@Shazb0t That’s an extremely arrogant assertion. I’m not sure you are in any position to make demands and assign onus to anyone here.
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Do you cook with wine?
Yes, and sometimes I add it to the food too.
Cooking and entertaining myself with music measured at roughly 67 dB; food at roughly 375F.
Nero D’Avola, Sicilia. Roughly room temp.
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I disagree. What else can I do to further the discussion? A claim has been made and all arguments have been justified off that claim. It either needs to be demonstrated or the discussion has nowhere else to go. Since the claim is Galen’s, and is in opposition to the available evidence that I’ve been able to find and attempted to demonstrate here, I’m merely stating that the ball is in his court if his aim is to further the conversation to a conclusion. I don’t think that’s extremely arrogant. I’ve read all of Galen’s responses and he hasn’t actually called into question that we are able to measure the changes he believes cables make to the signal, just that we need to have the right test protocol to measure these differences. I am interested in seeing this demonstrated.
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I cook, eat and play with wine! Unfortunately my wife sits in the living room/dining room which is between the speakers and the kitchen. When she’s out, I hit 65+, when she’s home al I hear is the exhaust fan. Yea, reds at room temp, whites/roses chilled as needed.
Off to a tasting of southern Rhone reds an about an hour. We assign no scores, take no measurements, just taste, slurp, enjoy, relax. and grow old gracefully.
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Get your hands on a “Johnson 250S Wine-o-Meter”. It’s time we stop using these ancient concepts like “taste”. After all, who knows where anyone’s tongue has been; certainly can’t be trusted.
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The other day I was inspecting our dog’s teeth. I leaned in and as I did he licked me right on the tongue!
Tasted like chicken!
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That sounds amazing. Is there a model for red, white, roses and sparkling? I hope it is expensive, because I’m told they make the best data.
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Gross, but funny as h*ll!
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THIS is my biggest gripe about Amir and his crowd.
DON’T tell me what I should hear and what I should not hear, since a LOT of “hearing” happens in the brain. Just because you can’t measure it, and you can’t hear it, doesn’t mean I can’t – because you can’t tell me what’s going on in my brain.
We can’t even MAKE something that reproduces sound PERFECTLY, what makes them think we can MEASURE sound perfectly? We can measure some things, but we can’t measure EVERYTHING. Sorry, but the technology just isn’t there (yet). To think we can measure EVERYTHING that can matter to sound is a fallacy (and arrogant).
When I first learned about the Tritone Paradox (you can look it up – I’m not going to bore everyone with a lengthy explanation), it struck me that I consistently heard it far differently from my wife, until I realized that the first language I would have learned when I was a child growing up in Hawaii was Japanese as that is the only language my mother spoke until she went to English school when I was a little over 4. I’m told that I was fluent in Japanese until about 5. At that point, both parents ONLY spoke to my brother and me in English, feeling that it was better for our future. My father was always fluent in both, being a second generation Japanese in Hawaii. I don’t remember any of that to this day.
My wife was born and raised in New Hampshire, so only knew/knows American English.
A more recent/well known phenomenon deals with ‘seeing,’ because just as ‘hearing’ mostly happens in the brain, most of ‘seeing’ happens in the brain as well.
Who hasn’t heard of the “blue dress with black stripes” versus “white dress with gold stripes” controversy a few years ago? Even when it was confirmed the actual dress was blue with black stripes, and people saw images of the actual dress, people who saw white/gold STILL saw white/gold when looking at the picture – they didn’t start seeing blue/black just because they were shown the actual dress. As an aside, I saw white/gold (as did my stepdaughter), my wife saw blue/black, but that’s not a language thing (my wife and her blood father are both white and only speak English). There’s a lot of theories on why, but nothing proven or definitive.
Edit: First language is not the only thing that can affect the perception of the tritone, it’s just one of the things found to differentiate the perception.
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Hi Shazb0t,
No, I don’t have that equipment in the lab. We test to measured RLC and calculations based on precision LRC meter values to determine the cables benefit “technically” only. We sell the data as I’ve stated before, same as all Belden cable.
For me, the case was closed with the differences the cables make. Have you even ever bothered to LISTEN to them in a good system compared to 1313A, a standard 10 AWG zip cord style cable?
Part of the problem, is you measure only and not listen with a good speaker system. I do both measure and then listen. If I didn’t hear such an improvement from all the beta testers with a full loom (improvements for IC XLR and RCA cables, too) I would never have started to offer them for sale. The beta testers demanded it so here we are.
We can send you series II speaker cable and XLR to use in a good system if you like. Even if we can measure a “graph” the user will still discount that away until they listen to them. The sound is the purchase and not the data. Sure, I provide a ton of that data but that is mainly to illustrate how the cable is working…and no one gives a hoot if it doesn’t sound appropriate.
I can send you the design data .PDF if you like…it is all known physics. Everything we do is public so you won’t see anything secret, we don’t do secrets.
You are right, we need to capture the signal that we do listening…from the speaker itself into the room. Are mic’s that good? I don’t know a lot about that capture pocess so I’m ignorant if the resolution is good enough.
Best,
Galen
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Okay. Well then it appears that is the impasse we arrived at. I appreciate your design process and taking electrical property measurements to optimize for minimum cumulative affects to the audio signal, regardless of whether we agree about their affect on audibility.
I have performed some single blind testing of my own with varying cables having a friend swap them and haven’t been able to identify the differences in cables I own with any statistical significance. This has been level matched, which is something that I’m not sure that we agree on.
I understand that you believe in what you’re doing and I respect that. I don’t love the line of attack that I see sometimes where proponents of cables start throwing around “good” speaker systems as the reason why us lowly peons can’t hear the differences. I don’t think you’re trying to imply that, but I am very happy with my Ascend RAAL Towers.
I am interested in trying to blind test one of your cables as you’re very passionate regarding your work. I respect that!
Sure, I bet it will be a fun read.
I’m glad that we agree this would be the ultimate test arbiter. I do believe that the resolution of current instrument grade audio measurement equipment is high enough to determine whether affects are likely to be audible or not. But I understand that you could make arguments against this. I do believe that null testing and controlled listening are an answer to this doubt. Anyway, thanks for your discourse.
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In the genuinely interesting exchange between @rower30 and @Shazb0t I am especially struck by the word ‘negligible’. I have over the years increasingly felt that what is negligible to a ‘measurementalist’ is far from negligible to an audiophile, who I have long suspected of being sensitive to changes which must be at or beneath the noise floor. I can’t hear such subtleties myself, but then I am not an audiophile.
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I must respectfully disagree. After all, you hang out here and obviously love recorded music.
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Shazb02,
Email me your address @ ggareis@iconoclastcable.com and I’ll fire off the .PDF and also the BELDEN INNOVATORS article we developed more than three decades ago to properly characterize cable’s real characteristics.
The papers are all data so no great controversial “beliefs” are in there so it is pretty dry if that’s your thing. I think we both like the data, however. Here it all is.
As far as speakers go, better is better there, too, to measurable parameters. I didn’t mean to imply WHAT speaker that would be, sorry about that if you feel I slighted you.
I will talk to Bob Howard about getting you series II XLR and speaker cables. The cable data won’t change listening to them! Let me know what lengths you need. We suggets 10 foot / 3 meter speaker so you don’t restrict future moves and 5 feet / 1.5 meter meter IC again to not hinder future set-ups. Most cable lengths are too short and we don’t like to bait and switch on the price. These cables will be LOANERS so take care of them. We can pre-pay them back with labels. We like to make standard lengths if we can. If you need preamp to power those are longer, we have that. Let us know.
I would also appreciate if you use the TPC copper as the value was driven with this copper so more and more people can own well made cables. That was the goal, bring the price down, not up.
Best,
Galen
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I prefer to just listen to the music. Just like with sex it can be enjoyed without measuring anything.
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Ya, that’s a crappy word. A 24 hour race was just about ten seconds between the first and second place car. That may seems negligable to us, but not the second place driver! Its a JANUS word, depends on which way you look at it.
Best,
Galen
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Sorry, it wasn’t meant to offend. I tried to clarify the use of negligable to be a substitute for real phenomena that didn’t have available data to suggest audibility in my postings. Not a pejorative, at least that’s what I meant when using it.
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And, now, back to our regularly scheduled programming.
Please?
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This was a fun one. 
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If we can get this topic to 666 posts, we might be able to turn it into a script for South Park, sell it, and buy some ridiculously expensive power cables which we can pass around and write reviews.
… and that’s the end of cocktail hour.
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