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What do I hope to learn from doing comparisons of interconnects? I see three "levels of knowledge."
It will take many weeks to do this test, as I can only do two trials per day and likely only one day per week. I am depending on the generosity of a friend to help me connect/disconnect cables and don't know how many trials we will reach, or what my success rate will be in the end.
Right now my score is 2/2. Yes, that's right, I know my result after each trial, which increases the danger of cherry-picking the result by stopping after a good run.
- The first thing I wanted to know was: what happens, anyway, when I listen to a cable without knowing its identity? I did that a few times years ago, but my listening skills have advanced. I was curious to know: would my sighted impressions of cables disappear in a puff of smoke? Would all become confusion? Or would I have relatively the same impressions? (Answer below.)
- Second thing would be to convince myself the difference is real, based on the test results, but not adhering to a strict interpretation of them. For an extreme example, if I missed the first 6, but had a good run of 10/10 at the end, and I could feel myself getting better at the task, I might interpret the results as: "I needed practice, that's why I missed the first six, but I'll throw those out, and accept the last ten." Subjective experience would play a role here. If I felt like I was just plain guessing, I would be hesitant to conclude the difference is real, but if my experience really "felt" like "I knew what I was doing" I would probably accept fewer trials or cherry pick runs where I felt confident.
- The previous level of knowledge is still partly intuition and self-knowledge. So the third level is a rigorous study that can be peer-reviewed and accepted by the scientific community.
My goal is to get as far toward level 3 as I can before the patience of myself and my friend runs out.
So what happened when I listened blind? Note that in this test, A and B were randomly assigned and unknown to me, so I always had to go on sound alone, even when listening to the so-called "known cables." And what happened was that I had similar impressions as I do sighted. I noted different microdynamics, different apparent balance between registers, different levels of transparency, or midrange beauty, etc.
The only glitch was that I somewhat stupidly forgot to listen sighted (in a critical fashion) to either cable ahead of time! I compared an expensive Cardas cable to a Radio Shack cheapie. For some music, I preferred the Radio Shack! Afterward, I listened more closely and discovered that the Cardas cable seems to have an extremely rolled-off high-end compared to another cable of the exact same make and model. So I will use the other Cardas cable next week. I realize this is another statistical wrinkle ---for level 3 I can only count trials with the same configuration.
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