Just purchased a pair of Nordost Frey 2’s which replaced, still have, WyWires Silver Series. First the WyWires are wonderful cables that throw a huge stage and the first speaker cables I’ve owned that made my speakers disappear.
Well, as good as the WyWires are, which mine are three series down from Alex’s best are nowhere close to the Frey 2. More everything, hearing micro details in recordings I have known for years and great recordings sound like the performers are in my room, average and some not so great recordings sound better. The upgrade was like getting a speaker upgrade, not subtle.
Yes, speaker cables make a difference, and I’ll stick to my earlier comment that speaker cables in my opinion can make the biggest or most noticeable difference between cables. Yes, there is a significant cost difference between these speaker cables, and the difference is there.
I learned early in life that cables do matter. An elementary school friend of mine and I used to make backyard walkie-talkies with two tin cans and some kite string. I found that more expensive kite string sounded better than regular kite string. I never tested to see whether or not the name brand vegetable cans sounded better than the off brand cans. As an adult, I connect my Personas with 12 gauge oxygen free copper wire. That sounds as good as any other wire I’ve tried.
In the last couple of weeks I tried set of Micca 14 cables after reading great reviews of them with some comparing them to $1,000 cables in their systems. I spent about $60 on two 6’ sets because I have a switch in my cables to support my home theater setup.
I enjoyed the sound of the Micca 14 cables as they had essentially no glare/harshness and were truly easy to listen to The trade off was in the clarity and detail and the deep bass lost its definition Sometimes when doing comparisons I don’t have the expected response when I swap back to the baseline. In this case, it was music to my ears. I strongly prefer my Blue Jeans Cable 10AWG speaker cables in my system. I lean towards clarity over warmth, but did appreciate the total lack of edginess with the Micca14 cables
@thynamein all honestly for the life of me I cannot understand why this cable issue is still so controversial in 2023.
I use home brew horn speakers. They were not made by an engineer, don't use expensive drivers, and even tho they bring me a lot of pride and pleasure they are far from having the perfect flat curve or the perfect phase / impulse response. Worse, the room in which they are currently used is a nightmare which I'm slowly trying to deal with. Well, even with all those flaws, differences in cables are so obvious that some cables I have tried barely stayed a week in the system, others led me to re-think the positioning of the system, others highlighted faults in my electronics in a way that had me reconsider that side of things, and so on.
Cales I currently own (or have tried for an extended period of time) include:
- generic 12 gauge OFC multistrand (lack of definition, a bit mushy, exaggerated sibilance, veiled midrange)
-generic silver plated OFC multistrand, 12 gauge (very bright, highlights high mids / low treble in a very artificial way, no real definition or transparency)
-QED "Qudos" original (12ga oFC multistrand with Teflon insulation) much better than the two generic cables, but not neutral nor really transparent, a bit colored, would suit many low cost systems well by adding some "meat on the bones")
-Leedh cable from the 1990's (these came with a pair of Leedh Nazca speakers whose tweeters needed a fix, speakers belong to a friend of mine but have spent many months at my place due to my friend moving to a different place): solid core OFC wire, twisted: more precision, but very dry and unmusical when tried in my system
-Belden 9497: bought that one because it is supposed to do marvels with horns, nice at low levels with great insight into the recording, brings out details, but ragged and rough at high SPLs
-My current cables: fake Nordost Odin from China, individually teflon insulated silver plated OFC solid cores, spiral geometry (completely different from the genuine Nordost cable which is flat): smooth and open, subtle "luminosity" without harshness, wide imaging, took ages to burn in (that was EXTREME and I almost threw them away at some point but I'm glad I didn't)
all those cables sound VERY different. It's IMPOSSIBLE not to hear it. And none was really expensive. The fake Odin is definitely more expensive than Belden but still nowhere near as expensive as true high-end cables. Those are all cheap cables in the grand scheme of things.
I wonder if any of the non-believers ever tried, as an experiment, to wire their speakers with cable A on left channel and cable B on right channel. Choose two cables with different materials and construction, and then see if you can get a coherent, well centered stereo image. Good luck with that!
If you cannot heat any difference in your speaker cables, any of them, your speakers suck. As well as your gear. I don’t really know how to put this mildly
Yes - 100% the do make a difference but they are system dependent as well as dependent on how you hear and perceive things. What works for me in my system may not be the best for you.
If just trying things out for the first time, try out a few different brands that fir your budget. Ideally, listen in your system and then buy the one you like best.
They most certainly do make a difference. I recently moved things around and had to sell my Morrow Audio SP-6'S because they weren't long enough for my current configuration and replaced them with a pair of second hand Canare 4S11 cables and hooked them up bare wire and let me tell you that everything collapsed and sounds thin as all hell with no details! I'm glad that I only paid $40 for the Canare cables. What a disappointment! If anyone has used the Morrows close to the SP-6'S and knows of something close to that sound quality please let me know. I'm disabled now and can no longer afford to buy the Morrows brand new. Any help is appreciated.
After getting my Pioneer SX-1280 back from a full recap, I wanted to upgrade the old "by the roll" 16 gauge wire with 12 gauge. I had already upgraded the crossovers on my HPM-100 200w version speakers which included banana plug posts. So with the addition of 12 gauge push terminal to banana plug adapters on the SX-1280, I purchased Mediabridge 12AWG Ultra Series 12 FT cables. For what I need It is solid. (And the cables are reasonably priced).
Bottomline, make sure what you have is solid as It relates to gauge, material, connectors and you will be fine.
A very respected loudspeaker developer told me that they had put needles into a potato and used that as a loudspeaker cable. They couldn't distinguish the sound of the potato from that of the very respected high priced cables.
Yes, but you neglected to mention that the potato cables used in that comparison are well known to a certain subset of audiophiles as Kartoffel Klassiks, and they perform particulate well with sour cream and chives. 😀
The big problem with all these claims is that few people do proper double blind tests with correct signal levels. This makes almost all tests flawed, and the information that is taken out of these tests meaningless. Nevertheless, the "information" taken out of such tests gets spread.
I have been a professional sound engineer for several decades in one of the biggest recording studios in Switzerland. I've spent a lot of time comparing things (and yes, very expensive things, too). It's very surprising what can be the results of tests. A lot of the time, the results have nothing to do with the gear.
For example, if a signal is slightly louder, you won't perceive that it is louder, but you will likely like it better. And the hearing memory is very short. Our hearing also changes over time. If you have to get up and plug cables etc., you won't be able to tell if the cable sounds different.
A very respected loudspeaker developer told me that they had put needles into a potato and used that as a loudspeaker cable. They couldn't distinguish the sound of the potato from that of the very respected high priced cables.
But if you're happier with a more expensive cable, enjoy it! Your plus of joy is real and will likely have a real effect. And I don't consider it relevant that your referencing the joy to the quality and price of your cable has no base in reality. The joy is real, and that's what matters.
I was using 10ga speaker wire from the hardware store. I thought it sounded good until I bought more expensive oxygen free copper 10ga Speaker cable. The highs were much more defined. More clarity and detail in the midrange. The bass was about the same, but it seemed as if the amp has better decay and recovery of deep notes changing pitch. It seemed faster responding if that makes sense. My budget is tight so I get what I can afford. I have no idea how much $$ =how much better sound or the cut off $$ before you split hairs? I spent about 2X for the new speaker cable. All I know in my case the the of speaker cable did make a difference.
All I can say is ignore the nay sayers and enjoy the hobby. Life is simple. "When you have money, you can make choices, when you have no money, your choices are made for you."
Interesting that in the Mega Test on speaker cable revealed that the preferred cables had a more linear capacitance.
Capacitance has allays been marked as constant and measured at high frequency, In the test, it is shown as somewhat erratic at the low frequency. The less erratic the better sounding?
What a good cable means to me is that it is better than the one I had before while still being affordable as I bi-wire and need 4 meters in length per speaker. By the way I try to buy used to save costs.
As an example, I started with the Chord Clearway interconnects based on Whathifi recommendations, later I upgraded to the Chord Shawline first version. After that I purchased the Shawline next version and out of curiosity asked the seller what he replaced his Shawline with, he said the Audioquest Water and recommended me to get it. So I bought it after a while and it is amazing and better than all the rest.
I also used the Van den hul Clearwater speaker cables which were also recommended by Whathifi and liked how treble sounded especially with female voices, but it was soft on bass. The issue became very obvious after I replaced the speaker original internal wires and crossover connections with the Clearwater and had to reconnect the originals back in a hurry. I watched a YT video on cable comparisons and the Van den hul Inspiration came in third. It was affordable in the used market so I bought it.
Only to find out that the Inspiration was good on bass but weak on treble in my system :) so I shunted it with the Clearwater and now I have the best of the two cables.
@dadawada: would you be able to describe your audio system? I am very curious. FYI, there is a section in Audiogon called "Virtual Systems" where you can upload pictures of your system, describe your components, etc.
Still waiting for your non existent scientific papers and or data.
Well...pull your heads out of the sand for a moment and go do some research...or not...and you will see plenty of people that know a lot more than me who say the same thing and have done actual scientific test to prove it.
I never called anyone "delusional" or "fools". You said that. I simply said I don't agree with everything you are saying and still don't.
You started with the "Trolls" calling I guess because my opinion is threatening to you...
Wallet tight?...well...let's just say I've been very blessed to have been executive of a number of companies that have been acquired and did ok. As executive of a publicly traded company today I still do ok. I'm just more careful with what and how I spend my money...
I don’t care if people think cables have no effect on sound in the same way I don’t care if some think the earth is flat. I find it amusing in a funny way, because in my system cables have a big effect on sound.
But I wonder if those who claim that all cables sound the same have actually tried some good cables and then came to this conclusion.
It’s not about research data and papers. It’s about trying a different good cable and still getting the same sound. Now that would be interesting.
@dadawadait's all about money, for you skeptics, right? All I read is "expensive cables", "it's your money", "a fool and his money", etc etc... looks like the wallet is as tight as the ears canals, for you folks. More seriously, had you ever made actual experiments, you would know that, for example, Belden 9497 cable sounds VERY different from similarly priced, entry level cable. There are people who actually PREFER the sound signature of the Belden cable, to the sound signature of cables costing much more.
What's more, if confirmation bias is indeed a thing, because yes we are humans, it does go BOTH WAYS and you people are not immune to it, as @thynamepointed out. Weirdly, when someone states this (and there is no way around it: it IS a fact, IT DOES GO BOTH WAYS) there's never any answer from the skeptics. You guys usually choose to ignore the remark.
I'll keep calling people "trolls" when they behave as such, and frankly, coming ON THE CABLE FORUM and basically calling us cable believers (and I wouldn't be surprised, in the grand scheme of things, if we are quite the majority) "delusional" or "fools" is nothing else than TROLLING. I've been trying all manners of cables, from the cheapest to the expensive, in the last 25 years and let me say this, if you can't hear the differences between two cables made of different geometry / materials, then how can you hear the difference between two DACs? Between two amplifiers? And HOW, good Lord, HOW DO YOU PICK YOUR ELECTRONICS and HOW DO YOU BUILD YOUR SYSTEMS? do you exclusively look at numbers? Ears are NOT TO BE TRUSTED!
My conclusions here is an ASR sleeper cell has been awoken.
This study is on Single End and XLR Interconnects but the research is out there.
@dadawadawhere is your empirical, scientific data that refutes what we hear. Rather you start spinning just like Amir did when @kota1 engaged him on a similar subject.
Well...pull your heads out of the sand for a moment and go do some research...or not...and you will see plenty of people that know a lot more than me who say the same thing and have done actual scientific test to prove it.
Summary and Conclusions The effect of cables on the sonic performance of an audio system has been a contentious subject for a few decades [31]. The controversy is fueled in part by the paucity of journal-published blind listening tests that prove there is at all an audible difference. Listening tests are tricky and can easily produce both false negative and false positive results; the relevant psychology and neurology is reviewed in [1, 32–36]. Another reason for disbelief in interconnect audibility may be due to a misguided focus on irrelevant measurements such as frequency response, resistance, and nominal reactance, whose resulting signal errors are indeed far below the presumed audibility thresholds.
The present work investigated other kinds of signal alterations during transmission through a cable, besides the above parameters. It was found that noise in some cables exists at audible levels. While the nominal reactive time constants may possibly be too short (<100 ns) for discernibility, the decay times arising from non- ideal effects are not obviously negligible (~1 s), especially when multiple occurrences combine along the audio chain. Within the audio community at large, there tends to be a misunderstanding and underestimation of the spectacular capabilities and extraordinary sensitivity of human hearing: For example, the ear can detect a cochlear basilar-membrane amplitude of ∼1 pm [37–39] and has a temporal resolution in the microseconds that has no direct connection with the maximum audible frequency.
The present work found clear systematic differences in the electrical performance of interconnect cables of different grades. Besides the electrical signal alterations studied here, vibrational effects (“microphonics”) may also potentially affect cable performance [17]. However unlike loudspeaker cables, interconnects lie in high impedance circuits and carry low currents. Thus they have smaller magnetic forces and induced voltages from mechanical motion. Another potential source of signal degradation in cables is triboelectric noise from internal motion; but it is estimated to be 180 dB below typical signal levels [45].
Previous work [1] demonstrated the audibility of cable pathways, pointing to differences in RF noise pickup as the likely cause. But it left open the question of whether the noise differences were due to shielding or balanced versus unbalanced topologies. The present work sheds light on that question by showing that its unbalanced cable S (of the same brand as cable A in [1]) is almost equally quiet. Furthermore, there are clear time-domain performance differences between the various interconnects tested. While cable manufacturers undoubtedly make a variety of measurements on their own products during the course of their development, the present results are of value to the consumer because they provide measurements across different brands made by a non-commercial entity.
Human nature is predisposed to a self-fulfilling prophecy...you believe therefore it is true.
And you completely immune to to those shortcomings of the human nature? What you are describing is confirmation bias, which by definition, goes both ways.
The truth is if you normalize the raw data presented the actual difference is about .1dBu or less...hardly perceptible and certainly well within the range of other issues not accounted for in a less than controlled environment
Human nature is predisposed to a self-fulfilling prophecy...you believe therefore it is true. You bought into the notion that a very expensive cable makes a difference in your quality of sound. So naturally when you listen you hear a difference. I'm not saying you don't hear a difference. I'm saying is that difference actually producing a higher quality sound...more close to the original...or if it is something else you are perceiving.
Look, if you believe cables make a difference to you then by all means feel free...it's your money. But if someone comes in here with an alternative position my advice to you is stop with the immature "Troll" statements.
Hiding behind that old science claim, are we? Want some whine to go with those sour grapes?
The first and most important aspect of science is observation. It's done through our senses. What you're referring to is data collected and tabulated to be referred to at a later date. And, what you're doing is using hubris as a shield of sorts to justify your preconceived notion that everything can be measured and can't be improved on. Quite the echo chamber you dwell in, eh? That would account for why they all say the same thing, like a mantra chanted by a cult.
Nature of science
Observations yield what scientists call data. Scientists analyse and interpret data in order to figure out how the data informs their hypotheses and theories. Data can be represented by detailed graphs or models, but at the most basic level, data is just recorded observations.
You need to remember that the word is not the thing, the map is not the territory, it's all an approximation of an observation done scientifically by, in this case, the listener.
Well...pull your heads out of the sand for a moment and go do some research...or not...and you will see plenty of people that know a lot more than me who say the same thing and have done actual scientific test to prove it.
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