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Originally Posted by hilbert25
A couple things:
You wouldn't happen to think that changing the speaker position would have anything to do with the sound? My point before was that from an empirical standpoint, you cannot claim that the change is due to the "burning in" of the cable when so many other factors also changed.
Claiming you are immune to the placebo effect is a nice thought. Possibly you are, but your example is actually doing you no favors. The outputs of cd/dvda/sacd are measureably different, but not hearing a difference could mean that the differences don't really matter, or that you are feeling the nocebo effect (a buzzword for the opposite of placebo, those psychologists are so creative).
By the DBS, I'm assuming you're referring to the cables with batteries to keep a "constant potential" or some such nonsense? Yeah, that was a funny product.
I have no problem with the pursuit of audio perfection, but audio elitism rubs me the wrong way. Especially when companies make their living by scamming people out of their hard earned money by selling snake oil, psychoacoustic products (*cough* $1000 transparent cable being made with a total of $5 in parts *cough*). Not that you are, but by listing the prices with your gear, you give the appearance of being one of those audiophiles that is trying to win a penis size contest by having the bigger/better/more esoteric system. Cooked cables will fit right into that mindset.
Esoteric cable companies are among the most notorious places in audio for bad science and I can find quite a few audio engineers to cite for this. The way that such companies would be able to validate themselves would be through double blind testing on large sample sizes (the only way to truly be rid of psychoacoustic effects), but nearly all are reluctant to do so.
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I suppose you could have a point on the speaker position thing. It doesn't appear that either side is going to convince the other of their viewpoint. I never meant to come of as elitist or say my ears are better than anyone elses here. I apologize if I came off that way. The reason I put prices in the gear list was to show that the system being demoed was no slouch. I stated before that one needs a system to a certain quality before the benefits of cables can be realized to their full potential.
Some audio gear calls for its high priced based specifically on its name (are you listening Mr. Levinson?). Contrarywise, there is gear out there that sounds like it should be more expensive than what it is. We just picked up a new Danish brand called Audio Philosophy that sounds amazing for the money. They have a 70wpc integrated at $1699 that rocks the house.
Back on the cable topic, I have always been fascinated with the "smoke and mirrors" world of esoteric cables. Transparent Cable is the stuff that my dreams are made of. Art Dudley of Stereophile did a review of AQ's Cheetah (with DBS) cables. He noted although the effects were very minimal, they were there. He did several tests with and without the batteries connected. When he took in the cables as a whole (disregarding the fact that they have batteries on them) he liked them very much. And I know you're just being facetious on the $5 Transparent bit too...