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Hey nerds! 3 high-quality cables, all sound different--why?
- Thread starter bongomania
- Start date
- Status
Ric5
Inactive
- Jan 29, 2008
- 29,772
- 30,452
- Disclosures
- I like 5, 8, 10, and 12 string basses
The only cables that sound different are the ones that don't work. The ones that don't work sound bad.
Au contraire; I've read (and comprehended, thank you) every post in this thread. I understand that you hear a difference between the cables, and I do not challenge that. I do not, however, accept it as a given that there is an objective difference. Maybe there is and maybe there isn't.Badly played. Failure of reading comprehension.
right back at you... 
You really hope people read other people's posts. Most people are too smart to do that.
Do the tests for the community - there will always be people who will not read whatever you conclude and still post how cables always/never make a difference.
For the record, I never said either of those things.You really hope people read other people's posts. Most people are too smart to do that.
Do the tests for the community - there will always be people who will not read whatever you conclude and still post how cables always/never make a difference.
Dude, read back a little and you'll notice he wasn't referring to you, and that comment was directed at the gentleman rather snidely telling him to try a blind test to win himself money in a fashion which implied that he was some idiot that thought a flashy all gold cable was objectively better then the average one.
Bongo, I think the problem here is that you have provided a good qualitative description of the issue, but the answer you seek is probably to be found by a quantitative investigation. And meanwhile, decades of audiophoolery and music industry marketing hype have made some of us hypersensitive. Through no fault of your own, qualitative claims, unaccompanied by quantitative evidence, tend to get a few people's undies in a bunch.
"Low capacitance" begs the question: "Lower than what," or "how much?" Equipping yourself to find out is now your homework assignment.
"Low capacitance" begs the question: "Lower than what," or "how much?" Equipping yourself to find out is now your homework assignment.
Someone earlier mentioned that a cable has resistance, capacitance and inductance ...a good verbal description of the circuit.
That circuit behavior is also however substantially shaped by the output impedance of the source signal and the input impedance of the amplifier input.
You know the phrase YMMV....this is why.
Every bass is a little different, every cable is a little different (and vary by length), every amp is a little different.
One way to test a cable that most everyone has available to them is to inject white noise as the input to the cable and then run the output into a spectrum analyzer like you would see in many sound recording programs. White noise is flat across frequency spectrum, by definition. the shape the output "noise" from the cable has in the spectral plot is what the cable has done to the signal in which spectral locations.
This is not for the faint of heart technically. You want to be sure the sample size of the spectrum analyzer is as large as you can get and that your source noise is truly "white".
Unless you are into incredible technical precision, this is an exercise that should be left to the Mythbusters.
I'd recommend buying high quality cables as short as makes sense for your use.
That circuit behavior is also however substantially shaped by the output impedance of the source signal and the input impedance of the amplifier input.
You know the phrase YMMV....this is why.
Every bass is a little different, every cable is a little different (and vary by length), every amp is a little different.
One way to test a cable that most everyone has available to them is to inject white noise as the input to the cable and then run the output into a spectrum analyzer like you would see in many sound recording programs. White noise is flat across frequency spectrum, by definition. the shape the output "noise" from the cable has in the spectral plot is what the cable has done to the signal in which spectral locations.
This is not for the faint of heart technically. You want to be sure the sample size of the spectrum analyzer is as large as you can get and that your source noise is truly "white".
Unless you are into incredible technical precision, this is an exercise that should be left to the Mythbusters.
I'd recommend buying high quality cables as short as makes sense for your use.
No....the non-white colors usually refer to the slope of the rolloff across the spectrum.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_noise
Pink (1/f) and other colors are described here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_noise
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_noise
Pink (1/f) and other colors are described here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_noise
I have read and responded to these threads before. I hear a difference in some cables, sometimes profound, sometimes not. Full disclosure here, I am a recovering audiophile, and do not believe that all things perceivable by a human are scientifically measurable. (Great post on the Peter Belt principal BTW. Stereophile also did a double blind amplifier shoot out with Bob Carver that ended in litigation!)
At its core, subjectivist vs objectivist views may correlate or they may not. I remember replacing the zip cord speaker cables with some Mogami stuff on an electrical engineer friend's stereo after he told me all wire sounded the same. He was slack jawed.
Millions of dollars of research has gone into cable design. Almost every imaginable thing has been measured by manufacturers including the effect of the dielectric and the shielding material. (Vintage guitars wired with solid core cloth covered wire anyone?) And in the musical world, we have just barely entered the "active cable" universe, which apparently is a trendy thing in some audio applications.
I use the cables I like the most. I don't like spending a gazillion dollars on cable, and I don't. I accept that they do sound different to me, ABX, ABC, blind tested or whatever tested. I have to admit, however, that though I have accepted this for myself, it is very entertaining to listen to the opinions of people who either do or don't accept it, and how passionate the arguments get, considering that when in live performance, the differences might just disappear in the mix. Or not. ;-)
At its core, subjectivist vs objectivist views may correlate or they may not. I remember replacing the zip cord speaker cables with some Mogami stuff on an electrical engineer friend's stereo after he told me all wire sounded the same. He was slack jawed.
Millions of dollars of research has gone into cable design. Almost every imaginable thing has been measured by manufacturers including the effect of the dielectric and the shielding material. (Vintage guitars wired with solid core cloth covered wire anyone?) And in the musical world, we have just barely entered the "active cable" universe, which apparently is a trendy thing in some audio applications.
I use the cables I like the most. I don't like spending a gazillion dollars on cable, and I don't. I accept that they do sound different to me, ABX, ABC, blind tested or whatever tested. I have to admit, however, that though I have accepted this for myself, it is very entertaining to listen to the opinions of people who either do or don't accept it, and how passionate the arguments get, considering that when in live performance, the differences might just disappear in the mix. Or not. ;-)
From an SPL point of view, noise that is flat across the frequency spectrum is white noise. Noise that is weighted to our hearing it as flat is pink noise.
On the other side of the coin, it is not necessary for all that research to actually yield any measurable results. If they can generate reasonable doubt in a customer's mind, then they have something they can sell.
I don't think that cloth wiring makes any audible difference, either.
Not to hijack, but some time ago I had a G&L bass that had a note that sounded sharp all the time. I checked it with a real strobe tuner, and it read like it was perfectly in tune. Every person that heard it, asked if I was in tune, no joke! It wasn't a dead spot on the G either, but a Bb on the D string. When compared to every other Bb it sounded sharp, but on the strobe they were all the same. Now I know the wood probably had something to do with it, but again, it wasn't measurable, but sounded different and awful.
Sub'd to learn 
Would it be possible to record an EAB with the mic on your MAC playing and open A, and then plug in the different cables and record them for comparison/analysis?
I'm thinking if you could throw the true acoustic sound in there, then you would have a baseline to see what frequencies could be getting altered.
But this all outside the scope of my education, hince being sub'd to learn.
Would it be possible to record an EAB with the mic on your MAC playing and open A, and then plug in the different cables and record them for comparison/analysis?
I'm thinking if you could throw the true acoustic sound in there, then you would have a baseline to see what frequencies could be getting altered.
But this all outside the scope of my education, hince being sub'd to learn.
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