I'm me. And I work for myself as well as a company that you once approached to design and build amplifiers for you.
There are a lot of people that are so insecure they don't trust their own senses (perhaps that makes them "senseless") and claim that all cables *must* sound the same because they can't measure any difference between them.
I trust my senses completely with respect to telling me what I like or don't like. I don't trust my senses completely with respect to establishing physical objective realities. This has nothing to do with insecurity but rather some 100 years of research which has shown time and again that our subjective perceptions are not always unerring reflections of physical realities. The ones who are insecure are the ones who are in complete denial of this fact and can't handle the notion that they're just mortal human beings subject to the same flaws and weaknesses as other mortal human beings.
As for claiming that all cables *must* sound the same, that is a claim I have NEVER made my life. And if you want to get on my shitlist, the best way to do it is to put words in my mouth and claim I have said things I have never said and hold beliefs that I do not hold. That's what your friend Curl has been doing here for several years and why I have such little respect for him. So shall I assume, based on your comment above, that you will be following suit and claim I have said things I have never said and hold beliefs that I do not hold?
John Curl has come up with an interesting measurement technique that shows differences between cables.
What interesting measurement technique? There's absolutely nothing new or unique about the technique he's using.
This is an extremely important finding.
We don't yet know exactly WHAT he's found. Only what he's claimed to have found. Just because someone has claimed to have found something doesn't necessarily make it so. Need I remind you of Pons and Fleischman?
Furthermore it is *valid* because it is *repeatable*.
Repeatable by whom? John? That doesn't make it valid. Who ELSE beside John has repeated it with the same result? Again, need I remind you of Pons and Fleischman?
You could find this out for yourself if you cared to. You can get a used Sound Technology on e-Bay for a couple of hundred dollars, and I would assume that the sound cards are about the same price.
Why would I want to do that? If the different levels of distortion John is measuring turns out to be nothing more than varying levels of distortion in his 1700B, why would I want to use the same device? If we're to rule out any anomalies due to the 1700B, then it would only make sense to try and repeat the measurements on something other than the 1700B.
Instead, you seem to be hung up on the "gain" that the Sound Tech applies to its residual (nulled) output. As if this meant anything important! John has already told you what the signal level he applied to the DUT.
It's important in order to determine ABSOLUTE levels. Knowing what the signal level applied to the DUT was does NOT establish any absolute levels once the output has been sent through a notch filter and some amount of voltage gain.
John said to add 50dB to his plots to get the proper levels which if that's the case, his measurements aren't measuring as far down as Arny Kruger's measurements and if Arny was measuring what he said he was measuring (two 12 foot Radio Shack interconnects strung togheter) then his measurements show no increase in distortion when 24 feet of Radio Shack interconnects are added. Which means that up to this point, no one else has been able to verify John's results.
You have clearly ("EXACTLY"?) demonstrated your lack of understanding by missing areas of even greater uncertainty, such as the averaging technique used. Nothing could be quantified without knowing the exact number of measurements that were being averaged. But that is not the point of this test. The point is that John has found a way to measure differences between interconnect cables. Furthermore, that measurement is repeatable and is *not* due to artifacts created by the test setup.
Again, who else has repeated John's measurements? And how has it been established with certainty that the measurements are not due to the 1700B? If they are due to the 1700B, John can sit there all day repeating the same results. So what? I'm sure Pons and Fleischman could sit there all day and repeat their results as well.
What counts is INDEPENDENT verification or falsification.
You seem incapable of grasping the importance of this.
And you seem incapable of grasping the importance of INDEPENDENT verification or falsification.
If you want to refine the results (certainly a worthwhile goal), please do so. But don't whine that John doesn't do his work the way that you think he should do it.
Did you actually read any of my posts? Or did John just call you and say "Waaaaaaaaa! Steve's pickin' on me again!"?
If you'd have actually read this exchange, you'd see that I wasn't talking about the way John is doing his work, I was simply trying to found out WHAT his work actually was so I would be able to take his plots and be able to determine the ACTUAL levels they represent. I did this by asking a very simple question. That being exactly how much gain was being applied between the output of the cable and the input of his Mac The Scope.
This was a simple question requiring a simple answer. And if John knew his 1700B as well as he should after having owned it for 27 years, his answer should have been simply "xxdB". But the answers he's given so far indicate that he's only just guessing and doesn't actually know for sure.
He finally managed to come up with a figure of 50dB. And if that's the case, then he's not measuring as far down as he claims to be and that Arny's measurements are measuring significantly further down than John and if Arny was measuring what he said he was measuring, adding 24 feet of Radio Shack interconnects does not add any extra distortion.
The thing I don't understand is why people with this attitude came here.
My only attitude is to get at the truth, wherever it may lay. What I don't understand is the attitude of those who unquestioningly accept anything and everything that comes down the pike.
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