Can we objectively rate speaker cables?

I like the reviews of cables in HIFICRITIC. They have been quite helpful to me. But cables are very system specific. That said, my system is quite fluid and the same ones usually sound better when I change amps, speakers, sources. My experience has been, unfortunately, that the best sounding cables are expensive. But not all expensive cables produce sound constant with their cost. On the other hand I have tried some of the GIANT KILLER wires and found MIDGET DISCOMFORTERS a more apt description. You pays your money and you takes your choice, if you go in believing there is no difference you are unlikely to hear any. The advance of audio has mainly consisted in discovering that things we thought made no difference in fact do. Remember "all amps sound the same"?" All turntables sound the same"? Wire is not magic but it performs a complex function that is still not perfectly understood. If a low powered , high distortion SET tube amp can be regarded as the acme of performance by respected listeners then the fact that wire can make a difference should be no surprise. I will not even go into the difficulty of sorting out preferences for one kind of sound or another. A friend of mine and I can usually agree on the characteristics of a cable but often disagree on which is the "better" one. Arthur Salvatore has a lot to say about almost everything, most of it interesting but also mostly around the bend and narrow in focus. He mostly focuses on extremely exotic items but when he descends to the level of things that you might actually have heard I find his judgement somewhat strange. I also like and use the Denon 103 but find it strange that he never mentions the Denon 304, which has far greater detail resolution and is a better cartridge.

Jenny,

Since the way a cable behaves has an awful lot to do with the equipment at both ends it seems to be a pointless endeavor to try to attribute individual sonic properties to the cables themselves. Arthur Salvatore has a lot to say about cables and reviewers that proclaim wonderful sonic qualities about higher priced cables.

Applauding your idea to bring some coherency to the confusing subject of choosing cables, we will be stomped by the variability of our systems. OTOH, your attributes, presented as opposites (warm-analytical) may help simplify things.

I would suggest we stick to characterising "objective" attributes: construction, materials used, shielded/non-shielded etc. For example, single core flat IC cable, copper, has a reasonably neutral-warmish sound (06) and good tonal balance, etc.

BTW, closed sound-stage & slow, both, are often due to restricted upper frequencies.

Hi Jenny,

I like your idea, but I think someone will have to put a lot of discriptive text in place to make everything clear.

For example what does "warm" mean? Does everyone view that the same way?

Another example of how confusing subjective observations can get; doesn't "slow" also relate to "warm" and doesn't "fast" also get somewhat into the same space as "detailed"?

If someone can give some very detailed and precise definitions to the end points of the scales then perhaps this will work. I certainly agree that it would be nice to have some sort of scale to allow one person to review a cable and have everyone else know where that fits in with other cables.

ROVA