In December 2011,I wrote that High Fidelity cables led by cable designer Rick Schultz was putting together a new cable.The cable came to market as CT-1.The CT-1 has FINALLY made it into my system!I had obtained a version of the prototype that Rick had been working on.It blew my previous reference Genesis by Virtual Dynamics.I thought I had finally found my end with this cable.This prototype delivered to my ears "Nirvana".Could I be at the end of my quest for the ultimate sound? No. I received two pairs of CT-1 to replace my prototypes.They went into the system this past Friday.Unable to dedicate time until Sunday listening,I stole a few moments,ducking away from company with anticipation.My guest could tell even with the music set for"ambiance"something was intriguing and I was in for a treat! The experience: First off,CT-1 was very user friendly.Installation was simple;the cable is very nice and light.The female RCA fit beautifully unlike any I had found in other cable.It was secure and reliable.It seemed much thought was dedicated to developing a designer fit to an aesthetically stunning RCA connector.Install entailed a few wiggles to ensure what seemed like a compression fit on my RCA. It was 2-3 hrs. for the 1st step of break in to be complete.At that point I had something different!Today,although they only have 10-12 hrs. on them,I can`t put into words how much my system has transformed.Believe me,I loved my prototypes.However....there is simply no comparision. The clarity and sound is so natural. The soundstage is like nothing I ever heard.Resoulution is breathtaking and inner detail is simply hard to believe possible. The sound has transended and now it simply does not seem as thought I have speakers. My system is musicians playing music. I am told with time they will improve and I trust that as it was revealed with the prototypes.I wanted to share my thoughts with you that now. Unequivocally,a testament to High Fidelity,as the name declares. High Fidelity Cables for me,the last word on it,after 12 hours! Truly Amazing
Fplanner2000, the only thing I did not evaluate was the HF power cords, so I look foward to what you have to say when you get the other urr HF power cord on your system, I can imagine they take a very long time to burn-in, what is your estimate that they take?
No wonder audiophiles in general are looked at as ignorant nut jobs. The average Joe with common sense, audio enthusiasts with basic electronics knowledge and of course engineers know the cable "performance" claims written about in this thread are complete nonsense and or shills at work trying to fool the ignorant into buying over priced wires.
In all fairness, all high end expensive wire makers have a job to do to convince some to buy. They only need a few believers to make money though I would bet. Its a fact that profit margins on wires most people would buy are huge. Accessories like wires have ALWAYS been where audio dealers make the most money. Electronics the least, and speakers somewhere in between. I know this from having worked in multiple shops that were part of larger chains years ago. It was a well documented FACT back then. All items we sold had cost and retail price listings that indicated which items were most profitable and not. I doubt it has changed much over the years, except to have been taken to new extremes in regards to asking price.
When one has a 5 or 6 digit system to start with , it seems to only make sense that some reasonable percentage be spent on the wires, power conditioning, etc. HF offers unique products in that category no doubt. I am happy for those who can afford such systems and enjoy them. The one or two pure intolerant shills on this thread are probably NOT doing the company any favors though.
Friends, Fellow enthusiasts, others... suspicion of the unknown is a typical human trait, perfectly normal. A major cause of mans inhumanity to man but, it's who we are. I share my experiences, thoughts and feelings on High Fidelity Cables Magnetic conduction products here because this is that thread,,, and I have never been more impressed!!!. Truth seekers will search out the truth as I invite all of you to do. Truth would be in the hearing of HF gear for yourself. I'm ok with those who have their reasons NOT to hear the truth. Hey man!, you are where you are.Right? Bottom line for me is that my music is the Sweetest it's ever been and Wonderful beyond what I could have ever imagined. Tell me how your system is sounding? Cheers Me
JMC- I have an all-tube system (VAC) and have NOT experienced any db drop since adding my HF UR cables. There was a bit in the beginning, but as the cables broke in (2 weeks) I got the gain back. It was pretty minor. IF yours doesn't come back,I would call Rick and see what he thinks. He will probably have a solution for you if the break-in doesn't solve your issue.
Hi Tsushima1, I have only had the opportunity to try the CT-1E in both regular and low resistance. The low resistance offered a slight improvement in output, but negligible at best. Rick was very helpful in assisting; explaining additional time and break-in may be necessary, but the trial period of 3 weeks ran it's course...I returned the cables.
@everyone. I post less because I stay away from the negative energy on this thread put out by people who doubt the enjoyment by the many other high fidelity owners. Until you hear and live with them you just wouldn't understand. @all high fidelity owners the nay Sayers just are not going to get it. Blah blah blah and attack and accuse and etc. All I can say to them is quit pocket watching. People spend the money they make on what they like and if they are happy with it so be it. If you think someone is not genuine then why do you think the rest of us are so stupid that we need to be saved by you. Lol. Look high end audio is about getting the best sound you can and so far this product has done that for the high fidelity owners. End of conversation. If something else does it for you then go buy it and keep buying it. Go to that thread and add something useful. This thread is a high fidelity thread that we like to use to tell others our actual impressions on this product. Good or bad. Mostly good. Lol. So if you want to attack people go do it on facebook or something. "Don't kill my Vibe" I can feel your negative energy from three planets away. Lol.
02-20-15: Jmcgrogan2 After positive experiences with the HFC interconnects, I finally received a pair of CT-1E speaker cables today. I noticed a dramatic drop in output levels. As Siddh points out, they are quite exceptional, aside from the large drop in gain. However, that may turn out to be a deal breaker for me too.
John (and others who are experiencing a similar issue), perhaps the experience Rlawry reported on 1-16-15 involving his HFC phono cables has some relevance:
01-16-15: Rlawry Previously I reported on this thread that I bought a used 2 meter CT-1 cable to try for signals between my turntable with Lyra cartridge outputting 0.5 mV and my Manley Steelhead Phono Stage. When I replaced my previous carbon nanotube Bybee filter cables with the CT-1 I got no signal at all from one channel and a weak one from the other.... I contacted HF cables and was told the cable connectors were probably contaminated with metallic debris, making for a bad connection, attenuating the weak phono signals. So I sent them back for cleaning and received them today. I tried the cables again after letting them settle for a few hours.
The results were completely different this time, and in a word, otherworldly.... If you think your cables might need the contacts cleaned, HF Cables can send you some Silly Putty to glob onto the connectors to effectively remove the metallic debris.
Well under an ohm of contact resistance would be audibly significant in a speaker cable, although several ohms or more would most likely be necessary to cause the 10 vs. 2 o'clock difference in volume control position you described.
Also, if you or one of the others experiencing this issue has a multimeter, it would certainly be interesting if you were to disconnect the cable and measure the resistance of each of its conductors between one end and the other. If you are equipped to do that, also check to see if there is an essentially infinite resistance between the two conductors, as would be the case with nearly all conventionally designed cables.
Jmcgrogan2, I don't know if you recall but when I first received my CT-1U speaker cables I also noticed right away a slight drop in volume with my Plinius SA Reference amp. After just now reading Fplanner2000 comment, it just dawned on me that I never noticed that after several weeks my volume also returned back to what it had originally been. I'm guessing that when you received your speaker cables you used the cleaning puddy on them as Al suggested but I'm guessing it might not help this issus, but a few weeks might. Let us know.
So these cables are defective by design, unless lowering the output signal is what you think a cable should do. I guess a cable that interferes with the signal that much would sound a bit different, so easily heard difference must mean some magical improvements? I understand now. Carry on and enjoy!
My experience with CT-1 and CT-1U cables are similar to the others' here. I found the CT-1s to have a slightly lower output than the cables I replaced but it then seemed the gain increased somewhat over time. Same issue with the CT-1Us I now have after replacing the CT-1s. I went from about a volume control position of about 9:00 to 9:30 but it now seems after a few weeks that I am back down to the original position, although my preamp has a lot of gain, something like 38V maximum. It is possible that if your phono stage or preamp has minimal gain that you could indeed be required to increase gain from 9 to 2, but I suspect a problem with the cables instead. The U is a big improvement over the regular CT-1 in the usual parameters, speed, detail, bass, dynamics, dimensionality, but still great liquidity and musicality.
Trav it is a different design using an alloy designed to support the magnetic conduction principle of these wires. It might lower signal levels in some cases as related as part of that. But I don't think it would be fair to label them defective by design. All designs have advantages and disadvantages.
Wow, John!! No wonder these things sound different, and no wonder they lower the gain of the system.
I would suggest asking HFC if those numbers seem right, or if they are indicative of a defect. If they are correct, and if the 5 ohm impedance spec of your speakers is in the right ballpark for most frequencies and is mostly resistive in terms of its phase angles, it would mean that roughly 2/3 [actually (5.6 + 5.8)/(5.6 + 5.8 + 5)] of the voltage the amp is putting out at any given instant would be dropped across the cables rather than appearing across the speaker terminals. That's a loss of more than 10 db! Although given that you are using a tube amp having a significant output impedance, that would be partially/slightly compensated for by an increase in the amp's output voltage that would occur (everything else being equal) as a result of it seeing a less demanding load of 16.4 ohms rather than 5 ohms.
BTW, how long are your particular cables? As I'm certain you realize, cable resistance is proportional to length, everything else being equal.
And yes, I think it would be well worth trying the 8 ohm tap and seeing how it sounds.
John, since there seems to be a big difference in impedance between the two cables, have you tried measuring or at least listening to see if there are differences in volume between the two speakers, and then swapping R and L cable pairs to see if it changes the other way? I would think that you would also have an volume imbalance that you could hear, i.e. the soundstage would be skewed in one direction. I wonder what normal impedance the cables really have. BTW, you mentioned that one of the spades was locked in the end of the cable end. Is the high impendance cable this one? I still think there is a problem with the cables that is causing the big loss in gain (oxymoron?).
Rlawry, I could be wrong but I interpreted John's indication that "my other speaker cables measured ~ 0 ohms" to refer to a completely different set of non-HFC cables. I'm sure he'll clarify, but I suspect he was saying that he only measured the HFC cables on one channel, his "quick check" not including taking the time to disconnect the cables on the other channel. And of course the difference between the two conductors on the one channel was minor (5.6 vs. 5.8 ohms, some of that difference perhaps simply being due to the resolution and accuracy of the meter itself).
Almarg, yes, you are probably correct. I did check the impedance of my Intuitive Design Cables and they deflect my multimeter needle a little. Obviously their impedance is well under 1 ohm. I cannot imagine the HF cable being a 6 ohm series impedance, so they must be defective or in need of cleaning.
Al, 3.8 ohms on each 2' run of CT1 speaker wire here.
The CT1e would have a Wave guide magnet added. They would be trying for magnetic effect vs. resistance, but has always wondered about the effects of higher resistance.
Magnetic or otherwise it still must conduct electricity.
I would think the material used as the conductor would allow one to determine the expected resistance in that resistance or conductivity parameters of various materials including copper silver and metals like nickel and steel that would be used in a my metal like alloy are well known.
In the case of these products one might even measure with and without magnets to compare if the magnets were removable. Or if the alloy used is known then the difference between its textbook resistance and what is measured could be attributed to the advertised magnetic conduction effect.
Or if they just work and sound great then it really does not matter how they measure I suppose.
+1, Calvinj. We come to a forum like this to share our experience, learn from the experience of others and then make an informed decision before we go out there to make a purchase. After that, if your purchase synergises well with your system, then you just got lucky. If not, you can sell it off and try something else. There is really no need to shout about a particular product/brand which may not synergise well in someone else's system, and denigrate the opinions of others. Audio is all about emotions and hence, it is a very personal hobby. As oft repeated, to each his own. Let's all enjoy this hobby in the most peaceable way. Cheers! J.
@jon2020 I agree with you. Positive or negative at least the person could say they have heard it and what they like or didn't like. Too much of the non-sound related talk for me. Im going to listen to my music instead of all that other stuff.
Is it out of bounds to discuss the actual measurable electrical properties of the product to try to understand things better? Especially in the context of trying to understand a reported issue?
If so fine. It's not worth rattling swords about. We all like what we like. In the end nothing else really matters. 🙏
Mapman, Just so you know, I was not referring to you. I think it is very informative that you brought up the measurements. Now that I know it may drop the gain, I would think twice about purchasing these cables before a home audition. Cheers! J.
ACman, thanks for providing the additional data point. 3.8 ohms for 2 feet; wow! What kind of speakers are you using? The volume loss resulting from a given cable resistance will, as you probably realize, be inversely proportional to the impedance of the speaker.
In any event, from a technical standpoint a couple of things seem clear to me, assuming that these high resistances are a consequence of the design and not of defects, and assuming that these resistances, which are at a frequency of zero Hz (i.e., the DC that is provided by the meters), are not somehow magically negated at frequencies of 20 Hz and higher:
1)The sonic consequences of the resistance will vary considerably depending on how the impedance of the particular speaker varies as a function of frequency. The output impedance and drive capabilities of the amplifier that is being used will also be relevant factors, meaning specifically that tube amps and solid state amps will tend to interact differently with these cables, and meaning also that due to their differing output impedances different tube amps will also tend to interact differently.
2)Putting aside subjective preferences, those kinds of resistances cannot, as I see it, be considered to be consistent with ***accurate*** transfer of the amplifier's output signal to the speaker's input.
I should add that all of this just applies to speaker cables. Under any reasonable circumstances the resistance of line-level interconnects will be inconsequential, because it will be a miniscule fraction of the load impedance. The same goes for phono cables, aside perhaps for those few situations in which certain LOMC cartridges may be loaded with very low resistances (e.g., tens of ohms).
I checked the DC resistance of my 2.5m CT-1U speaker cables and they barely deflected the multimeter needle, indicating a resistance of far under 1 ohm. This is more in line of what I would expect, not requiring a power amp to drive a large series resistance.
Hi everyone, I have read the unfortunate post about the speaker cables here,I had the same exsperience, does the power cables do the same db drop in volume?, from what alot of you have said, the power cables is the biggest jump of performance over the other types of cables of HF, I do like what power cables are capable of doing,I have seen where alot of cable brands are known for their power cables than any thing else, stage 3 Kracken comes to mind, cheers.
Strange indeed, John. And I would emphasize that what matters is the total series resistance of both conductors, which would be 11.4 ohms for your 2.5 meter CT-1E, 7.6 ohms for Acman's 2 meter CT-1, and probably less than 1 ohm for Roger's 2.5 meter CT-1U.
Roger, I want to make sure I understand what you mean when you refer to the multimeter needle "barely deflecting." To measure low resistances with most analog multimeters one would set the mode to R x 1 (or some such nomenclature), then touch the meter leads together, then adjust some knob on the meter such that the meter reads 0 ohms, and then make the measurement. The 0 ohm reading will usually correspond to deflection of the needle from its rest position at the left end of the scale, all the way to a position at the right end of the scale where 0 ohms would be marked.
So a resistance of a fraction of an ohm would result in the needle deflecting nearly all the way across the scale, to a point close to where 0 ohms is indicated. Does that all sound consistent with the measurements you performed? If not, I'd be curious to know the make and model number of the meter.
Acman, I'm interpreting that your last post just above was a clarification of the one just above it, rather than an indication of a second measurement at a different point. Is that correct?
If that is not the correct interpretation, you would be saying that you measured the same 13.1 ohms for the speaker itself and for the speaker plus the wires. That would not make sense, given the 8 ohm nominal impedance of the speaker, and also given the 3.8 ohms you measured for each of the conductors in the cable.
If my interpretation is correct, and the 13.1 ohms just applies to a measurement at the amp end of the cable with the cable connected to the speaker, everything seems consistent. The wires total 2 x 3.8 = 7.6 ohms, and the DC resistance of your nominally 8 ohm speaker itself would be 13.1 - 7.6 = 5.5 ohms, which seems reasonable.
Almarg, How would all these people be able to measure the capacitance of their speaker cable's and Interconect's?, That would be interesteing to know these measurements.
Almarg, I went back to confirm that I did the resistance measurement correctly and now I cannot get the needle to move at all from the left when holding the probes together. It does read the correct voltage when measuring household current but something seems to have changed. I guess I need a new DMM, after which I will re-measure the cable resistance. Not sure what happened.
Thanks, Roger. That all seems to point to the battery in the multimeter being dead, or possibly to the terminals which mate with the battery being corroded.
In many and probably most analog multimeters the internal battery is just used for resistance measurements, while not being used for voltage or current measurements. If the meter circuits are not receiving a reasonable voltage from the battery, the needle will not move.
Most analog multimeters have a removable cover over the battery compartment, which when removed will provide access to the battery (or batteries).
Hi, Al: I came to the same conclusion and changed the battery, which fixed the problem. So I re-measured the cable resistance and it is right around 5 ohms, so apparently John's and Acman's cables are functioning properly, at least the resistance. I am surprised at these readings but perhaps the normal laws of standard electrical properties do not apply when currents are modified by magnetic fields. Sorry for the poor scientific method here but eventually I got it right.
02-22-15: Audiolabyrinth Almarg, How would all these people be able to measure the capacitance of their speaker cable's and Interconect's?, That would be interesteing to know these measurements.
Various manufacturers of electronic test equipment offer both hand-held and bench type capacitance meters and "LCR meters" (LCR meters can measure inductance as well as capacitance and resistance). Also, some of the better digital multimeters can measure capacitance, although I suspect that in many or most of those cases the resolution and accuracy of the DMM would not be good enough to make meaningful measurements of cables, when measuring capacitance. And I suspect that capacitance meters and especially LCR meters providing resolution and accuracy suitable for measuring cables are likely to cost at least hundreds of dollars, and perhaps thousands for a really high quality instrument.
In any event, regarding the HFC speaker cables I would feel safe in assuming that the capacitance of any speaker cable in which the two conductors are physically separate (i.e., not in the same jacket, and not physically joined together) would be low enough to be insignificant. Inductance is more likely to be important with that kind of cable, especially if cable length is long (since inductance, like capacitance and resistance, is proportional to length), and especially if the speakers happen to be electrostatics (since the impedance of electrostatics typically decreases to low values at high frequencies, while the impedance presented by an inductance rises in proportion to frequency, resulting in that impedance becoming increasingly significant relative to speaker impedance as frequency increases).
It's a completely different story when it comes to line-level analog interconnects, btw. With those cables resistance and inductance are usually unimportant, while capacitance can sometimes be quite important, especially if cable length is long and the output impedance of the component driving the cable is high.
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