Newsgroups: rec.audio

Here's a letter from Dick Pierce who appears to want to cool the flames.
I agree with the intent and thought it interesting.  He also said I could
post it, so here it goes unedited (warning - R-rated language in use):



I thought I would reply to this by private email rather than by a post.

Your points are, for the most part, reasonable and valid, though I
disagree with the tone used against the other Richard, but what of that, eh?

I have heard differences in cables myself. But the conditions under which
the differences were demonstrated were so poorly controlled that it would
be impossible to eliminate all other causes unequivocably. I, on the other
hand, have failed to discern the differences between two well touted
"magic" cables that some others had claimed differences between, and these
tests were made under far more controlled conditions. Conclusion? There is
no string evidence presented to me that either stringly suggests that
there is a difference nor unequivocably proves there is not.

The problem is that the proofs advanced for or against differences between
cables are seriously flawed (did you catch the thread recently where I debunked
the gawd-I-am-so-tired-of-hearing-this-again damping factor nonsense?).
The reason being is that the proofs are advanced by people who consider
themselves "expert" in the particular proof. Their range of expertise, if
it is real, is sufficiently narrow to prevent them from seeing the forest
for the individual medullary rays in the sapwood.

Let me describe a bit of anecdotal evidence that might suggest one
hypothesis (I am not advancing this as the answer, but more as an
illustration of the process than anything else). For a number of years,
some of my friends and associates have, as a group, made various claims
for and against the difference in sound between low-level interconects.
They all have respectable systems, most participate in listening to live
music, so most, I feel, have a sufficiently discerning and intelligent ear
that I respect what they say.

The problem is that until I considered on factor, their opinions seemed to
by randomly distributed as far as age, musical taste, occupation,
equipment "technology", and so forth. It was sort of by accident that I
noticed one fairly string corellation: geography!. It would seem that the
majority of those who claimed to hear a difference live essentially in the
Boston metropolitan area and the western suburbs. As a general rule, those
that couldn't seem to hear a difference lived in more rural locations. 

One might argue that there should be the opposite corelation: quiter
surroundings contribute to lower thresholds for hearing and all that. No,
it would seem, all those who claimed to hear a difference were within 6
miles of a major center for TV/Radio brodcasting (the western suburbs, for
example, are sites for upwards of a megwatt of RF output!) Another pocket
of audible differences is to the north and east of Boston, all in line of
site of Logan Airport's recently refurbished (1980) air-traffic-control radar.

To me this suggest that there might be a correltaion between the sound of
low-level interconnects and the ability of certain types of cables to
effectively reject low level RF interference. And the differences are much
more noticeable on phono interconnects (much lower signal levels!).

Does this prove that the differences are due to RFI handling? Absolutely
not! It merely suggests a hyposthesis, what I often refer to as a
"testable assertion". The evidence asserts that RFI might be a factor, so
we can devise real experiments to test that assertion. The assertion makes
some predictions, and the test must be constructed to clearly discriminate
whether the predicatble results are present or not.

Is this the way science works? You betcha (at least when it works). Is it
the way stuff is done at Stereo Review, Stereophile, and the AES? No
fucking way! Why, because all of the participants in these organizations
have an agenda to advance, in pretty much all cases, it's a commercial
agenda. There is also an ego-agenda to be advanced, and it's clear that
your ego-agenda and Mr. D'Ippolito's have collided head on. Note that
there is nothing wrong with ego-agendas (as long as they contribute to
one's own enlightened self-interest). The problem is that they can very
easily get in the way of the advancement of knowledge.

No, I am not going to reject out-of-hand claims that you and others make
about the audibility of cables. I know the media to be far more complex
than some on this and other forums seem to claim. I know many of the
proofs advanced are bogus. But because the proofs against are flawed is no
reason for me to accept your and others claims. 

No, both sides have failed to make their case. Both have exhibited very
bad science. Both have specific agendas to advance. There is an answer
somewhere in there, the answer is undoubtedly more complex than some would
like to think. In all likelyhood, when the answer is found, somebody's
certain to be dissapointed (I bet it won't be me, though!). But the answer
can and will be found. But not through the current mechanisms, that's for
sure.

That's just my view. Read through it. If you think it might contribute to
the general enlightenment of the net, you have my permission to post it,
preferably unedited and appropriately attributed. If it pisses you off,
then clearly I have misunderstood your ire (which I share in to some
extent), and have missed the mark pretty badly.

|                Dick Pierce                |
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