2. cables
  3. 1055523706

Do you really need ultra expensive cables?

I was always told that you need to spend about 30-40% overall budget on cables to have good sounds. To some equiqment manufractures, that is not the case.

For those of you who visited McIntosh at HE 2003. What do you think about their Stereo set-up? Do you reallized that they spend less than 3% on cables? Not that they can't afford them. But their arguement was that if your equiqments are so nice, and so musical, why do you have to depends on cables to improve sounds. What do you think of that?

Thanks!
rodney01

Showing 2 responses by abex

abex
322 posts
 
Listening to my system I notice that Cables have effects like Decay of Cymbals lasting longer with certain cables than others.Vocals can sound veiled at low listening levels with certain IC's.Snap and Pop of drums are not right with others.

Things like this showup when the synergy in cables to system parts is not correct.

I wish I had the $$ to try some of the more expensive Cables,but looking for the least expensive choices I decided to try 47Labs OTA Cable and do my whole system with it.I recently had my speakers internally wired with it.

The only place I was unable to use it was as a digital cable and decided to use cryo treated Beldan between Transport and DAC.

Results have been good.The speakers are a pain to breakin though as they are Metal Drivers and the OTA takes around 200 hrs to breakin.At the 100Hr. level at present.

The best Cable I have had a chance to hear was Transparent which went for $2800 for the Speaker Cable & IC's.To much for my pocket.
abex
322 posts
 
When I listened to a system with expensive Transparent Cable the thing I noticed was that it was just allowing the music to come through .I thought this was what neutral ,eant .There was no coloration except for what the system had in it for components.

The downside of it was there was a veiling of vocals which I interpreted to be from the amplificatio.Beside that fact I thought the system to be highly musical,but I could never live with that signature of vocals which I assotiate with Mif-Fi gear.

Neutrality I thoink should be what is aimed for in cables.If you can accomplish that then you can pickup where there might be component problems which can be eliminated.

At $3000 for the cables that is what I would like from cables and if I can find that in less expensive alternatives then I want them.Within reason that is.

The Cables I am using at present are neutral ,but I feel there might be better where Bass is concerned,but I will narrow the reason that is down.Getting closer everyday.

The Mids and Treble regions are spot on.Decay is the best I have experienced yet in my system. I think slight lack in Bass is due to my amp.Will know more when my new amps get here.
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