If you hook up your conventional voltage feedback solid state amp with say one foot of cable to your speaker, and then sweep the amp 20 to 20k and record amplitude say each 1KHz direct at the speaker terminal, then next use 30 feet of the same cable, do the same test, you will measure differences in amplitude, and many will exceed 0.1 db and a few 1db or more.
Your plot will also therefore show rises or falls in frequency response amplitude, and that would be audible if you have golden ears and listen to your music by alternately switching between a one foot and 30 foot cable every half second or so!
In other words, unless you have a real long cable (say over 6 feet) or really goofy one, if you are not switching the cable in or out, you then need a very good aural memory to know that there is a boost or drop say, in the upper midband due to your excessively long cable.
This is a test most anyone can do at home, however, with your cheap radio shack wire it will be harder to see the changes than with the mega buck mega rip off stuff.
Tom
An alternative that I like is a preference test where you keep a cable connected for a week and listen to music as often as is possible, while noting how long you enjoy listening and feel like turning it off, while also noting if you start to skip tracks-become fidgety-etc.
After a week switch to the other cable and repeat.
This can also be done blind where a friend will go in and swap the cables for that week so it is unknown which is in, as it is lengthy preference test you do not need to be in the room at the time of change and can even start listening much later that day or the next.
What is interesting is that by week 3 or 4 of repeated switching cables, I find your listening behaviour will possibly be affected either by greater listening satisfaction or becomes worst (similar to fatigue-less interest-etc) depending what cable is in that week.
If there are any differences I find listening often over a week and then switching and repeating can form a preference for one and then also affects listening behaviour, more so than trying to identify subtle sonic variations unless sure what it is that is affected and by what traits-characteristics of music or sounds.
If no change in listening trend and behaviour-enjoyment, go for the cheapest
However in my experience it can be quite surprising which cable is preferred and it can be the cheaper one, the problem IMO is that there is no real quick way of identifying from specs-etc a "whats best" cable for a person and the system.
Some cheap cables can outperform in terms of preference expensive ones, and a few mid-priced and expensive ones may outperform all others, but IMO there is no proven reason why for the well made cables.
Just the theories we see posted.
The problem is, who really has time or more importantly the incentive and motivation to do such extensive preference testing of so many cables to find one that may more ideal than the current cable you are using if the system is already enjoyable.
In a way its a lot down to pot luck with a bit of guestimate on narrowing the selection, and this is what sucks about cables IMO
Relating to aural memory, I am not sure how well the facts can be weighed up on this because there are posters I respect who do mention aural memory is short term.
And yet a test at AVreview with 4 listeners suggests (not scientifically proven with their testing and statistically not enough) it is possible to differentiate in DBT between cables without fast switching (it was a slow process as they had to leave the room each time the cable was changed to avoid cues/tells from the person swapping.
So their testing averaged I think around 45 mins per test, their test is more anecdotal as they only managed 6 tests using 6 different music tracks.
But the delay was caused by amount of time some required due to swapping often and also having to leave the room.
So maybe this is the key, lengthy and repeated listening to A,B, and X before even tempting to make a selection.
The downside is even the listener who suggested not using a switch box was sick of the testing in the end, and they never reached a useful 12 tests, however he did score 6/6 (including the time that A and B were same cable - he stated that he felt he failed as he could not tell a difference).
So an actual large study would be highly impractical from a logistical,practical (time allocated and completing the test along with listener patience and concentration) and funding perspective if the listener was allowed such lengthy and repeated time to study A-B-X in the test.
Another interesting point is that without the switch box the music had to be repeated from start to where they stopped without the ability to listen continually to the music while switching, so forcing often a repeat of the same segments.
Anyway I appreciate such topics on ABX may be more relevant to a different thread, but as a listener did score highly could suggest that maybe it is not possible to generalise about aural memory.
I appreciate there are a lot of studies out there I have not read, and the test they did could had thrown up some quirks as it was not scientifically driven.
Coming back to anecdotal, any reviewers who are members here want to chime in with their experience as I notice they do seem to own (please no comments about how they are bribed with free cables or the JV scenario) and possibly use multiple cables for reviewing components such as speakers and also pre-power amps.
Jeff, do you reviewers at Soundstage tend to use multiple cables when reviewing products?
Cheers
Orb
