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Is actually a 2,3,4,1 to me.
And that, listening through an iPad to an UEBoom2 bluetooth connected, „it cannot work“ and it doesn‘t when choosing a cable of that value for my proper system of some very much higher value. It was an experiment.

1 sounded utterly uninspiring
2 the mellow music spectrum fitted voice and song, that this would have been my preferred cable listening through a wireless system, hahahaha
3 tightly followed by the not so mellow, more controlled and precision indicating (remember BT, mono) #3
4 just did a good job, less precise, less mellow than 2 and 3 but the chaos mentioned in soundstage is of course difficult to extract out of this crappy mobile system, but looking at price, definitely a go for a quick setup or vacation home intermediate setup.

Unfortunately the #1 was very distant and obviously off the line.

Cheers.

I think a key question, and one that I hope Mr K will answer, is; is the cable to the RCA box the same as the straight through run (#1)? ie for #2,3 and 4 has the signal gone through #1 already?

If it is, it clearly illustrates the effect of cables and how they can be used to "tune" a system (which we all should know they are). The challenge, is how do you know if you can get a better result and what cable will do that for you, based on what is important when you are listening. And some advice doesn't fit - back in the 80's when I had Naim equipment (I am in the UK) I really diliked the Naim speaker cable and I felt like a heretic, and not long after I got rid of my Naim's.

in upgraded cables. But my Rega RP6 came with hardwired interconnects that do not appear readily replaceable. Any advice/experience much appreciated.

If these differences are so obvious as to render DBT testing irrelevant, then it certainly wouldn't take much effort to actually perform the DBT and be done with it, no?

If we can do it with wine, we can do it with cable, I would think.

Think of the fame, fortune, and accolades that await that person! Maybe even a million dollars from James Randi!

So, we are still waiting for Godot when it comes to the DBT cable messiah. (They differences are so blatant that they can be heard on iPhones and via built-in computer speakers, after all.)

I love this comparison, but that 6 dB range of levels leaves be dubious, I admit. Am I the only one? Maybe.

It's been ~45 years of the great cable debate, perhaps it will be settled in another 45.

So, I am pro cable, and blind curious.

I know wine experts who can only discern differences between wines when they know which is which, so this affliction is not limited to cables, either!

I undertake SBT wine tasting all the time. My point was that nobody lights their hair on fire when we talk about blind tasting wine, but us audiophiles certainly do when it comes to gear! All the while thinking of reasons to discount the exercise.

You were not an experienced wine taster, yet the example you use is perfect: an inexperienced test taker can do this stuff!

Us wine nerds take it to the point where the decanted wine might have been the same wine as the first, and differences would emerge merely via decanting! Big fun!

I love stuff like that.

I also agree that the A/B/X box and instantaneous type of test is ill suited to this exercise. There's no rush, listen all day, all week, then make a change, or not (!) and compare...I think that's the cool path for Hi Fi.

My Hi Fi Club does blind comparisons all the time. I think the first step toward beating 'blind testing deafness' is simply doing it in the first place.

Regarding wine, we can pick out grape, age, even producer...why shouldn't this be possible for cables, especially since so many of them "remove veils" and have "obvious sonic signatures that can be the size of orders of magnitude." Why should oenophiles be able to claim superiority of discernment vs. audiophile? We should do better

It's too bad we so often sit and congratulate ourselves over being able to hear the "obvious" differences between cables but go all "arms crossed and brows furrowed" when we get challenged.

_

To drift a little, that 6 dB range of level difference is something even JA should be able to measure. One of the British Hi Fi magazines does this, I will volunteer to go look for how wide their measurements can be...6 dB seems to strain credulity. Not of you, but of that order of difference.

i'm just a starting out audiophile in college with a uturn (hoping to upgrade to a mofi deck and a cartridge since i dont like having to do a lot of modification with rega products). and i dunno what cables would overall be the best when im just using a simple schiit preamp and headphone amp

MF 1: "...That we’d need blind A/B/X testing to “prove” that any sonic differences exist is absurd"

MF 2: "...of course I knew what I was hearing so I was the most biased listener"

It's not absurd Mikey, and your statement '2' above is the reason that your statement '1' is wrong. It's called Confirmation Bias, to which you indirectly allude in '2'.

If You think that these differences between cables not only exist but are down to better 'quality' of sound (rather than simply the electrical differences between the cables) then you owe it to those you report these results to (given the financial differences involved and the manufacturers who profit from being 'best') to do those tests unsighted AND to have JA do full lab-tests to see if the playing field is level. Until that happens it's more probable that you are hearing tonal differences resulting from electrical (resistivity/capacitance/inductance) differences between the cables that are dimensionless in 'sound quality' terms.

In support of this perspective and regarding your 'N.B.', it's safe to say that these electrical differences will affect AC-carrying mains cables just as much, but Because those DON'T carry an audio signal any influence such cables have can ONLY be electrical. If you hear a difference in mains cables you must then ask yourself exactly What it is you are hearing in the audio ones.

When phono cables costs $3000 for 1-m and the companies making these can charge any amount for a thick dielectric and a silly name, inquiry needs to be systematic -- it was not so very long ago that a junior Stereophile 'reviewer' left to become a high-paid PR mouthpiece for a cable company, so there's both vast profits involved as well as attempts to game the field.

I think #2 sounded sooo different from the others that many saw it as the weaker cable. #3 and #4 were actually close on my studio monitors.

For me it's pretty simple. If I could aford $4500 cables to put on a high priced system that would up it's performance I would do so! The fact that I can't afford them and I don't have an expensive system the $9.00 cable is the one I use. To each his or her own. But Michael I appreciate your expertise and always enjoy your reviews and perspective in everything analog!! Keep on keeping on Sir! Peace and Love!

It was nice to fine Hosa was a decent performer as I have much of it in my 3 recording systems and have found when one brand produces hum, switching to Hose often solves the problem. I do find them to be decent performers. At 73 I had a hard time choosing between 3 and 4, but that is my hearing loss and nothing do to 3 being not as revealing. It is me for sure.

As for power cables I have an MIT IEC cable that dropped my computer recording noise floor nearly 10db and using a very affordable Furman 8 outlet AC filter box, I have 4 of them on all my audio gear, I can get a near -80db noise floor in my computer before opening up my microphones. I cannot complain about that.

Thanks for all the work you did to put this together.

No matter how many times you show a nonbeliever in cables, that quality cables really do make a difference, has gotta start to get quite irritating after a while. It’s almost as if they’ve got their hands over their ears while singing aloud. As you mentioned, good cables can make or break a decent system, and I also feel sorry for those unwilling to even think about that fact. I don’t expect this test to make a believer out of everyone (or anyone, for that matter), but wanted to at least say thank you for doing it nonetheless, Michael. I’m sure you were aware of the response you’d get beforehand.

that I would flunk an ABX test, but can hear some real difference. There's too much going on in the recording to focus on everything-- I grabbed onto the one thing I know well--the sound of the guitar--(having played for 32 years) and heard what I heard (this computer has a Geek Pulse DAC and HiFiMan 400i headphones). 4 is surprisingly better than stock to me, and the next time I replace a tonearm cable, I may go in that direction. 3 sounded great. 2 had a little too much fairy dust for me, but did sound good. 1 was kind of bland.

The Stradivarius and wine tests need to be talked up more. Because I know professional violinists, and one of the things that would make them considerably happier is being able to have, play, maintain, and insure a $12,000 violin instead of a $300,000 one, if the tone was the same. The only classical string instrumentalists who seem to have adopted modern instruments in large numbers are violists, however, and that's mostly for ergonomic reasons.

With wine, yeah, I've had some absolutely amazing experiences without knowing what I was actually getting. And the price usually was commensurate, even if I was eating at a BYOB place with a oenophile friend and didn't recognize the label until I googled it later.

Well, first of all I don’t feel this was a fair test, but only because of the environment. It is just that there is nothing that beats a live in-person test. With internet you have all kinds of anomalies. On top of that, of course, people are listening on different gear instead of on the same system. So those two factors alone skewer things even if the test was to merely prove that cables make a difference.
I prefer real science to pseudoscience. I’m not saying cables can’t make a difference, they can, but that difference is tiny compared to many other things, including just small tweaks that are free or very low cost. I personally would not use cables to try to EQ my system. Realistically, the “difference” between most cables in any price range would be almost imperceptible except by very sensitive measuring equipment. All most folks have is their ears to measure with and that should always be the final say where one’s system enjoyment is concerned. If you hear a significant difference (before knowing cost), then by all means go with what you hear. Of course, cables don’t need to cost a fortune either and I agree with Michael that one should not spend outside what is commensurate with one’s gear. While I personally would not spend $1000 or more on cables on a $11k system lets say, but some might and it would not be wrong either. There is nothing to gain by spending a fortune though. It is the same with all audio gear as well and even with other things like cars, there is a demarcation line of diminishing returns. In other words, the difference between a $3000 cable and a $300 cable would most likely be imperceptible to the ear, so spending more money is wasteful and not needed in my opinion. Same thing with a car, they all get you from point A to point B, but often times the more expensive the car the more unreliable and costly to maintain it is. Of course, these days cars are made more and more poorly year to year by all the makes, what’s up with that?
I used to run Monoprice premium interconnects and speaker cable in my system. (I’m not saying what my system is, but I will say it is not commensurate with Michael’s by any stretch, however it is not from Walmart either). I had zero problems sonically with the Monoprice cables. I tried Kimber interconnects and had all kinds of problems, however that was on a different system than I have now. With my current (and final) system, I still had Monoprice cables initially, but there was an issue with the interconnects, not sonically, but with the terminators. They were way too tight and over-engineered. Also, the cables are rather stiff. I ended up going with WireWorld interconnects. As for fit, they are far better, but sonically, they are no different from the Monoprice cables. I even bothered to go a step up from the “entry-level” ones and two steps up from that for the cables into and from the phono preamp. That said, I also wanted new speaker cables and I like DIY (nothing new to me). So, I went and got some speaker cable from the same place many cable makes get their bulk cable. It was a little different than the Monoprice stuff, but very subtle. The biggest difference was the gauge, I went from 14 to 12. I decided to go all in and made them fancy looking with the flextec and heat shrink and nice terminators. They look like something from Audioquest, but without the plastic badge and battery pack, etc. Cost about $36 and an hour of my labor to make two 10-foot runs, but that is just aesthetics. This is the interesting point: They made a small but notable sonic difference to my ears! Soundstage was slightly wider and had more depth of field and I also heard more subtle details. I attribute all that about 98% to 99% to the gauge change in the wire and not some brand name or fancy wrapping, etc.
I personally think the power cable hoopla is designed to void warranties. The gear comes with the power cable it does for a reason. Is it the best grade of cable? No, but it is appropriate at least as it has been tested for and with the gear. If you had a new piece of gear at any cost and let’s say it has a 5-year warranty and you change the power cable straight away and then experience problems with the unit, what do you think will happen when you call the manufacture and tell them the problem? They will inevitably ask you to bring it in. They will find out you used a different power cable. These techs are not stupid, they know how to trace stuff. They will find out and you will have to pay because your warranty will be voided.
That said, if the warranty period on your gear is over though, then feel free to do whatever you like.

Is that you never did actually correct the channel mismatch - 1 and 2 were the same, 3 and 4 were the same but with left/right switched (and I dl'd the files *after* you said you corrected that problem). Because the L/R were switched I couldn't compare the pairs.

I used HiFiMan HE-500 'phones, Schiit Asgard 3 amp (it's like a headphone Aegir - which is rated Stereophile Class 'A'), Schiit Modi mulitbit DAC fed by s/pdif input (since it sounds a lot better than USB off my PC).

This was a stark contrast to the tonearm comparison you did before where the three SAT arms all sounded distinctly different but amazing and the (I think SP-10) non-SAT arm sounded like dog crap compared to the SAT arms.

I listened and posted this before reading the above article or any comments so as not to be influenced by what was said. Didn't read the comments in the original article either (or much of the article), except folks saying WTF with the swapped channels (which apparently never got fixed). This has done nothing to change my mind about cable. I will agree that some speaker cables can alter the sound due to differences in capacitance/inductance and how the amp reacts to those differences but they're pretty minor in the grand scheme of things (preamp, DAC, vinyl front end, amp, and speakers all have a significantly greater impact).

I've always had a hell of a time getting any sort of signal through those black rubber cables. The ones with some sort of copper in the middle work a lot better.

Re. subjectivism for evaluating cables- naysayers often point to the 'placebo' effect, which could have some merit if it were a case of people imagining that certain cabling changes led one to think there'd been a relative improvement or decline, but what about when a cable/inter-connect/power cord choice makes a system sound viscerally unpleasant? For example, I have some Thiel 2.3s in one of my systems- they have many strengths, and sound really good in that system at this point, but (as well known) can run a bit hot in the lower part of the treble range. First, I found I needed certain lines of Cardas interconnects to tame them; other lines early on- Audioquest or Ayre signature (sort of an audioquest/cardas hybrid, sound-wise) interconnects did not sufficiently tame the Thiel's problem. Speaker cabling also had to be Cardas. With better system isolation and a change to a tube preamp, tho aforementioned cable lines could be introduced for an overall better sound, but power cabling (primarily Shunyata) was still too intense if uniform, and thus needed a Cardas pc or two.
If a suboptimal cable combo creates a sound that actively makes me uncomfortable as soon as I listen to it, that would seem much less likely to support a placebo effect, especially since I think that for most audio applications of mine, the other cabling lines are considerably better than the Cardas (which I am not knocking overall, and about which I'm discussing more 'down-line' examples manufactured almost 20 years ago). A persistently-disturbing sound balance shouldn't simply be attributable to momentary whims or any power-of-suggestion, especially since it went against my overall desire to use more resolving cabling.

Wow. #3 is an expensive "Beyond" cable!?

Have a listen to the quiet parts. It's picking up hum. So unless it's an issue with the recording, IMO this is not good.

why you, Mike, have such implied faith in digital copies of needle drops. Let's skip the irony of your historic preference for vinyl and just stick with basics. You on the one hand have historically insisted that all cabling breaks are to be avoided. And yet, Keep in mind too that once you hook up the ADC to the output of your phono stage with one set of IC's and then go into a pre-amp to adjust level and boost the output with yet another set of IC's and then go from the ADC to your hard drive with yet another set of IC's, there is no way you are going to get a perfect rendition of what you could hear direct from the record. What am I missing here? And this is before I even get into the silliness of trying to hear subtle differences through the cheap devices that 99% of the readers of this site use to try to evaluate your needle-drops. Tell me I am full of "it". I can take it. But you won't convince me otherwise. I just need to see your response so I can understand your point of view.

Your hostility and dismissive attitude towards anyone who isn’t you are stunning. At first I thought this piece was an April Fools spoof.

What’s the point of this? I’d gently suggest some anger management counseling.

Cables can not add anything to a signal, only take away.
An audio signal is one of the simplest signals to reproduce.
Electrons do not flow any better through "pretty wire".

Audio hobbyists love to tinker with expensive gadgets. Please do not try to take away any of their toys.

They are four tracks. They have no identical volume level, similar, but not identical. But even worse is, that in track 1 and 2 left and right channel are swapped, tracks 3 and 4 have the channels right compared to cd version. And in track 3 the right channel has 4-5dB lower volume, than the left.

So the people are comparing not levelled tracks and not identical left/right information and the track with the most expensive cable has bad channel balance. Just listen to left and right guitar, you will notice the difference. Or open the tracks with audacity.

How viable is such a test ?

In our TLDR contest.
Bonus points for “Let’s cut to the chase” followed by TWENTY-FIVE paragraphs.