External DAC with Connect

A clarification - a controlled DBT being referred to is one based on listening to music through decent speakers - not test tones or instrument measurements, i.e. real world use.

Why don't you clarify what you mean? Do you believe that digital cables can be "more revealing", cause "greater soundstage", "crisper highs", or cause one to describe the sound with other esoteric adjectives such as "wooden", "fuzzy", "orange peel", etc? Or do the transmission errors you describe affect the music in more deleterious ways?

I don't have a strong position either way about this particular topic. The point is we're using it to discuss the validity of your position that disagreeing with your belief flies in the face of science and logic. I do disagree with that, for the reasons I've already outlined.

Whatever I thought about it, your choice of phrases to describe audible differences is irrelevant to me unless you're using them to describe changes you hear.

Do you think spending $1000 produces any audible gain over a properly constructed cable costing $10

I really don't know. It's not something I spend a lot of time worrying about, but equally I cannot rule it out from personal experience (which is ultimately what matters to dictate my own spending decisions).

I don't have a strong position either way about this particular topic. The point is we're using it to discuss the validity of your position that disagreeing with your belief flies in the face of science and logic. I do disagree with that, for the reasons I've already outlined.

Whatever I thought about it, your choice of phrases to describe audible differences is irrelevant to me unless you're using them to describe changes you hear.



I really don't know. It's not something I spend a lot of time worrying about, but equally I cannot rule it out from personal experience (which is ultimately what matters to dictate my own spending decisions).

Nice dodge. :rolleyes:

I cannot rule it out from personal experience (which is ultimately what matters to dictate my own spending decisions).

Unfortunately, that is the root of most snake oil products: the thought that there is some chance it might work.

I'm sure Mrs Goggins swears by Daffy's Elixir since it cured her of an upset stomach, conveniently ignoring the likelihood it would have cleared up on its own.

Equally, I'm sure there are people who have swapped out a $10 cable for a $100 and noticed a difference, because the original cable was defective, incorrectly inserted, or because the act of swapping the cable cleaned the contacts.

And, of course, if changing from a $10 cable to a $100 cable makes a difference, imagine how much better a $1000 cable would be, because these things are absolute and linear, right?

That is how people think; even sensible, intelligent, mostly rational people. And that is what snake-oil salesmen prey on: that seed of "it might work" which can grow into a weed of conviction that it will work.

It's true that if you operate an equipment out of range, or it is somehow defective, that can have an audible impact. Yes there are circumstances in which things like this can happen, but these are increasingly unusual.

Take toslink, for instance: the tolerance for degradation before you start getting any issues such as bit errors or significant timing problems is very high. Whilst it can happen, it's also highly unlikely to, and when it does it's down to equipment faults, or misuse. I would be surprised if, in practice, it occurred in more than 0.00001% of the population. And then, in those cases, changing the cable out for another $10 would probably fix it just as well as changing it out for a $1000 cable.

Yet many audiophiles will reverse these odds, claiming (without substance) that all $10 optical cables are "crap" and that everyone should be spending at least $100 (or, preferably, $1000) on one. But that's a bit like saying "don't buy a car costing less than $20,000, because the steering wheel will fall off when you are on the freeway" just because you heard it happened to someone, once.

Incidentally, irrespective of audibility issues, the most expensive optical cables in the world cost in the region of $5 per metre or less to manufacture. Add in the wholesale cost of hyper-expensive connectors, and the maximum cost of production of any 2m toslink cable should be around $20. When someone sells a 2m cable for $1000, they are making a mark-up of 5000% or more!

The problem with audiophillia is the assumption that there is always a significant benefit to be gained by buying another expensive bit of kit. That probably was the case back in the 1960s, but that isn't the case now. Despite vendors flowery language, most DACs, cables, amps and transports are, within their operating specifications, pretty much the same and that is about as good a you need.

Regarding your amplifier clipping example: that's certainly a case where audio quality is impacted, but that is, arguably, because the user is operating the kit outside of its optimal range. Maybe the manufacturer is at fault for not being honest about what that is. But, in that case, changing the amp out for a more expensive model with a similar range is unlikely to give an improvement. Conversely, changing it out for a cheaper model with a more appropriate range is likely to yield an improvement.

But audiophiles tend to advocate solutions which are rare, and shiny, and expensive over ones that actually might work. They favour "magic bullets" over Science and Engineering.

The example of hires is key: a well respected authority in digital audio recently produced a paper describing why hires audio might actually sound worse than standard res. No one has come up with a meaningful counter-argument to that paper and, in fact, audio degradations due to hires artefacts have been measured in the real world.

Anyone who really cared about audio quality should be very happy about this, because it means investment in expensive equipment an esoteric file formats isn't required (and, in fact, is counter-productive). A lot of people will have been saved from making an expensive error, and you would expect them to be cheering about that.

But, as I said before, I don't hear much cheering and I can only conclude from that that audiophiles actually don't care about audio quality that much, and care more about buying, owning, and tweaking expensive kit, and lauding it over others.

So, the audiophile community is still advocating for hires. And one of their prime advocates is an aging rock star with no Engineering background who has spent much of the last 4 decades at rock gigs and studios, who now suffers from hearing problems and probably would struggle to ABX a 128k MP3 from a hires FLAC.

That's about as rational as audiophillia gets!

Cheers,

Keith

This discussion has been very interesting.

And I don't doubt that some folks may, in an ABX test, be able to identify what X is.

After all, humans are pretty good at detecting differences in this type of test.

What I would like to see is that same person come back, say, a month later and identify X - no listening to AB first.

That would be meaningful to me.

Nice dodge. :rolleyes:

In what way is it a dodge? You asked me my position, although it's not germane to the actual discussion, and as a matter of courtesy I told you.

And I don't doubt that some folks may, in an ABX test, be able to identify what X is.


On the contrary, I think the point is most of us simply don't believe they would be able to differentiate between A, B, or X with any statistical significance.

In which case, your second test is moot.

Humans are very good at thinking they can differentiate these things, but when tested, they're actually not as good as they thought.

Cheers,

Keith

In what way is it a dodge? You asked me my position, although it's not germane to the actual discussion, and as a matter of courtesy I told you.

Majik said it better than I did. And you know what this discussion is about. It is only you who chose to concentrate on a single post which was a mere generalization of comments that came before. So I will end it here: Taken at face value, yes there can be differences between digital cables, that is, a cable can be defective and cause audible errors. This in no way justifies audiophile claims that audio is improved by buying ever more expensive cables, and a $10 cable can perform perfectly if it is made to spec (as 99.999% are). Also, if a cable is defective, the audio will degrade in an obvious manner, with none of the flowery esoteric descriptions put forth by audiophiles. In short, a faulty cable won't subtly "degrade the soundstage", sound "wooden", or "flat"; it will instead cause obvious droputs, clicks, etc.

Unfortunately, that is the root of most snake oil products: the thought that there is some chance it might work.


Yes, I agree with pretty much everything you posted. But you seem to admit no middle ground between full-on audiophilia and hard-line objectivism.

What I've been trying hard to demonstrate, perhaps ineffectively, is that one can take a thoughtful, rational, sceptical, and pragmatic viewpoint about this without sitting at the hard-line objectivist end of the scale.

Yes, I agree with pretty much everything you posted. But you seem to admit no middle ground between full-on audiophilia and hard-line objectivism.

What I've been trying hard to demonstrate, perhaps ineffectively, is that one can take a thoughtful, rational, sceptical, and pragmatic viewpoint about this without sitting at the hard-line objectivist end of the scale.

But if you don't require any proof, or at least any rational explanation, at what point do you call "bull***"? Who knows where the boundary is between complete snake-oil and a reasonable possibility?

And, with modern electronics, and modern manufacturing, the boundaries have been shifting more and more to the point where the reasonable possibilities are disappearing which tends towards the view that most unsubstantiated claims are snake oil.

When 95% of claims are bogus, what criteria do you use to allow the 5% to be heard?

Cheers,

Keith