Propeller Head Plaza Technical and scientific discussion of amps, cables and other topics.

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Some reading material

Posted by Jon Risch (B) on February 16, 2005 at 19:58:03

In Reply to: technical justification for high end speaker cables posted by danlo on February 15, 2005 at 20:03:39:

I have a starting point in the form of a partially annotated cable bibliography, which resides at:
http://www.geocities.com/jonrisch/c4.htm

This includes a section which references posts I have made on AA, and references pages at my web site.

I feel compelled to explain something about that part.

None of that material was ever intended to be the equivalent of a formal paper or technical article, in the sense of submission to a journal, etc.
Most of that material was derived from work done to arrive at a working criteria for building a homemade set of cables that I could be happy with, without paying mucho dollaroes.

After having done some controlled listening tests, extending over a period of many years, in order to get some of the relevant data for my own purposes, I was then encouraged to share that information, and the details on how to build your own high performance cables.

All that information was ever originally intended for, was a way of sharing this DIY cable information, along with some basic information on how cables worked, usually in a format that was intended to be digested by layman, rather than professionals.

Since that time, when some folks would challenge, or make statements/claims to the effect, that there are absolutely NO basis in science or physics for the audible differences reported by music lovers and audiophiles, I would then post about my own theories and speculations regarding the empirical data I gathered, and sometimes attempt to correlate that data and observations with the current theories and ideas regarding cable performance.
In that sense, what I have at my web site, and what I have posted about, are more like starting points, or interesting observations.

In recent years, a few certain individuals have insisted that by doing so, I have somehow lead people astray from "real science", and that I have done all manner of terrible things, because I dared to think that there must be some sort of scientific explanation behind what I heard.

There have been claims that my theories and speculations are not to be even considered, because I did not formally submit them to a professional body, or because I did not go through some sort of review process, usually something quite specific and particular to that person making the claims and demands.

Others have attempted to dismiss my listening tests, because they did not follow one particular paradigm popularly refered to as ABX. More correctly, they did not exactly mimick the classic ABX tests popularized by Arnold Krueger and Tom Nousaine, despite the huge number of problems and flaws in those very same classic ABX tests.

I touch on some of this in these posts:
http://www.audioasylum.com/forums/prophead/messages/2190.html
http://www.audioasylum.com/forums/prophead/messages/2579.html
http://www.audioasylum.com/forums/prophead/messages/2580.html

I also make a copy of my original AES paper on my listening test methods available to anyone interested in the particulars.
My AES paper is preprint #3178, "A User Friendly Methodology for Subjective Listening Tests", presented at the 91st AES convention, October, 1991.
It is a moderately sized text file, easy to e-mail.
I also have an update for that article, with minor modifications I propose to the original methodology, having had the opportunity to refine it some more since the AES presentation.

I am absolutely sure that some of those afore mentioned individuals will decry anything I have to offer, due to a long history of arguing and hard words between us. However, how much of their protests are actually based on concerns for true science, and how much are due to personal feelings toward me, will be very difficult to separate.

Jon Risch

This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:

Kimber Kable

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