe requires clocks with jitter in the tens of femtoseconds. nor do I have a scope that fast  

 

Also consider this: my switch has 32 ports, suppose I had 16 inputs, each coming from a server with an RF signature and 16 outputs — are you suggesting that the single ASIC somehow switches the RF noise from input to output? It seems to me that the noise would multiply and quickly blow the eye pattern. 
 

Until someone demonstrates with good data that that occurs, I don’t believe it happens. 

[PYP]

7 hours ago, jabbr said:

I suspect you are not the AC power cable skeptic you claim. 

 

Really?  How so?  Rather than accepting a label for myself, perhaps this explains it:  I don't think a power cord should make a difference because I can't find a reason why it should, but since others report differences and I believe not everything that can be heard can be measured, I decided to give it a try.  The first tries were unsuccessful and I gave it a rest.  When when I bumped into ICs that really worked for me, I thought it might time to try again.  This time, I was very surprised by the result and that cord is still in my system.

 

While in theory it would be interesting to test cords, that just isn't where I am now, if you know what I mean.  I would need to recall my younger self and it isn't working.     I'm not on this thread to convince anyone that my approach is verifiable by measurement, but am very interested to understand what folks measure and why.  I respect your informed opinions, but that is what they are.  No offense intended.  

[sandyk]

3 hours ago, jabbr said:

Not at all. I am saying that if your brain believes that something will make the system sound better, that it *will* actually sound better to you. It has nothing to say about your tastes nor experience. 
 

By the same token , if your brain believes that something can't possibly make the system sound better, or perhaps even different, then you are unlikely to hear it unless the difference is large. 

[kumakuma]

8 minutes ago, sandyk said:

By the same token , if your brain believes that something can't possibly make the system sound better, or perhaps even different, then you are unlikely to hear it unless the difference is large. 

 

I wonder if this is actually true.

[jabbr]

7 minutes ago, sandyk said:

By the same token , if your brain believes that something can't possibly make the system sound better, or perhaps even different, then you are unlikely to hear it unless the difference is large. 

Certainly.

 

This is a property of subjective experiences: they are subjective. 
 

If you want science, you need objective measurements.

[sandyk]

5 minutes ago, kumakuma said:

 

I wonder if this is actually true.

 That has been my experience at several listening sessions with 6 or more participants., where one was a qualified E.E. and the other an I.T. specialist . 

[kumakuma]

1 minute ago, sandyk said:

 That has been my experience at several listening sessions with 6 or more participants., where one was a qualified E.E. and the other an I.T. specialist . 

 

 

Is it possible their listening skills were simply less developed that others participating in these sessions?

[jabbr]

58 minutes ago, PYP said:

While in theory it would be interesting to test cords, that just isn't where I am now, if you know what I mean.  I would need to recall my younger self and it isn't working.     I'm not on this thread to convince anyone that my approach is verifiable by measurement, but am very interested to understand what folks measure and why.  I respect your informed opinions, but that is what they are.  No offense intended.  

No offense taken and agreed my opinions are my own. You asked for an objective explanation. I provided one, though it seems to get some people into a tither. Personally I don’t care about AC power cords but I find USB curious. 

[jabbr]

6 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 That has been my experience at several listening sessions with 6 or more participants., where one was a qualified E.E. and the other an I.T. specialist . 

You should believe a negative listening experience the same as you do a positive one, otherwise you are biased. You are free to be biased, but your statements won’t get the same consideration as if you were neutral. 

[PYP]

2 minutes ago, jabbr said:

No offense taken and agreed my opinions are my own. You asked for an objective explanation. I provided one, though it seems to get some people into a tither. Personally I don’t care about AC power cords but I find USB curious. 

 

And I appreciate your explanation.  As we all know, there won't be a measurement that subjectivists believe that will change their beliefs and there is no subjective test, blind or otherwise, that objectivists won't pick apart.  Personally, one of my "buttons" is dogma, no matter who is being dogmatic.  But this thread does provide a thorough discussion of the differences, and that is interesting.  

[PYP]

7 minutes ago, jabbr said:

No offense taken and agreed my opinions are my own. You asked for an objective explanation. I provided one, though it seems to get some people into a tither. Personally I don’t care about AC power cords but I find USB curious. 

 

I wonder if that term has ever appeared in a dating app:  I am USB curious.  Perhaps an app just for audiophiles.  Though I suppose the first question would be:  Are you a subjectivist or objectivists?  And I suppose the photos would be of systems and not people.

[jabbr]

7 minutes ago, PYP said:

 

And I appreciate your explanation.  As we all know, there won't be a measurement that subjectivists believe that will change their beliefs and there is no subjective test, blind or otherwise, that objectivists won't pick apart.  Personally, one of my "buttons" is dogma, no matter who is being dogmatic.  But this thread does provide a thorough discussion of the differences, and that is interesting.  

That’s what it is all about actually: what does it take you, personally, to be convinced of something?

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

8 hours ago, jabbr said:

Fair enough. Does it matter? Not really, this question isn’t important enough for anyone to do Science on. The way to try to settle the expectation and confirmation bias rathole is to do measurements and publish the techniques to sufficient detail that the measurements may be independently repeated. No need because people are welcome to do whatever pleases them.

It definitely will not settle the issue but it will make whichever hypothesis stronger - for most,including me that will be enough. As you say nobody cares sufficiently to do the job properly (and by caring I mean has the funds and time and inclination) together with the knowledge of research methods. Does it matter? I agree, people are welcome to do whatever pleases them.

[gmgraves]

14 hours ago, Audiophile Neuroscience said:

 

I totally get it George. I have to say tho it seems a little curious coming from a professional audio reviewer but then again your personal listening habits don't have to reflect your job as a reviewer. As a (trusted) reviewer its good to know what you think is unimportant as well as important - at least as a starting point.

It’s not that I think it’s unimportant, it’s more that I think it’s a futile endeavor. It’s basically the audio equivalent of counting how many angels can set on the head of a pin. Nothing is perfect, and cables, since they can’t add anything to the sound (unless they are defective, then the diode effect can add distortion), so what we end up chasing is different amounts of loss at differing frequencies. Here is how I see it: Chasing losses all around the audio spectrum looking for better sound is like fighting for peace. If one never swaps cables, then one never knows what it’s like to swap the devil to which one is familiar (one’s current cable complement) for the devil one doesn’t know (new cables that merely shift the tonal balance from one part of the spectrum to another). When one goes out and buys new cables, one does not have any idea that they are going to like the change In sound that the new cables afford, so, like I have said before, one is buying a pig in a poke. Since said changes are random, and often are different for different systems (a cable is a synergistic part of a system after all. The system is the source of the signal, the cable, and the load). Audiophiles that I know continually swap cables looking for better sound which seems to be, in their definition of better sound, different sound. I get the impression that instead of enjoying their systems and the music it plays, they sit in front of their speakers and fret continuously that the system could sound better So they figure “Maybe new cables would help.” Now, it might make more sense if the manufacturers actually knew in what way their cables would change the sound of a system, but they don’t. They don’t even know why cables change the sound, much less how they will change it. They’re feeling their way in the dark, fer crissake!

It’s such a crap shoot. An acquaintance of mine is very wealthy. He fell for the hype and bought a pair of Nordost Valhalla Two interconnects to go between his Audio Research preamp and his Audio Research power amplifier. Now, you know how much those puppies cost. They day he got them, he called me to tell me how disappointed he was. The Nordost cables sounded really dark, and he hated them.
When he tried to return them, the dealer wouldn’t take them back under the pretext that he could no longer sell them as new, and he couldn’t afford to take that loss on cables that expensive! Now what is there to make a pair of interconnects “used”. Wire isn’t like a car, you know! It’s not like they are going to wear out. After talking to the manufacturer and even threatening legal action (the answer there, of course is Caveat Emptor). He ended-up chalking it up to experience and selling the cables online at a considerable loss. He offered to send the cables to me for evaluation, but I declined the offer. To paraphrase Henry Higgins from Shaw’s (and Lerner and Lowe’s) Pygmalion, “I will never let a Boutique interconnect in my life!”