more 'snake oil'

I admire and respect your dedication and thoroughness, but as with all these things, you are likely to attract people of a like mind, who then help underpin your viewpoint. People with an opposing POV are not easy to change because of what they believe (know) they are hearing.

I suspect a convincing case could be made for the opposing argument, if the same time and effort was put into it. I am waiting for Shunyata to publish their comparative listening tests (done over several years) for power cables, which were conducted under controlled conditions using blind and double blind tests, that repeatedly confirm the benefits of them.

Anyway, until indisputable evidence appears that finally puts this to bed, controversy will continue to reign.

Cno

That's all fine, but we (as customers/magazine readers/forum members/hi-fi users/magazine staff) are constantly being berated for not following accepted scientific processes in selection of our hi-fi systems.

We go to hi-fi shops for demos. Bad. Too subjective.

We take things home to demo.  Bad. Too subjective.

We read magazines for guidance. Bad. They don't conduct scientifically rigorous tests.

What can the average hi-fi customer do?  A scientifically objective means of sorting out what is genuinely good is practically impossible in the retail setting. (Even in specialist dealers.) That probably goes for 'pro music' shops too. (Ok that's an assumption, but I'd be very suprised if they'd allow a double blind  testing session, with objective and independent supervision and analysis/measurements, on their shop floor everytime someone wanted to know, objectively, which speakers were best to buy).

So it is only reasonable - for those who chide us for our subjectivism/foo/delusions etc. - to provide us with a list of exactly what equipment has already 'passed' such testing (and evidence of where that testing took place) so we can confidently buy the right stuff.

Do you really think the controversy will ever end?

At some point it will be proved that I've been right all along!

I can promise you that going by criticism I have had, there are many out there who have been through the evidence who have an opposing point of view. But for the likes of cables, we await a positive ABX test. Problem is even if we do get one, such as Shunyata, we cannot then declare cables can inherantly affect SQ.

In any case, there is likely to be a way of making a cable affect SQ by attenuation and affecting volume. As I said before, slightly higher volume is audible and will sound better due to more detail, clarity and dynamics.

I think it is unlikely that undisputable evidence will appear to convince all people.

The evidence is in my blog. As I said before the science says spend your money on speakers, then amps and the source when digital is unimportant, except with bit rates where higher is better. Cables are a definite no.

But since looks, image, surroundings, knowledge (through reviews) affects SQ, what is wrong with going to demos or reading reviews? Nothing.Just because the science says one thing does not negate the other.

So based on that knowledge, buy a super dooper cable if during a demo it sounds better, safe in the knowledge it really does sound better, to you, based on your experience. Does it really matter what causes the cable to sound better?

No!

Nobody had been measured running a mile in under 4 minutes before 1954......it didn't mean it was impossible though, as Roger Banniister went on to prove.

That doesn't really matter, as long as the evidence is strong enough to persuade most reasonable thinking people.

There will always be those who won't leave the safety of their beliefs. (eg.Creationism vs Evolutionism), but as of today, we are still a fair way off agreement.....arguments abound where one side shows no respect or tolerance for the other. This hobby is broad enough to have room for differing opinions.

Cno

Blind tests are insufficient evidence on their own, but there is other evidence to say a cable cannot affect SQ. We have known the electrical properties of cables for years, back to the C19th, even skin effect. No such property has been correlated let alone causally connected to reported changes in SQ.

Then we have alternative reasons as to how a cable can affect SQ, image, brand, cost etc, which is evidentially corroborated by sighted tests and known affects on SQ with visual stimulus.

So, yes, keep an open mind to a whole new discovery, but goodness knows where it will come from or how it will explain what we do know already.

Which speakers? Which amps.

Sorry to press this a bit, but it's not about cables (for me anyway) and - as you can see from my sig - my digital sources are iPhone/iTunes/AirPlay, an iMac, a built-in CD player on my Marantz M-CR603, a Blu-ray player, a TV and a Humax. (Hardly anything 'foo' there.)

So yes, ok, we'll discount the digital sources and the cables (I barely have any except a couple of Belkin ethernet cables and some HDMIs that cost me £3.55 each at Tesco and an optical cable I got for £8 from Beresford a long time ago).

So what are the 'scientifically acceptable' speakers and amps for me/us that are free of the taint of any subjectivity in their development, design, build, marketing etc.  Brands that only prove their designs with rigorous double blind testing and don't have any truck with subjective reviewing, subjective selling or subjective consumption. Brands that you and fr0g - and the other proponents of scientific objectivism - can say with certainty are totally free of any hooey and hocum?

There are obvious reasons why speakers sound different, and that they do is not a point of contention, it's accepted by all.

It's unlike you to completely miss the point, but you don't seem to 'get' ABX testing. It's not about showing which speaker or which amp is better; it's about whether people can tell the difference between different speakers / amp / etc when everything is removed save listening to them. So, people can with speakers and can happily go and read reviews and demo etc and buy ones they like the sound of. Cables they can't, so they're still welcome to do all those things but may want to be aware they could save themself some money.

You know better than this Cno, you must be tripping up over your own arguments. Galileo didn't have to change because of what was 'known', it would be because of prevailing doctrine / dogma. The argument works against you, because it is an example of someone being forced to go along with 'belief' rather than 'evidence'. The evidence, I'm afraid, is all against things like cables making a difference. 

Nonetheless, your 'balance' argument is exactly that used by creationists. They wish for their point of view to be put on an equal footing with that corroborated by (an abundance of) evidence. It is not wrong or dogmatic to say that should not happen.

To continue the analogy, religious fundamentalists argue their views should have equal footing because 'so many people' hold those views. Hifi and cables are not worth getting as excited about as the (mis)education of children. So telling people to keep an open mind is fine, and as IDC has said people may still get their moneys worth due to their perception of it. But for now, I do not feel uncorroborated subjectivism should be given equal status to the science and evidence that suggest things such as cables do not make a difference.

Chebby, I do not think blind testing will be able to answer your question as to which specific speaker or what ever is better.

Take speakers, there is an ABX test where 97% of tests correctly identified a Yamaha S4115H from an AR-5. But that does not tell us which one is better (I dont even know of either speaker). No ABX test can, it only shows us what is different and what is not.

What you could do with an ABX test is after the objective question of pick out X from A and B, then ask, which sounds better. But that then becomes a blind comparison test, which is subjective, which sounds better to you.

Continuing with speakers, Axion Audio, Paradigm and Harman International have conducted speaker blind comparison tests. But they do it one of their own against another of their own, or are vague about the competition. What those results have shown is that there is a greater consistency between price and SQ, more expensive tends to be better. That is different from other products such as DACs and CDPs where price and SQ is not correlated at all. But, in any case, blind comparison is subjective, not objective.

What the blind testing does, is show that there is more of an audible difference between speakers than any other part of the hifi chain, since take away other stimuli and people can still pick out which is which and which is more expensive, more so than any other hifi product.