Nice article on cables...

[Sckott]

http://www.verber.com/mark/cables.html


Great read.

[Joseph]

Originally posted by Sckott
http://www.verber.com/mark/cables.html


Great read.

Hmm, sounds like John Dunlavy is doing a good job trying to sell HIS cables!:rolleyes:

[Dave]

Originally posted by Tangent
Hmm, sounds like John Dunlavy is doing a good job trying to sell HIS cables!
Funny Joeseph I don't see it that way at all. It seems that he really gives a poop about the consumer and wants certain guidelines layed down as to validility of claims made by cable designers. Seems like a great idea to me.:)

[Joseph]

Originally posted by Dave

Funny Joeseph I don't see it that way at all. It seems that he really gives a poop about the consumer and wants certain guidelines layed down as to validility of claims made by cable designers. Seems like a great idea to me.:)

Hi Dave,

This email was written in 1996. Since then Dunlavy has marketed his own speaker cables although he insists that any 12 AWG zip cord will do just fine.

I think the man makes fine speaker systems but he paints the specialty cable industry with a wide brush implying lots of voodoo and deception.

More emails from John Dunlavy (http://home.new.rr.com/zaph/audio/johndunlavyonwire.htm)

[krabapple]

Originally posted by Tangent
[B]

Hi Dave,

This email was written in 1996. Since then Dunlavy has marketed his own speaker cables although he insists that any 12 AWG zip cord will do just fine.


Indeed. He's catering to a niche market that wants 'the best' but he is honest enough to admit that you probably won't *hear* a difference between what is measureably 'the best' and what is 'adequate'. It's the same market that buys other 'overdesigned' items.


I think the man makes fine speaker systems but he paints the specialty cable industry with a wide brush implying lots of voodoo and deception.

Er...yes, exactly.

More interesting missives from Mr. Dunlavy.

http://home.pacbell.net/drquad/jdunlavy.html

http://sound.westhost.com/cables-p2.htm

[Scott Wheeler]

I actually had an exchange of e mails with Mr. Dunlavy about this issue. I don't think there is nothing hypocritical in his position on cables and his manufacturing and marketing of cables. I think however there are certain presumptions in his blind listening tests that are a bit unfair and are indicative of his bias about the sonic differences of cables. If one conducts a blind test and gives the the people taking the test deliberate misinformation he or she has IMO poisoned the test and tried to get a particular result. I have never participated in a properly set up double blind test. I have only conducted home single blind tests that cannot be considered well enough controlled to be of any scientific value. I can however relate two anecdotal pieces of information that have influenced my skepticism of double blind testing as it is often used in audio by "objectivists" and specifically how it has been used by Mr. Dunlavy.

One night late and dark, I poured myself a glass of milk to wash down the cookies I had so wrongly eaten at such a late hour. The milk tasted horrible! I spit it out!! Well as it turned out it wasn't milk at all it was apple juice. I love apple juice. So why did it taste so bad? It was my expectations. So, are my positive expectations giving me a false positive experience with apple juice in my everyday life? Or do our senses and those expectations created by them interact with how we perceive things? I think the answer is the later of the two possibilities. (maybe there are others I have not considered). I think the lesson is that knowledge is empowering for our senses. We perceive things very differently when we know what to expect than we do when we are on the look out for the unexpected or when we are faced with the unexpected by surprise. I think the current state of double blind listening tests fail to address these issues. I like apple juice but under the test conditions created by Mr. Dunlavy with his deception tactics during blind testing I would have not liked it at all as I didn't at that moment in the middle of the night.

The other piece of anecdotal evidence that influenced my biases in listening tests was an experience with a particular cable of all things. I brought home a particular cable that had been highly touted in reviews to check it out. I thought it made a substantial improvement in the sound of my system. One of my best freinds was living at my house at the time and frequently enjoyed the benefits of having access to my stereo. He went in and listened to the stereo with the new cable in place before I had the chance to tell him what I had done. He asked me if I had changed anything on the stereo because for some reason it sounded much better to him. This is not a statistically significant test since it was one trail (and an accidental one at that) however it did have the qualities I think that may be both important and missing in the current state of double blind testing. It was not a test of the listener but a test of the product. There was no performance pressure or sense deprivation or anything else that could corrupt a double blind test. There was in fact truly just one variable in this particular listeners routine of listening to music on a stereo.

[krabapple]

Originally posted by Scott Wheeler
I actually had an exchange of e mails with Mr. Dunlavy about this issue. I don't think there is nothing hypocritical in his position on cables and his manufacturing and marketing of cables. I think however there are certain presumptions in his blind listening tests that are a bit unfair and are indicative of his bias about the sonic differences of cables. If one conducts a blind test and gives the the people taking the test deliberate misinformation he or she has IMO poisoned the test and tried to get a particular result. I have never participated in a properly set up double blind test. I have only conducted home single blind tests that cannot be considered well enough controlled to be of any scientific value. I can however relate two anecdotal pieces of information that have influenced my skepticism of double blind testing as it is often used in audio by "objectivists" and specifically how it has been used by Mr. Dunlavy.

One night late and dark, I poured myself a glass of milk to wash down the cookies I had so wrongly eaten at such a late hour. The milk tasted horrible! I spit it out!! Well as it turned out it wasn't milk at all it was apple juice. I love apple juice. So why did it taste so bad? It was my expectations. So, are my positive expectations giving me a false positive experience with apple juice in my everyday life? Or do our senses and those expectations created by them interact with how we perceive things? I think the answer is the later of the two possibilities. (maybe there are others I have not considered). I think the lesson is that knowledge is empowering for our senses. We perceive things very differently when we know what to expect than we do when we are on the look out for the unexpected or when we are faced with the unexpected by surprise. I think the current state of double blind listening tests fail to address these issues. I like apple juice but under the test conditions created by Mr. Dunlavy with his deception tactics during blind testing I would have not liked it at all as I didn't at that moment in the middle of the night.


Yes, we certainly perceive things differently when our expections differ. That's why blind test protocols exist. Perceptions, as you've seen , are too unreliable to trust without some sort of controls for that unreliability. The beauty of a statistically valid DBT is that it doesn't really *matter* how expected or not your perceptions of difference were. The truth will out, in a statistical fashion.

The current state of DBT certainly addresses these issuesm and many others. For more information, begin a correspondence with Mssrs. Dunlavy, Kruger, Nousaine, Pierce, or others who actually do such testing.


The other piece of anecdotal evidence that influenced my biases in listening tests was an experience with a particular cable of all things. I brought home a particular cable that had been highly touted in reviews to check it out. I thought it made a substantial improvement in the sound of my system. One of my best freinds was living at my house at the time and frequently enjoyed the benefits of having access to my stereo. He went in and listened to the stereo with the new cable in place before I had the chance to tell him what I had done. He asked me if I had changed anything on the stereo because for some reason it sounded much better to him. This is not a statistically significant test since it was one trail (and an accidental one at that) however it did have the qualities I think that may be both important and missing in the current state of double blind testing. It was not a test of the listener but a test of the product. There was no performance pressure or sense deprivation or anything else that could corrupt a double blind test. There was in fact truly just one variable in this particular listeners routine of listening to music on a stereo.

While it's possible there was an audible difference due to the cables, there's still more than that potential variable. For example were the contacts all solid and clean before the change (sometimes oxidation builds up on contacts)? This could result in an audible difference that isn't due to the cables. Had some component been moved slighty from its previous position, while you had switched the cables? This could produce a sighted bias. Could he see the new cables (even if it didn't fully register that they were new)? Again, possible sighted bias. And perhaps most importantly -- and you recognize that having one trial was a problem -- did you try to verify the difference by switching the cables again?

[Scott Wheeler]

Krabapple

I don't think you explanation really addresses my issue with the affects of "blindness" in blind tests be they listening or taste or whatever. We are wired to coordinate all our senses and we have trouble effectively identifying things when we are out of our element and deprived of certain senses we rely on. That was the gist of my apple juice story ( a true story by the way) As a former owner of a chocolate store I have done a great deal of taste testing. I have found blind taste testing to be problematic quite often. I found myself trying to much to figure out what I was tasting and neglected to get to the business at hand which was deciding if I liked what I was tasting. In some cases I found blind comparisons to be quite useful especially in evaluating chocolates of different brands (we had the best by the way) but when evaluating particular recipes of our chosen brand of chocolate blind tests proved to be more of a distraction than help for the reason stated above.


And as to my cable story you raise some possible issues that are quite valid which is why I relate it as a strictly anecdotal event. I am certain my friend claims he didn't see the cable and it is unlikely that he did in that particular set up. we did re-test the cable and were quite convinced that it was the source of the improvement we were hearing. But those were all sighted tests at that point and lacked the impact of our accidental blind test which we found quite convincing despite the lack of trials. I then bought a second pair of cables so all my cables were these type. Funny thing is the second pair didn't have near the impact the first did despite my elevated expectations. I then tried the company's speaker cable only to find I thought it slightly degraded the sound.

[Richard Feirstein]

On Summer in College I worked in the quality lab at Belden Wire's Brooklyn, NY facility. At the time they got in orders for bulk cable with custom color and printing from a vender who was one of the first that started this high end cable business. These were good but normal production products sold by the lb in quantity. When the ads from this vender came put with super claims about audio qualities due to the special Cu used and the special construction, and how much better they sounded, we all had a big smile on our faces. You can fool some of the people all of the time, etc. Sure they sound better, ha. At least they cost a lot more. The CEO of this company is very rich today, and still talks a good game, but he is still full of ....... I do not have any information on their current products and I am sure Belden has nothing to do with this end of the business any longer. Belden sure makes good wires at a reasonable price and has never used puff to sell its products.