Cable curmudgeon


I'm not an 'audiophile" but I like to think I have a good ear having been a professional musician (principal wind player in major symphony orchestras) for 50 years. A number of years ago going into an excellent audio equipment store I talked with, what seemed, a knowledgeable salesman.  Being a musician experienced in audio systems but not expert on all the equipment out there I had some questions concerning high (over-priced?) end cables. The salesman assured there was an audible differencet in a demo room switching back and forth etc.  After a few minutes I noticed the sound coming out of only one channel.  He complemented me on my "good ear."  Hmmm? A few years later when setting up my home system I investigated speaker cables. Two sets of Monster, stranded standard cable, solid core copper (used for alarm system) attached with like connecters. There was a difference.  However, not in terms of better or worse: bass and treble were acceptable as was clarity loud and soft.  Differences were esthetic- like asking "whose the best tenor" (I like Plácido).  Now I know as a musician used to live (i.e. un-amplified) music that all I hear coming out of a loud speaker is perforce ersatz.  But most everything today comes out of a loud speaker whether a rock concert or a hi-fi system so perhaps my opinion is curmudgeonly. But, for me, spending oodles of money on hyped cables, well... I  liked the solid core for my alarm system- still do.

 

exflute

If you ask this forum which cable is best you get multiple options. 

There is no one answer as people like the one they currently use but are always looking for a better one. 

This tells me that there is no one best cable or people would tend to generally gravitate to a specific brand. 

 

Let the opinions continue. 

@vanson1 isn't your statement true for all audio equipment - turntables, speakers, amplifies, preamps. phone stages, streamers and cassette decks?

I view everything is a compromise based on criteria and a high impact criteria is cost.

 

Also a flutist (though not professional). My take on this is:

- The data on cables does not show anything that would explain audible differences between cheap and expensive cables except if the connection is bad (e.g. oxidation) or the cables are very long.

- Blind tests generally do not show that people can reliable detect differences between cables (but if you ask which one they prefer they’ll tell you).

- Virtually all of the people who sell, and most of the people who buy, expensive cables claim to hear differences.

- What and how people hear is extraordinarily impacted by cognition and context. (remember the experiment with Nigel Kennedy playing in the subway? Or all the auditory illusions where people hear very different words in songs?)

One side of this debate thinks that some people are naturally "Golden Ears" and/or that critically listening trains you to notice differences that non-hobbyists either don’t notice or react to unconsciously. The other side thinks that fools and their money are soon parted.

My take is that you buy a stereo system for nothing but pleasure. If you buy and listen to music through $10k speaker cables, and get $10k worth of pleasure out of it, you got your money’s worth, regardless of whether the positive differences you hear come from some so far undetected physical difference in the electronic chain, or from the way your cognition and your hearing interact. If not, not.

BTW, you're not Loren Lind, are you?

 

 

I wouldn’t use colored components with rolled off highs to assess any cables.

How do you know the Mac system 'failings' were not the cables? One AQ swap changed it from beautiful to beastly.

 

 Mac/B&W D3 combos ... simply gloss over too much detail to be useful in accurately determining the subtle yet critical differences between cables.

Not my experience at all. While not my cup of tea, Mac makes some lovely gear and stellar systems can be assembled with the right choices of LS & cables.

 

Whenever a customer wanted to hear the differences in cables I deferred to other more neutral and transparent electronics so the differences could be more readily heard.

Wasn't that rather pointless? Since cables interact with the hardware and the effects are largely system dependent, unless you are demoing on similar equipment and program the result could be WOW, meh or BLECH when the poor schlub gets them home... hence the burn-in scam.

 

Well those are just silly arguments I’m not even going to bother responding to.  Let’s just say we live on different planets and leave it at that.