On Mar 16, 6:58*am, "William Sommerwerck"
wrote:
"Mr. Land" wrote in message

...

I'm talking about salespeople who could talk an entire morning
about how a pair of speakers sounded, never using terminology
that approached anything that could be measured by a technician.

Would _you_ select a loudspeaker solely on the basis of its measurements?


Of course not. What I meant to convey was a basic difference in
approach
that seemed to exist between the salesmen and the technicians. I
could have
given a better example - perhaps that of a saleman bringing us a
receiver of one
of his more affluent customers and telling us to fix it because its
"imaging" is
off. Right. Let me get my "imaging" meter...


These folks could supposedly discern the difference in sound
quality of a *tonearm* (not the cartridge, not the turntable, not
the connecting cables, but just the tonearm, for heaven's sake).

You could, too. It's not difficult. The arm is mechanical system, and
number, strength, and damping of its resonances affect the way it colors the
sound. If you don't believe this, mount the same pickup in a modest arm
(such as a Dual) and in a really good arm. You should easily hear the
difference on pops and clicks.


Pops and clicks aside, and speaking only of the tonal quality of the
music, I
don't doubt for a second that the mechanical characteristics of a
tonearm
would have some non-zero effect on how the overall mass (arm,
cartridge) reacts
to movements of the stylus - but I can't imagine these differences
from one
arm to the next being more than very subtle. I know that I myself
could never
audibly discern the characteristics all the salemen discussed - nor
could any
of my colleagues.

With no special equalization in play and at moderate volume, the
difference between the ordinary speaker cord and the Monster
cables was marked, even to my untrained, non-audiophile ears.
I was shocked... I even returned to relisten periodically just to make
sure I wasn't hearing things myself. *I even took the display switch
apart to make sure they weren't cheating.

Let me stand on the other side of the issue. Did you try listening blind?
For example, have another employee pick regular or Monster cable without
your knowing, then listen to a few recordings to decide which was in use. If
the Monster cable had a distinctively different "sound", you should be able
to recognize its sound, even without direct comparison.


We sure did! We tried different audio sources, different volumes, and
different
test subjects (all skeptics like myself.) All blind tests. As I
said, the
difference was quite discernable, to everyone.

As I said, I was shocked. If I hadn't heard it (repeatly) with my own
ears, you
could never have convinced me that the speaker wire could make any
difference.

As to the article comparing Monster cable with a coat hanger - I can't
recall
ever using coat hangers as speaker wires, nor placing my speakers a
coat
hanger's distance away from the receiver. But if I ever do, I won't
waste
my money on Monster cable.

I've yet to be convinced about speaker cables. I saw one case where a weird
speaker cable (Polk Cobra) interacted pathologically with an oddly designed
amp (Berning), producing gross overshoot and ringing, which was both plainly
audible and visible on a 'scope. But that's a different situation.