Does high quality digital cables matter?

Habanero Monk wrote: »

When you take the dubious step of saying it does X/Y/Z to the sound vs another competent CAT6 cable then I have to take issue since I understand how packet switched networks operate.

If that's the case we would have to incorporate the switch in the realm as we all know not all switches/routers are not created equal and it's not always about the $ value of that switch either

WOW, 9 pages of a thread NOT involving the hi jinx of PFB:)

headrott wrote: »

Could it be that those people that cannot/do not hear differences between audio equipment are the ones afraid of being taken by "snake oil con artists"?

Absolutely.

headrott wrote: »

After all, if you are trained to listen for certain audio aspects; you listen without bias based upon aesthetics and can hear a difference, then there is no "snake oil" inflicted upon the listener. It has already been shown in the studies Ray posted that listener bias can be overcome (along with Ray, myself, and many others on this forum).

Certainly agree you can train individuals to listen for particular aspects of sound quality. I struggle with how that eliminates bias in the case of a cable comparison. In an actual experiment, you'd train subject to listen for particular nuances and subtleties in a music selection. But then during the comparison phase you would tell a subject:

"Ok, now that you're training is complete, I'm going to ask you to use your training to evaluate two cables. One cable is a really expensive, high quality cable made from rare metals mined from Asteroids."

"..The other cable is from Wal-mart".

I fail to see how that eliminates bias.

headrott wrote: »

So, can it be that it is cable naysayers are the ones that are in fact biased and are wanting people who can hear differences in cables to help the naysyaers overcome their bias by "proving" to them that differences exist in equipment? This is called projection; a mental state which someone is exhibiting is expressed upon others, "accusing" them of exhibiting that behavior. This is a coping mechanism.

Yes. This could be the case. However, I think "most" of the "naysayers" would be convinced with objective data. In my opinion, this is the beauty of science. The data are the data. The data do not care about the cables. The data are neutral.

Habanero Monk wrote: »

And all the matters not. If the CRC is correct, if the checksum is correct the data integrity is 100%. If your position is correct then you have a lot to worry about when it comes to financial transactions.

Red herring. While financial data might make you happy, or cry, it is unaffected by jitter.

If Jitter is an anomaly to good sound because of variance of waveform, well the audio wave form is not constructed on the data wire. It's packet data. The data is sent and the waveform is reconstructed at the computer in RAM. If there is missing data either TCP or a manufacturers correction routine higher in the OSI stack is responsible for taking care of this.

You know as little about jitter as you do networking.

Jitter shouldn't be a problem because a good DAC re-clocks all the data coming in. It's part of most marketing literature. Now if there is demonstrable effect due to Jitter it is the DACs' fault.

Yes, some DACs do reclock data, but like anything else, are not perfect. The better the input then the better the output. I can actually speak from personal experience on this subject where from upgrading a digital cable between the file player and DAC I experienced a major (my major is your non-existent) improvement. This should never have happened if the DAC eliminated jitter.

Jitter is also measurable: http://nwavguy.blogspot.com/2011/02/jitter-does-it-matter.html

Are you kidding me! Did you bother to read that? Or, more likely, you don't understand it. (See below)

I have a Dayton Omni-mic I can bring if it matters that much.

Don't bother, since you wouldn't understand how to either properly use the tool, or understand the measurements. You have continually demonstrated that you do not have the slightest idea what you are talking about. At least you have been consistent over time on various topics. Consistently wrong.



Relevant information from Monk's link above.

"CABLE JITTER: Cables can “smear” digital signals by attenuating the highest frequencies. The diagram to the right is an example. The top blue waveform illustrates a perfect digital S/PDIF or AES3 bitstream. The bottom red waveform is what you might get out the other end of a long cable. The hardware receiving the signal uses the “zero crossings”—where the signal transitions an imaginary line drawn horizontally through the middle of the red waveform—to extract the clock. As you can see by the red arrows, that isn’t always correct due to the waveform distortion. The gaps between the red arrows are jitter. The amount of “smearing” depends on the bitstream itself so as the audio signal changes so does the clock timing creating jitter related to the audio itself."

Habanero Monk wrote: »

And all the matters not. If the CRC is correct, if the checksum is correct the data integrity is 100%. If your position is correct then you have a lot to worry about when it comes to financial transactions.

If Jitter is an anomaly to good sound because of variance of waveform, well the audio wave form is not constructed on the data wire. It's packet data. The data is sent and the waveform is reconstructed at the computer in RAM. If there is missing data either TCP or a manufacturers correction routine higher in the OSI stack is responsible for taking care of this.

Jitter shouldn't be a problem because a good DAC re-clocks all the data coming in. It's part of most marketing literature. Now if there is demonstrable effect due to Jitter it is the DACs' fault.

Jitter is also measurable: http://nwavguy.blogspot.com/2011/02/jitter-does-it-matter.html

I have a Dayton Omni-mic I can bring if it matters that much.

BlueFox wrote: »

It is a good thought, but, as usual, not followed through. The received download file needs to be compared to the original file played from a directly attached source. Without a basis of comparison it is impossible to know if any jitter has been introduced during transmission. More than likely, it has, but without hearing the original file one has no idea if the downloaded copy could be better.

Jitter or not, if the 0's and 1's are the same..bit for bit..then there is no difference. There cannot be any difference. The source equals the playback. Exactly. You can't get Jitter from nothing, and you can't get nothing from nothing..IE: If there's not an 0 or a 1 to support it, then it's NOT there. If you hear something different, then your mind is playing tricks. This is a well documented mental disorder common among ALL humans.

No problem. A sequence of 1s and 0s can be correct, but have timing errors as to when the rise and fall of the 1s and 0s occurs. For most data this is irrelevant. For example, 01000001 represents the letter 'A'. Where the rise and fall time of each bit occurs doesn't matter, since it will always be 'A' when printed or displayed on the computer screen. There is a small +/- tolerance built into this encoding. As long as the frame is within this tolerance, the letter 'A' results.

However, for music, data being transformed into an analog signal the rise and fall time are very important. Otherwise, the music is 'off'. In this case the +/- tolerance can result in a slightly different musical signal than what was transmitted. While the digital frame is correct from an Ethernet perspsective, a little distortion results from the timing errors. This is the jitter aspect. Unfortunately, every link in the chain can add, or subtract, these timing errors. This is nothing new, and is well understood. Whether some people want to believe it is another issue.

Personally, until this better understood and resolved I will stay with direct attached USB storage to my file player. No network music for me.

badchad wrote: »

We can agree to disagree here. I think we all have inherent bias, whether we're aware of it or not. These biases are formed from the moment we're born due to our life experiences. This is Psych. 101. You don't have to agree, but if an individual is blind to the treatment conditions, his/her bias is limited. That's the point.

You can also disagree with all the economic researchers in the field of "debiasing consumers" who stand on decades of solid research showing that the effects of consumer bias can be removed with appropriate training. Here are a couple of references from economics journals to get you started:

DarqueKnight wrote: »

The field of consumer research is full of examples of consumer bias being eliminated or the effects of such bias being eliminated through training and education.

One example is "Consumer Behavioural Biases In Competition-A Case Study", by S. Huck, J. Zhou and C. Duke, Office of Fair Trading, London, U.K., May 2011 (link):

"This is a survey of studies that examine competition in the presence of behaviourally biased or boundedly rational consumers. It will tackle questions such as: How does competition and pricing change when consumers are biased? Can inefficiencies that arise from consumer behavioural biases be mitigated by lowering barriers to entry? Do biased consumers make rational ones better or worse off? And will biased consumer behaviour be overcome through learning or education? (p. 5)

This leaves the possibility that third parties, the press, or government agencies could engage in consumer education and, surely, such efforts cannot have adverse effects. However, there is some literature that throws doubt on the effectiveness of de-biasing and education, certainly from a cost-benefit point of view. For example effective education may not be a simple matter (see, for example, Chater, Huck, and Inderst 2010 or Choi, Laibson, and Madrian 2010). (p. 61)

We also find that firms may sometimes have little incentive to educate consumers. This is particularly severe if educated or sophisticated consumers benefit from the pricing offered by those firms who do not engage in consumer education. However, where learning will eventually eradicate consumer biases, firms may have a clear incentive to establish a reputation for 'fair behaviour' early on. (p. 69)

Another example from the field of economics is "Shrouded Attributes, Consumer Myopia, and Information Suppression in Competitive Markets", Gabaix, X., and D. Laibson, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 121(2), 505-540, (2006) (link):

"Firms often shroud the negative attributes of their products, particularly high prices for complementary add-ons.

A "curse of debiasing" suppresses unshrouding. Debiasing a consumer improves consumer welfare, but no firm can capture or even partially share these benefits. Firms receive lower profits when they interact with debiased consumers. Debiased consumers know how to avoid high-priced items. Moreover, firms cannot drive away such debiased consumers without losing (profitable) myopic consumers as well. Debiased consumers can pretend to be myopes, enabling the debiased consumers to take advantage of the traps that firms set for myopes." (p. 531)

Therefore, in the field of economics and consumer research, the concept of the "debiased" consumer is well established. "Debiasing" occurs when a biased consumer learns to eliminate, or eliminate the effect of, their biases. The concept of debiasing is also well established in the fields of stereophonic audio and television. It is only within a certain subculture within the stereophonic audio community that the concept of training to remediate biases is not accepted.

badchad wrote: »

It takes minimal extra effort to blind a study and it all but ensures bias is completely eliminated. This is why its standard practice across nearly every scientific discipline.

Then why did the Bell Labs researchers who used blind tests for monophonic telephone audio abandon blind tests when they turned their attention to stereo? Why are so many economics professors advocating consumer training, rather than blinding, for eliminating the effects of bias in consumer decisions? Why does the field of sensory science specify blind tests for na

teekay0007 wrote: »

DK, you've mentioned several times that there's differences between experienced listeners and trained listeners. Can you explain how someone becomes a trained listener, as opposed to being just an experienced one?

No, I'm not going to explain it again for the 10,001th time since I have already addressed this in this thread and several others.

Look up the definition of training. Look up the definition of experience. I think most people understand that a policeman can be trained in the use of firearms, yet have no field experience using them. Likewise, a criminal can have years of experience using firearms in committing crimes, yet have no formal training in firearm use and safety. Anyone can pick up a gun and pull a trigger.

For an answer to your question, I will refer you to the explanation of Bell Labs scientists, who invented home stereo systems, in my "Survey Of Early Stereophonic System Subjective Evaluation" thread.

DarqueKnight wrote: »

No, I'm not going to explain it again for the 10,001th time since I have already addressed this in this thread and several others.

Look up the definition of training. Look up the definition of experience. I think most people understand that a policeman can be trained in the use of firearms, yet have no field experience using them. Likewise, a criminal can have years of experience using firearms in committing crimes, yet have no formal training in firearm use and safety. Anyone can pick up a gun and pull a trigger.

For an answer to your question, I will refer you to the explanation of Bell Labs scientists, who invented home stereo systems, in my "Survey Of Early Stereophonic System Subjective Evaluation" thread.

My point in asking is that from what I've seen and read, there's an awful lot of people here on this very forum who I believe would put themselves in the "trained category", when by the definition you're using, they'd actually fall somewhere in the "experienced listener" category. In fact, I'd say with considerable confidence, there's only a handful of contributors on this site that I'd personally put into the trained category as it's been described. I'd put myself in the very early stages of being an experienced listener.

Given this, how are we - those not in the trained listener category - supposed to validly and sufficiently evaluate a new cable, pair of cables or piece of equipment? How can we, short of becoming "trained listeners", know that we aren't making our choices without bias, if not for the use of a blinded trial in our own listening space?