On Tue, 31 May 2005 14:21:57 +0100, "Keith G"
wrote:


"Don Pearce" wrote


big snip - not hard to do...


I simply don't know. I'd like to be able to explain point (1), that's
all. If you throw out actual difference, what are you left with?
Explanations could be: physiological; psychological; sociological;
environmental; political; anthropological. Or pathological :-)

Take your pick. And garnish with evidence, if you would.

Rob

The evidence is right there in Stewart's as-yet unclaimed thousand
pound prize to anybody who can show that they can hear a difference
between cables.

I would happily pay a thousand pounds to be be *able* to hear the
difference....!! :-)

The total pool is over $5,000 if you include the US contributors.

The evidence is there with rabid high-enders like Greg
Singh (who no longer posts) who was strident in his claims of night
and day differences which mysteriously vanished when he could not see
which cable was plugged in.


Ha ha! Trotsky! - I wonder where/how he is???

(I miss him - he had a great wit and and lovely line in ****-take!! :-)

He had wit like **** and didn't recognise a ****-take for days, which
is why he slunk off back under his rock.

It is there in a test which I myself proctored, in which similarly
vocal types were asked to comment on the sounds of various cables in a
sighted test.
They all agreed that the cables sounded very different,
and they all agreed on a description of the types of sound they heard.
What they did not know until after the test was that the cables I was
changing were not the ones carrying the signal - which remained
unchanged throughout.


Where, when, what, who? - Details would be interesting.


I'm afraid that this and a thousand other physical and psychological
studies say that the human brain is very, very easily fooled, and
evidence from a sighted test is totally valueless.

If you want to see this in spades, look up the McGurk effect.


Yes, indeed:

http://www.media.uio.no/personer/arn...k_english.html

IMPORTANT - do *not* read the text before playing the video (hide it with
your hand) for best effect!

Actually, that turns out to be not at all important! I watch the
video, hear what was predicted. I close my eyes, I hear what is really
being said. I open my eyes again, and I *still* 'hear' the wrong
thing! Powerful thing, the human mind..........

Works the same with amplifiers - I *still* hear my Krell as having
sweeter treble than my Audiolab, even though I know it doesn't.

I don't *do* cable threads - same old **** chasing round and round (bringing
out the worst in one or two posters here) and I most definitely CAN'T tell
the difference between speaker cables - sighted or not (I'm happily using
mains cable on one of my amps). But I will just say this - I've got a pair
of Monster XP speaker cables that my brother (no 'audiophile' whatsoever)
gave me because he said that 'they didn't sound too good' on his (mainly
Denon) 'hifi' system....???




--

Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering