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

No no no! It is about the claimed abilities of the cables! Or ears. Or something. It isn't about cables, it is about the claims made about the cables! We need to test the claims! Not the cables!
 
robinson said:
I notice the challenge is still about a person, rather than the cables. If it was about the cables, the facts of the matter, anybody could test that. In fact, why not just test the cables and find out?

You don't need any one person to test technology.
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Do you go after the gun used in the crime, or the criminal?

You go after the guy who says there is a difference or the test is worthless.

Paul

:) :) :)
 
robinson said:
No no no! It is about the claimed abilities of the cables! Or ears. Or something. It isn't about cables, it is about the claims made about the cables! We need to test the claims! Not the cables!
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That makes no sense at all, it is the cables that the claims are made for, you have to test the cable and the person that makes claims for that cable, or the people who buy into is BS will call Foul.

Paul

:) :) :)

Which they will do anyway when they fail the test.
 
I still think that even if the makers do dodge the test, that performing an objective test with some everyday audiophiles would be invaluable in making the case clear. There doesn't even need to be any financial reward involved.
Hang on a sec, that is what's happening, isn't it?
 
robinson said:
I notice the challenge is still about a person, rather than the cables. If it was about the cables, the facts of the matter, anybody could test that. In fact, why not just test the cables and find out?

You don't need any one person to test technology.
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Robinson, you have asked for this same clarification several times, and not last time, but the time before, you said you understood it.

The claim is not about the cables - it is about the fact that individuals claim to be able to hear a difference that should not be perceptible to a human ear's range of hearing. The test is to see whether these individuals have supernatural hearing abilities.
 
Dan O. said:
It may not be necessary to have supernatural hearing. We have lots of data on the ability to hear pitch and loudness and it is primarily that data that forms the basis of the counter claim that the cables are good enough that nobody should be able to hear a difference.

What we don't have as much data on is the ability to hear complex phase and coloring patterns such as used in locating sounds in the 3D space around us. When a listener has trained themselves to interpret these patterns for a particular stereo setup, how much of a change is necessary to break or distort the pattern recognition?
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You just don't seem to understand, the claims are many (many means a lot) orders of magnitude (well over a thousand times) below what humans can hear. And yes we do have the knowledge on hearing, because that is how the development of MP3 and AAC came about, you can not throw away data without knowing now hearing works. The only ones who claim we don’t know about hearing are those selling skin-oil.

Paul

:) :) :)
 
circuit_bent said:
People seem to forget that the JREF is about more than just the MDC. Can't the idea of near $10,000 vs. $50 cables be debunked? Will that not benefit general understanding of the fraud?
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Sure, but this thread is about the MDC. If this was about technical testing of audio cables, it would have to be put into another forum.
 
This is a silly test. There are differences in cables, it's easy to spot with good headphones, but its a totally different matter are these differences true to the signal. Any cable can color the sound one way or another. Impedance mismatch will make obvious changes in bass quantity even though the cable will measure the same way etc.


Snake oil. It's funny that snake oil salesmen may have been onto something. There's an article at sciam.com, but I can't post the link because I have under 15 posts.
 
I think we are straying off the topic of the MDC as regards PEAR Cable. Can we please ensure that all posts in this forum section remain strictly on-topic to the Challenge.

ETA: Posts since moved to technology forum.
 
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Here is what I am wondering? Is Pear Cable really selling what they say they are selling? Has anybody dissected one of their cables and looked at the materials to see if it really is what they claim?

Because a fraudulent product would in this case sound every bit as good as what they claim to be selling here.
 
BenBurch said:
Here is what I am wondering? Is Pear Cable really selling what they say they are selling? Has anybody dissected one of their cables and looked at the materials to see if it really is what they claim?

Because a fraudulent product would in this case sound every bit as good as what they claim to be selling here.
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Or perhaps someone could demonstrate the frequency response graph on their website was inaccurate ? If that graph was true pretty much any one of us could pass a DBT.
 
WDB said:
Or perhaps someone could demonstrate the frequency response graph on their website was inaccurate ? If that graph was true pretty much any one of us could pass a DBT.
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How, exactly, are we supposed to do that? Go out and buy a set of those insanely priced cables and make our own measurements?

The effect of speaker cables on frequency response can be calculated quite easily, and those calculations verified by measurements. The effects are tiny all the way from 0 to 20kHz. I have no idea how they got that plot, but I'm extremely skeptical of it. It looks like they put a largish capacitor in parallel with the competitor's cable.
 
WDB said:
Or perhaps someone could demonstrate the frequency response graph on their website was inaccurate ? If that graph was true pretty much any one of us could pass a DBT.
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Not really. The differences were above 10kHz and only a couple of dB. There isn't much musical content at those frequencies and with such a small loss, the difference may be inaudible.

The difference, if any, could easily be made up with a graphic EQ, but that would go against the audiophile religion.
 
bjb said:
Not really. The differences were above 10kHz and only a couple of dB.
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Not really dBs. At around 20kHz in that graph the difference (red) reaches only 0.45 volts. What that might translate into dBs is not totally clear from that graph.
 
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