Playing with RCA vs Balanced in my setup

[Stryder5]

Quote Originally Posted by Paul Stewart
"When I was doing research into "Infra bass and perceptions of reality in sound staging", which followed on from something Graham Holiman started. We found that a lot of what we did was indeed measurable, but a lot of what the large group of test subjects perceived was not, both they and us the crew could hear the effect, without going into the full details of something thing that is a large corporations Intellectual property, I will say it took almost three years to work out what was actually going on.

So when someone says they can hear what I can't measure, or I can hear it myself, my approach is to accept that people very probably, can detect the effect, then look for a new way in which this can be measured. That for me is proper exploring science. The closed minded "if I can't measure it, it isn't there" approach is not the attitude that made scientific advances, it's what has held science back."

That's a cracking post from Paul. It has always seemed to me that different people *must* have different perceptions. If some say they can't hear differences in cables I believe them. But, for me, I can't help but hear differences. In fact I've never heard two cables that sound the same so there's something going on whether people quote science at me or not and I agree that keeping an open mind to these phenomena is imperative to aiding our understanding of what's going on here.

Totally agree!

[RothwellAudio]

However, I simply don't buy the notion that it's *automatically* the case EVERY TIME someone hears something, which apparently contradicts the 'facts' contained inside some engineer's favourite text books [read as self-appointed 'indisputable fact bibles']!

Neither do I. I thought I'd made that clear.

And when that's the case, we need to delve into the matter further, with sufficient RIGOUR, and apply some lateral thinking, rather than simply dismissing it out of hand as 'imagined', due to expectation bias, placebo or whatever. That is fundamentally NOT the way for us to genuinely learn.

I agree entirely. I thought I'd made that clear too.

Furthermore, how "rigorous" should folk be on a hi-fi forum, when simply relating their SUBJECTIVE experiences, for the consideration of others?

Maybe about as rigorous as you're suggesting in the quote above?

I have no idea what we're disagreeing about

[Marco]

Lol - who says we're necessarily disagreeing? All I see is the sharing of confidently expressed opinions!

In terms of the 'rigorous' bit though, what I'm getting at there is that *no-one* is duty bound to 'prove' anything that they've merely reported as a subjective experience. Only stuff being portrayed as FACT needs 'proving'.

Otherwise one simply shares views and experiences, informally, for others to consider or dismiss as they see fit. There's no onus on people to do otherwise, as indeed some wrongly insist upon on, on other forums.

Level-matched, double-blind testing, before anything heard is considered as real, is NOT the norm, and simply the domain of obsessive 'measurists', keen to skew otherwise potentially valid observations to conform with their belief system.

Marco.

[RothwellAudio]

In terms of the 'rigorous' bit though, what I'm getting at there is that *no-one* is duty bound to 'prove' anything that they've merely reported as a subjective experience. Only stuff being portrayed as FACT needs 'proving'.

Fair enough - I won't disagree with that

[Marco]

Cheers

Now, I'm off to do some work for a change! L8trs

Marco.

[Qwin]

Not a noticable improvement as such. I just like the idea of balanced circuitry and thus balanced-line interconnects; so it is a satisfying completion of an ambition.

It is my aim to have my system completely balanced from source to speaker. At the moment my CD player has balanced outputs, and my pre- has balanced inputs as well as outputs, as do my monoblock power amps. Since pick-up cartridge are essentially balanced components, I'm looking for a balanced phonostage.

The Pro-Ject Phono Box RS has both XLR and Phono inputs/outputs for convenience, but is a full dual differential circuit and works best on the balanced XLR's.
It has lots of adjustment, including on the fly cartridge loading from 10 to 1200 ohm, plus multiple gain settings, so will work with virtually any cartridge from MM to LOMC.