Well, it is a video.
Well I got a chuckle out of that comment, I wasnāt going to give it a second thought until your follow-up.
I think itās an interesting measurement effort, have not seen comparative cable measurements including speakers before. What I understand is that he measures some differences in speaker outputs across the frequency spectrum, with different (gauges of) cables, but these differences are too small to be audible.
I wish there were more comparison measurements like this. Mostly itās just the cable that is measured. E.g. Iconoclast published cable measurements, and shows measurable differences between designs, but itās the cable only, and not clear if differences are significant enough to be audible in a full chain. Curious what others opinions are on this test, if people know of other tests like this, and if those show similar or different results?
It doesnāt appear he is giving chose 20k as place where cables had the most similar dB levels up his Kimber Cables for lamp cord. Plus he doesnāt consider phase difference over frequency. And velocity of propagation which can make your music sound mixed up and less lively
His advice on fixing room acoustics makes sense. When you do that cables matter even more as does the perceptible differences one can hear.
It seems from the video we are all a bunch of nuts to even imagine
that a better designed cable will yield an inaudible difference than a lesser
cheaper cableā¦As well as being preconditioned to thinking we are hearing a difference.
Perhaps Mr. DellaSala has lost a degree of hearing ability and thus cannot
hear any differences at all.
As for me I will keep my Nordost Red Dawn speaker cablesā¦
Best wishes
He did not hear exactly what he wanted to not hear; i.e., he was preconditioned. Expectation bias goes both ways.
I assume we have all had the experience listening to two different amplifiers, preamps, DACs, etc., both of which with perfectly flat frequency response specifications, vanishingly low distortion, and the like. Yet, they sound very different.
With respect to cables, we know they measure differently as well as sound different. Galen has taught us a great deal in this regard.
I wish I did not hear a difference in cables. Or for that matter between amps, DACs, and more. It would be cheaper.
I find these guys so boring.
Itās always the same story: "This is what I like best and I have a terribly expensive test instrument (substitute for mommy) to tell me that Iām right.
An excellent summary.
But you left out the exceedingly long introduction, preface, summary, recapitulation, coda, surrounding the minute of actual content.
Iāve experienced that cables matter, a lot. Power cords Dragon during last weeks changed dramatically my system (all PS Audio), also Dragon HDMI. Therefore I ordered combo SILVER BASS William Tell. Never bought AudioQuest before last month. Just discovered this brand with my ears.
Is measuring a criteria in audiophile? If so why toeing in or out a speaker of millimeters and moving them a few inches we all can agree that we hear differences? Measurements where are in that case?
It sometimes seems a sort of sterile perseveranceā¦
Itās better IMO enjoining music, cables and so on.
Here in Italy we love food or wine, and I assure you that when I taste them on my table I donāt measure tannin percentage or grain chemicals, just spend lot of money (if I want and if I can) in trusted canteen and artisans who are able to produce magical flavors belong to traditions and country history. Thatās all.
Cheers.
Here is more on why cables can sound different from one another.
Hope the video is better than that shirt. The only test measurement device I need is my ears.
I borrowed this borrowed quote from @Baldy
Hereās a nice quote from DāAgostino. Pay attention to the last line.
āOur current designs have absolutely nothing in common with what I did at Krell. When I left that company, I wanted to do something in the completely opposite direction. Iām glad in a way that I was asked to leave, because [the move] provided me with the platform that I could use to do the designs I do today. I think that at Krell we got involved in a numbers game: We can do this better because it measures better, and it does this better. It was more about technology than listening.
But at DāAgostino, we listen a lot.
Listening is the most important thing, not how it measures.ā
Thanks Dan DāAgostino and Vern!
Of course I am not biased but, I think this guy is an absolute ānut!ā
Heās a bit tense indeed but I feel there is something interesting here. He setup a measurement experiment measuring speaker output with different speaker cables. Thatās interesting to me because normally cables are measured by themselves on electrical properties, not on resulting sound. His results, which he shares, show differences in frequency response too small to hear. This does not mean people canāt hear any differences, just that he did not measure any of significance. In my ideal world, differences that can be heard would also be measurable. E.g. the Holo May seems to both measure and sound very good. I wish there were more experiments like this one, because it is a relevant setup.
Having recently entered this particular area of this crazy delightful game we play and am considering upgrading my cables, Iāve been researching for weeks. Iāve found everything is so ridiculously polarized - either all-in or itās all snake oil BS. Not much in-between. I found this video takes an open minded sensical approach with realistic results - with a bit of actual science measurements drizzled in. Different cables sound slightly different for different tracks. I found this much more helpful than an all charted & graph engineering numbers review approach without ever hooking the dang things up or the obligatory coat hanger versus mega-dollaresium comparison. Those do NOT help me. I have been using 10Ga aluminum braided power cable for twenty some odd years and am wondering if I should even spend $$ to replace it. It was reasonably pricey power cable from my old car audio shop days back in the 80s. I thought it would make quite decent speaker cable?
The cable naysayers. Probably eating American cheese slices because they canāt tell any difference from real cheese. Washing it down with freeze dried coffee because they canāt taste any difference between that and fresh ground beans. Give āem some zip cord and a subscription to Consumer Reports and now theyāre an audiophile expert.
I have a hard time believing anything that Gene says ever since I saw an interview he did many years ago with the late, great Jim Thiel of Thiel Audio. Jim was explaining some of the wiring and crossover components that were being used in Thiel loudspeakers, while Gene was lecturing Jim about why wire didnāt matter. Here was a pioneering engineer and speaker designer trying to explain how they measured and listened to speaker components, and Gene was being rude and insulting in insisting that Jim was worried about the wrong stuff. As if Gene understood what he was talking about!
Regarding the āgreatā video in this thread, Gene continues to make the uninformed assumption that differences between audio cables are mostly a matter of frequency response - and if the frequency response of two cable is virtually identical, then the sound of the cables should be identical as well. What Gene fails to grasp is that most sonic differences between different interconnects and speaker cables are generally not related to frequency response but instead relate to other factors such as how they handle noise and phase/timing issues. In fact, most sound quality differences between cables show up in either spatial effects (e.g., imaging/soundstage) or timbre (tonal quality or color, which is reflected in how harmonics are presented). This point is made very clearly in the video (above) of the blind A-B test, in which the trained listeners were nearly perfect in blindly identifying different cables based on the width and/or depth of the soundstage.
If cables donāt matter, the components probably donāt either.
That makes no senseā¦