Pear Cable CEO Calls James Randi's $1 Million Offer a Hoax

My prediction: There will be no test. Mr. Fermer will backup out of it using some excuse. I'll put $50 on it.
Who's raising the bet?
Regards,
Yair
 
It does not matter if there is a test or not. When he fails it, and he will, he will come up with a BS reason why he did. It is no different from dowers and others who either fool themselves and/or just plan lie.

Paul

:) :) :)
 
yairhol said:
And still, I say there will be no test.
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Michael Fremer is a well-known figure in the "stereophile" community, and he's participated in listening tests like this one many times in the past. His MO is to claim the test was rigged AFTER he participates, rather than backing out beforehand. I'm 65% tempted to take your bet.
 
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DevilsAdvocate said:
Well. here you go. Straight from this thread:

Post 42
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And you think theyll agree to that?

Post 44
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errr, they wont agree to THAT, their whole point is that they DO significantly change the sound in some way, at least change it from what "inferior" cables do, as in sound "better"

its more of the same after that.

IF the cables are shown to have identical electrical characteristics in the audible range, both for frequency and dynamics, then fine, I say there will be no audible difference.

But this is NOT the claim they are responding to thats being shown all over the media
 
Minkster said:
Maybe it would be important to the tiny fraction of people who give a damn about high-end audio.

Would it be important to science on the whole though? Enough to risk the entire credibility of the skeptical movement? Hell no
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I hope you're kidding!

Don't do science because you don't care about a specific subject?

Don't advance medical knowledge...why?

People are thought to have a specific range of hearing. You don't think its important to know if the oodles of litterature on this subject is wrong?
 
Dan O. said:
The Michael Anda case is a perfect example. Here we have a kid that is throwing his money away on superstition. If he actually saw his peers doing blind A/B testing he might learn to use it himself and get back to believing in reality.
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I corresponded with Michael Anda quite a bit during that time. He was familiar with double blind listening test results. His response: the standard audiophile woo-woo mantra, "double blind listening tests are not effective when testing such a subjective thing as audio." They have honestly convinced themselves that because the perceived effect disappears when test controls are imposed, there must be something wrong with the tests.
 
peteweaver said:
As long as there is sufficient room for nyquist theorem (in simple terms it means having a signal to noise ratio capable of being twice that of human audible range) then it should not matter what make cable is in use, or how much a speaker cable costs.
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We would be speaking of nyquist if we were doing digital audio

Also Nyquist has nothing to do with signal to noise, it has to do with frequency response
 
Gr8wight said:
I corresponded with Michael Anda quite a bit during that time. He was familiar with double blind listening test results. His response: the standard audiophile woo-woo mantra, "double blind listening tests are not effective when testing such a subjective thing as audio." They have honestly convinced themselves that because the perceived effect disappears when test controls are imposed, there must be something wrong with the tests.
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Does anyone remember the GREEN MARKER on the edge of the CD snake-oil to make it sound better. Well, my friend (a vinyl and tube person) came over my house with a CD with, oh no, the GREEN MARKER edging done to it.

Well he knew that I have the same CD, so here we go, the NON-BLIND test. Well he and my son (who was about 12 at the time, now 30) agreed that the GREEN Marker CD sounded better when played and knowing what was being played. Well, I started to stand in front of the player and when my friend said to change the CD, I went thru the motions and didn't. They heard the different, until I showed them the truth and the CD was not changed. We did this several more times, some times they knew the CD that was playing and sometime they didn’t. And more and more times they made mistakes and I would show them the CD was not the one they thought it was.

Now why would you or I say these mistakes were happing? We would say it is because there was no difference. But NO it was because their ears were getting tired, and not that they were wrong. That is a big problem, because even when tested, it is the test that is flawed and it is not that they are wrong.

Paul

:) :) :)
 
Paulhoff said:
Does anyone remember the GREEN MARKER on the edge of the CD snake-oil to make it sound better. Well, my friend (a vinyl and tube person) came over my house with a CD with, oh no, the GREEN MARKER edging done to it.

Well he knew that I have the same CD, so here we go, the NON-BLIND test. Well he and my son (who was about 12 at the time, now 30) agreed that the GREEN Marker CD sounded better when played and knowing what was being played. Well, I started to stand in front of the player and when my friend said to change the CD, I went thru the motions and didn't. They heard the different, until I showed them the truth and the CD was not changed. We did this several more times, some times they knew the CD that was playing and sometime they didn’t. And more and more times they made mistakes and I would show them the CD was not the one they thought it was.

Now why would you or I say these mistakes were happing? We would say it is because there was no difference. But NO it was because their ears were getting tired, and not that they were wrong. That is a big problem, because even when tested, it is the test that is flawed and it is not that they are wrong.

Paul

:) :) :)
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Your test was obviously flawed because, because, because . . . it did not result in the "correct" answer. :D
 
I find this challenge exciting -- Golden ear audiophiles vs. Acute consumer advocates of implausible advertising.

Of course I am biased in favor of Randi, and I will admit that earlier in this challenge I was worried this test wasn't appropriate -- but I've given it some thought and realize that $7,500 cable wire is total woo. This is a simple test that will humiliate the people who sell $7,500 cable wire and sleep well at night.

Bring these rascals on!
 
Senex said:
I find this challenge exciting -- Golden ear audiophiles vs. Acute consumer advocates of implausible advertising.

Of course I am biased in favor of Randi, and I will admit that earlier in this challenge I was worried this test wasn't appropriate -- but I've given it some thought and realize that $7,500 cable wire is total woo. This is a simple test that will humiliate the people who sell $7,500 cable wire and sleep well at night.

Bring these rascals on!
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Exactly. I don't see what the massive problem is with people worried about cheating and such. You go to a store, you buy some high dollar and some regular cables off the shelf, and you perform a test from the same machine with someone switching them back and forth. The whole process is monitored, there's no reason for anyone from Pear to be there since they aren't the ones taking the test, and the music that is played through them comes from an outside source.

If he wins, it's certainly a step forward into our never-ending quest for understanding the mysteries of our world and, as an educational foundation, we should celebrate that. If (when) he doesn't, it's a chance to expose a fantastic legal scam too many people are foolishly getting sucked into.

Either way it's what the MDC should be all about, rather than just a carrot to dangle in front of idiots so we can make fun of them after the fact (although don't get me wrong, that's pretty awesome too). :)
 
Minkster said:
I'm pleased you think the MDC would be somehow validated by someone winning it. I think the opposite. As I said in my earlier post, its not the million dollars thats important, or the challenge itself - the power in the MDC is that its presented as something we know is never realistically in danger as paranormal claims are bogus and will never realistically be proven by science. Thats the point of it....tell a non-skeptic about the MDC and it all becomes a little clearer. Its an illustrative tool for us skeptics and allows us to (almost immediately) say 'Go on then, prove it....hey, and if you can you could win a million dollars'

By someone winning the million dollars the power of the award will largely disappear. Sure, it may still be there still but its illustrative nature wouldn't work....

"I heard some guy can dowse for water"
"Yeah, So he should take the MDC...."
"Maybe he should, someone else won it after all when they proved the paranormal"
"But he won't because its a crock. No dowser has ever beaten the preliminaries"
"Yeah, but everyone was so sure that audio stuff was rubbish. But it wasn't, was it?"
"Itwas a risky claim to take on in retrospect, unlike dowsing"
"Ahhh, but didn't Randi insist it was paranormal? So stuff like that MAY be true...."

It would be a nightmare and whilst it may show the JREF to be honourable in paying out and so on, it would remove the challenges illustrative ability, harm Randi's credibility (he couldn't be anywhere near as authoratitive after being proven wrong very publically) and generally put skeptics back years.

The same thing would happen if someone took an ESP challenge and won, however thats something so unlikely its not worth worrying about and if it did happen, it would advance science so much to be genuinely worth it.

Would science be advanced if it were shown that certain people, after years of potential 'training' could detect subtle changes in sound frequencies being piped through varying bits of cable?

And my beef with all this is that if measuring devices can detect differences, then its not beyond the realm of impossibility that some human ear may be able to pick these up. Not necessarily through any paranormal means, but just training, familiarity and an acute ear for music.

Its probably complete hogwash and I think anyone wanting to spend a fortune on a cable needs their head checking, but its just such a minor thing to risk so much on
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I understand where you are coming from. but it seems that your position is a reactionary one. I would rather think JREF stakes it's reputation upon integrity rather than wether someone won the million or not. I thought truth was the final intention.
 
joobz said:
I understand where you are coming from. but it seems that your position is a reactionary one. I would rather think JREF stakes it's reputation upon integrity rather than wether someone won the million or not. I thought truth was the final intention.
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Agree with the truth thing. I suppose my problem with this stems in my skepticism of the skeptics on this occasion and my tendancy to err on the side of caution, especially as potentially the whole JREF credibility is at stake.

My problem is thus (in laymans terms)....

You have two wires. One expensive and one VERY expensive. Using scientific measuring devices there are measurable differences between the two wires. Is it possible for someone with a very acute sense of hearing and years listening to various high-end music systems to distinguish *some sort of difference* between music being played with the two different cables.

Chances are there isn't any way of them doing it. Randi certainly has been quite aggresive about that fact, as have others on here.

But what I can't get my head around is the *impossibility* that someone with that acute ear could exist. And perhaps its just that I've not seen enough decent evidence that it would be impossible presented in basic non-sound-engineer terms yet.

I'm confident that the Pear claims that *anyone* can tell the difference is bogus, and if the challenge involved bringing in various random people then I have no problem.

But the challenge relates to some subject-expert, and that tiny degree of doubt over what is possible and whats impossible starts to surface. And because of that it seems a (relatively) trivial thing to risk the MDC on.

I suppose its just my inner head questioning whether the ability to tell the difference would be paranormal or not. If its not, then its not really something for the challenge is it? And I've yet to be convinced.

I know none of that probably makes any sense though! Its late!!
 
Gr8wight said:
They have honestly convinced themselves that because the perceived effect disappears when test controls are imposed, there must be something wrong with the tests.
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Any test should be designed so that the ability is either there or it is not. Testing to see if a speaker cable is designed so that it actually has a different signal than another speaker cable, isn't a very hard test. If it was about testing the cables, it would already be over.

joobz said:
I thought truth was the final intention.
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If that were the case, the matter would already be settled. It is for almost any other issue that is a case of technology. It isn't rocket science to measure audible differences in any signal. It just isn't that hard. We know the frequencies that human beings can hear, we know the amplitudes of a signal that matter, in regards to audible changes, and we can measure both with ease, in any case. This is basic stuff for audio engineers, it isn't even mysterious. You could do it with two pieces of equipment yourself.

It takes less than five minutes.

If the matter isn't sufficiently resolved by scientific measurement and analysis, I described a simple test, that after being conducted, anyone can listen to see for yourself if a difference is audible. Not better or worse, if you can hear a difference.

According to Randi, nobody can hear any difference, it is a paranormal event if you can. This may be the truth of the matter. But you don't need a million dollar challenge to find out.
 
robinson said:
Any test should be designed so that the ability is either there or it is not. Testing to see if a speaker cable is designed so that it actually has a different signal than another speaker cable, isn't a very hard test. If it was about testing the cables, it would already be over.
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Are you that naive to what we are talking about here, no matter how the test is set up they will call fail we they fail, and that fail will come up as, "We got tired" "There was to much stress", well the list is a long one and I'm sure there are many I haven't heard of. They are not interested in the truth, they are only interested in SALES.

Paul

:) :) :)
 
Minkster said:
I suppose its just my inner head questioning whether the ability to tell the difference would be paranormal or not. If its not, then its not really something for the challenge is it? And I've yet to be convinced.

I know none of that probably makes any sense though! Its late!!
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My initial gut reaction was to also be against the test. For the same reasons. However, I must again state that there is something bizarre here. Is there any data on the anjou cables (the $7250 ones?) The only freq data they have are on the commice (~$400).
if you are going to pay 10x as much, you should be able to demonstrate audible differences

This is why I think the best experiment is to compare
bell wire vs. some monster brand(or equivilent), commice and the anjou. You would always have a "negative" control running with each round of experiments.
 
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