15ft XLR interconnects, $1950

[genek]

Just to try to get this back on topic, anybody have any conjecture on how likely it is that the person who would pay $1950 for a set of interconnects and believe he was hearing a sonic improvement from them could tell the difference in a double-blind test?

[roundhome]

Just to try to get this back on topic, anybody have any conjecture on how likely it is that the person who would pay $1950 for a set of interconnects and believe he was hearing a sonic improvement from them could tell the difference in a double-blind test?

I would not think they could if there was nothing to listen to that was different.

but ever watch a drummer test sticks or any string player test different strings if there is a difference to be herd they can tell.

as a tech for over 30 years on many types of gear the only time i have noticed a diff in wire is when it could not handle the current needs some special coatings for enviroment needs and shielding for induced induction of unwanted signals have seen connection carode causing 200 nanosec delayes not triggering the gate

but as far as music and wire there is no effect on signals that a human can here ever watched on a spectrum analyser that would be the best test run a signal through a wire into a spectrum hit memory change the wire run same signal then over lay them and look for a difference. if you can"t see any you can't heir any I don't have the equipment now to try it

now if your amp can't pull the current though the 20 gage wire and you get a 12 gage wire you will here some difference at the higher volumes

then again what do i know i have only been a field tech not a research tech

but my spark plug wires are still copper so you will get some noise in your radio next to me i put a filter on to keep it out of mine

an air filter

[Steve F]

Soundminded,

I'm not sure I totally understand your expectations of a home hi-fi system. These are quick questions, 'yes-no' questions.

No hidden agenda, no 'gotcha' traps, no right or wrong. I just want a clearer understanding of your positions so I can put your responses into an accurate context.

Do you expect your home hi-fi to replicate live music, either of the 'they are here' or 'you are there' variety? Yes or no?

There's no right or wrong answer here. As you know, my expectation is 'no.' What's yours?

(Note--I'm not asking if you believe that the technology exists to do so, nor am I asking if manufacturers are going about it the right way, or anything else. I'm simply asking what your expectation is: Yes or No.)

Do you think that the goal of replication of live music in the home (either 'y-a-t' or 't-a-h') should be the goal of commercially-available equipment and recordings? Yes or no?

Quick, one-word answers.

Again, I'm not asking if you feel that mfgrs have missed the target, or if your own invention comes real close, or anything like that. I'm simply asking what your expectation is.

No right or wrong answers. No hidden agendas. No 'gotcha.' Just a clarification of your expectations. Yes or no.

Steve F.

[soundminded]

Soundminded,

I'm not sure I totally understand your expectations of a home hi-fi system. These are quick questions, 'yes-no' questions.

No hidden agenda, no 'gotcha' traps, no right or wrong. I just want a clearer understanding of your positions so I can put your responses into an accurate context.

Do you expect your home hi-fi to replicate live music, either of the 'they are here' or 'you are there' variety? Yes or no?

There's no right or wrong answer here. As you know, my expectation is 'no.' What's yours?

(Note--I'm not asking if you believe that the technology exists to do so, nor am I asking if manufacturers are going about it the right way, or anything else. I'm simply asking what your expectation is: Yes or No.)

Do you think that the goal of replication of live music in the home (either 'y-a-t' or 't-a-h') should be the goal of commercially-available equipment and recordings? Yes or no?

Quick, one-word answers.

Again, I'm not asking if you feel that mfgrs have missed the target, or if your own invention comes real close, or anything like that. I'm simply asking what your expectation is.

No right or wrong answers. No hidden agendas. No 'gotcha.' Just a clarification of your expectations. Yes or no.

Steve F.

1. Do you expect your home hi-fi to replicate live music, either of the 'they are here' or 'you are there' variety? Yes or no?

Yes to both.

2. Do you think that the goal of replication of live music in the home (either 'y-a-t' or 't-a-h') should be the goal of commercially-available equipment and recordings? Yes or no?

Yes.

[JKent]

Steve, I don't know where you are going with this but I think most of us here would answer "yes--reproduced music should sound like the original live performance". Y-A-T

Having said that, I remember years ago when I read some of the "high end" mags one of them--maybe Stereophile--had a contributor who was unique because he was a bona fide concert musician AND an audiophile. It has been said that MOST musicians are NOT audiophiles. I think there could be two possible explanations: One being that the musician can listen to an imperfect playback and mentally "fill in the blanks." Another is that the musician realizes that NO reproduction system will give the true Y-A-T experience and so settles for pleasant but imperfect sound reproduction.

Then there is a third possibility--that our memory of live performances is so imperfect there is no way to tell if the reproduced sound is 100% accurate. Think of trying to remember a color when you go to pick out paint--can't be done.

I was recently in the home of a collector who was a retired high-end audio dealer and part-time tinkerer. He had a system so esoteric I didn't recognize any of the names and he told me it was about $100,000 worth of equipment (including solid silver ribbons to connect the speakers). The speakers were ginormous German-made devices from a sci-fi movie, with big football-shaped transducers. The suitcase-size, highly modified monoblocks could probably have used their own power plant. He cranked them up and described the detail, transparency, etc etc etc yadda yadda yadda. I thought my ears were going to bleed! To me, the system was harsh and unpleasant. Give me a pair of classic NE speakers and a good-enough amp any day.

And when you think about live performances--especially classical or jazz--does the sound really have pin-point accuracy, crystalline highs, and so forth? No. The acoustics of the auditorium and the location of your seat color the music and make it somewhat soft and diffuse.

The death of the original "quadraphonic" sound was in part due to the fact that it may have sounded "good" but it was certainly not realistic. I remember a demonstration of the original Bose 901s. You sat in the center of 4 speakers and it sounded like you were IN the music. Interesting, and impressive I suppose, like the early stereo "ping pong" demonstrations, but nothing like real music.

Going out on a limb here.... I LIKE surround sound. Great for home theater but also nice if balanced properly for music. It gives just a little "hall" effect. And with modern receivers, you can turn off the surround and listen in stereo if you prefer.

Just my opinion. YMMV.

Kent

[Steve F]

Well, one's satisfaction with hi-fi is certainly going to depend on one's expectations of their system/recordings.

I do not expect my system to replicate live music of either kind ('t-a-h' or 'y-a-t'), probably because I don't think it's feasible or realistic to expect so. That's simply my view--not any more 'right' or 'wrong' than anyone else's view.

I expect a reasonable tonally-accurate facsimile of my memory of such an event. The 'my memory' part of the equation is what puts limits on things and allows me to make (my admittedly highly subjective) judgments as to which speaker or system is more or less realistic, more or less colored, more or less satisfying. As you say, four 901's sound less realistic to me because of how I recall those instruments probably sounded in a live setting, the operative words being 'recall' and 'probably.'

But again, at no time do I expect to believe that Chick Corea is really in my living room and at no time do I expect to think I'm really at the Village Vanguard. I KNOW that I'm always in my living room on Standish Ave, but the recordings as played through my system can sometimes remind me, very vividly, of the actual event. They remind me, they don't convince me, nor do I expect them to.

That's just my view.

Steve F.

[soundminded]

Steve, I don't know where you are going with this but I think most of us here would answer "yes--reproduced music should sound like the original live performance". Y-A-T

Having said that, I remember years ago when I read some of the "high end" mags one of them--maybe Stereophile--had a contributor who was unique because he was a bona fide concert musician AND an audiophile. It has been said that MOST musicians are NOT audiophiles. I think there could be two possible explanations: One being that the musician can listen to an imperfect playback and mentally "fill in the blanks." Another is that the musician realizes that NO reproduction system will give the true Y-A-T experience and so settles for pleasant but imperfect sound reproduction.

Then there is a third possibility--that our memory of live performances is so imperfect there is no way to tell if the reproduced sound is 100% accurate. Think of trying to remember a color when you go to pick out paint--can't be done.

I was recently in the home of a collector who was a retired high-end audio dealer and part-time tinkerer. He had a system so esoteric I didn't recognize any of the names and he told me it was about $100,000 worth of equipment (including solid silver ribbons to connect the speakers). The speakers were ginormous German-made devices from a sci-fi movie, with big football-shaped transducers. The suitcase-size, highly modified monoblocks could probably have used their own power plant. He cranked them up and described the detail, transparency, etc etc etc yadda yadda yadda. I thought my ears were going to bleed! To me, the system was harsh and unpleasant. Give me a pair of classic NE speakers and a good-enough amp any day.

And when you think about live performances--especially classical or jazz--does the sound really have pin-point accuracy, crystalline highs, and so forth? No. The acoustics of the auditorium and the location of your seat color the music and make it somewhat soft and diffuse.

The death of the original "quadraphonic" sound was in part due to the fact that it may have sounded "good" but it was certainly not realistic. I remember a demonstration of the original Bose 901s. You sat in the center of 4 speakers and it sounded like you were IN the music. Interesting, and impressive I suppose, like the early stereo "ping pong" demonstrations, but nothing like real music.

Going out on a limb here.... I LIKE surround sound. Great for home theater but also nice if balanced properly for music. It gives just a little "hall" effect. And with modern receivers, you can turn off the surround and listen in stereo if you prefer.

Just my opinion. YMMV.

Kent

One of the things I've learned during a lifetime career as an engineer is that a paradigm is not a way of conceptualizing the solution to a problem, it is the way you conceptualize the problem itself. In short, the quality of the answer you get depends on the quality of the way the question is posed. The range of possible solutions to a problem is often restricted to the way you define a problem in your mind.

Perhaps you've seen this little puzzle American industry used to present to its employees in seminars on manageent training in the 1980s and 1990s when it was concerned about just this kind of tunneled vision restricting the possibities for progress and by no coincidence improved profits. The "that's the way we've always done it" mentality is not only death to profits, it is death to a corporation where the competition does not similarly restrict itself.

Here's the problem, many if most have probably seen it. Take a piece of paper and draw 9 dots on it in a 3 x 3 matrix. Now place your pencil on any dot you want to start and connect all nine dots with four straight lines only there is one restriction, you can't lift your pencil off the paper once you start until all 9 dots are connected. You'd be surprised at how few people could solve that problem if they hadn't seen it before. Hint, this is where the expression thinking outside the box originated from.

Much of the way we solve problems is like that. We restrict our thinking to prior experience, to the way we've always thought in the past. That is what precludes getting the answer, especially in this industry.

Think of the paradigm shifts in other industries. Go back 150 years, 100 years, or even just 50 or 60 years and ask yourself Steve's questions related to any industry or technology you can think of. The expectations then that we would have the solutions we ordinarily use in our daily lives today would have been considered impossible or thousands of years in the future at best. Most people of that time would most likely have considered the problems posed insurmountable by mortal human beings. If nobody dares to think outside the box or anyone who tries succumbs to ridicule, all existance will always remain inside the box. This industry died when the risk of allowing ingenuity and unconventional thinking free reign succumbed to the drive for maximizing profits and those who had the potential to invent new and creative solutions found more fertile ground for their talents elsewhere. Small wonder those who are left resent even the suggestion of it.

[rrcrain]

Just to try to get this back on topic, anybody have any conjecture on how likely it is that the person who would pay $1950 for a set of interconnects and believe he was hearing a sonic improvement from them could tell the difference in a double-blind test?

I think they really hear a difference because they've convinced themselves they will hear a difference. Then there's the exotic wire with built in inductance or capacitance tha's guarranted to make a difference simply by design.

[Steve F]

All good points, worthy of further thought. At this point, my expectations (and therefore my satisfaction) are determined by what technology has been made available to me at the present time.

When the musical system/experience equivalent of the Enterprise's "holodeck" becomes technologically feasible and available, my expectations will change accordingly.

I am not an inventor. I'll leave the bringing into reality of the "concert-o-gram" or the "jazz-club-o-gram" to the inventors.

Until then, my AR-9's satisfy me and meet my expectations.

Steve F.

[roundhome]

Mr Kantor will like this one I just came from the only High end store in my area and said something about the NHT speakers

The sales person /audio expert said ya you should have seen the wires sent with them and that Mr Kantor told him he could put more expensive wires on them but why. he then said he can tell when better wires are used

I just walked out

came home and cranked up my old AR9 Speakers as the sales person said don't sound as good as the new Martin logans they have

[kkantor]

Mr Kantor will like this one I just came from the only High end store in my area and said something about the NHT speakers

The sales person /audio expert said ya you should have seen the wires sent with them and that Mr Kantor told him he could put more expensive wires on them but why. he then said he can tell when better wires are used

I just walked out

came home and cranked up my old AR9 Speakers as the sales person said don't sound as good as the new Martin logans they have

Yeah, who says we are only in it for the money?? If you want to make money in the hifi biz, you have to pull out the tweeter and replace it with a 12AX7.

Seriously, this is a good discussion, that might never end. Personally, I think it is currently possible to sonically reproduce a given environment to very high standards, into a well-known listening space. "They are here," is a bit easier than "you are there." But, both can be done, if one has control of the situation. The problem is that each and every situation is different, and neither the budgets for recording and distribution, nor the consistency of the playback domain, are up to the task.

I think most people agree about the above. The controversial issues are whether this problem is, or even should be, important to anyone, and, if it is not important, what ARE the guiding principles of non-live music distribution. As SM has said... almost all of the current discussion in the audio world is total folly. "Frequency response," is to sonic accuracy what "nose size" is to beauty.

But, I do think there are scientists and engineers around who do indeed understand the problem and are trying to unravel (undebussy?) it. Their rate of progress is slowed by the lack of a clear commercial incentive.

-k

If God is dead, everything is permitted."

-Sartre

[genek]

Their rate of progress is slowed by the lack of a clear commercial incentive.

From what I can see, there is a very clear commercial incentive. Today's design target is "You Are There" reproduction, and the "There" is a movie theater. My most recent visit to a HT dealer led me to conclude that the engineering is getting pretty darned close to hitting that target, because I came out of the place with the same headache and ringing in my ears that I got from my last movie theater experience.

[soundminded]

Yeah, who says we are only in it for the money?? If you want to make money in the hifi biz, you have to pull out the tweeter and replace it with a 12AX7.

Seriously, this is a good discussion, that might never end. Personally, I think it is currently possible to sonically reproduce a given environment to very high standards, into a well-known listening space. "They are here," is a bit easier than "you are there." But, both can be done, if one has control of the situation. The problem is that each and every situation is different, and neither the budgets for recording and distribution, nor the consistency of the playback domain, are up to the task.

I think most people agree about the above. The controversial issues are whether this problem is, or even should be, important to anyone, and, if it is not important, what ARE the guiding principles of non-live music distribution. As SM has said... almost all of the current discussion in the audio world is total folly. "Frequency response," is to sonic accuracy what "nose size" is to beauty.

But, I do think there are scientists and engineers around who do indeed understand the problem and are trying to unravel (undebussy?) it. Their rate of progress is slowed by the lack of a clear commercial incentive.

-k

If God is dead, everything is permitted."

-Sartre

"I think it is currently possible to sonically reproduce a given environment to very high standards, into a well-known listening space. "They are here," is a bit easier than "you are there." But, both can be done, if one has control of the situation."

Here's a tough question: How?

Here's a much tougher question: Why?

[kkantor]

From what I can see, there is a very clear commercial incentive. Today's design target is "You Are There" reproduction, and the "There" is a movie theater. My most recent visit to a HT dealer led me to conclude that the engineering is getting pretty darned close to hitting that target, because I came out of the place with the same headache and ringing in my ears that I got from my last movie theater experience.

Well, I understand your are partly just tossing in a dig here. But, a "commercial incentive" is different than a "design target." The HT business is far from healthy. Margins are tiny. Retailers are distressed. Very few brands can earn a living there. Distribution technology is unstable. Recording standards are ad hoc. If I were planning a research program, I'd think very carefully about the reality of payback from the HT space.

You could try earplugs, unless the headache and ringing in your ears are 24/7.

-k

[genek]

Well, I understand your are partly just tossing in a dig here. But, a "commercial incentive" is different than a "design target." The HT business is far from healthy. Margins are tiny. Retailers are distressed. Very few brands can earn a living there. Distribution technology is unstable. Recording standards are ad hoc. If I were planning a research program, I'd think very carefully about the reality of payback from the HT space.

You could try earplugs, unless the headache and ringing in your ears are 24/7.

I will bow to your obvious experience in the audio industry, but in the fields in which I have worked (computer hardware, semiconductor equipment, biotech and aviation) design targets are dictated solely by commercial concerns. Even those imposed by regulation are vetted for their commercial impact.

I'm sure the HT business is not much more healthy than the audiophile equipment business (or any other business for that matter in these times), but it is still today's biggest "commercial incentive" for any company making consumer home audio that can't suddenly shift gears into some totally different industry.

I do have earplugs, but they're for situations I can't avoid, like flying. For movie theaters (and now most audio/HT dealers) my method for avoiding the headache and ringing ears is to just not go in.

[kkantor]

I will bow to your obvious experience in the audio industry, but in the fields in which I have worked (computer hardware, semiconductor equipment, biotech and aviation) design targets are dictated solely by commercial concerns. Even those imposed by regulation are vetted for their commercial impact.

I'm sure the HT business is not much more healthy than the audiophile equipment business (or any other business for that matter in these times), but it is still today's biggest "commercial incentive" for any company making consumer home audio that can't suddenly shift gears into some totally different industry.

I do have earplugs, but they're for situations I can't avoid, like flying. For movie theaters (and now most audio/HT dealers) my method for avoiding the headache and ringing ears is to just not go in.

Of course, but the problem I was alluding to is when design efforts become misaligned from the commercial incentives, or misapprehend them in some way. Predicting the market, the economy, the competition, that's obviously difficult. And the longer the R&D latency, the harder the task, the more the uncertainty grows. (Well, let's ignore the apocalyptic time scales for the moment.)

-k

BTW- I very, very rarely go to a movie theater these days. Maybe once a year, even less. But, most of that has to do with the content, not the sound or the environment. As for earplugs, I buy them bulk and use them as often as I possibly can! But, I know that's weird.

[genek]

Of course, but the problem I was alluding to is when design efforts become misaligned from the commercial incentives

I think when that happens you end up with either bankruptcy or a legendary niche company consisting of some artisan designer whose work people are willing to pay big bucks for upfront and wait months to take delivery. I imagine that everyone who tries to start a high-end audio business is hoping that they'll be the latter. I doubt that any of them are expecting to start the next Harman International in their garages.

[soundminded]

Of course, but the problem I was alluding to is when design efforts become misaligned from the commercial incentives, or misapprehend them in some way. Predicting the market, the economy, the competition, that's obviously difficult. And the longer the R&D latency, the harder the task, the more the uncertainty grows. (Well, let's ignore the apocalyptic time scales for the moment.)

-k

BTW- I very, very rarely go to a movie theater these days. Maybe once a year, even less. But, most of that has to do with the content, not the sound or the environment. As for earplugs, I buy them bulk and use them as often as I possibly can! But, I know that's weird.

"As for earplugs, I buy them bulk and use them as often as I possibly can!"

Isn't that like closing the barn door after the horse is gone?

[genek]

For anyone in the market for hearing protection, I heartily recommend earplugs molded to impressions of your ear canals. I was fitted for a pair by the company I was working for during my "steely eyed missileman" 20's and have used them ever since, and 30 years later my most recent audiologist exam showed that the upper range of my hearing still extends beyond 19kHz. Start protecting it when you're young, because once you lose it, you'll never get it back.

[kkantor]

"As for earplugs, I buy them bulk and use them as often as I possibly can!"

Isn't that like closing the barn door after the horse is gone?

Exactly. There are better things to do in the barn than hang around with a horse.

Plus, my electric guitar plugs directly into my brainstem. Ears, are passé.

-k