Barry,
Your last post brings up valid concerns regarding the evaluation and rating of microphone cables.
Barry Hufker wrote on Sun, 03 April 2005 16:34 |
To truly be any kind of believable evaluation, the test must be double blind....Only then when listening to various cables (in a double blind test) and making an assessment can anything be truly known, even if it can't be presently measured. Anything else may be personally useful but not useful to us all.
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Here I disagree, from experience.
I have partaken in double blind tests of audio gear over the years, and found them to be deficient. Primarily because to me, the item under "double blind" test was as unfamiliar as the rest of the listening chain. (Often a chain which I found to be so deficient in resolution overall that it was impossible to separate out the culprit.
An example: I use a very old pair of 414 headphones for all of my work. If I gave that pair to another listener, the learning curve would be too steep for the listener to:
a. evaluate the double blind tested microphone
b. get used to the 'weird' sound of the headphones.
c. keep the two apart to evaluate confidently what he hears
To truly distinguish audible differences in a cable I think it makes as much if not more sense to do these tests with people who are thoroughly familiar with: a. listening evaluations and b. their playback chain.
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I don't understand for instance what you mean by ..."Resolution".. "detail and clarity" I assume.
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I would define it similarly: High resolution to me is "amount of information in time". Audiophiles correlate that to 'stage width' and 'depth', i.e. three dimensional psycho-acoustic effects from a two dimensional source.
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"Speed" may have something to do with transient response or slew?
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I am not able to correlate definitions of slew and transient response to what I hear: it is often the case that a cable may have more speed at a certain frequency band than at another. How would you measure that in slew or transient terms, other than plotting a sine wave?
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"Congestion" is an emphasis on certain frequencies or is it a lack of clarity, which then would be resolution?
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'Congestion' means a narrowing, or even collapse, of time-aligned processing of audio.
You get a complex passage/wave form, let's say a violin playing 1/64th notes over an orchestra at a fortissimo passage, accompanied by timpani:
How will the cable move the information along in time, without being overwhelmed by the complexity? Can it keep the various impulses, including their relative volumes, apart, or does it smear it all together to an ugly mush?
The upper mid range processing of a cable is the canary in the coal mine here:
Bad cables (a qualitative verdict, not a matter of taste) will get harsh and hard under these circumstances. Good cables will stay with the music, more or less. No feature of a cable is more important to me than the above, because I correlate the level of listening fatigue or emotional attention to this feature.
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While I think a genuine double blind test should be done, I wonder here and now if any kind of consensus could be reached as to which audio cable is "best."
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Cannot answer that question; that's why I started the thread.
So far I have found better cables through two methods:
1. I listen to every cable a manufacturer or colleague sends me, regardless whether it costs 50 cents/ft or $500/ft. I will prioritize a cable test if I respect the source (i.e. someone whose audio tastes I know and respect.)
2. I never read the literature that comes with the cable before
I listen to it. I also categorically disregard any advertisement and any endorsement by any audio professional, regardless of his accomplishment in the business.
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My guess is that we can't reach a consensus as to which is best, just as we couldn't with a microphone.
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Here is a radical thought I believe in:
Yes, we can, and often do: As an example, a consensus of professionals thinks highly of Tim de Paravicini's products.
But so far we mostly proceed to better audio components, even rankings, by just networking with experienced listeners and sharing what they experience.
But that is why I started the thread: Could there be more objective methods of honing in on the quality of microphone cables? Testing methods that not only sound reasonable and agreeable, but can actually be realized by busy professionals without grinding lives to a halt or breaking the bank?