I think we can get this thread to 200 if we really try.
Those Arthur Salvatore thread guys won't know what hit 'em.
Go team! |
Most people would like to believe in magic, to have super natural powers. Imagine the satisfaction of being able to hear things so subtle that they are even beyond the tremendous power of todays equipment to measure. You too can experience this thrill! All you need is faith and money, brother. Soon, you will be hearing differences in the molecular structure of your interconnects and the improvement of setting your gear on little pointy things. You are surrounded here at Audiogon with believers who will show you the way. |
Amen!!! Now, can I get a witness. |
Amen, brother Steve. We can make a mint by starting the Church of the Heavenly Power (Cord).
Jadem6, you appear to be criticizing me for not believing there is a difference, and then criticizing me for trying to be fair. I bought the TMC's because they are the highest-rated at audioreview and was willing to give them a chance, and change my opinion if there was an improvement in sound. I've lived with them for about a week and I think a week isn't a fair trial. Unlike some who disagree with me, I try not to jump to conclusions.
Grungle, you're a pessimist. I think we can squeeze 500 posts out of this. If you're gonna be a bear, be a grizzly.
P.S. Nobody has yet explained the logic of plugging a multi-thousand dollar power cord into 50 cents a foot Romex. |
Hm, I'll have to check the rule book, there are already several power cord "debates" going on, using the topic to pad a signal cable fight may not count. Of course, neither will silly meta discussion, so....
Jadem isn't offering an argument or support, he's just sniping. Nothing to disagree with.
J Thunders, congratulations on your ears. You sound like you have enough faith in them to try a blind test, eh? Any chance?
By all means trust your ears, our point is that you hear with your BRAIN, which is susceptible to all kinds of prejudicing and suggestion. IMO, your best bet is to accept this and say the extra money is worth the perceived improvement, even if it quite likely disappears when you don't ALREADY know what you are listening to. After all, under normal circumstances you know what's there. |
Plasmatronic: Your brother of choice (Stevemj) has zero first hand experience (from his history at this site) of what he speaks. In other words, his opinion is based on Zip, which just happens to be the speaker cable that he prefers. |
Oh shit, here we go with the epistimological thing again. Maybe you want to argue about whether God exists for a while, or maybe a theory on the origins of the universe.
Re: ABX, sure, what the hell, I'll try anything once. I pass the test with digital links, why not a power cord-eh?
But sounds to me like you fellas have chosen poorly your hobby. I don't know what systems you run, but based on the above, I can now assume that you picked your pieces on something other than how they sound. Cool. I'm into it. But I will never understand how the unbelievers of you can look me in the face and say an amp you have chosen sounds better or different from another, or likewise with a pair of speakers, but also say the stuff that strings them all together makes no difference. Any comment on how arbitrary that is?
We can go roundy round racing on this for another month solid, but what's the point? Your minds are made up. There appears to be no amount of rationalizing, mathematical machinations, blind faith or otherwise that's gonna change your minds. So that begs the question, if everything sounds the same, why are you here? Sheer joy of playing devils advocate? I'm stumped. |
J_thunder, the systems they use are hush, hush. VERY top secret stuff. They have to keep it that way due to the confidentiality clause in the contract with Bose and Sears. |
Negatives for me and No Money? What's your problem? Join in or piss off. |
J, I tried to correct those votings... but, how could you tell no money got negatives?
BTW, tried a different cord on my cdp. It still sounds different (to me) than the previous one. I'll live with it, what else can I do?
Cheers |
I could tell no money got it when I gave him a couple of points it put him back to 0/0. But only for his delivery though, the content is just beyond foul and as such I could never endorse it. :-P |
Recently I had this eye opener experience. I have only two power outlets behind my wall of audio equipment. so I got $40.0 power strip from Radio shake so I can connect some components from outlet on side wall( not very high end!) I hooked up my cd player and preamp to the new strip ( my older one was/is the 2 for $10.00 Home depot power srtip). At first I like the sound a great deal: Sound stage opened up, depth improved, more details. Upon extended listening I discovered that the midrange magic was gone , there was lot of gringe and soundwas not just as lively. I cahnged back to my old $5.00 Home depot strip. Magic! Every thing came back to normal, meaning perfect sound. (to my ears). CABLES DO MAKE DIFFERENCE BUT NOT NECESSARILY FOR BETTER. YOU NEED TO FIND THE RIGHT CABLE -$50.00 TO $5000.0. |
JT, thanks for the vote. Sorry if you thought it was foul, I am not sure I follow you on that one. Sarcastic...yes. Foul... I just don't see it. |
You got it. Bose/Sears = foul, as in totally disgusting. As in even if this is all fun, you wouldn't wish that on your worst enemy type of foul. I just took your sarcasm one step further.
Where'd they all go anyway? You must've really hurt 'em. |
I remember seeing John at a seminar with Classe Audio at Cherry Creek Audio in Denver before this article was written. At that time, John was very vocal with his opinions about wire and bi-wiring. They were similar to what is written in this article. It was clear that, although he makes some very good gear, he is a technician first and an audiophile second, or third, or somewhere down there. If the placebo effect really works, then why have I not purchased every "sexy" or "highly touted" item I have auditioned? Why have I not been impressed with some highly regarded and well reviewed equipment? HMMMMMM! There's another one for you, John. By the way, the medical community has recently reversed itself, claiming that there is no such thing as a "placebo effect". Not long after the seminar, John came out with his own line of audiophile cables, so he could join the ranks of cable manufacturers perpetrating a fraud on the audiophile community. Would John agree that all amplifiers sound the same? What ever happened to those guys, and their double blind listening tests? Well, I've decided that all speakers sound the same. Whay buy a pair of SC-IVAs when my Cerwin Vegas sound the same? I think I'm onto something! |
Sorry JT, I was tired and did not catch that one in time.... Good one though. |
Oh yea, they do the disappering thing when ever you ask for a list of the equipment they use, or have heard. It's a pretty easy qestion. |
Of course they will come back to give me another -2,-2... Thanks guy. |
It always surprises me to hear someone adamantly denying hearing any sonic differences between the various manufactured interconnects, and all the while condeming others that do. Without sarcasim meant, I honestly wonder if those that argue against these facts are possibly sonically deaf, or maybe it's their gear...I don't know. It truly perplexes me though, that they appear to be sincere audiophiles and do apparently appreciate music, still, they are unable to hear the tone, detail, or soundstage changes in their music, when equipment changes are made, yes even to include interconnects. I know I do, and if you don't, well stay with your Emerson clock radios and stop being a nuisance to others. |
I don't think there's anyone here trying to claim that all audio gear is of the same quality, or that no changes made to equipment will have an effect on the sound it produces. That's absurd.
I don't know about anyone else, but I'm just interested in what happens in blind tests, and if anyone remembers, that's what the article that started this thread is about.
The relevance of such tests to your listening is debatable. |
Sean, electrical PROPERTIES dictate the electrical behavior of wire, and audio signals are electrical.
Of course what you said doesn't work, and I never said that it would. I just said that speaker cables should have as little resistance as possible. They should also have minimal shunt capacitance and series inductance, but being in a low impedance circuit, the capacitance and inductance are fairly unimportant, especially for the run lengths you find in homes and studios. Velocity factor has totally negligible effect on audio.
I don't want my speaker cables to have "sonic characteristics." I just want it to deliver the signal from the amp to the speaker without alteration. You might be interested to know that 12 gauge zip cord at 30 cents a foot makes excellent speaker cable for runs less than, say, 40 or 50 feet. For longer runs I'd go to at least 10 gauge. |
I get by with 26 gage speaker cable, but then again I use low watt bulbs (300B's). |
Placebo effect is worth paying for. Audio and visual perception, in the end, is all in the mind. It all ends up as a psychological phenomenon - pure interpretation. Thus a placebo effect, especially for audio or visual interpretation, is entirely real in my opinion. And worth paying for.
Everyone's brain is wired differently, thus we all "hear" and perceive things in an individual way. Belief systems rewire the brain (memory is electro-chemical configuration). Thus scientifically, believing in something can in fact alter its perception to you.
Note that Dunlavy does say that cables have very different electrical properties which are measurable. As an engineer, Dunlavy has decided to build cables that focus on optimizing these electrical properties. They might even sound good? Too bad their appearance is crap.
I personally find that good looking speaker cables (fat, color coordinated, well terminated) "sounds" better. Thus I pay. |
Bravo Trappist. Just don't take it to far is all I ask. |
Grungle, you know it. I'm on the placebo hunt right now for some AudioQuest Anaconda interconnects!!! |
I do believe that cables can be 'engineered'. When you change the capacitance and inductance of a cable you are effecting a parameter called the "charateristic impedance"(I will use CI for short). In normal zip cord type wire, the CI is approximately 90 ohms. In RF theory it is said to be very important to match the load impedance to the CI of the cable.
If this theory was applied to speaker cable then we need to design cables with a CI of 8 ohms. The problem with designing a cable to 8 ohms is that a speaker is only a NOMINAL 8 ohms (or 4 ohms) and varies with frequency. It would be practically impossible to build a cable that could match the impedance curve of a speaker.
A few years back I investigated the effects of lowering the input impedance of my power amp. I tried some 75 ohm video cable as an interconnect and a 75 ohm RCA with a 75 ohm termination on the circuit board of the amplifier. This combo sounded very close to the best interconnects I had used in a more conventional manner. My preamp has a very high current output and can in fact drive a 8 ohm speaker at low volumes. It was important to drive the amp with this pre amp but it was less important what interconnect I was using. The differences that I heard in interconnects when the input impedance of the amp was 20,000 ohms was far larger than the differences when the input impedance was down around 100 ohms.
I do not know if it was the reduction of reflections due to the matching of the cable to the load. It may have also been the contribution of a lower noise floor due to the reduced thermal noise of the lower input resistor. I believe that musical enjoyment can come from the contribution of a number of factors, combining in a manner that makes the sound pleasant to YOUR ears. I kept the low input impedance in my amp for about a year until I got a different pre and had to take it out cause the new pre could not drive the load! |
So, Sqjudge, R,L& C variations are what detemine(in the largest percentage of) our final sound in ICs?
Do you feel that a direct connection (wire free)will always provide the most accurate results no matter what?
(i.e directly soldered I/O connections to the PC board, an integrated amp wired direct internally with a negligable amount of buss or braid)....Frank |
Frank, I am not sure what all effects the sound of cables, but I do feel safe to say (quoting a friend in the know) "everything makes a differance".
I do feel that no connector is better than a connector and there is a lot of connectors with wider bandwidth than a RCA plug. A BNC is one just for starters.
Lets get some oppinions on this ...... Chris |
So, big speaker God has spoken and we should bow to his sacred word. No, I don't think so. This guy puts his pants on like any other man and has an opinion. Everyone else has an opinion and their own subjective experiences like his highness. Take what he says with a grain of salt and respect, trust what you hear, and screw the cult of personality BS. |
I read alot of 'em, but does anybody wonder "why things sound the way they do?" So you hear differences, but why doesn't anybody explain why it sounds different instead of just arguing whether or not it can be heard. I mean, ya, you put on some cable with a really high capacitance and you get some ringing or overshoot in the high frequencies because your amplifier may not be as great as you thought based on how much you paid for it. But X person thinks "this cable has more detail, must be the silver." Or with some little tube amp that doesn't have much top-end to start with, one finally gets a cable with a lower inductance and you get your high-frequencies back, "must be that solid copper with an optimized crystal structure so those electrons don't have to hop through the micro-diodes." My limited knowledge on the subject is, there can be audible differences between two cables on X amplifier, but they don't sound different for the reason cable manufacturers want you to believe, micro diodes, intercrystal rectification, skin-effect, etc., they sound different because the electronics at hand are sensitive to the basic cable load. Good/better electronics are less likely to be affected by different cables. Now of course this takes us into the whole vacuum tube arena, because alot of people are set on there valves. Honestly, if someone knows of a truly great, moderatly priced cable, tell me and I'd like to hear it. I'm using 4PR and up against analysis plus oval 9, no audible difference, and the designers of my electronics said I shouldn't hear one because the electronics are "not load sensitive" (for all practical, audible purposes). |
Sorry Ezmeralda, I cant buy into that one. Cables like MIT, Magnan& Siltech, of course, do create R, L, and C,changes with different amplifiers, but the character or "personality" per se, of the IC, shines thru most every time. Gold and silver plating yields large differences in sound. Dont take my word on it, contact Doug Sax who will tell you that gold plating in his switch contacts ruined the sound and he needed pure silver to get the desired effect. No R,L,C changes there, just plating! Please explain why? Anybody............Frank |
While i HATE to join back into this thread, i have been reading how some components are FAR more susceptible to cable changes than others due to design and overall circuit stability. I wish i knew how to test them to find this out. Maybe i should contact Frank Van Alstine and he can fill me in....
As to Ezmerelda's comments about the Kimber 4PR and Analysis Plus Oval 9's, i can draw some parallels between the sound of the two. I could see how one might not notice much of a difference between the two of them in some systems. Quite honestly, based on the experiences that i've had with those two specific cables, i too would choose the MUCH cheaper Kimber 4PR. Sean
> |
Firstly, Frap, I don't know what you mean by "cables like MIT,etc." creating LCR changes--all cables create LCR changes to my knowledge, or I should say frequency shifts due to them. Secondly, in the last sentence, plating does subtly affect the LCR values. Thirdly, what I'm saying is alot cheaper than the high-end cables, in fact it will save you alot of money. Most of Dunlavy's points seem right (I say seem because I'm not qualified to evaluate it entirely). I still have reservations as to why he has to charge $1,000 for a 10ft pr of his new "LCR cable", but maybe I'm naive to production costs.
Regardless of the usually subtle effects LCR values have on the linearity of the signal with good electronics, cable money is still better spent on better electronics IMHO, unless you've got money to burn (note, not necessarily more expensive electronics either). And I find it curious that cable manufacturers have to resort to what I perceive as such devious marketing schemes: square wave graphs without amplitude and/or frequency being specified, our cable versus a generic "leading large round conductor", their speaker cables' specifications (when they actually get published!!) compared to a 24-28g speaker cable (as if anybody uses that--unless you happen to buy into the images and ideologies of the 47 labs sakura systems S$%^), cite *Hypothesis* to market a cable (the microdiodes and various crystal structures like), etc. and do nothing to take it to that next step and translate the physical or electrical characteristics of their cable (if the latter even gets shown) into scientifically audible terms (because to do so would probably show the cable isn't that signficant). As Dunlavy pointed out in other articles sometimes these facets/claims of cable design result in changes of .005db, hardly audible. Inductance is unlikely to cause shifts of 1/10 db (although it can be as high as a couple db, audible) and resistance unlikely 1/20 db (to my knowledge). Which brings me to another point. If all these other, what I consider, less significant/"high-end" aspects of cable design are so audible, conductor material, skin effect (significant with RF), plating materials, etc. that people can hear significant differences in them outside lcr values, how come no one has managed to find a way to measure the distortion they impart on a signal after 30 years? And this is now why we have solid-gold interconnects sold on the basis of "the detail of silver and the bass and authority of copper"--B.S. This is why we have science: to settle the battlefield of opinions with facts--and I don't see any for the other side (nor do I hear things that lack explanation), yet.
As far as the plating in the selector switch making a difference, firstly, I won't deny your/his experience, there may have been an audible difference. However, secondly, I don't know the circumstances surrounding the situation which would take into account all variables. Since selector switches are physical devices with friction, there may be something else going on, I don't know. As far as the pure silver being needed to get the "desired effect." I take it the "desired effect" is not a coloration sought(distortion) as it is a more accurate signal transfer and that the gold was distorting the signal in some way.
Sugarbie, as far as your tenors and vocal chords analagy, the shape of the singer's mouth/vocal cavity, and other factors affect the *timbre* of their voices which allows you to distinguish among them, even though they may all still be singing the same note-frequency/pitch. Incomparable analogies do not discredit Dunlavy.
Why does everyone quote the age old "if they measure the same they must be the same" All the scientific community asks is "if they measure the same but sound different why can't you find a measurement to explain the difference."
I forget who made this point early on, but it is a good point that MR. dunlavy only showed the placebo affect and not that people can't hear differences, only they think they hear differences. Good Point. |
Nelson Pass measured, charted, documented and published measurable differences in speaker cables 20+ years ago. He even notes that some specific speaker cable / speaker combinations caused some "well respected" brand name amps to shut down / go into thermal overload. The same speakers and amps with different cables DID NOT act up. Obviously, the amplifier is seeing a COMPLETELY different Z ( impedance ) at it's output terminals and is simply responding accordingly. Obviously, the only variable would have been the speaker cables !!!
Besides Nelson Pass, Moncrieff of International Audio Review measured, charted and documented differences in speaker cables. He even went so far as to publish frequency response charts for many that he tested.
Due to the differences in physical layout, gauge of conductors and dielectrics used, the characteristic impedance of the cable, the total length of the cables in use, etc... the amplifier can see VERY different conditions at its' output terminals. Some cables will act as "impedance transformers" and make suitable speaker loads "unsuitable" and vice-versa. Simply altering the length of an "unsuitable" cable CAN change the feedpoint impedance that the amp sees when trying to "load up" AND alter the amount of reflected EMF that the amp has to deal with. Since Mr Dunlavy is WELL versed in RF transmission line theory, this should not be news to him.
Since this IS the case and it has been documented time and time again, you would think that he might acknowledge that the stability of the amp MIGHT come into question BEFORE making "generic" and rather BOLD statements about speaker cables being "relatively un-discernable" from each other. After all, it is well known that amps change output levels when the impedance is altered. Why couldn't their frequency response or transient characteristics be affected also ???? Those specs ARE load dependent also.
PLEASE don't get me wrong. I am not defending "the wire bandits". I think that the mass majority of this stuff is WAY overpriced. While i can understand that there is a LOT of research involved in making any REAL product, the actual costs involved in most of these "wires & cables" is phenomenally low. As such, i have bought MANY different "manufactured" cables but have also made more than a few of my own ( with pretty excellent results overall ). Like i said, i just don't like the fact that Dunlavy talks out of both sides of his mouth with a different message being heard as the situation changes. Sean
> |
Whoa Ezmerelda, Since scientists cannot explain all phenominon that occur, why deny the possibility of their existence. As far as these wires being overpriced and the money better spent on amplification, I am in your camp on that, if you have read my posts on wire.
Where I run into trouble with "scientific" types, is the steadfast hardheaded implication that "There exists no means by which a difference could occur sonically, so no difference can exist".
The example of plating above that I mentioned, was in my own experience as well. Here is the story. In 1990, I purchased the brilliantly engineered WELL TEMPERED Turntable and arm for use with my reference system. I had never before heard sound so correct, so right, so master tape like. It was a breakthrough in my mind. I could also discern which rooms were using this new marvel, at the shows, from the hallway!! I am not kidding. The price vs performance were so sky high, that the following year I bought another one for use with a different cartridge. I decided to remove the reference Cello MC from my current unit and put it on my newly aquired one. The two units were IDENTICAL, but the new one (1991),was about 25% better sounding in all areas. I immidiately called the factory and wanted to know what was different. "Oh nothing really, just the jacks on the termination box. They are now Cardas".
The fact is that the special copper/plating process that yields only marginal measurement changes, if barely any, was enough to change my system drastically for the better. I'm not picking a fight with you, just pointing out the truth of the subject, to MY ears, and a number of many other reliable ears that I confirm my findings with.
But I must say, regarding cable prices, I find them obsene and completely ridiculous, but their contribution to our musical present cannot be denied. I am quite certain that in actual materials, most of them could cost a fraction......Frank |
Frap's post is interesting and points out a real issue.
There are two intersecting factors in his turntable story. The first is that since phono has the lowest signal levels that you are likely to find in any system, they seem to be most sensitive of all. People who use my Silver Lightning product between the turntable and the phono pre often report rather significant improvements in almost every aspect. I take it to mean that the low level signals are most likely to be effected by *anything.* The second factor is that most people have really *never* heard, or had an opportunity to hear the effect of a single, simple change (assuming it had an effect at all)! So, it is obvious that they will be very skeptical to say the least.
I had a really wierd episode with sonic effects of materials at one time, which made me really scratch my head and wonder if I wasn't hallucinating. To make it brief, I thought my big Symphony No.1 amp, one just built and being listened to for the first time, was distorting badly in both channels. I was really worried that I had made some stage on the PC board non-linear by inserting the identical wrong parts on two boards! It really sounded odd, the highs were "lifted" above the speakers, and they sounded oddly strident as well. Wrong as far as I was concerned. I am sorry to report that the problem was cured by changing the binding posts. The binding posts that were "bad" were of another manufacturer and were the standard 30 amp 5-way style, and *identical* in every visual respect to the "good" ones!
No, I did not (this is now 12 years ago) save the bad ones, and run comprehensive tests to see what the technical differences were - I wish I had. But, since the problem went away immediately, there was nothing much to think about.
If you never had this sort of experience, you'd think I was completely wacky in the head. Indeed, the experience is/was wacky, and I can not explain it. It was certainly not a mass delusion or some sort of sighted bias at work. The last thing that I wanted was to have completed an amp at 2:00 in the morning, and have to trouble shoot it because it sounded like dog meat.
So, there are those who have had these sorts of things happen, and those who have not. Some of the have nots simply don't have gear that would permit them to discern what was going on (like if your amp has those brand binding posts on it all the time! :- ) ) or simply have just never been in a situation where it simply HAPPENS. They, with good reason, tend to be very skeptical about these reports. I understand.
_-_-bear |
I had great difficulty in blending bass and midrange in my admittedly complex system. I got most of it right by experimenting with speaker placement and room treatment but the final touches on bass rendering were only achieved by finding the right interconnect and speaker cables. I don't care if its against the law of physics or if I am hallucinating as long as my ears keep on telling me, that it sounds right now. As Greg so aptly put it: Cables are both personal and system dependent! |
Geez...
It's hard to follow threads on a non-threaded heirachy site!
Anyhow JHunter suggested the pink noise method for testing cable "differences." I certainly do like to use pink noise for discerning very small effects. You can use pink noise when tweaking a crossover, change a *very small* resistor value and *hear* a change. You can forget about hearing the change using any sort of music.
So, does it matter if you can't hear the change when using music? You bet! The resulting sound when the improvments have been made are almost always subjectively better sounding and most often objectively test better with test equipment.
this is a follow up to Jhunters post back 5-31-01
sorry for the delay! :- )
_-_-bear |
It's amazing how many responses to the Dunlavy piece have been posted. It just goes on and on and on. Going against my own personal grain, I will make it brief: no you can't always believe your eyes and ears. You have to find objectivity somewhere or else you're just groping in the dark. Does anyone out there honestly think that Dunlavy could produce the speakers he does using the anti-scientific mindset exhibited by most cable promoters? Do you guys really believe that measurement and double blind testing is a waste of time and that some audio guru can conjure up the perfect whatever in a magical, mystical golden ear trance? There's a big difference between building something and sitting on one's duff listening to it and haphazardly commenting using buzz words. Science is what got us here, as we say in French; "don't spit in the soup". |
Pbb, in my opinion, you are missing a slight point, which I find surprising, since you seem to play the guitar:
Many audiophiles are avid concertgoers and if a piece of wire brings them closer to the experience of the real thing, who would bother then about measurements and double blind testing. For me, the only thing close to some objectivity here, is the live event and how I remember it and if science helps me along this goal, fine, je ne crache pas dans la soupe !
And p l e a s e , lets not start up this argument again. Its futile and leads to nowhere. |
Pbb, measurements, multiple testing, etc., probably are useful for manufacturers. For users -- i.e. most of us here -- Detlof's summarised it all IMO.
Between you & I, how many of us can explain audible differences b/ween pieces of, say, active amplification based on (visible) differences in the design? Not I!
Cheers! |
I have read thru this thread probably 3 times so far, Im not trying to start this argument back up, but I would like to try and say something to justify experimenting with cables to newbies.
I think cable prices are the biggest rip-off in the entire industry and cable manufacturers are complete a'holes. I have been to several cable manufacturing facilities and making any cable in mass is relativly inexpensive(for most designs) and I am talking about Category 6 cable AND fiber optic cable. Cable prices are completely inflated by the manufacture to pad their wallets. I would love to see some little company ruin the entire cable industry thru good products/pricing. Good justification ehh?
I would also like to state that Bose is also a doctor ;P and we know the general opinion of the products released under his name. Being a Dr. doen't mean crap, BUT being a good speaker designer does mean something, and what does it mean in this case, nothing. A signal is a singal right? NO, because was we would all be using class B solid state amps and chugging along happily. But differences are percived, and more, try running 1000Mbs on good ol' copmusa Cat 5...what do ya get? Packet Loss, signaling errors, and carrier drops; Is this all from cross talk...no, because I can get some Cat 5 to run at 1000Mbs. So what does this tell me? Use the right cable for the right job. Does this apply to audiophilia? Maybe.
Can I hear a difference between my kimber PJB and my homegrown pure silver lace interconnects which have very similar cable geometry(ahem like cat 5, try signaling over cable thats not twisted pair, props to bell labs), you bet your sweet a** I can, I can prove it six ways of sunday and Ill even do it with some headphones; can I measure it? Not yet. Yet being the important word.
Now don't gimme these stupid lines about being system dependant, that is irrelevant in a disccusion on cables in general. We are dicussing weather the phenomenon exists at all. My point being, that if in any system you can percieve diffenerces in cables, then there is something going on. Just because some people cannot hear the difference does not mean that they dont exist. What about measuring, well all I can say is that I dont trust anyone's lab techniques but my own, and what exactly were they measuring for, how accurate were there results, what was their base line measument, what was their list of uncontrollable variables(i.e enviornmental RFI, EMI), what kind of power were they getting, what kind of gear were they using etc etc etc...
SO, whats my point...there is none, this fight is for scientists who still believe the universe is heliocentric and its impossible to travel faster than the speed of sound.
If in your system you cannot hear the differences between cables then you are lucky and do not have to worry about cables and you probably dont like your power chords either, you can sell this stuff to me ;P
(if your feeling generous and want a definite answer then donate the equipment, have some good hunches I will find that answer for which all the measured and docmuneted evidance shows, my lab skills are excellent) |
Remember, there are 3 fundamental structures to be successful in business; production, marketing, and sales. They are interrelated but have different goals. The cable industry is marketing driven. Marketing people will alot of times just pick a number, they never spend money upfront, they depend on sales to drive money. By marketing, I mean packaging, ads, websites, reviews, any print, etc...Just read the ads and website claims, makes your mouth water. Look at some of the slick packaging. Marketing will make commitments that sales can't possibly deliver in many cases, but 20 million percent markup will cover no matter if sales makes projection or not. BTW, I hear differences in interconnects but no so much in speaker wire, IMO diminishing returns come quicker in speaker wire. Just my 2 cents. |
Detlof, I have no qualms about anyone listening to anything and enjoying it. If someone gets pleasure from a Radio Shack or Wal-Mart rack system, that's more than fine with me. If someone thinks that a 12K cable is just the thing, so be it. My point being that things don't look the same, and are not the same, whether you are looking ahead, so to speak, and designing/building any element of a sound system or simply getting the end product and, ex-post facto, auditioning, analysing it. I think that it is dishonest to put out a product, make outlandish claims that cannot be substantiated and ask a price that is absolutely out of step with the cost of bringing the thing to market. When the upshot is that part of the ploy is to say that what you are selling is beyond any scientifically verifiable procedure, that nothing can prove or disprove your claims as a manufacturer, what you have is a situation where people will be had. Now whether they enjoy being had or not is another issue. I fully agree that live music is the yardstick against which to measure the performance of a sound system. I also agree that human hearing is the final arbiter of what constitutes a good system. What I cannot agree with is that our individual hearing is so different from one person to the next that anything goes. That we are not subject to so many vagaries in our ear/brain processor that any number of variables can be thrown in, helter-skelter, and that, somehow, the result will be of some value to more than the one individual listener. If someone wants to provide something significant to listeners in general (and I am not suggesting the population at large, but audiophiles in general) and make some contribution to advancing the state of the art, it has to be based on more than random possibilities and blind faith. Once the product is on the market, people are free to do what they want with it and to claim that it provides them with any manner of contentment. In closing, I have two thoughts: firstly, I believe that a guitar (and any other instrument, obviously) is just that, a musical instrument and, aside from the fact it needs to be tuned properly (and, hopefully, to stay that way for a while) has to be judged on its own merit, and that a sound system is not; the latter is a sound reproducing system and, therefore, there always is a standard to judge it by: the original sound, and, secondly, if cables are now seen as an acceptable means of fine tuning a system by, I guess, adding or subtracting something to make it more euphonic, why have audiophiles eschewed tone controls long ago as being low fi? |
Is Dunlavy really an electrical genius? I can easily improve every one of his speakers with a very simple circuit modification to each of his speakers' drivers.
Now don't get me wrong, I do feel that John is better than most speaker designers, and he offers tremendous value in terms of what his speakers sell for, but to use his opinions as the benchmark to base this cable argument is a quite a stretch. |
Pbb, I do not have the least difficulty with your argument. Besides I think it is very well written and thought out. My experience is, that people who have trained their ears to judge the performance of live or reproduced music,.i.e. in judging the performance of a given system, generally "hear" pretty much alike, although their emphasis on the parameters given for their judgements may differ. Of course, you could use tone controls instead of selected wires to fine tune a system. Only tone controls mostly degrade the sound over a broad spectrum, whereas a well chosen IC or speaker wire may in fact enhance it.
In reading your lines again, I am wondering what your basic hypothesis or assumption is, which you are building your arguments on. Would you assume, that a well designed music system, built and devised to the state of the art of accepted scientific knowledge, would, apart of the vagaries and uncertainties of room influences, be able to reproduce the original musical event in your home, provided the software is of the very best quality? And.... again, say in a truly SOTA system, how much is there "science" in its design and how much "intuition" and "art"? Or in other words, is there sufficient measurement savvy, to design a truly first class system through measurements alone?
Regards, |
I was a sceptic until I recently did my own tests. On interconnects I did repeated testing playing the same 1 minute section of music over and over. I was swapping the $4 per pair generic black interconnects you get with most cheap stereo gear, with Kimber Select KS-1030 silver interconnects $800 per pair. The effect was quite pronounced. In particular, with the cheap stuff, a section with a tambourine on top of a drum which was being hit, was muffling the drum and blending in with it. The drum was just a "thumping" sound. With the great interconnects, the entire effect was different: the drum was hit first, it was nicely pronounced and tonally rich. A fraction of a second later, the tambourine rattled and jangled... it was clearly subordinate to the drum. Here is an example where the entire sonic precedence of instruments changed by varying the interconnects.
Are the Kimbers 400 times better than the el-cheapos? No. But they are much much better.
Speaker cables: last night I decided to experiment with ultra-cheap 20 gauge zip wire speaker cable. (I lived with this stuff all through my twenties. :-) I removed my 12 gauge thick copper speaker cables with gold plugs and replaced with the cheapo zip cables. Did repeated swapping on a well memorized 2 minute section of classical music.
With the cheap stuff, the imaging was much blurred. There was no crip 3D soundstage either. Many instruments congealed together into a fuzzy, ill-defined image. Bass tonal richness was gone (color, as they say, went from bronze to grey). I repeated the test over and over and it was clear that the thicker cables we much improved.
I will repeat the test soon with some nice Nordost Blue Heavens, which have more silver content.
It's pretty obvious to me now that the material of the cable (silver versus copper) can make a big difference. I cannot really quantify the effects of wire topology or biwiring without more experimenting.
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Methodology. It seems to me that the best way to test all this stuff would be to put a computer on the end, next to a speaker, and to AtoD what comes out of the speaker cable. Swap the cables. Then compare in the digital domain the differences. It would be pretty possible then to have a quantifiable way to measure what is going on.
I say to put the AtoD in parallel with the speaker only because speakers create demand on the current that will affect what comes across, whereas replacing with a computer will have completely different current characteristics.
Is there some nice hardware and software for a PC that can do this? Must be..... |
Testing is a good idea but no pratical computer test equipment has a noise floor exceeding 96 db. Our hearing has a dynamic range of about 110+ db. That makes our ears many times more sensitive that any test equipment. Chris |
You can invert the polarity of one channel and measure accross the positive leeds at the speaker, with a mono source you will then be measutring the difference between channels. Then with different cables on each channel, you will be measuring only the difference caused by the cable and since the differences will be very low you can add amplification to bring the signal above the noise floor of your sound card. An intersting variation of this descrived by Hafler allows you to listen to the difference signal directly. |
Sqjudge,
Can you suggest any components for doing this measuring and testing.
Only 96db sensitivity?
What about taking an A/D converter from someone like dcs which is really high quality and take the digital out of that and do the measurements?
Is there a PC interface for TOSLINK or ST link???? |
