Are you buying the right interconnects ?


In the late 90's I purchased a pair of Paradigm Active 20 speakers from Definitive Audio. Prior to buying I purchased a 3 meter pair of MIT interconnects from Audio Advisor. Regular retail price was $700 and they were on sale for 50% off. 
Hooked every thing up and waited a month for a full burn in. Wasn't satisfied. I thought, whats going on here? So I decided to try the Paradigm stock interconnects that came with the speakers. They were twenty feet long and looked really, really cheap like you find in a department store. They cost $20 a pair. I switched them out and was blown away.
The sound from those 20's suddenly sounded, rich, full, very sweet top end and the bass sharpened up to complete focus. I called Paradigm and spoke to an engineer and asked why the sound difference? He said the MIT's are not a match since they are a high impedance/capacitance cable and it has nothing to with the price. He mentioned the impedance/capacitance value numbers vary with different brands. He said you should always talk to the engineers at the amp/preamp companies, and ask which cable values would best match their components. Once you get the specs, go to a local electronic supply house, the one's that sell cables to TV station's and radio station's. Give the measurements to the salesperson to find a match and your good to go. 
audiozen

Showing 3 responses by atdavid

Unless the MIT cable was specifically designed to have high impedance and roll off the highs, which is completely possible, then the highs should not be affected and the bass not at all. TV and Radio stations will tend to buy from specialty distributors, so this advice seems odd. Most could not tell you the capacitance of their cables I suspect.

Teo_Audio, just looked at your website after reading your point and it is not making sense to me. Impedance matching is a factor of matching source impedance and load impedance to the cables. That would be a factor of unit resistance, unit inductance, and unit capacitance, the latter being a factor of conductor distance, shape and dielectric, inductance primarily spacing and material, and unit resistance obviously exclusive to the conductor. With load impedances 20-100K ohms, matching is near impossible if not impossible as connectors to match that do not exist. Ditto on the source impedance but at least close.
Your cables if I am reading this have a liquid at room temperature conductive, it looks to be pretty much the same as what is in a thermometer? That would conduct significantly poorer than a copper or silver conductor, or even that material when solid. That resistance would increase impedance a bit in cable, but I don’t see how that would make a change significant enough for cable matching. Can you shed more light on that?
I hope by confrontation hack jobs you don’t mean my post which asked you to clarify how you can ignore the intrinsic properties of cables, molecular level fluid conductors or not, such as resistance, inductance, capacitance which are critical to the impedance and hence matching. I am not asking you to reveal any secrets in construction, etc. This is basic stuff with regard to parasitic resistance, inductance, and capacitance that will apply no matter the transport methods of electrons. Even superconductors experience impedance and skin effects (actually worse skin effects).


There was no anger in my post, nor are my thought patterns set in stone, so if you would like to communicate on my above paragraph, that would be helpful. You gave a lot of reasons why people will not understand your cable, but you did not give reasons why you can ignore basic parasitic properties that cannot be avoided and lead to the parameters for impedance which you claim your cables solve at least to some level.
teo_audio1,179 posts10-31-2019 1:34pm

I can’t really respond to confrontational hack jabs like that above post, as there is no good answer to angry when it is set in stone.