man@bocar.UUCP (M Nevar) (05/14/85)
This is an editorial that appeared in Stereophile Magazine
Volume 6 Number 6 that came out in the Spring (?) of 1984.
It is reprinted by request of you netters. It is long.
If you have any interest in high-end or speaker cables,
read it, it is VERY interesting.
Well, here goes:
The Horse's Mouth
It's not often that you get a chance to have extensive
discussions with the horse's mouth, but we recently had that
opportunity. Since July of this year (1984) there has been
extensive discussion in the audio community, particularly
the high-end segment, of Larry Greenhill's review of three
speaker cables in Stereo Review (August, 1983, Ziff-Davis).
From recent talks with author Greenhill we've learned that
that the most interesting story was *not* in Stereo Review:
instead it can be found in the varying reactions from
different quarters, and what they say about the high-end
industry in general.
The commentaries have been many and varied. About six weeks
after the SR article appeared, we were privileged to receive
the preprint of a critique by Peter Moncrieff, of IAR. This
critique consumed 14 pages and was unusually circumlocutory,
even for Peter. It went to great lengths to pound SR's
point of view into the earth, along with it, a piece of the
readers patience. Many just criticisms of Greenhill's
article (as published in Stereo Review) were made, but that's not
all; IAR's critique went on to introduce questionable theoretical
constructs: a concept known as "the vinegar effect"; an analogy which
likened the performance anxieties surely experienced by the
listening panel to sexual performance anxieties; a radical
proposition with respect to left-brain right-brain
separation as it affects the outcome of psychoacoustic
experiments. Unfortunately, in my eyes, the IAR critique's
ponderous length and doubtful points obscured what was in
fact legitimate criticism of the SR cable review.
IAR circulated this preprint to a variety of high-end
manufacturers. The purpose was to alert this community to
the danger posed by the variety of misleading analyses
employed in SR's speaker cable article, to decry Stereo
Review's standard position on the audible differences (the
title of the critique is "Three Strikes and You're Out"),
and to suggest a boycott of Stereo Review's advertising
pages. Responses were solicited with the promise of
printing them intact in whatever form they came.
To my mind, the most remarkable aspect of the IAR story was
its consumption of an entire issue of IAR Hotline. I could
only think, "Gee, Peter, why spend so much time
demonstrating what everyone's known for time immemorial:
Stereo Review is committed to badmouthing high-end audio."
I was surprised when IAR Hotline eventually came out; a
large number of people had actually written to voice dismay
at the speaker cable article, to testify as to the
audibility of different speaker cables, and to decry high-
end's lack of muscle in the marketplace. Apparently the
issue m=was more controversial than I thought.
Then I heard of even more reaction. Hans Fantel of The New
York Times wrote a piece pointing to the Stereo Review
article as yet more proof that high-end audio people were
raving lunatics in their insistence that seemingly minor
factors can have major effects on the sound. Gregory Sandow
of The Absolute Sound wrote a piece for The Wall Street
Journal (Nov 29, 1983) pointing up the differences between
TAS (and its ilk) and Stereo Review as exemplified by Larry
Greenhill's article on speaker cables. In their September
issue, TAS ran a comment on the SR article, a few letters in
response, and a very funny "play" starring Julian Hearse,
Antonio Stradivarius (sic), David Ramada-Inn, Gordon Sales,
and Hairy Person.
By this time Stereophile readers who haven't read SR's
original article should be running to their shelves,
garbages, or libraries to see what possibly could have been
said that would generate all this controversy. And that's
just the point: controversy, no matter the source, generates
interest and sells magazines. The most interesting comment
of all comes from William Livingston, editor of Stereo
Review, in a letter circulated to SR's "comp" list and
addressed to "Friends of Stereo Review":
"In the August (1983) issue of Stereo Review we published
an article by Laurence Greenhill in which he described the
results of listening tests... The article turned out to
be a somewhat bigger news story than we realized... The
letters came from everywhere from Ogden, Utah, to
Montevideo, Uruguay... I have never responded to the charge
that Stereo Review is an enemy of the high end. Anyone
who reads the magazine knows that this charge is unfounded...
While such letters may not prove anything conclusive about
speaker cables, they prove to me that Stereo Review is a
magazine with a very high degree of reader involvement.
We are a magazine that makes a difference."
Not surprisingly from the tone of this letter, SR's "comp" list
is composed mostly of advertisers.
What does Stereophile think of the SR cable review flap?
Well, we're in an unusual position, because we've seen both
the article Stereo Review printed *and* the original article
as submitted by Larry Greenhill. I spent some of my
undergraduate years studying the New Testament. Much of the
New Testament scholarship is devoted to analyzing the
different contributions made by the "authors" of the
different gospels as they passed along orally the traditions
they had received. believe me, if the evangelists made the
changes in their oral traditions that Stereo Review made to
Larry Greenhill's article, the New Testament might read like
Fear of Flying.
Granted, SR reported the data just as Larry gathered it --
in fact, some of the data actually contradicts the written
part of the article. then, of course, SR inserted a lot of
their editorial opinions about the inaudibility of different
components and general scoffing at high-end audio nuts.
They really put it to the reader, though, when they made up
their conclusion to Greenhill's article:
"...the results demonstrated that while Monster Cable and
16-gauge lamp cord are both audibly different from and
probably superior to 24-gauge wire, 16-gauge is good enough
to be indistinguishable from Monster Cable when playing
music. An esoteric cable would have to be demonstrably
superior on 16-gauge wire... So what do our fifty hours
of testing, scoring, comparing, and listening to speaker
cables amount to? Only that 16-gauge lamp cord and Monster
Cable are indistinguishable from each other with music and
seem to be superior to the 24-gauge wire commonly sold or
given away as 'speaker cable.' Remember, however, that it
was a measurable characteristic--higher resistance per foot
--that made 24-gauge wire sound different from the other
cables. If the cable runs were only 6 instead of thirty
feet, the overall cable resistances would have been lower
and our test would probably have found no audible differences
between the three cables."
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excuse me, but I can't hold it in any more
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
OK, I can type some more now..
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Careful readers of the article as printed will know that
this conclusion does not present an accurate description of
the data that was gathered. Even more interesting, Stereo
Review's editors entirely created that ending. Author
Greenhill's original manuscript has none of the offensive
language that eventually appeared. Here's how he put it:
"The striking outcome is that the panel accurately heard
and named speaker cables in 5 out of 6 comparisons. . .
The listeners felt pleased after this listening test
battery: they had heard real differences ! After 50
hours of testing, scoring, comparing, and just plain
listening, they were exhausted but felt accomplished.
Both Monster Cable and twenty-four gauge wire could be
heard reliably under double blind conditions."
Big difference, wouldn't you say? Yet Greenhill's original
actually allows for two different interpretations of the
data. One measure of the reliability of a series of
identifications is known as chi square, or binomial,
statistical analysis. Using this method, a prediction is
made as to the probability of the identifications having
occurred by chance. Another measure of reliability, one
commonly used in psychoacoustic experiments, is the 75%
rule: if a subject's identification (of the speaker cable,
in this instance) is correct more than 75% of the time, the
difference identified will almost certainly be audible--
presumably to most people, most of the time.
When Stereo Review wrote their conclusions, they essentially
threw out all the tests where a subject was unable to
identify the cables more than 75% of the time; Greenhill, on
the other hand, was impressed that his group of 11 listeners
could pick, with better than 999 to 1 odds, between 16 gauge
zipcord, 24 gauge zipcord, and 11.5 gauge Monster Cable
(using the chi square method of statistical analysis).
Greenhill's original report, which is three times the length
of the published one, makes it possible to evaluate the two
methods fairly. It's certainly possible to distinguish
between 24-gauge and either 16-gauge or Monster: one can
reliably distinguish between 16-gauge and Monster (using the
best signal, pink noise), but the differences are right at
the edge of audibility so that many listeners won't notice
them, and the most acute listeners will.
I think it's unfortunate that more of the original report
didn't make it into print, instead being sacrificed to SR's
editorial viewpoints. Greenhill and his friends from the
Audiophile Society (who supplied 8 of the listeners for the
cable test) have tried several double-blind listening tests,
and none of them have come up with positive results (ie,
reliable identification of the components in question).
Here they finally achieve success in the form of interesting
results, but those results are obscured by the time the
report makes it to print. The first interesting result is
that the listening panels preconceptions of cable
performance had a large effect of perceived differences
between cables *when they knew* which cables were in use.
Second, differences were still perceived in double-blind
testing, but to a much lesser degree. Third, panel members
were surprised that the differences between the cables were
so subtle and difficult to distinguish. Fourth, the
performance of different panel members varied widely: there
was one truely amazing "ear" amongst them, and four very
good ones. Fifth, differences between very similar cable
(none of them using exotic materials or cable geometry in
their construction) could still be reliably picked out, even
when (in one trial) the resistances of the different wires
were artificially matched using a potentiometer. Sixth,
pink noise is a better test signal for discrimination than
the choral music selection used (not necessarily all music).
With a list of positive results such as this, it really
makes you wonder why SR chose to emphasize only the
negative.
Much can be learned from the coverage afforded the cable
article. Stereo Review has used Larry Greenhill's article
by distorting it to represent their well-established
editorial positions. IAR has used it to draw attention to
it's role as savior of the consumer and of the high-end
industry. TAS has capitalized on the humor possibilities,
and taken the opportunity to attack Julian Hirsch (Hearse)-
-at whose feet I feel this matter is unjustly laid. Hans
Fantel, who must have read only the conclusions and not the
data, used the article to justify his hitherto- announced
scorn for esoterica. The Wall Street Journal seemingly has
no axe to grind, but Gregory Sandow has used their pages to
not unfairly promote The Absolute Sound, for whom he also
writes.
Significant harm has been done, however. Truly esoteric
speaker cables (of which New Monster Cable is definitely not
one) have been maligned in the eyes of that portion of SR's
550,00 readers who are not intellectually discriminating--
and without even being tested. The cause of "scientific"
testing has not been helped; here was a successful test
which earned its author and participants not fame, but
infamy.
Larry Greenhill's position in the high-end community has
been changed substantially , at least in the short run.
Several manufacturers now refuse to talk to him, and a
magazine he works for (High Performance Review) has even
been denied the opportunity to review a certain
manufacturer's products. Attacked by all manner of
underground magazine (whose ranks he once felt a part of),
Larry has hardly known which end was up these last few
months. On the other hand, he has only himself to thank.
He did sign off on the article as printed, with adequate
time for review, although there was a lot of pressure to
accept the changes suggested by SR's editors. His personal
opinion is that it would be wise for him (and for others who
write for those magazines whose primary interest is
attracting advertisements) to be most careful about what
they approve for publication. In keeping with Larry
Greenhill's desire that the whole issue go away, we close
our review of the cable article situation with a plea for a
more objective stance from Stereo Review, who had the chance
to expose as a success this attempt to differentiate between
slightly varying components, and a plea for the many more
tests such as the one carried out by Greenhill.
Well, that's it. Lunch time.....
Mark Nevar