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Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!tektronix!tekcad!shauns
From: shauns@tekcad.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.audio
Subject: Speaker wire: reader reactions
Message-ID: <50@tekcad.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 29-Sep-83 01:01:56 EDT
Article-I.D.: tekcad.50
Posted: Thu Sep 29 01:01:56 1983
Date-Received: Sat, 24-Sep-83 03:06:02 EDT
Organization: Tektronix, Beaverton OR
Lines: 33

Hey, folks, this net has gotten a bit quiet lately, so I'd like to toss
something into the area of computer discourse and dialogue.

This pertains to the Letters column in October's Stereo review, which deals
largely with the irate and vehement rebuttals to that Magazine's sobering
tests of audiophile speaker wire.  The upshot of the testing was that 16 gauge
jukebox cord could NOT be distinguished from Monster Cable when carefully
controlled double-blind testing was used, but, curiously, DID sound
better when the panel knew what interconnect they were listening to.
Stereo Review concluded that the only benefit of such cable was to the
manufacturer in the form of large profit margins.

I will let you read the interesting and sometimes hilarious replies for
yourself; one reader went so far as to say that "naked wires" did terrible
things to the sound and that the only way to properly connect amp to speaker is
through coaxial cable.  I do hope he doesn't mean RG58-U.

However, there was one reply that interested me.  This respondant, in the
midst of damning Stereo Review for impeding audio progress, claimed that
intantaneously switched ABX comparison schemes actually mask fine differences
in performance, and that this is why none was discerned.
He also claimed that aural memory is actually quite long, long enough to allow
the speaker cables to be manually exchanged, and that if this is done,
differences will be evident.
He gave no proof, however.  Does anybody in netland care to discuss
why he might think this the case?

-- 
				Shaun Simpkins

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