Mega Lossy v Lossless Test

[hubsand]

In all seriousness, I've spent hours on the phone with two people recently who are adamant that upgraded connectors and mil-spec shielding on SATA cables improves the sound quality of an audio computer.

I don't know: I've not heard them. But I wouldn't rule out the possibility. However, even the possibility has caused an almighty flame war in certain sectors of the interweb!

 

[hubsand]

Peter Walker nailed what should be the desired attitude towards cables many decades ago.

'They should be of sufficient length in order to reach the components and of appropriate colour to match the room decor' - or wording very similar.

Decades ago, that was a commonly held view.

 

[hubsand]

Was it ever conclusively proven that painting the edges of your CDs green did nothing more than turn them green?

It would be interesting to compile a list of all the crazes that have surfaced over the years in similar vein, and note how many apparently 'insane' ideas have now become mainstream, and how many have gone the way of the minidisc.

 

[RobHolt]

Was it ever conclusively proven that painting the edges of your CDs green did nothing more than turn them green?

No but it can be, very easily.

I've produced - on this forum in fact - perfect null results from lathed CDs to show that no difference exists when they are played on the same transport.
The same would be possible for green ink.

 

[sq225917]

Come come Rob, you produced null tests to show no difference for a specific cd played on a specific cd player, that's not the same as stating that " no difference exists when played on the same cd player" it's only proof with the disc and the player under test.

The audiodiffmaker guy has a green cd file on his website- no difference on the cd player he used.


Let's not beat around the bush here, anyone who tells you that a SATA cable can make a difference is a fucking idiot or a charlatan. SATA cables connect hard drives to mother boards. All data coming off a hard drive is buffered in main memory ram or on chip ram, all of it is error and parity checked at every stage of its transmission. SO until it hits your sound card or toslink/spdif output it remains as just 'error checked data'. It's impossible to change the data with a cable because if it did it would change all data- and your computer would never work.

Oh but its better shielded! All the shielding in the world won't make any difference because errors are impossible anyway. To make any difference it would have to intercept the data between the last memory buffer and the output device- and 5cm of wire can't do that, last time I checked it was infuckinganimate.

Any audio reviewer putting his name to such a claim would no doubt be pilloried and have to take the ridiculous claims down from his website before his career and credibility was ruined- oh he did.

 

[RobHolt]

Come come Rob, you produced null tests to show no difference for a specific cd played on a specific cd player, that's not the same as stating that " no difference exists when played on the same cd player" it's only proof with the disc and the player under test.

That's what I said.
It clearly says using the same transport.

It will happen on all transports though IME (well unless one is clapped-out I guess) and I'm happy to repeat such tests on anyone's transport. You can take from that that I've done the rest on others, also with a null.