Topic: James Randi Posts $1M Award On Speaker Cables

[Tim]

You're holding yourself out as some sort of expert and calling others "fools." Your qualifications are most certainly at issue. We're not trying to make it a pissing contest, just trying to figure out how us "fools" can get as smart as you apparently are.

As for the insufferable comment it has nothing to do with your opinion but instead with your attitude towards everyone else in this thread. It is, in a word, shitty.

[boojum]

Well, no, the challenge has been met with another challenge, known also as a cop-out: "Fremer has also asked that interconnects be tested in addition to loudspeaker cables unless James Randi will concede that they affect sound quality."  So Fremer has put something out there to make it unpalatable to Randi who may turn it down and the loonies in the audiofool world will whoop he would not let them take the test.  Well, that is what I suspect.  Let's see.  We all know that in a double blind you should only be testing for one thing.  In this case the speaker cables.  Looks like the audiofools copped out.   

How very cynical you are.  I read every post by Randi on the subject, including the emails he copied over.  Nowhere does Fremer say they are tested at the SAME TIME.  I believe him to be issuing a challenge back at Randi saying he wants both "cables" tested under the same conditions.  This is why he gave him the option of "James Randi will concede that they affect sound quality".  He just wants Randi to admit that "cable" affects sound.  He clearly has accepted the challenge, and went further to push Randi into admitting that his challenge could be bs.  I do not see any cop out.  After all, if Randi will concede, then the speaker cables are all that is tested no?

RB -  Fremer changed the rules to suit himself.  Were he willing and able to do the test he would have just plain accepted the challenge.  Something simple like, "Yes, I will take the test."  Instead he weaseled it with this little curve thrown in.  And were he that interested in testing interconnects, he could have asked Randi to administer a separate test.  But he did not.  And lets see if this point is clarified by Fremer and Randi. 

The only time I have seen the audio nuts offer a challenge was when they said you could not make a transistor amp as good as a tube amp.  And Bob Carver took their money from them.  They could not tell their super hotsy-totsy tube amp from a transistor amp he modified at the test.  Made them look pretty stupid, too.  That was the guys at Stereophile who were beat out of $10K, years ago.

[boojum]

You're holding yourself out as some sort of expert and calling others "fools." Your qualifications are most certainly at issue. We're not trying to make it a pissing contest, just trying to figure out how us "fools" can get as smart as you apparently are.

As for the insufferable comment it has nothing to do with your opinion but instead with your attitude towards everyone else in this thread. It is, in a word, shitty.

If disagreeing with you and agreeing with Randi makes me "shitty", I plead guilty.   

Even reasonable people can disagree.  It is not apostasy.  Anyone who accepts wild claims of technical superiority of a product without any proof other than advertising claims is foolish.  The proof is in the testing.  The audio world clings to these ideas but will not test the ideas.  That is kind of foolish.  As usual, YMMV 

[Tim]

If disagreeing with you and agreeing with Randi makes me "shitty", I plead guilty.   

Try again, that's not at all what I said. Your smug attitude is shitty and irritating. It has nothing to do with your opinion but the way you present that opinion.

Even reasonable people can disagree.  It is not apostasy.  Anyone who accepts wild claims of technical superiority of a product without any proof other than advertising claims is foolish.

That's a strawman argument. Find me one person in this thread who is accepting claims of technical superiority without any other proof than advertising? Time after time people in this thread have discussed doing comparisons.

The proof is in the testing.  The audio world clings to these ideas but will not test the ideas.  That is kind of foolish.  As usual, YMMV 

Really? The "audio community" will not test these ideas? That's just flat out false. There is plenty of testing occuring within the audio community.

Now, again - what are your credentials? Are you a scientist? Do you own a hi-fi system? Have you participated in any testing? Since you're the expert and we're all fools why don't you enlighten us a little?

edit: don't PM me, anything you have to say to me you can say right here.

[BJ]

Well, no, the challenge has been met with another challenge, known also as a cop-out: "Fremer has also asked that interconnects be tested in addition to loudspeaker cables unless James Randi will concede that they affect sound quality."  So Fremer has put something out there to make it unpalatable to Randi who may turn it down and the loonies in the audiofool world will whoop he would not let them take the test.  Well, that is what I suspect.  Let's see.  We all know that in a double blind you should only be testing for one thing.  In this case the speaker cables.  Looks like the audiofools copped out.   

How very cynical you are.  I read every post by Randi on the subject, including the emails he copied over.  Nowhere does Fremer say they are tested at the SAME TIME.  I believe him to be issuing a challenge back at Randi saying he wants both "cables" tested under the same conditions.  This is why he gave him the option of "James Randi will concede that they affect sound quality".  He just wants Randi to admit that "cable" affects sound.  He clearly has accepted the challenge, and went further to push Randi into admitting that his challenge could be bs.  I do not see any cop out.  After all, if Randi will concede, then the speaker cables are all that is tested no?

RB -  Fremer changed the rules to suit himself.  Were he willing and able to do the test he would have just plain accepted the challenge.  Something simple like, "Yes, I will take the test."  Instead he weaseled it with this little curve thrown in.  And were he that interested in testing interconnects, he could have asked Randi to administer a separate test.  But he did not.  And lets see if this point is clarified by Fremer and Randi. 

The only time I have seen the audio nuts offer a challenge was when they said you could not make a transistor amp as good as a tube amp.  And Bob Carver took their money from them.  They could not tell their super hotsy-totsy tube amp from a transistor amp he modified at the test.  Made them look pretty stupid, too.  That was the guys at Stereophile who were beat out of $10K, years ago.

Sorry, but that is the pot calling the kettle black there.  He didn't change any rules, as they haven't been set yet.  Randi uses words and twists them to suit his objective.  He has repeatedly done this, and not just in this challenge.  I detailed the reasoning behind the extra portion, without ever having talked to Fremer.  It was understood, as he is just calling Randi's bluff.  sorry, but if you can't see the logic, and follow everything RB says so blindly, then this thread will never go anywhere other than the same dizzying rhetoric thus far. 
I have never read, subscribed to, nor supported fremer, i have no clue who he is.  I have no stake in this, as for cables, I built my own out of Belden wire.  I don't have the skrillz to spend $10k on a stereo, enough to judge for myself whether monster can be distinguished from Pear.  I DO know that when i did upgrade my equipment, i could tell immediatly that my current wire was insufficient, hence building my own new ones.

[Tim]

looks like Mr. Randi is a bit of a schister himself
http://www.skepticalinvestigations.org/exam/Prescott_Randi.htm

more criticisms of his rules http://www.alternativescience.com/james-randi.htm

edit: I guess my point here is to try and put an end to the silliness of this thread. We get your point boojum, many of us disagree and no matter what we say or do we'll never "prove" ourselves to you. I'm sick of your smug attitude and I'm sick of you calling us fools. You've made your point and we've made ours.

[carlbeck]

I agree with Tim, I have not posted to this thread recently because of Boojum's smug attitude. I think the fact that he is not willing to disclose his system & tell us how he analyzes his efforts speaks vollumes.

Honestly when I had Kenwood gear & Polk speakers I thought my stereo was pretty bad ass, the best I had heard up to that point, no reason to change anything. Again, I am not claiming to know what Boojum has for a system but I have been there too & would have agreed with his arguments of cable being cable, blah blah blah. It was until I started listening to different components & how they interacted with each other that I started to realize how poorly my Kenwood sounded. Sure the cynic can say it is because I have invested so much money into my stereo that I have to think it sounds good, more of that I am tricking myself into perceived quality differences that don't exist bullshit. Like I should take a blind test to see if my Cary sounds better than my Kenwood? Please, it has nothing to do with money at all. My last system which I considered to be the best I had ever had up until that point retailed at close to 10k, my newest system retails for less than half that & blows the first one out of the water. It has nothing to do with money at all.

So instead why don't we take your "scientific" approach & see how valid it really is in the context of this speaker cable comparison. How about I cover the Mercedes emblem & Kia emblem (just like your blind test) have you drive each one & see if you can tell me which is better. A car is just a car right? If you pick the Kia I will call you a fool just as you have called me. I am quite certain you would pick the Mercedes. Honestly this is the first time on this section I have run into such a smug attitude from a poster. Again & finally, if you or ANYONE else want to come to my house with all your cables & compare them to mine you are more than welcome.

[Brian Skalinder]

We can settle this right now. 

If cable is cable, then anywhere in the recording / playback chain we place different cables that allows for ABX testing may provide an effective test.  Nashphil posted just such a test ~6 months ago:  different cables between mics and preamp.  If only one person performs an ABX test and can determine the difference between the two cables, then cable is not just cable, and the cable one uses makes an audible difference (though, of course, it's impossible to determine which one sounds "best" as that's purely subjective).

Any volunteers to ABX the samples and report back your findings?  Foobar2000 allows one to save the ABX test results to a text file, so I'd say that's best for proving one's point (one way or the other).

Edit to add:  Of course, this doesn't address speaker cables specifically.  But it does start to get at the "cable is cable" thing.

[som]

that just sound wretched, and wonderful at the same time

I've said for years, if Springsteen's Born To Run blaring out of a cracked 4-inch car speaker can't send shivers down your spine, it *ain't* about the music!


+T on vintage reggae!

[Tim]

that's a very special project Mike

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[rokpunk]

me,... I'm perfectly satisifed with canare ofc cable.
I tried some of the fancy silver plated stuff, but was pretty much underwhelmed. I don't have the $$$$ to experiment with the gold wire stuff.

comparing recording cables to speaker cables, is almost like comparing rocks to water, apples/oranges.
The speaker cables has to be able to carry a much larger current load than the microphone cable, and it needs to be a much larger pipe to carry that load.

Many modern day PA systems are self powered and run along standard XLR cables.

[fsulloway]

.... so I'm sort of blowing fart bubbles when it comes to this stuff (the pa end of audio).

fart bubbles? ewww! you might need this. 

[rokpunk]

The amp is at the speaker, correct? so, you're just sending a balanced signal to the amp??
At least, I've seen that with the smaller scale PA on a stick rigs.
If you were sending an amplified signal that far, you'd need a large pipe to send it down,... is what I'm thinking(?)
I haven't ever rigged anything larger than the old fashioned JBL's stand spkrs at the side of the stage, so I'm sort of blowing fart bubbles when it comes to this stuff (the pa end of audio).

exactly. the amp lives in the speaker cabinet. the theory is, the shorter the distance that the amp is from the speaker, the less loss there is. so a line level signal is sent out of the console/rack directly to the speakers via a standard XLR cable, line level. the old school method is to send a line level signal to an amp (or a rack of amps), then use 12/2 copper cable to send it to the speakers. obviously 12/2 or 12/4 (bi-amp) is much heavier and harder to deal with than an XLR cable. most of the high end stuff you see out there these days (ala Meyer Sound, EAW, Turbosound, even JBL) is self powered. the future will be that all audio travels over CAT5 cable. infact, it's already happening. pretty amazing that 32 channels of digital audio can travel from the stage to the console via a single, .19/ft, CAT5 cable. copper is pretty much a thing of the past in live sound.

the whole reason i brough this up is that these major tour sound companies (Clair, Showco, etc) aren't using any special, multi-thousand dollar XLR cables to interconnect their systems...they are using standard, off the shelf, XLR cables to hook up their half million dollar PA systems.

[Tim]

Different cable for different purposes. Why use expensive cable in a system that isn't meant to deliver precise, pin point accuracy, imaging, soundstaging etc.? Not to mention the environmental factors working against PA's - bad acoustics, bad rooms, dirty power, crowd noise

in hi-fi you can control all of these factors in ways that are not possible feasible in a live setting

all imho and based off of my limited experience with pa's..

[Jammin72]

Here's an interesting read on the subject:

http://www.roger-russell.com/wire/wire.htm


Here's an except though there's quite a bit more info.

Stereo Review Dares to Tell the Truth (1983)

A 6-page article by Laurence Greenhill titled "Speaker Cables: Can You Hear the Difference?" was published in Stereo Review magazine on August 1983. It compared Monster cable, 16-gauge wire and 24-gauge wire. The price at that time for a pair of 30-foot lengths of monster cables was $55.00. The cost for 16 gauge heavy lamp cord was $.30/foot or $18.00 and the 24 gauge "speaker wire" was $.03/foot or $1.80

"...So what do our fifty hours of testing, scoring and listening to speaker cables amount to? Only that 16-gauge lamp cord and Monster cable are indistinguishable from each other with music and seem to be superior to the 24 gauge wire commonly sold or given away as 'speaker cable.' Remember, however, that it was a measurable characteristic--higher resistance per foot--that made 24 gauge sound different from the other cables. If the cable runs were only 6 instead of 30 feet, the overall cable resistances would have been lower and our tests would probably have found no audible differences between the three cables. This project was unable to validate the sonic benefits claimed for exotic speaker cables over common 16-gauge zip cord. We can only conclude, therefore, that there is little advantage besides pride of ownership in using these thick, expensive wires"

Needless to say there was a strong letter to the editor in the October Stereo Review from Noel Lee, President of Monster Cable. "...was not the conclusion of nearly three thousand Monster Cable purchasers who participated in a warranty/response card survey in 1981-1982. Among those responding, 56 per cent indicated 'an overall significant improvement, '42 per cent attested to a 'noticeable improvement,' and only 2 per cent wrote back that they heard no difference in system performance."...

Yes, some of this claim is believable but for the wrong reasons. If the wire used previously had resistance that was too high, there would be an audible difference. If the wire connections at the amplifier or speaker were loose or corroded, installing the new cable tightly would make an audible difference.

Then we get into the more subjective evaluation. Suppose you're already using adequate size wire and have good connections at the speaker and amplifier. If you're then told the new wire will make an improvement, you will be looking for it and truly believe that you hear an improvement. Some people might go as far as saying "If I spent all that money for these cables, you can be sure I'm going to hear a difference." (rather than admit I wasted my money or have bad hearing).

There are other factors as well. If you listen to the system with the old wires and then replace them with the new ones, it could take 5 or 10 minutes to do this. By then you will have forgotten what the old sound was like. How many of the customers made an instant and more reliable comparison like what was done in Gordon Gow's demonstration or in the Stereo Review test? I wonder how these customers would fare in a test where they didn't know which wire was being used.