Usb Cables

[tony]

That is your favourite PPang TZ Yun cable that Pearse was using with the Meitner.
Don't think I would agree with Nigel's view that the TZ bested his cable. I thought they sounded different.
For long sessions I think Nigel's cable would be easier on the ears.This will suit lots of people.

I think to get an unbiased view someone neutral needs to change the cables as that would eliminate any
assertions of bias. I believed I could detect differences but not night and day. Others need to hear this and make their own minds up.

[nige2000]

Tony, so that's what your expectation bias sounds like?
What's a TZ sun, btw?

Nige, I doubt it's to do with impedance

sorry meant tz zun one of pangs earlier cables

also curious to how the ppa red was over a meter longer and didnt lose any/little of the detail

cant be many people that require that sort of length though

[mjock3]

Thanks for the reply Tony. Nice mini review!

Well Nige your cable faired pretty well, and looks great. Must feel good to have an attempt do so well. I tried making a USB cable once and it sounded just horrid. Not to mention was a royal PITA to try and solder. Guess I am getting a bit old.

[nige2000]

Thanks for the reply Tony. Nice mini review!

Well Nige your cable faired pretty well, and looks great. Must feel good to have an attempt do so well. I tried making a USB cable once and it sounded just horrid. Not to mention was a royal PITA to try and solder. Guess I am getting a bit old.

usb cables seem very expensive over with you

i get my usb cable wire of the guy that sells this audio usb cable

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1m-8-Core-Pure- ... 2ec983fcd7

if he'd make up ones less than 12 inches long, it may sound as good the ppa red
might be worth asking std length is a meter

might be an option over burning the fingers!!!

[jkeny]

I don't often visit that "other" forum but these posts jumped out & spoke to me from a guy that knows what he's talking about (I've communicated with him privately before, I believe)
http://www.pinkfishmedia.net/forum/show ... stcount=92
Worth bookmarking & also worth repeating:

If you do thorough testing to establish there's no physical effect, be it the claimed effect or another effect that might not have occurred to anyone, then fine.

Most people on a forum who question audiophile anecdotes do no such thing though. It's straight to synthesising theory and denial.

If people had the humility to use the words probable and improbable I would take less exception, but many don't.

The difficulty is what passes for 'thorough' is far from thorough enough, both from the alpha nerds and from the fairy-foo-folk.

The calls for ABX tests are little more than pointless dick-waving by those who want to appear 'sciencier than thou'. Those few who actually understand the mathematics involved in this are working stochastically rather than deterministically, because the audio engineering world is starting to wake up to the notion that all this listening stuff might have something to do with signal detection theory, rather than some 1950s mechanistic view of of how the brain processes sound.

http://lsbaudio.com/publications/AES127_ABX.pdf

If you work to this model, however, several big things fall out of the mix. First, if you run a test with less than about 50 test subjects, each one being tested the statistically significant number of times to achieve 95% confidence, your results are rendered invalid due to the potential for 'false alarms' (Type II errors in standard stats models). Then, if you have a group of test subjects anywhere between 50-200, the only way to eliminate a strong bias toward false alarm is to crunch the numbers using Beyesian stats methods, which has happened precisely never. Third, this has been well known in practically all branches of sensory science since the 1920s, and even the secret military knowledge bit with respect to ASDIC was declassified before stereo hit the streets.

So, we don't know what tweaks work from a scientific setting, because the science used to test is fundamentally wrong. As it stands, it is designed to flood the results with false negatives, and the people who hold to this are too rigid to see the science has moved out of the 1950s.

Ultimately, there's a move to replace bad test models with even worse test models. The most random sighted, non-level-matched, non-comparison listening test succeeds on the 'even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day' standard, but that doesn't mean it should be replaced with a clock that always tells the wrong time.

Just thought I'd bring people's attention to it

[Ivor]

Just thought I'd bring people's attention to it

Glad you did, interesting stuff.

[Fran]

Yes, John.


One very notable thing. Its usually easy to spot when someone is talking from a truly authoritive point - the lack of BS always stands right out clearly. Your author above clearly puts that across.


Fran

[nige2000]

so even if we had all the testing gear we still have to verify by ear, maybe todays measurement techniques are not up to the task and have limited use

[jkeny]

Yea, he makes a lot of sense & puts some meat on what we have always thought - a group of people pretending to be of a scientific persuasion who make demands for DBTs. ABX or other tests/measurements of anyone saying they heard a difference/improvement in the sound due to xxxx.

If it was fully understood how we hear what we hear & had measurements that correlated with our hearing then making demands for such measurements would be understandable but we don't have this model of our hearing yet, never mind the measurements to accompany such a model.

Until that time we hear what we hear (always being mindful that we can be wrong, also).

I also believe this forum proves that using our ears is a successful path - just look how far we have come in the sound of the systems we are listening to now compared to what we started with when the forum was first established!

[nige2000]

It's a wonder that using ears to test what's pleasant or accurate to human ears has become almost absurd

Granted many mistakes can be made, probably why so many tests seem necessary to be satisfied with results