I used to think pricey interconnects were snake oil...

An average Joe decides to take his wife to a fine high end restaurant for a nice anniversary dinner.  He stares at the menu, sees salads and appetizers start at $25.  He is thinking to himself, I can get two dinner size salads at Zaxby’s for less than that.  Then he sees the steaks with the prices starting at $75.  Of course he is thinking about how he could have gotten a whole steak meal for the two of them at Longhorns for less money.  Nearing the end of the meal he is hoping his wife is too full to enjoy a dessert.  The tragedy here is multifaceted.  First, he missed out on a fine dining experience with his wife and likely stayed quiet or didn’t listen to her very well because he could only think about the prices.  Two, he missed out on enjoying the best meal he is going to have all year.  (Yes, this used to be me.)  If you go out for a nice meal, count the cost ahead of time and then enjoy a really special time.

My point is:  If you want to play in high end hi fi you have to pay.  Everyone loves showing off their gorgeous new speakers or shiny amplifiers but do not want to put much money into cables.  I don’t like buying expensive cables either but they are a vital part of a hifi system.  People spend big money on speakers and amps, dac’s etc and then wonder why the system sounds no better than a good mid fi set-up.  Well, power cords- which were my last hold out, are the most important consideration, I found followed by speaker cables and then interconnects.  If streaming then, the USB cable and ethernet cables matter too.  

If you want to go hifi then it’s either all the way or don’t bother.  This is a big boy game.  Count the cost before even starting.  I really didn’t think I would ever spend half the cost of my new speakers on amp power cords and speaker cables but that is what it took to get the sound I was after.  

mahgister is correct.  The music starts with our ears and brain.  The room is the next most important component followed by the gear and then finally the choice in music.  Careful selection of the gear is required to get great sound.  Tube amps, for example must be carefully matched to speakers and the speaker cables more so than SS amps.  That's because the damping factor of tube amps is much lower typically than SS amps.  Tube amps work better generally with higher impedance speakers and short, thick speaker cables- due to their generally lower damping factors.  That is all about bass control.  Preamp to amp matching is another important consideration.  But most importantly is the room.  Muddy mid bass, lack of deep bass and even sibilance can be caused by the room and speaker placement.  The room also affects the soundstage and imaging.  Sometimes the amp or the speakers or even the cables are blamed for the system sounding too bright  or too dark when the real culprit is the room.  I know first hand how true this is.  My current room was difficult to get right.  It has dormers and sloped walls.  Corner traps not only in the room but also in the dormers made a significant improvement in the bass.  I had diffusers on the front wall which improves the imaging but not until I added diffusers to the sloped parts of the walls did I eliminate the last bit of pesky brightness.  Absorbers at the first reflection point on the side walls also help with clarity and brightness.  

I had my stereo in a 24x36x13 great room in my last house.  It sounded magnificent- especially after putting in a hardwood floor.  The 7/8" hardwood stiffened the floor which made the bass sound better.  I finally have this room figured out, I think.  I've been in this house 6 1/2 years now.  (slow learner, I guess).

Here's my take on cables and power cords.  They work.  They make a difference.  There.  Okay, I have more to say.  It's frustrating sorting through cables and power cords- more than frustrating.  Unlike amps, speakers, phono cartridges and DACs cables do not have a lot of specs to look at.  Secondly, it's impossible to look under the hood.  I can lift the lid on an amp and ewe and aww at its innards but the best I can do with a cable is turn and tug a little on the ends to see how tight the shrink tubing fits.  Maybe I can look at the plating on the connectors and get a feel of their quality.  Setting aside the sound differences for the moment it is gut wrenching spending a lot of money on cables.  And the prices have gone past the cost of a decent amp and are approaching the price of a basic car, no less.  We don't know how much pure copper, silver and gold are really in these things.  Then, someone on Youtube will cut an "audiophile" cable apart and reveal that it is more filler than wire and the workmanship might even be suspect.  No wonder even the best cables are difficult to resale for any reasonable amount relative to the original MSRP.

In the late 1980s I started hanging out with the wrong crowd- audiophiles.  I got into the cable game.  Back then the big deal was speaker cables mostly and then interconnects.  I watched a buddy put some serious money into MIT cables around 1990.  But they worked.  I started with Monster Cable, then Kimber Kable, then AQ, Nordost and eventually worked my way up to some pricey MIT cables.  Today, I am primarily using Purist Audio Design cables- the upper end of their lines.  I try not to think about what I have put into cables and power cords chasing after better and better sound.  Secondly, the PAD cables are as plain looking as it gets.  No fancy blue or red anodized collars, no pretty braiding of smaller wires into a single big wire and no pretty red or blue anodized connectors.  Hard to impress with these cables by looks, oh but the sound...

The other trick about cables is the sound.  Say you have a pair of speaker cables and/or interconnects and you try out a new set of cables in your system.  If the tonal balance is a bit brighter, then at first you might interpret that as better clarity and more lively sound.  Listen a few days and you start to have fatigue.  Put the old cables back in and now the system sounds darker at first but the fatigue is gone.  What to do then?  Try something else maybe.  And so the frustration starts.

After going round and round and encountering some real junk cables over the years, I have learned to stick to the well known brands.  If I have to trust what is inside these cables then I stick to the brands with a reputation and a pedigree.  I also try them and listen to them over weeks to be sure that is what I want.  I haven't been able to send a higher end PAD cable back yet.

What I listen for: 1:  Tonal balance.  Not bright or fatiguing but not dark either.  Not just better speaker cables but the better interconnects make the bass more crisp and clear- more punch.  Highs are oh so sweet- not irritating or grating ever.

2.  Soundstage and background.  This one is easy to differentiate.  The better cables drop the noise floor.  Sounds come out of nowhere.  The soundstage is wide, deep and tall.  Better cables improve on this.  The better MIT cables that I started using in the early 2000's showed me this.  Imaging was startlingly focused.  It freaked some people out.  My grandmother was convinced I had a speaker hiding in the fireplace.  From MIT to PAD I found they did everything better.  

3.  Noise floor and detail.  Upgrading power cords, unfortunately improves the sound too.  They take more noise out of the system.  When I got the better PAD power cords I immediately could tell the noise floor had dropped even more.  I thought the system was already quiet but it got even quieter.  A PAD digital power cord on my DAC improved the highs.  Thought they were already good but they got better, more natural.  And then with all this comes more detail.  Detail is a two edge sword.  It is exciting to hear some things in the music that you have never heard before but it can also be distracting and take away from the music.  When I started hearing more detail I was distracted to the point that I wished I could undo it.  But eventually I learned to tune most of it out.  Still, it is difficult sometimes to listen to my system in complete darkness.  I sounds and feels like people are moving around in the room.  Be prepared for consequences to a clear, detailed system.  One blues singer has a wheeze when he breathes.  Love the song but that quiet wheeze is a little distracting still.

I think the top cable makers know their art pretty well.  They know how to create product lines that give a little more of everything for more money.  I don't know how they do it.  It's like a car model with a base 4 cylinder but for a little more you can have a 6 cylinder and the top of the line is a V8.  More performance for more money.  

And in the end it still depends on the parts in your particular system, your room and your hearing- not to mention your budget.

My son accompanied me to Axpona Tampa last year.  He was 32 then and I compared what I was hearing in the various rooms with the impressions of his young ears.  There were a few times where I did not detect subtle differences that he could hear but overall I was pleased that my hearing was still pretty good.

My son visited last week and I got a chance for him to hear my streaming setup and DAC with different sources. I played CDs, FLAC files and streamed 44.1/16 and hi res.  His conclusions all matched mine.  I did not let him know what source I was using.

The thing about cables which is true for audio in general is that the very expensive ones are on another level.  I know people don’t want to hear that.  You still have to sort the pseudo high end from the real deal and I think cables are the hardest component of all just because looks do not reveal how they will sound- in general.  I started out with basic receivers and such in the 70s and stepped up to hifi in the late 80s.  Started doing a lot of DYI upgrades to my speakers and amps.  Then in the 2000s I stepped into the higher end hifi gear.  As satisfying as DYI projects are, the expensive stuff- the good stuff has no equal.  

What I’m trying to say is that sometimes we are merely making lateral moves when changing a component or a cable and then experience disappointment and frustration when the gain is nil.  And that leads many to dismiss the hobby as futile and a waste of money.  It is difficult to do these days but hearing an outstanding audio system can be inspirational.  I can’t say that I would have been better off to have never heard some outstanding stereos over the years, Audio has been a bug in me since my college days.