The Cable Test - listen and decide

Better than smelling of Foo!
Though there is probably some similarity to Bolivian Unicyclist's jockstrap

 

Going out on a limb I'd take a guess at 4 being the home made cable

As for the others
No1 Silver because its more brittle (transparent)
No 2 the other Chord
No 3 the bootlace

But then its all a complete guess on my part. Yet the test could be educational for those in the back of the classroom who will wake up one day to the smell of coffee.

 

All will be revealed tomorrow night.

Last chance to listen and vote.

 

All sound the same so I must be deaf, which is a good thing as I can spend all my spare cash on new music instead of wire!

 

That always was an option.

Try a set of plat alloys first though, then decide if you really can't hear more music.

 

Shame these were not made available for this event

 

There is plenty of crap alloy in this test - keep watching......

 

?


If yoiu think they're crap what is the purpose of the test?

 

I'd say the figures speak for themselves, whatever anyone's view is.

 

Send your cable to RobHolt maybe he can compare with one of the other ones on a blind test

I think its shown on this test that even if you can hear differences it is so very very slight. Perhaps you don't want to know? Perhaps you will prove different.

 

Poll closed

Well 22 participants is pretty good - thanks to all who voted and commented.

Seems we have a large majority in the 'no difference' camp and a spread across the others but no strong opinion expressed by the latter group, with most of those describing the difference as very small.

Cable 1 - This was the free bootlace and is pictured below:





Cable 3 - This was the Chord Calypso:





Cable 4 - This was Chord Silver Siren:





Woops... we missed out number 2
Well number 2 was my own brew and as mentioned in the first post, this was made from commonly available parts.
Very commonly available parts in fact and hence the reference to 'crap alloy' above.

Cable 2 is in fact cable 1 (the free one) but with the screen peeled away, the positive conductor cut and the following objects inserted in series to bridge the signal gap:

- Piece of twisted aluminium foil from a chocolate bar
- Old brass wood screw complete with tarnish
- Length of tin\lead solder, also with a little surface corrosion
- An old Yale door key
- A few inches of plastic coated cable tie

All just twisted together in series.






The spin-off arguments might be interesting.

Still want to replace the few inches of cheap wire inside that amplifier?

Still convinced that you should pay extra for caps or resistors with copper/silver lead-outs?

Is that inch of carbon track in the cheap potentiometer really sounding worse that the £30 posh Alps?

What do you mean you just paid £100 for an audiophile quality switch?!

 

LOL LOL

I'm not given to using LOL but .... LOL LOL

What a scam. Brilliant.

 

Thanks Rob. What are the prices of the two Chords?

Steve

 

I did say it was home made from commonly available parts

 

IIRC £150 for the Siren and £30 for the Calypso in those lengths.

 

Rob I love you.

Now the sample size and standard deviation is *way* too small to be significant, but if the slight preference expressed for cable #2 were a general trend...we could have an interesting discussion about how a *little* distortion might add 'excitement' to the dreary lives of so-called audiophiles.

Or not, since that's entirely hypothetical




PS wanna borrow my SPDIF rusty-coathanger 'cable'..?

 

All joking aside, I just want people to stop and think about the magnitude of these so called differences and get things into proper perspective. There are hugely more important things to address in getting most systems to work well than fannying around with expensive wires and, in some cases components.

Jim Lesurf got it right - 'pick the system, then choose your favorite cable colour'

 

Spot-on. Cable effects* are several orders of magitude below the obvious ones.

Nevermind. Severnshed's open if you have nothing better to do




[size=-2]*FWIW - I think that cables can sound different *and* the reasons for such audition always remain discernable by measurement in context... *and* that such differences remain _very_ small in magnitude. IOW, cable that measure the same *are* the same...but we might have to measure more than R-L-C[/size]

 

I don't have plat alloys, I wish I did.

We've been through enough of these debatesfor long enough for me not to get involved in another cables war.

See my foot notes.

Horses for courses as always guys.

I suspect there is more "can't hear, won't hear" than anything
else. Nothing new there thoiugh. Dev, I know your approach to it so your note is little surprise either.

 

files/cables 1 and 4 were immediately ruled out due to there distorted unclean edge...mostly around the lyrics, file's/cables 2 and 3 were without the abrasive of 1 and 4 and so went into the play off, file 3 received the vote as it was without the flat sound of 2, was more defined with wider/fuller dimension.

good fun , thanks Robh