Opening a can of worms


Here is the can filled with opinions. It's been hashed and rehashed to infinity and beyond with no clear result. Since I am a seeker of truth I'll post my thoughts here for the yea and naysayers to debate over. Question is: Are expensive speaker or any other cable in a system worth the exorbitant cost over a reasonably priced cable loom? I thought I'd  experiment myself to find out. My comparison is between Transparent Ultra cable loom and Blue Jeans cable loom on a pure stereo system comprised of Proceed PAV,  Proceed PDSD,  Krell Kav 250, Musical Fidelity A3cd, Sony Ps4300 TT and B&W 803D2 speakers. All sources were used by this experiment using identical playback material. Cables had in excess of 200 hrs burn time and all were identical in lenght. The only variation were the connector manufacturers.
One change that occurred during this 4 week long endeavor was that I'm firmly seated on the sharpest picket on the fence.
My result is that I'm now a believer that there are audible differences in cables. I also believe that these differences are minute and one has to really listen carefully and for a long time to discern these differences.
Now to the crutch of the matter, $$$$$, As we all know Transparent Cables would reside in the upper tier of Audio Cable expense.  Blue Jeans Cable on the other hand falls into the lowest tier of expense (well maybe not lowest but low nontheless )
One would think then that the Transparent would be far superior to the BJs. Not really! Yes the highs were a little cleaner, mids a little tighter and lows a tad more pronounced but not by as much as one would expect. Soundstage was somewhat more open and airy and depth was somewhat more defined with the higher priced cable but again less than one would expect. 

Now for my personal opinion regarding the cable debate: expensive cable looms are slightly better than reasonable priced looms, if a dollar equals a penny to you then by all means opt for the higher priced loom, if a penny equals a penny don't be ashamed for opting for the best you can do. The differences are so minute that it's not worth going into debt over. BOTH looms sounded superb on my test system and I would be happy with either loom.

Now let the debate begin, just know I'm a fence sitter and not in one camp or the other
gillatgh

Showing 11 responses by shadorne

@nonoise 

You are very clever. Great rebuttal. I still haven't got an anwer why some folks prefer the sound of fuses and wires over the faithful reproduction of the source!
"Fuses and cable swap outs resulted in obvious changes in tone, timbre, ambiance and depth, or see through, as I call it. Even footers made a noticeable difference. I used to love Herbie's tenderfeet but with the Tonians, I had to take them out and just perch the gear directly on the maple shelves. It was just a bit too foggy with them. "

So frustrating to have equipment that is extremely finicky. You never enjoy the music because there is always contamination of the source audio from almost every extraneous factor.
So audio is a special exception and all other electronic devices are different. Sure. 
So special wires and fuses are ONLY critical in audio sound quality? Nobody else has a need for special performance tuned $50 110 volt AC fuses. Nobody else has a need for better performance from $1000 wires to run 3 feet? 

Seriously, how could anybody buy into this kind of logic? It is predicated on audio equipment being somehow different from all other electronics. Why wouldn't your digital camera provide shaper images and better color from a better USB cable. Why woudn't all printers or PC perform that much better with a better fuse? Why do people upgrade RAM in PCs but nobody buys special digital performance PC fuses so that the digital bits have rounder zeros and sharper 1s? Why wouldn't your car run better and faster with a different fuse or specialist battery cables - after all modern cars all run on electronics?


Agreed we are all different. Some brains are more wired to fanciful wishful thinking and some are more logical with a higher degree of rationality. Does this affect what we thinkwe hear - absolutely!

If fuses or wires made a difference to equipment performance it is rational to expect these affects would be well known and many industries (hospitals, military, IT, airlines, manufacturers etc.) would all be purchasing these audiophile specialty products for the increased precision they bring to any electronic device.



@hifiman5

Thank you but I am actually the one who has no worries about dielectric burn-in. I don’t worry about the fact that the dielectric air around cables is constantly changing and therefore for a fact that the cable can never ever fully burn-in.

(I know that these effects are totally negligible and of the order of a butterfly flapping its wings half way across the otherside of the globe and somehow affecting my subwoofer response)
@hifiman5 

Glad we agree about the air around cables being a dielectric. Do you deny that as a direct consequence cables can never burn-in?
@hifiman5 

The most important dielectric is air! 

Since air circulates freely around then your wire conductors can NEVER EVER burn-in!

Perhaps you should give up this hobby and start hunting for UFOs and aliens.
There is no debate - everyone agrees that adding a filter (like the one in your Transparent cable) will change the sound often audibly. No debate at all.
Looks like the transparent ultra cables have a black box which probably houses a filter.

If you add a filter then it likely will sound different and audibly so in many cases.

This is normal. This is what filters do. Of course at no cost you could use a tone control too but whatever floats your boat.