If there is not a difference in the sound of various brands/prices of cables, then why wouldn't we all just use the cheap stuff and invest more in music? One reason would be the "snooty" factor of liking the "idea" of having the high price spread in your system. Another reason why some invest tidy sums in cables is that in their system and circumstance they hear a difference that justifies, for them, their cable investments.
My cable purchase decisions have been based in part on reviews, price and most importantly, experience over decades in audiophiledom. Please know that I, in that time period, have made some significant purchase errors. Fortunately, most of those mistakes were rectified at little financial detriment.
Interconnects - I like the Audioquest line because of many years of experience with their cables and that whatever their current line is, their is a consistent sound revealed by their interconnects as you move up and down the line. The trick is finding the cable that best suits your sonic tastes with your system. Example. I tried AQ Columbias and Colorados from the line previous to their most current offerings. In being able to A/B them, the Colorados had a fuller more natural bass response than the Columbias. Their response sounded to me to be very linear up and down the frequency response of my system. Therefore, my system is wired with AQ Colorados.
Speaker Cables - Here is where I learned a new lesson a little over a year ago. When I traded in my Vandersteen 3A Signatures for Treo CT, the copper heavy earth series AQ cables that I had used successfully with the model 3s sounded too heavy in the mid-bass with the Treo CT. And yes, I experimented a great deal with speaker placement trying to find a spot in my room to tame the mid-bass beast. Didn't happen. Then came research time. I was reading hours each day all over the internet, investigating cables from myriad manufacturers, many of whom I was completely unfamiliar with.
It was in this forum however that I began reading more and more about Paul Laudati's Clear Day Audio cables. The more I read the more the adjectives used to describe the sound people were getting through them started to sound like what I was looking for. Next step. Call Paul. That I did. He was very forthcoming with information about his cables but made no wild promises about how they would do with my system. The price was very reasonable for what he was offering and so I took a leap, after even more research and purchased the Double Shotgun models. Fortunately for me, the mid-bass hump was gone and the treble smooth but opened up so for the first time I could truly hear what the CT tweeters were capable of.
In summary, experience, research, personal contact and anecdotal information from others informed my choice here. Isn't that what a lot of us learn from other's experiences here on this forum, kinda the whole point of spending time here. The bonus is of course, in those situations where sharing your audio travels can help someone else here on their journey. |
@czarivey That must be tough to quantify. 😋 |
@twoleftears To follow up on your point, another way of looking at the "sweet spot" is expressed as "the law of diminishing returns." Finding equipment that is in line with your budget that gets you the maximum sonic performance for the amount of money spent, such that to get much better sound you would have to spend a great amount more than the component you selected. That is where you want to be. So there is a "sweet spot" within a specific category of components ie. amps, preamps etc. and also as you were eluding to, a "sweet spot" in a particular manufacturer's line. Specifically, this can be seen in a cable manufacturer's line where there is a cable that gives you most of the sonic virtues available at a price point and to significantly improve sonic performance would require a major jump up in that line to a prohibitively expensive offering.
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Where to begin? 1. Tin clad copper? Yigads! 2. Yes the better the quality of the conductor AND the dielectric mated to high quality connectors and guess what? High quality, high functioning cables. 3. Spending ungodly sums on cables relative to the quality of your gear is silly. Perspective! Life rule: Keep things in proper perspective. Find a balance to where and on what you spend your money. Example: Having a fabulous amplifier connected to poorly designed and thus poor performing speakers is madness. Balance, perspective.
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@whitestix I don't think jafant was talking about the wire burning in. That would be silly! What's burning in, or more appropriately "forming" to the wire inside of it, is the dielectric; be it teflon or polyethylene or whatever...
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@whitestix "I often hear folks espouse these run-in beneficial claims, but I never hear about anyone that says after X number of hours that the "components", particularly wire, sounds worst than it did in the beginning. Statistically, it is an even chance that that the is the outcome." What? Why would run-in EVER make wire sound worse? How often does appropriate aging make Scotch or Bourbon taste worse? How about wine? Why do the best steakhouses age their steaks? Oh...so they taste worse and can go out of business. It is sad if you have never experienced the benefits of proper run-in. I don't think I have ever heard, in over 40 years in this hobby, a manufacturer not encourage the purchaser to allow for run in of their components/wires whatever. BTW, many of those manufacturers allow a 30-60 day trial period. Why? So you have an opportunity to hear their gear over time to experience how their components/wires get worse? 😲 |
@kosst_amojan
" Nobody ages steaks until they rot. Wine goes corked all the time. A lot of things have an optimal aging period, but forever is never it. I think this cable burn in jazz is pure snake oil. I’ve never heard it. Caps breaking in is extremely subtle. I think a lot of people just hear what they want to."
I never implied an infinite aging period as you seem to imply in the quote above. Corking wine? Really? Who the hell does that? If they do, their palate gets what it deserves!
Can’t relate at all to what you are espousing. It’s actually enjoyable to hear from one day to the next how a cable dielectric forms to the wire within it. Most interesting, and a refutation of the "expectation bias" argument, is that oft times during the burn-in, there are periods where things sound worse. It is not a linear, predictable process. You know when the "forming" is over when the sound achieves a consistency. Again...this is why many cable manufacturers offer the trial period. There can be times when that burn-in period is completed that you are not satisfied with the sound and it’s time to visit UPS.
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@blindjim An ambassador of forum peace. Ahhhhhh 😇 |
All wire conductors encapsulated by a dielectric benefit from burn in. I can't help it if you can't hear the sonic effect of that. I can have sympathy for you though... and I do. 😔 |
@shadorne
Congratulations, you have stumbled upon a truth! Air it is. But what is it that is sealing in what air is there around the wire, eh? That is where the burn-in takes place. I just visited over a half dozen audio manufacturer sites that discussed the issue of component and cable burn-in. Most recognized the controversy surrounding this elusive issue but ALL recognized its absolute existence. This includes manufacturers who do not sell any products meant to address burn-in.
In their own product development and listening tests, burn-in is readily heard and anecdotally is reinforced by customers who, after putting newly purchased cables into their system heard a harshness and lack of body to the sound relative to the cables that had previously inhabited that space in their system. The manufacturer's response is to allow time for the cables to burn-in. Voila! Problem solved.
As stated before...I sympathize with your inability to hear this well-recognized phenomenon.
To Area 51 with you!😋 |
@shadorne of course not, as that would be a silly assertion. Air is the "best" dielectric which accounts for cable manufacturers such as Audioquest who have been, for several years now, been using either PE tubes or Teflon tubes as the physical dielectric to minimize the physical dielectric's contact with the conductors, thus rendering "air" as the substantive dielectric in their designs.
Might be instructive for others to weigh in on their experience with "air tube" dielectrics versus "wire coating" dielectrics which may make burn-in even more critical as those contacting dielectrics must "form" through burn in and in my experience yield a greater magnitude of sonic improvement through burn-in.
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@kosst_amojan
Interesting. You seem fixated on capacitor break-in and by comparison I suppose it seems like I am stuck on the issue of cable burn-in. to each their own.
You said..."Seems to me the best cable would be the least reactive, not one designed to be as reactive as possible. You seem to be calling reactivity virtue for some reason."
Don't know what I've written here that brings you to that assertion. I've had quite a number of different interconnects pass through my systems over the years. In all instances burn-in yielded a sonic benefit usually in the form of dynamic musical swing, smoothness of treble and upper midrange and openness of the soundspace. I have never addressed technical measurements ie. capacitance, inductance etc. I care about what I hear and realize the obvious, that not all aspects that affect sound can be measured.
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@kosst_amojan You mean my 👂👂lied to me. I hate when that happens!
BTW your statement above "Unlike your cable break-in myth, my statements about cap break-in are supposed by actual science." is not very convincing. Do you even believe what you're saying? |
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@geoffkait Nice post. I am struck by the angry responses from those who disagree with something YOU are hearing. Only I truly know what my ears are perceiving as I listen. In the same way, I can't disprove what you or anyone else is hearing. Whether it can be measured or not is immaterial to me. I'm not listening through a set of scientific measurements but rather the elegantly designed human ear. All of our chemistry is different. There are so many different human variables at play.
I can and have heard sonic differences as cables burn-in. Period. If someone else hasn't it doesn't invalidate my experience.
On a personal note, I have always had highly sensitive ears. Example...as a kid, there was a department store in a nearby town that I didn't enter because the florescent lights gave off a high pitched whine that I found very annoying. Because of my awareness of the sensitivity of my hearing I have endeavored to protect it. Any activity I engage in that involves a loud persistent noise, ie. vacuuming, mowing weed whacking etc. I wear ear plugs.
On the flip side of that I have a suppressed sense of smell and unfortunately, taste. I would never critique someone's cooking or wine selection because I know that those two senses for me are compromised. It's just who I am.
If there are audiophiles who truly cannot hear cables burn-in or other difficult to perceive sonic events, that may just be them. And that's fine. It doesn't mean they can't be discerning listeners and comment intelligently on the hobby.
In closing, perhaps we all have to be a bit more cognizant of our personal uniqueness and accept that, rather than get angry that we're not all alike. |
@shadorne I can, without reservation state that I am a logical, sequential left-brained thinker prone to wanting all things rationally explained, but I know I hear differences in cables burned in or not.
Just because there are such perceived differences, the nature of those differences would not, I suspect matter or apply to hospitals, etc. There are, I'm sure, differences in visual acuity of test equipment (imaging) that would indeed matter to a doctor who is examining an Xray, MRI or mammogram image. I doubt that the qualities that affect my aural perception would be applicable to their desire for more acute visual perception.
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