My response to "Boycott the sub-forum"

[gmgraves]

23 minutes ago, charlesphoto said:

This has nothing to do with rational or irrational thought, and everything to do with rational and irrational behavior. If you can't parse that then I'm truly sorry for you and perhaps, as CC might say, you need to move on and find your fulfillment elsewhere.

 

IMO CC was being entirely diplomatic when he said mansr's contributions would be missed, because as long as I've been around here I haven't seen him contribute one single thing beyond one liner snark and naysaying. Pretty easy to rack up 13,000 posts when that's one's m.o. My prediction is the "objectivists" thread is going to be a very lonely place, because more often than not they have their rigid, marked in stone stance, but very little to back it up  - i.e. prove without a doubt why ethernet cables absolutely couldn't make a difference in sound, vs always haranguing those who hear a difference to prove why they do. Repeated, empty phrases about 'science' and 'measurements' is just another flip side of subjectivism if you ask me. Maybe it comes down to obstinance vs curiosity. I'll always choose the side of curiosity - it's what I try and teach my children. 

I think that you are being just a wee bit unfair. When people with a real engineering or scientific background state something akin to “Ethernet cables can’t possibly make a sonic difference”, all that they are saying is that after looking at what kind of signals these cables carry, and given the parameters of those signals and that cable, they don’t see any way that said cable could affect the way that a DAC sounds down-stream of that cable. Here’s the problem. I have a master’s degree in electronic engineering. I think I understand how cables work, what their drawbacks and strengths are and how digital audio works. I can see nothing in Ether cable, in digital audio encoding, or in the way DACs Interpret the signals they receive to explain such a phenomenon. This tells me that Ethernet cables (or USB cables for that matter) simply CAN’T alter the sound of the digital signal passing through them, BUT, THEY CLEARLY DO! Why? I haven’t a clue. So just as you can’t tell me why it should alter the sound, all I and those like me can do is tell you why it SHOULDN’T affect the sound.

[gmgraves]

44 minutes ago, Allan F said:

 

IMO, George, you are being far to kind to those people, and I suggest that you are attributing an undeserved favourable interpretation to their posts. Unlike you, who is prepared to accept the existence of these differences although you are unable to offer an explanation for them, they tend to adopt a very different approach. Not only do they insist that there can be no such sonic differences, but they also maintain that there is, in fact, no possible sonic difference. Moreover, they tend to ridicule anyone who suggests that there is, and declare that anyone who does so is deluding himself/herself.

As I said earlier, there is no excuse for incivility on any subject. Having said that, I do understand their extreme skepticism. Cables are passive, not active components. That means that any alteration of sound attributable to cables, be that alteration on an analog cable or a digital cable, is caused because something in the signal is being SUBTRACTED from that signal, as cables, by definition, cannot add anything. I know that Ethernet cables and USB cables change the sound because I’ve heard it. I suspect that these naysayers of which we speak here, have not heard it. When you haven’t experienced a phenomenon, and that phenomenon, by all knowledgeable accounts SHOULDN’T HAPPEN, it’s easy to attribute it to some non-system based cause like one’s imagination, or perhaps a willingness to lie for reasons of self-aggrandizement. 
After years of denial, I started to notice, for instance, that every different USB cable I tried sounded different. I became so frustrated by this (and technology’s inability to explain it) that I purged USB from my system where possible I now use only SPDIF for digital (and mostly Toslink, at that) because I have found that SPDIF does not change the sound from cable to cable (either coax or Toslink). I realize that Toslink limits me to a 96KHz sampling rate, but I think that higher than that just   Makes the file size bigger without providing (for me, anyway) a concomitant increase in SQ (diminishing returns, and all that). As usual, YMMV!

[gmgraves]

7 minutes ago, Jud said:

 

Wasn't he in Mutiny on the Bounty?

He was!

[gmgraves]

1 hour ago, Bill Brown said:

 

"Shouldn't," backed by sound supporting engineering reasons, is great.  Let people soak it in, learn and benefit from your expertise, then leave it up to them.  Some will be educated and convinced!  "Can't possibly," "irrational," "impossible," "you are delusional," "silly" isn't edifying and is a turn-off (not that you have used all of those).

 

You have previously extended your above comments about digital links to analog cables re. no difference.  I believe (?think) there are equally educated engineers that would disagree.  It feels ok to me that I use a generic USB cable, balanced Canare star-quad interconnects, and Kimber speaker cables.  I believe I hear a difference with the latter.  I don't think I am delusional, but if I am I am still happy .  So what?

Well, you are misinterpreting my current stance on analog cables. Speaker cables can have a real affect on sound because the cables are a real part of the circuit. Amps have different output impedances and react differently to different loads. Speakers also have different impedance CURVES, and cables have to interface to both of those. Speaker cables have differing levels of  DC resistance and capacitance and inductance. Making putting together the best speaker/amplifier connection system a crap shoot at best. As consumers, we have no way of modeling our amp/speaker interface to come up with the ideal cable to maximize the performance of both.

on the other hand, most (if not all) line-level components have very low output impedances and very high input impedances. This means that short runs of coaxial cable between components are not dealing with the kinds of load interactions that are present in the amp/speaker interface, nor are the runs anywhere near as long. My stance is that if one interconnect sounds different from another, it’s because it is attenuating some portion of the audio spectrum with respect to some other portion. I’d rather have an interconnect that doesn’t noticeably attenuate ANY portion of the audible spectrum. But since that doesn’t exist, and because I firmly believe that “boutique” cable makers PURPOSELY alter the passband of their products to make them sound deliberately different from their competition, and I know that it is something over which the audiophile buyer has absolutely no control, I choose to ignore the entire cable selecting fracas!

Please, I didn’t post this to hijack this thread to talk about cables. I posted it just to set right a misrepresentation of my current stand on the subject. No more please!

 

 

[gmgraves]

11 minutes ago, Allan F said:

 

There's another element at play here, George, As you know, those who insist that sonic differences are impossible, readily dismiss all experiences of those hear them as "expectation bias". However, they ignore the fact that expectation bias can work both ways, i.e. if you are convinced that there can be no sonic difference, you won't hear it if it's there. That is not to say that expectation bias does not exist. It does, but it cannot possibly explain sonic differences heard repeatedly over extended and different listening sessions.

I have always known that expectation bias can be a negative bias as well as a positive one. I.E. I don't expect to hear a difference and so I won't as you say. But it is a free country, and as long as those who hold a different opinion from yours or mine should be allowed to voice that opinion AS LONG AS IT'S done in the spirit of a debate and remains not just civil, but CORDIAL as well, then there should be no shackles on people's ability to voice that opinion. 

To me, I can think of nothing more boring than a forum that has become  a "mutual admiration society" where everybody reinforces everybody else opinions with no dissenting voice. It would be like a country that is allowed only one political party, and opposition is outlawed. Eventually that country's government will become an oppressive, totalitarian one. As contentious and divided as the USA has become over the last few decades, I thank our lucky stars that we still have room for different points of view. I see this forum as a microcosm of the larger political world. We need all points of view to be held and voiced, lest Audiophile Style become a vast empty place where nothing of real interest is ever said, and no progress or personal growth for it's members ever occurs. 

[gmgraves]

32 minutes ago, Bill Brown said:

To gmgraves:

 

I am sorry I misrepresented your thoughts/statements.  I was under the impression that you had written that properly-engineered/terminated analog cables had no difference in sound.  My understanding of your thinking was inadequately nuanced.

 

I agree re. cables.  I keep it simple and cringe at the exorbitant prices of many.

 

Bill

No problem. I want to make it clear, that your characterization of my cable stand, was, at one time, quite accurate. Because of what I have learned here, over the years (I have been posting here for almost 13 years now!) many of my views have modified because of the lively debates with those with whom I have disagreed. These people have encouraged me to listen more intently and to try things that I would have blown off as nonsense earlier. I can't and don't blame you for getting me wrong. I was quite stubborn and vocal about my original views on this subject, and neither you are anybody else can read my mind or realize that I have changed my mind, unless I state that I have changed. For the record, while  I agree that Interconnects can sound different, I have vowed not to turn down that street. As you say, Keep It Simple, and look upon expensive "boutique" cables with a jaundiced eye.

[gmgraves]

3 hours ago, ShawnC said:

Andrew Quint, The Absolute Sound magazine.

Yes. Now that I think about it, the character in Mutiny on the Bounty was Quintal, not Quint.