By popular demand, your winner and topic for this week’s discussion is….
Has Anyone Ever Studied The “placebo” Effect With Amps, Cables Etc?
Please share your experiences, knowledge, reviews, questions, or anything that you think might add to the conversation here.
Vote for the next topic in the poll for the next discussion.
Previous discussions can be found here.
I feel like people always feel attacked when you point out that a difference probably isn’t real. But I think we need to stop saying you don’t hear it. Human hearing is clearly not merely the process of tranducing sound pressure. You cannot separate objective “sound pressure at the ear drum over time” from whatever other post-processing happens in your brain, and the latter has been repeatedly established to be a significant factor, which you can test for yourself easily enough if you doubt it. This makes it easy to make the attribution error that something is producing a different sound wave, rather than merely changing the cognitive aspect of “hearing”.
Amazing–you can still sell a 2000 dollar amp that nobody could tell the difference between it and my relatively cheap FiiO 7. No noise, plenty of volume–NO PROBLEM.
The hobby turns into watch collecting after a certain pricepoint. People buy 2000 dollar AMPs not because they sound amazing, but more for looks, quality, etc.
Is it unnecessary? Definitely lol.
Well… I think the problem becomes when they think they’re buying something that makes a massive difference in sound quality, when in reality those claims are impossible to assess without a proper ABX. Even then, it gets very difficult to get to a meaningful result.
I don’t have an issue with folks believing in differences that don’t exist (and there are on occasion measurable differences), my issue is with situations where people are putting their money into this stuff instead of stuff that tangible does matter, and very obviously so - like headphones and speakers.
Alright, this is the small, insignificant hill I’m prepared to die on.
Firstly, placebo is the wrong word - I’d argue it’s more of a perceptual phenomenon.
Why? Because we prioritise visual information over auditory information - we know this from the Mcgurk effect where hearing a word said over a video of a different word being said causes people to hear a different (third) word.
In this scenario all the ABX studies would show this had no effect on the audio, but we can clearly see from studies ( https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3196040/ ) that what is perceived by people and what auditory information they are receiving can be different things.
This would mean that we could equate the ABX studies to be victims of looking for or measuring the wrong thing. The see visual information on the cables as a confounding variable, when in reality they should be considered as part of the dependent variable - with audio and visual data being seen as one/a whole.
Also, we know that 2 headphones can have the same/similar FR, but will/can sound different.
So, what we need is a blind or some kinds of ABX test where copper cables are put in either copper or silver sleeves and vice versa, not tell the participants and then see what the results are. I haven’t been able to find any studies on this, and until I do I won’t accept that cables don’t change a persons perception of how music sounds - and after all, perception is reality.
This post asked for studies, I provided one and no one has provided any that refute it - maybe do that before you downvote without providing anything to the discussion…?
Don’t die on this hill bro.
I’d be happy to be proven wrong - I haven’t been able to find anything that has studied or discounted it yet though!
I’m with you 100%. Cables (certain cables) can provide an audible difference from another cable.
In the case of speaker cables, the most important factor is to look at the purity of the material - how pure is it in terms of crystals and air? If you’re serious about sound, UP-OCC Copper or Silver is the only way to go. When I went from OFC to OCC, that’s when I began to believe.
The dielectric and geometry also play a big role.
None of what you described has a real, audible effect on an audio signal. It would have one on signals of a much higher frequency, such is in the mhz or ghz, but audio is not transmitted at those frequencies.
Everything you said is completely bunk when it comes to what you can hear. The ONLY time cables matter is for speaker-wire, and it is very specifically gauging of the wire based on the length of the run and impedance of the transducers themselves. Choosing the wrong gauging can cause very measurable, detectable high-frequency roll-off.
Any other situation, there is 100% no difference whatsoever.
None of what you described has a real, audible effect on an audio signal. It would have one on signals of a much higher frequency, such is in the mhz or ghz, but audio is not transmitted at those frequencies.
Everything you said is completely bunk when it comes to what you can hear. The ONLY time cables matter is for speaker-wire, and it is very specifically gauging of the wire based on the length of the run and impedance of the transducers themselves. Choosing the wrong gauging can cause very measurable, detectable high-frequency roll-off.
Any other situation, there is 100% no difference whatsoever.
I get custom cables made so I can have the length & color & termination I want do thay dramatically sound better no but it isn’t any worst
It’s supposed to be quite a debate over wire qualities, and a large amount of hotheads out there think they can just identify some $2000 dac from some $1000 dac or something. Yes, there have been scientific studies to test these theories and sadly, those hotheads make it seem as if the audiophile community is in words, “obsolete”. There is a fine line though. After working for years with music, perhaps if you’re a producer or a good sound engineer, there are those out there who can tell differences between lots of things in terms of audio. But if you’re just sitting in your bedroom listening to music and suddenly decide your want a $2000 dac/amp, you won’t be able to tell the difference. Another thing, if you do tend to work with music throughout your life, then I guess your subconscious begins to identify these small differences, because it can. But it’s correctly said that lots of people do automatically defend something which they believe they support. Sometimes myths are made because the wrong people represent certain things.
There is a long list of studies, experiments, and blind tests here. One of the best lists I’ve found.
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/testing-audiophile-claims-and-myths.486598/
The key takeaway after a meta review of all them is …
“The clear conclusion is that ABX testing does not back up many audiophile claims … Any change in sound quality comes from the listeners mind and interaction between their senses. What is claimed to be audible is not reliably so.”
Let me devils advocate this a little, but if this were true wouldn’t it stand to reason that every time someone spent more money on something or just something new trying to perceive an upgrade if their brain was telling them it should sound better wouldn’t that upgrade always sound better to them?
If so then why do some people get new things and it sounds worse?
Again devils advocate, but curious as to how that’s explained because if someone’s upgrade something and the mind is so powerfully is controls how something sounds to you then that upgrade should always sounds better because the brain is telling you it should. Right?