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James Randi Posts $1M Award On Speaker Cables
elrond amandil writes "James Randi offered US$ 1 million to anyone who can prove that a pair of $7,250 Pear Anjou speaker cables is any better than ordinary (and also overpriced) Monster Cables. Pointing out the absurd review by audiophile Dave Clark, who called the cables 'danceable,' Randi called it 'hilarious and preposterous.' He added that if the cables could do what their makers claimed, 'they would be paranormal.'"
... are listed here. Those wooden knobs are a real bargain! Only $485!
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
I find the audiophile phenomenon to be mighty amusing, even though I'm guilty of throwing away a few extra dollars for an "oxygen free" guitar cable or two. But holy crap, that's quite a price difference -- and for what? If anybody ever gives me crap about getting a Cinema Display instead of a Dell monitor, I'll just think of the Pear Anjou cables. Getting a monitor to match your workstation's case at least has "interior decorating" to justify the difference in cost, but who's ever going to see your speaker cables? Yikes!
P.S. Did you know that if you mark around the edges of your CDs with a sharpie that the music sounds better? ;-)
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
Frankly, the drug dealers were our best customers - they just wanted something loud and they didn't f**k you around by insisting you order the latest greatest cable as reviewed by their favourite HiFi magazine. Paid in cash too.
The reason I'm asking is the "psychology" of an experience isn't just the consciously reportable part. Philosopher Ned Block has done some great work consolidating the research into experience and reportability, and concludes that what we're aware of phenomenologically is of far wider scope than what we're able to access in reportable form. A number of my friends are professional jazz critics. Even for the best of them, what they're able to report from a concert is far less than what they're able to consciously (and unconsciously) experience of it. This isn't just the subtle effects, but some of the most overt aspects of the experience - to the listener. But these aspects don't map into our spoken vocabulary - although another musician will often be able to describe them with more music. (A lot of music is musicians describing other music.)
So the blind test you'd need to do is of more than whether listeners can tell you about the difference. The test needs to be about whether the experience has been phenomenologically different for the listeners, perhaps - especially because it's music - in ways where words fail them. To do that you're going to have to do some sort of longer-term tracking and evaluations of outcomes. For instance, if it's music that fills the particular listener with joy, is there more joy at the end of an hour's listening? That would be the measure of a true psychological effect. It's not psycho-acoustics we need to measure, but different outcomes in the inward experience of mood and consciousness.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
I've always been amused by the cable thing. Even "high end" gear tends to use RCA phono jacks, which they gold plate, rather than BNC connectors, which are known to be flat to 50MHz and don't come loose.
Even Monster Cable for speaker cable is silly. All you need is heavy-gauge copper. Nothing else matters.
I was amused some years ago to find that Monster Cable didn't make VGA cables, where signal degradation is a real issue for long cables. That's a high bandwidth analog signal, and they'd have to actually work to make a good one. Eventually, they did get into VGA cables, which they overprice as usual. A high quality 5 meter VGA cable can be obtained for about $8, but Monster will charge you many times that.
The "tubes vs. transistors" amplifier thing is amusing. Back in 1990, Bob Carver, who designs amplifiers, challenged two high-end audio magazines to give him any audio amplifier at any price, and he'd duplicate its sound in one of his lower cost transistor amps. Two magazines took him up on the challenge. He won. Then, almost as a joke, he built the Carver Silver 7 amplifier, which is all tube and sold for $17,000/pair. Each amp has two chassis, one for the power supply, and the thing is chrome-plated. Audiophiles bought the things. Then he came out with a transistor amplifier with the same transfer function at 1/40th the price.
There are things that do matter, like read error counts on CDs, but they're usually hidden from consumers. Early CD players had error counters, but the industry agreed to hide that information when people started complaining. Now, most CD players reread and buffer, so it's less of an issue.
"People are hungry for this kind of thing," Randi said. "Knowledge of the future represents power, and people are looking for power, so they pay money to astrologers and 1-900 numbers, not realizing that if the astrologers and operators of the 1-900 service really had all this power, they'd use it for themselves and not have to do all this marketing to others."
Not sure what kind of speakers Nostradamus may have been using, tho.
RichM
Data Center Knowledge
Think of all the Audiophiles who will go and purchase these $7000 cables to try to claim Randi's $1,000,000 prize. Randi may have actually increased the number of people who will hear about and purchase these overpriced monstrosities.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
The important thing about James Randi is this. In the '70s there were a whole lot of people claiming to have scientifically demonstrated paranormal abilities. There was a public perception that things like telepathy and various other paranormal phenomena valid subjects of scientific study. In fact many very reputable scientists were taken in. There were studies done that showed that such phenomena existed and were subject to scientific study. Then James Randi came along and duplicated the tests and outright said he was using trickery (even told you what trickery he was using). He then set up tests that would prevent people from getting the results using any of the tricks he knew. No one was able to get results under those conditions. It is quite likely that if it wasn't for James Randi (and a few others like him) parapsychology would be a recognized science today. The scientists of the 70's couldn't find any flaws in the experiments that were run to demonstrate various "psychic" abilities, James Randi did (and proved it).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I find this whole audiophile thing to be absurd, but tubes are the real deal. Maybe not for stereo systems, but for guitar amps there is a noticeable different between those that are tube and transistor based. Tubes saturate differently than transistors. In many applications this is undesirable, but in the case of a guitar amp you will usually want some saturation. Tubes and transistors produce demonstrably different waveforms. Audiophile products (like the wooden knobs referenced earlier) often rely upon pseuso-scientific claims that are not demonstrable.
/. a few weeks ago.
Transistors do sound more harsh. That's why a lot of heavy metal guys prefer transistor amps (Dimebag Darrell really was the first guy I can think of who was vocal in his preference of tranny amps because of the harsh sound). I'd bet that most people could tell the difference between a transistor amp and a tube amp. It's subtle, but it's there. It's like the dynamic range compression that you find on newer recordings. You may not actively *notice* it, but the sound tends to fatigue your ear. There was a nice article on that here on
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Note however that lamp cord is not shielded therefore it actually can be worse sounding than a shielded cable.
For speaker cable, that is not the problem. The signal induced into an unshielded speaker wire is in the micro or picowatt range in the audible frequency range. It is not enough amplitude to be heard over the background noise present in a room with a breathing person in it, or more often it is much less than the thermal noise(hiss) of the amplifier. At inaudible frequencies such as RF, the wire makes a fine radio antenna. Add in a little non-linear detection in the output stages of a cheap stereo and you can plainly hear "Breaker 19" as the guy goes by outside.
For the rest of us, the problem is not related to unshielded verses shielded. It has to do with dielectric loss. The cable was designed for 60 HZ power, not high frequencies. Some cable had quite a bit of loss at higher frequencies (I swept a lot of RF cable and power cord). Most people wouldn't notice as the cable length was too short to have much effect (small room, speakers only 6 feet or less from the receiver) and the cheap speakers provided much more response flaws to the fidelity by several orders of magnitude. Did you know the loss was great enough in the clear lamp cord that it could be used as a very inefficient EL wire? A high voltage high frequency signal made these babies glow violet. (Discovered from my Tesla coil days)
These very real high frequency losses is why the wire dielectric is such a big deal in the manufacture of cable for high frequency use. The twist and dielectric is the big differences in Cat 3 Cat 5 and Cat5e cable. The copper in all three is the same gauge and quality.
When an engineer designs cable and knows what he is doing, they design the audio cable just like they would an RF cable. Low loss, and match the load impedance. At one time we needed to run a long signal wire over 500 feet. We used RF coax. We terminated it and added a small inductance to compensate for the end equipment's input capacitance of 47 pF. Then we sweep tested it. (audiophiles rarely do this with test equipment). We managed to get flat response to 500 Kilocycles with only a half db loss at the high end. Loss and distortion in 20HZ to 20KHZ wasn't measurable unlike it was in our unterminated cable.
This is why network cable has a design impedance and it is required to terminate the cable with it's impedance. T connections is not permitted. (Unlike stereo where a Y cable is often used either external to the equipment or internally. Coax network cable required external terminations (Network old timers will remember the 50 ohm terminations) while utp cable forbids T connectors and the end equipment provides the termination.
More HF engineering goes into most network cable than goes into most audiophile cable. Audiophile speaker cable is almost never engineered to match the load impedance. Due to the complex impedance of a speaker, the best cable is either none or as short as possible. This is the reason for powered speakers and sub woofers. The signal wire can then be a better match to the load impedance of the speaker amplifier. Now if they would just stop using cheap amplifiers and speakers for powered speakers..
Other than just having all the heat in one spot in the dash, this is the reason premium car stereos have amplified speakers. No speaker wire while driving a complex impedance. You can't make a speaker wire to match the impedance of a speaker. An amplified speaker or amplifier at the speaker with very short wires is a better solution than any $7000 long speaker cable. Anyone who does RF engineering understands this.
The truth shall set you free!
I prefer an amp that doesn't clip at all. Then it doesn't matter whether it's a tube or a transistor. I'll add my own clipping and thermal noise for effect, thanks.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
An amp that *doesn't* clip? So, what, do you play through a HiWatt or something? A keyboard amp? A bass amp? One of those crazy Roland amps that I see a few jazz guys using (the ones who for some reason don't have a polytone)?
You think a stompbox sounds better than natural tube saturation? For real? Usually, stompboxes try to mimic the real thing. What you describe be some kind of device. And where can I get said stompbox?
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No, we're not.
Compare a Remington rifle to a Merkel. If you think that's comparing a mass-production item to a boutique item try comparing a Kimber to a Merkel. Compare the Remington to a Blaser or a Sako.
Compare a Smith and Wesson M41 target pistol to a Unique (out of business and French to boot, but still better than anything you can get from the U.S.), a Hammerli, or a Walter target pistol.
Compare the best revolver to ever come out of the S&W Performance Center to a Korth.
Compare the best semi-custom 1911-pattern target pistol you can get from a low-volume specialty manufacurer in the U.S. to a Pardini centerfire target pistol. Of all these comparisons, this one will be the closest, but only if the U.S. maker didn't have a bad day when they built your pistol.
No, the sad truth is that American gun makers don't take quality as seriously as the Europeans. It's true that you can't beat the bang-for-the-buck of the American brands. The Ruger .22 target auto is more pistol for less money than you can get anywhere. Unfortunately, it also looks like an industrial tool compared to the products of Europe.
For purely custom, incredibly expensive, one of a kind guns, you're as likely to find a suitable artist in the U.S. as elsewhere. But for combining mass production and high quality, no U.S. gun manufacturer can hold a candle to the best Europeans.
I use multiple strands of CAT5e adding up to 12 guage as my speaker cables and a double twisted pair with floating ground for my interconnects. I add $15/pr gold-plated RCA ends for the best sounding $30 interconnects on the face of planet earth. No seriously. They sound notably better (subjective I know, but I used to write high-end music reviews for a magazine some of you may remember called (are you ready?) Ultimate Audio. So I've spent *A LOT* of time listening to high end systems...) than anything else I've used excepting that time a borrowed a set of $1000/meter 99.9% pure silver cables from an audio-nut friend of mine. Insanity. CAT5e makes excellent audio cable :)
A Call For A New Slashdot Moderation Level!
In 1988, Philip Greenspun and I did a study of audiophile cables, as part of a Psychoacoustics laboratory course at MIT. Our paper was published in The Absolute Sound and the MIT Computer Music Journal (first page). The MIT version published several paragraphs and pages out of order, so you have to put the puzzle back together.
At the time, CD players were just out, and many audiophiles derided them, so we used 33RPM LP recordings, purchased new and played on a high-end turntable, and used expensive electrostatic speakers and a typical audiophile listening room, not an anechoic chamber, as audiophiles again had in the past not accepted such tests.
Rather than testing speaker cables, we decided to test the tonearm-to-preamp connection, where the signal as the weakest, reasoning that any effects would show up more profoundly there.
We tested a 1-meter long cable from Straight Wire (provided to us free, but costing about $100) and 24-feet of zip cord from Radio Shack (which we purchased).
To avoid any interference from switches or relays, I went into a closet with the equipment and the door closed, and Philip waited with the test subjects in the listening room. (This formally made our test single-blind, though it answered previous concerns from previous tests about signal depredation from switches. Still, we made sure that there was no way for subjects to find out during the test.)
Each run consisted of either AAAA or ABAB, with A or B being a one-minute passage played with cable A or cable B. AAAA or ABAB was etermined by coin toss. Before each minute passage, I unplugged the cables and plugged the cable back in, so there was no way for the subjects to tell which cable was used. We asked for each 4-minute run if the subjects thought it was A or B, and we asked after each 1-minute, if they preferred it.
We ran several groups of 5 subjects each, and did 6 runs with each. Our tests included audiophiles, musicians, and other random test subjects. We found no statistically significant ability for subjects either in preference or in ability to distinguish 1 meter long audiophile cable from 24 feet of Radio Shack zip cord.
If we discarded the first run for each group of subjects as a training run, we found an 80% confidence for ability to distinguish, which was still not significant. However, we did find a 95% confidence on preference, for the Radio Shack 24' zip cord!
Well, tube amps don't really clip as such, they just go non-linear. When you get to their current limit, the wave will take an asymptotic curve towards the limit, unlike a transistor.
In any case, if you operate an amp beyond its rated power, the results are crap.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I have heard/played several of the amp emulators, line 6 etc. They don't quite get it. They get close, sure, but like so many other things the devil is in the details. A $1000 line 6 amp is NOT going to sound like a Fender blackface. It just isn't. Obviously, that doesn't mean it isn't feasible, as you have already said. It's just that none of the modern emulator amps that I have ever heard quite replicate the right sound. I am sure that some amp maker out there could come up with some type of halo project and create an amp with DSP that sounds spot on. But then again, for what that would cost, why not just buy the real thing?
Tube amps are "living" things. Even how you route the wires can make a difference in how it sounds, especially in the older point to point wired amps. The tubes, the types of components you use (think of all the different types of capacitors you can get...carbon filament, silicon, paper, etc), everything, makes a difference. Amps fascinate me. I'd love to take my knowledge of electronics and love of guitars and make amps someday. They are, more than anything else I can think of, more than the sum of their parts.
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