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Comparing the tone of three different "boutique" cables

#182
bassk81976 said:
He's not saying that. He's saying that we do need to not fall into the same trap that previous generations did - We can't just say that "a cable is a cable", just as they used to be able just say that "the universe revolves around the earth".

Just like we can point to graphs and say
"everything's is...the same... so it's the same", they pointed to the sky and said
"everything goes...around us..so they go around us".

And he's right. That's why science works, because things don't just stay the same. People constantly test things over

EDIT: I think i'm getting johndough's argument, am i right?
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The difference being that when people though the world was flat, it was a theory, doesn't matter if everyone believed it or not. What's being discussed in this thread are facts researched with empirical data. No amount of belief, faith or philosophy will ever change them. Although science is always prone to change and debunking, you can't rely on that and say:"Oh well, these tests are inconclusive because we might find new ways of doing this in the future". No, you must trust what empirical data provides at the moment, which might be as correct now as it might be 1000 years from now.
 
#183
johndough247 said:
I think you're missing the point...facts are facts huh? 600 years ago it was a widely accepted 'fact' that the world was flat...
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Do you believe that the earth is round? Or do you believe that we cannot know whether the earth round, because even though it is a widely accepted fact based on our current knowledge, some future discovery may show it to be otherwise?
 
#185
rbbrchkn said:
I for one was puzzled at first about the bottom and top-end rolloff in the first graph. Now that I think about it, that looks to me like it's not a property of the cables, but rather highpass/lowpass filters in the converters used for the test. Are you going in/out at 44.1khz?
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Yes, and certainly it is reasonable to assume that there is some coloration or loss inherent to the testing mechanism itself. The reason I'm not bothered by that is that the systemic coloration or loss will occur identically with all cables tested. :)
 
#187
bongomania said:
Yes, and certainly it is reasonable to assume that there is some coloration or loss inherent to the testing mechanism itself. The reason I'm not bothered by that is that the systemic coloration or loss will occur identically with all cables tested. :)
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Cyrus, you can factor in the "house curve" for your sound card in True RTA, so that the graphs reflect an applied inverse curve. But frankly, that's a pretty ugly house curve, by my standards at least.

I'd like to see a loop-through test in RMAA as well, for both the noise floor and distortion of your test jig. Also, does your card not support 24/96 resolution? Someone is gonna argue that we can't see high end behaviors properly because of the "low" Nyquist number in your test -- just watch!;)
 
#188
It took a couple of days but I got through reading the whole thread, good stuff.

Unfortunately with my own personal bias I prefer a monster cable for my DB playing as it seems to kill the top end in a nice way. And will stick with my spectraflex on the Electric side.

If and when I need to purchase cables, I will likely not spend spectraflex type money. Although I realized that before the tests.
 
#189
Bongo: thanks for this thread, great work and keep it up. I think it would be a good experiment to modify the impedance of one of these cables until you get significant different results with the RTA software, and then, just for the fun of it :D, do a double blind test including the modified cable.
 
#190
I posted a question that I don't really know if it sounded dumb, I mean it did to JimmyM, but I think it's quite valid; Considering that the signal in the charts isn't dead flat, that means that we've never had a completely accurate way of transferring our sound. Thus, I asked if there's any way to make a cable that does. I suppose if we added an active circuit it could possibly do so. I know Alembic has done things like these, but their active cables were just their pre-amps inserted in the cables. I'm talking about exact, colorless reproduction.
 
#191
I learned to use the Canare cables...they are the best priced cable if you want to do custom lengths. The DIY geeks at Gateway Electronics here in town turned me on to it. Runs 90 cents a foot and the brass ends are 2 bucks each....they are rugged and easy to create. Dead silent and tone wise it has always done well.
 
#192
Florox said:
I posted a question that I don't really know if it sounded dumb, I mean it did to JimmyM, but I think it's quite valid; Considering that the signal in the charts isn't dead flat, that means that we've never had a completely accurate way of transferring our sound.
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I think you're mistaking the graphs, not taking into account the scale of the y axis.

The charts are showing it to be essentially flat from 20-10k. Look at the diff between the cables themselves and the cables in series with a P pickup to see the difference between something that ought to be flat (a cable) and something more shaply.

Or maybe if you imagine the standard error bars on there versus what's audible.
 
#195
rbbrchkn said:
I for one was puzzled at first about the bottom and top-end rolloff in the first graph. Now that I think about it, that looks to me like it's not a property of the cables, but rather highpass/lowpass filters in the converters used for the test. Are you going in/out at 44.1khz?

I propose a control sample where you test the response of the system without a cable... :ninja: j/k
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Why the "j/k?" A pass-thru test (as Passthruinwind :) suggested) is a legit test for calibrating the measurement system. De rigeur, actually.

BTW, Bongo, this is fantastic stuff. Of course there is stuff here on TB that is a waste of time or that is bogus, but the info you're presenting here is great. This is the kind of stuff that makes TB a great place.
 
#196
Florox said:
I posted a question that I don't really know if it sounded dumb, I mean it did to JimmyM, but I think it's quite valid; Considering that the signal in the charts isn't dead flat, that means that we've never had a completely accurate way of transferring our sound. Thus, I asked if there's any way to make a cable that does. I suppose if we added an active circuit it could possibly do so. I know Alembic has done things like these, but their active cables were just their pre-amps inserted in the cables. I'm talking about exact, colorless reproduction.
Click to expand...
sorry if it sounded like i insulted you, but exact colorless reproduction only exists on paper for ANY gear no matter what it is. yeah, maybe you could stick a preamp into a cable, but then it's a preamp, not a cable. and what do you do if you need to have more than one cable in your rig? buy preamped cables to go between your effects? and then you're going to plug into an amp that has its own coloration, and a cab that has even more coloration. it becomes pointless to chase the flat tone to such a degree.
 
#197
Passinwind said:
Cyrus, you can factor in the "house curve" for your sound card in True RTA, so that the graphs reflect an applied inverse curve. But frankly, that's a pretty ugly house curve, by my standards at least.

I'd like to see a loop-through test in RMAA as well, for both the noise floor and distortion of your test jig. Also, does your card not support 24/96 resolution? Someone is gonna argue that we can't see high end behaviors properly because of the "low" Nyquist number in your test -- just watch!;)
Click to expand...

Certainly, that all makes sense. Here is a test of the $9 cable and the $159 cable. I changed the conversion to 24/96, and I calibrated the RTA with the "house curve". The blue+yellow line represents the two cables each in series with the P pup, and the pink+green line represents each of them without the P pup.

Link Removed

Link Removed
 
#198
JimmyM said:
sorry if it sounded like i insulted you, but exact colorless reproduction only exists on paper for ANY gear no matter what it is. yeah, maybe you could stick a preamp into a cable, but then it's a preamp, not a cable. and what do you do if you need to have more than one cable in your rig? buy preamped cables to go between your effects? and then you're going to plug into an amp that has its own coloration, and a cab that has even more coloration. it becomes pointless to chase the flat tone to such a degree.
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For the most part, yes you are correct. However, Q-Tuners, through Mike Pope, through BFM cab yields extremely flat results. Maybe not exact, that was an incorrect term, but very, or reasonably, flat is possible, and done already. The above is not my setup, by the way, I'm just saying.
 
#200
even bill would disagree that his cabs yield dead flat response. the amount of flatness is limited to what the drivers used will do, and i've yet to see a driver with flat response. any cab that claims flat response either has expensive dsp added to it or is lying.
 

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