I’m a convert after years of digital cable improvement denial

A: Yes

 

I'm just wondering......can engineering and science measure increased width and depth in a soundstage? That's where I notice a big difference with better cabling on my main rig. My ears tell me it's there but scientific verification would be nice as well.

 

And you're assuming the science is absolute? I grasp it all buddy and I hear something that contradicts it. so you're also saying that anything that contradicts current science is automatically wrong. I see.
You have allot of faith in current science. Good for you.

 

Sure.

If something is changing the signal it can be measured. Otherwise what else is happening, magic?

Soundstage width and depth can be manipulated in the recording/mixing process via mic positions, mic arrays, mixing/reverb etc...all technically quantifiable. In my sound design work I create spaces small medium and vast all the time by manipulating sound. And the perception of soundstage can be affected by the type of speaker, room, listening position, speaker arrangement. All this stuff you no doubt know already, but which is just a reminder that it's not voodoo. (In fact I just used a tweak recently of decoupling my speakers from my wood floor, via springs, and it seemed to very obviously increase soundstage width and depth along with other elements. They produce a measurable reduction in transmitting vibrations).

As to whether you are noticing differences in soundstage/imaging via changing your cables, that is up for debate. And a scientific and engineering approach is certainly applicable.
Engineering can give an idea if it's technically plausible the sound would change when introducing new cables in to a given system. Scientifically you'd reduce variables like "sighted bias" and could do a blind test to see if you can reliably detect one cable changing the soundstage vs another. If you can, then it would move on to precisely what may be causing the difference...a different tonal balance could be the culprit, or perhaps reduction of some distortion known to be audible. But that's speculation because we don't know that the cables you reference are actually changing the sound, and rigorous evidence for this is pretty rare.

 

That's a strawman. Nothing Shawn (or I) wrote implied Absolutism, which no one can provide. Science is merely the most rigorous and successful form of empirical knowledge gathering humans have come up with. Doesn't mean every scientific inference is right, not by a long shot. It merely means, well, what do you have that's better in it's place?
And, no, confidence in science is the exact opposite of "faith." Science is by nature anti-dogma: anything can be challenged, you just have to anti up the evidence for your hypothesis.

You feel you have knowledge or experience that contradicts science? Join a very long line-up of people claiming the same. The USA patent office has received plenty of patents for
Perpetual Motion Machines, which silly physicists currently think to be impossible on known physics. Those applying seem confident they know something physicists don't. Yet for some reason, nobody seems to be getting rich off their patent ;-)

 

I’ll have to try upgrading my AudioQuest Forest USB cables to something else to see if I notice a difference. Not high on my list, though.

Where I have heard a difference, and it was immediate and pretty obvious:

Headphone cables (stock to Blue, Black, and Silver Drgaon for HE-4XX, Elex, and HD650 respectively)

Phono Cable - BJC to Cardas Iridium (did not notice difference going from Stock Technics to BJC)

Subwoofer - BJC to AudioQuest Evergreen and Monster Cable for LFE to Evergreen fro R/L RCA pair

Power - Generic power strip to PS Audio Dectet

Where I didn’t notice anything too obvious, and thought there MIGHT have been a change, but didn’t really investigate for long:

XLR Interconnects - BJC to Moon Audio Blue Dragon (Sounded less grainy if I tried to notice, but it wasn’t immediately obvious, and I didn’t care about comparing too much - I just wanted to relax and not futz around)

RCA Interconnects - BJC to Pangea Premier (whichever ones make a big deal out of using Cardas Copper) - I thought things sounded less grainy, but again, I didn’t spend much time, and if I have to try hard to notice, I don’t usually bother).

Optical and Coax cables - BJC to Pangea (the least expensive Pangea) - slight improvement in smoothness and less etchiness, but so slight, and I don’t know if it was expectation bias. Again, nothing that made itself immediately obvious. I had to try really hard, so I don’t know if there really was a difference or if I just expected/wanted to hear a difference.

Because the power cords in my stack look like crap and have different sizes, I’ll probably spend money getting some upgrades in power cords before I tackle USB cables. If I don’t notice a sonic improvement, at least the tangled mess of cables will be no more...

 

D'you polish those ears before you go out for the day?

 

And the thing is, these guys that bemoan the science that also enabled the self-same cables they rate to be made, might be better off railing against the marketing that shills some products and claims that come written on the box.

Still, my bad. What do I know, cables costing £100s over the years, but suddenly my ears are the problem when I go to hand built Havana XL cables at £35/m are as good as the ones at £200+...?

Uh huh, okay, yep, natch, all over it...

 

When you make that kind of comment under these conditions you are simply guessing what the other person is seeing. Therefore you can't in any manner say that what the OP is seeing is an optical illusion.

In exactly the same way, if I tell you that I have in front of me two TV's, one is a LG the other is a Samsung and I'll tell you the Samsung has better picture, you can't tell me I am having an optical illusion. It is you who is having the illusion of knowing what I am seeing without being there yourself.

If you were there, you would be in a much stronger position to make a comment on what the OP is seeing. You were the one talking about no guessing which is exactly what you are doing.

 

How on earth could that possibly happened? There is an Italian proverb "A closed mouth catches no flies" I wonder whether that might have some connection to this intriguing mystery.

 

You seem to have forgotten the nature of the OP's claims.

If someone says "My friend built a functional Perpetual Motion Machine - I saw it operating in his garage" you don't have to have "been there" to know the odds of that being true.
You just have to know something about the impossibility of such a device given known physics.

Likewise, if someone is claiming their image (or sound) improved "because" he thinks an expensive HDMI cable is "better" than a cheap one, it's not a guessing game. The person has in all probability made an incorrect inference, or has imagined the improvement.

E.g. it *could* be that someone has 4K HDR capable display and source and was using an HDMI cable only spec'd for 1080p, hence it wasn't able to pass on the additional resolution, contrast and color depth on some sources. Swapping it for a 4K capable HDMI cable can indeed show a difference. Obviously.

But that has nothing to do with the type of claims the OP was making, where he was clearly advocating that whatever difference he believed he saw was due to the higher quality of the more expensive HDMI cables. He was leaping from his experience to decry the idea that a high end HDMI cable wouldn't produce a better image, that it's not true "bits are bits" in the sense of how HDMI is said to operate. But unless he was using an inadequately spec'd HDMI cable for his devices, one can be quite confident his pricey HDMI cable was not rendering a different image. It's simply how they work.

And he even advocated that spending hundreds of dollars on a fancy HDMI cable is a way to improve sound and picture quality. And that is patently false. It merely takes using an HDMI cable of proper specs to get all the info you need, and there is no need to spend boutique dollars to get the same performance.

 

^

Very good explanation
Here's a little bit of my more recent first hand findings. My amps (Mcintosh mc1201's) have 124db snr balanced vs 120db snr rca connection. So there's 4db scientific differences right from the start. There's also a toggle switch so you can plug in both types to a+b them. When I brought the amps home all I had was some lower end Kimber xlr's and some decent quality MIT shotgun rca's. Toggling back and forth it was clear the MIT rca gave the better overall presentation even though it was down 4db right off the bat. This is not what I wanted for an outcome. I'd just spent several thousand $$ for the amps and now I've got to spend more for cabling. So this finding leads me to believe that in addition to overcoming the 4db those rca's also had to do more as well to win the a+b. So in this particular situation science says yes and then says no; my wallet says no and my ears say yes.

 

Again, you are making assumptions about something you have not tested thoroughly or you are incapable of noticing differences, it does not mean others are the same. I have no idea of what the OP sees and what might be described by some as a huge difference would be described as insignificant or non existent by others.
I have tested enough cables including HDMI, I think it is possible some might provide better picture, I have personally struggled to notice any however only one cable I tried was expensive and I ended up buying one that wasn't, most likely you would disagree on price. I did however notice some mild differences in sound that were repeated over and over. My bluray player was connected to a power conditioner just by pure chance once and the colors improved noticeably since then it's always connected that way.

I know you won't believe it but it does not matter, I am enjoying -within what I can afford- terrific picture and sound, I've been exposed since I was little to a myriad of equipment so I know what's out there. Judging by some of your comments I wouldn't fancy listening to your equipment no matter what it might be -no, I have not checked your profile- the important thing is you are happy with it and I am happy with mine.

BTW: I am sure you'll love to know that I am working in getting an "audiophile" Ethernet switch and cable.

 

I can help: In a discussion about certain cable types, the person-in-question presumed that the reason I didn't hear a difference in some of my trials wasn't because I was accurately hearing they were the same signal. Rather This Person, before knowing a thing about my system or experience, leapt to "fact" that I was "incapable" of perceiving the differences.

I'm pretty sure it was the same person who just told us: A much more important thing would be not to guess about the perception and capability of other people.

*And who just yet again suggested I am incapable of noticing the differences described by the OP!

(Let me channel an Uglyversal response "I wasn't guessing." ;-))

 

If you meant that as an analogy, I think this would be an analogy with much more parallels to the original subject, since it touches the subject of visual perception in a more general way:

If someone is in an environment with for example blue lighting and claims to see a very dark object that’s unlikely to be dark - like an apple - one might argue that it’s actually very dark and conclude that in this example the apple is dark because it’s rotting - even while it doesn’t smell or feels like it.
Because if you see it with you own eyes it must be true.
However, if the apple is red, it looks dark because the blue lighting doesn’t contain red color wavelengths for the apple to reflect.
The assumption of the apple being red is more likely since - other than the dark color - there are no signs of rotting.

One could still argue that a red object in blue lighting is black, specifically for those circumstances, even though the object itself is actually red.
But that’s a debate on the definition of truth rather than a debate on truth itself.

 

But I want to stress that I really don’t KNOW why its better, but it is and I am amazed that the cable mattered that much. And more amazed that as I went up from Forest to Cinnamon to Chocolate (Audioquest product line names) it got better each time. As a scientist, I always want to know why something is, so I apply what I know to a solution. In my area of expertise, I speak with authority, but I only have an understanding of some of the electrical engineering involved in transmitting digital information so my premise above is only what could be going on and enough to quench my thirst to understand how what Im seeing and hearing COULD happen. I’m not trying to defend this as the reason for observed phenomena.

My deepest area of expertise is knowing what I observe and find it laughable that someone applies a limited bit of expertise and declares it as truth. Dismissing all those observing contrary as incapable of observation because of bias. Im surprised as anyone that changing an HDMI cable mattered this much so Im sharing my “conversion” story. A knowledgeable explanation for the improvement is most welcome.
I don’t care what those of you who can’t perceive these differences have to say about why my observations are flawed.

 

Glad you had a positive experience with the AQ Cinnamon HDMI because their Cinnamon USB made diddly squat over a stock one. Sold it for £50 a few months ago.

 

Can't help it, can you? ;-) The go-to diss instead of evidence.

It's not merely "assumptions," its a basic understanding of how HDMI works.

Why all HDMI cables are the same

You can ignore this all day long and imagine what you like, but to keep implying you are living in some alternate version of reality where "for you" (or the OP) HDMI or other digital cables somehow works differently, well, that's your gig I suppose. Some people just think they are above engineering and science, that their perception Reigns Supreme and can overturn any silly old scientific or engineering theory, just because they think they perceive it.

I'm happy to hear it! By all means, I hope you enjoy it and no one should tell you how you should spend your money. And if you think you hear better sound, then for you
that can justify the purchase.

There's no conflict between any of us enjoying whatever we want, spending our money as we desire, vs spreading dubious or incorrect technical claims.

 

Hold on. You're a scientist?

And you've leapt from your anecdotal experience, with no reliable theory for how your claim could work, and no replication controlling for bias effects, to a presumption you've just overturned current digital signal theory?

I mean. Really?

As a scientist you of all people should know that, as expressed by the great Richard Feynman, "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool!"

This is why scientist incorporate controls for variables, bias, seek independent confirmation, replication of results by other parties, etc, before leaping to conclusions. When it comes to observation, human error and bias are known factors to consider. It makes little sense to me that you reference your scientific scruples while seemingly being profoundly unscientific on this matter.

(Not that it matters in the case of however you personally want to spend your money of course. But you came here with claims that went well beyond that. And of course MAKING the claims is perfectly fine too, but they'll receive deserved pushback if they are dubious).

 

Im convinced that >>95% of "audiophiles" have not bothered to "blind AB" cables. The more expensive the cables, the less likely to blind AB. I do believe some people (like Steve) can hear differences...but I do not feel a high % of people can hear differences, maybe 1-3% (and this assumes a schveeeet stereo). And I am speaking about analog cables, no comment on digicables. You can probably guess my thoughts on digicables though and would probably be correct. Yes I have compared them , yes blind AB, and I do own from el cheapo to $120 coax . I have seriously probably done more blind AB cable testing than 99.781% of the members on here, no joke.

I just had my Counterpoint NPS-100A amp open and there was a quote from Feynman on the circuit board, let me see if I snapped a pic.

No pic but just for this thread I will open back up, snap a pic, and post to Imgur so I can post here.

 

I can't agree with that because I personally wouldn't pass any serious judgement on the color or luminosity of subjects unless properly lit with certain range of daylight.

 

Evidence?? Don't make me laugh, just the title on itself is an outright lie from the diferent versions point of view, let alone results.

If the title is a lie it is a very bad start isn't it?

 

That’s exactly the point of the analogy. Even without actually being with someone as a co-witness, you can still be reasonably sure that what they see is probably just what it appears to be, but nothing more than that.
That no serious judgement can be made based on what is seen due to the circumstances.

 

Well, I hope the OP didn't have the TV switched off while passing judgment on the picture quality.

 

heh, look at the date on the article- it's from 2012.
back then they WERE all the same! high speed and higher spec HDMI cables came later . . .back in 2012 all that had changed for HDMI were the spec docs and that didn't have much to do with cables.

pics in that article do show good examples of what happens when you try to push more data through an HDMI cable than it can handle at a given length.