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Re: What Is The Average Objectivists Beliefs On Wires?

I am afraid, thetubeguy, that some people will only ever be interested in denying you (and many others) your experience of hearing different cables sound different. Because if they had ever heard these differences for themselves they, like you after hearing differences for yourself, would no longer be able to dismiss other people's experiences so readily. They would no longer be able to use the dismissive sentences they do.

Yes, you and others are correct. You CAN hear differences between different metals used as a conductor, between different plastic insulation materials (different chemical mixes !!), between different colours of insulation materials, between different configurations and designs, and (as described below) some identical cables connected in a different direction.

Comments by John Atkinson from Hi Fi News October 1983 issue.

"I had an interesting conversation with a contributor to HFN/RR some months back. "Isn't it time", I was asked, "that we organised a test to show that this business about cables being directional is a load of rubbish, dreamed up by unscrupulous con men ?"
How could a phenomenon like directionality in conductors, therefore, have been missed by researchers all this time ? Surely it is too much to believe that it hid if an engineer bearing measuring equipment approached, but it was only too willing to be heard if carrying a music signal ? My initial reaction, therefore, to this 'new' fact, was to dismiss it as moonshine. However, a less-than-open mind is nothing to be proud of, even when confronted with statements which appear to contradict everything which appear to contradict everything one has learnt or been told........ No one has yet come up with any reason as to why two different types of cable sound different, but that is no reason to dismiss the results of listening tests. The dogmatic approach adopted by some engineers and scientists that a phenomenon can't be held to exist until it can be satisfactorily explained, is obviously unsound...." John Atkinson.

John goes on to describe a experiment he and his wife were involved in. (To be brief) - Under single- blind listening tests, they both consistently identified the difference between A and B only to be told later that the only difference between A and B was the direction of the one metre length of interconnect between pre and power amps !
John concludes his article with the sentence "In the meantime, something is going on, and we don't know what it is, do we?"

Then, in the November 1983 issue of Hi Fi News, John comments that Bob Stuart of Meridian had told him that care is taken in production of his new Meridian modular amp - to ensure that cable is connected the preferred way round. He (Bob) can't yet explain why it should sound better one way round than the other.

Just who are people prepared to believe ?

The John Atkinsons., the Bob Stuarts., the Julian Vereker's (who wrote in Hi Fi News 1995 that they were somewhat alarmed when some new cable with parameters they had particularly specified did not 'sound' good)., the Jean Hiragas (Editor of the French 'Revue du Son' who instigated the whole 'cable controversy' over 25 years ago by stating that he could hear differences in different wires) of this world.
OR
The engineers as just quoted by Soundmind "To the electrical engineer who is far better informed than the "average" objectivist and who is an objectivist by training and must remain an objectivist to survive and who is NOT in this industry, audiophile wires are a joke. They shake their heads at the whole thing."
OR
Such as Peter Baxandall (a very well respected UK audio guru during the mid 1990s) who said in 1985
"I do not believe that the type or quality of dielectric used in LF coupling capacitors is of any significance whatsoever."
"I do not believe that the use of expensive, special loudspeaker cable - no matter which way round they are connected - confers any sonic benefit whatever."
"I believe that all this recent business about single-crystal, high purity, oxygen-free, connecting cable is just a load of absolute hogwash."

The point at which people have to start is NOT 'that it cannot happen, that if you heard changes in the sound then you must have imagined it' but that IT HAPPENS, that people CAN hear changes in the sound - and if it happens, if it changes the sound then, if you are involved in audio, if you claim to be a 'professional in audio', then you have to start at that point by saying "Something is going on. What is it?"
Regards,
May Belt.

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