Lets talk AntiCables...:)

[rpatt]

Originally Posted by ZoetMB

Absolutely worthless, IMO. People believe what they want to believe. The esoteric audio industry has been selling sham beliefs that defy physics for a long time. You say you performed your own "A-B" test, but it's meaningless because you knew which cable you were listening to. The only test that counts is a blind A-B test and I've seen an entire room of Audio Engineering Society members, many of whom considered themselves to be "golden ears", fail them.

I'm an ex-recording engineer. I can't tell you the number of times that some annoying producer asked me to change something in the mix and I twiddled some knobs without actually changing anything and the producer said, "yeah, that's much better now!"

There are all kinds of psychological audio effects. Asked to choose between two signals, 99% of people will choose the louder one as the one that they perceive as higher quality. That's why in A-B tests, the levels MUST be perfectly matched. People will choose a system with more bass and treble over a speaker that's more accurate. Back in the 1970s, I sold audio equipment and I sold far more of a crappy OEM house brand than a high quality classic speaker from Acoustic Research that were priced the same, even when people came in asking for the AR. (I personally bought the AR).

Repetition of the same segment of audio will result in the brain getting used to it and it will begin to sound "right". That's one thing that audio editors need to be cognizant of because if you have a bad edit and you listen to it 10x, it will sound okay until you leave it for a while and then come back to it. There's a relatively new book out about how the brain deals with sound and it's all quite interesting (sorry...forgot the title).

Ever watch Jimmy Kimmel's bit "Lie-Witness News"? They ask people on the street about events that never happened and they get tons of people to comment on the events as if they did happen. This isn't a real example, but they'll say something like, "did you see on the news that Obama punched a baby in the mouth" and they'll say, "Yeah, that was really terrible - he shouldn't have done that. I was really shocked." It's not too hard for someone to start claiming that if you place a piece of popcorn on top of a speaker, it will sound better and then thousands of people will jump on that bandwagon. While not relevant to this particular case, half the stuff I read about audio has people applying analog rules to digital signals. People who simply do not understand the physics behind digital audio think they know what they're talking about. Somehow they think that dipping a cable in chocolate is going to change the digital 1s and 0s in a bitstream or the lands and pits on a CD.

The same is true for other audio myths. I especially enjoy the golden ears who thought that placing tissue paper in front of a speaker cone made a difference. Or taking the magic marker and marking the edge of a CD. Or the expensive weight they sell you to place on top of a CD on vinyl LP. Or all the B.S. from Monster Cable, which is brilliant marketing, but has no basis in reality. Reading esoteric audio reviews really cracks me up. They practically claim that the musicians play better on the esoteric equipment.

(I always feel like my car drives better after I bring it to the car wash, but that obviously has no basis in reality.)

If you can explain to me using accepted physics how a cable of relatively short length can change frequency response within the range of human hearing, or change phase or distortion levels, then I'm willing to listen. But failing that, you've got a hard sell. But if you love your cables, I'm happy for you.

The power of suggestion.