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 6 responses by teo_audio

He wasn't a reviewer for Stereophile when he cut that cable apart....

many people have cut cables apart, btw...

re the idea of matched impedance ...device to device as done by the cable, this can be handled differently:

In a fluid metal as a conductive pathway... the connectivity is like an arc strike and is a dynamic flow matching system.

In a wire, this cannot happen. But with a room temperature fluid alloy (fluid at the molecular level, like water) --- it does.

It is not a perfect system, but it is notably better than 'wire'. This is just the straight up physics of it.
Read up on the conductivity of conductive molecular level fluids.

You might get somewhere. You might be reading for a while, though.....

An interesting point is that even Wikipedia tells you that it falls under the umbrella of QED.

Interestingly enough, that is a recent change in the understanding of the physics of it. It is still evolving.

But wait..there’s more. And more.....

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.

To put the shoe on the other foot, tell me why wire is better? Or that somehow wire is perfect as conductors go? where and how does wire ’fall down’?

all of that at the molecular level, please, in layman’s terms.

One had better be up on conductivity at the molecular level, and what is in the texts is pretty darned primitive ( decades old in most cases) compared to what is understood at the leading edges of it...

And if lets say, I did understand it quite well, could it even be translated to commonspeak, at all? And, in such a case, is there any one on the other end of the line.... that is ready to ’get it’?

Do I explain is successfully to one in a crowd of 100 and get stabbed to death as a charlatan by the other 99?

And, when I do that, how many patents do I throw away to those who are silently listening and have the intellectual chops to see it for what it is? Do I end up like Oliver Lodge and get cheated out of a fortune?

I’m telling people it is there, and that it is real and it is superior in some important, fundamental ways. For sane, thinking people... that is more than enough.
I hope by confrontation hack jobs you don’t mean my post
No, not at all....
Mechanical tuning of systems (any component thereof) does not have to cost money. 

But careful selection of materials and material attributes is suggested.