Pro Cables vs. Audio Cables....Are We Being Duped?


Like probably most of you audiophiles out there, I have a few friends who are musicians. I told one of these friends that I was looking for a long (25+ ft.) pair of balanced interconnect cables. He suggested that I consider looking into some nice studio/mike cables, as all studio cables are of balanced design.

He further stated that most audio interconnects are a ripoff when compared to similar studio cables. To illustrate his point, we looked at comprable lengths of balanced cables from Monster Cable and the Studio versions were a couple of hundred dollars less. While it was hard to tell if the cables were truly apples vs. apples; the construction and description of each cable appeared to be extraordinarly similar.

While the thought of using "mike cables" in my home audio system makes me shudder, I certainly would not be opposed to saving a few hundred bucks either.

Do any of you have any experience comparing studio vs. balanced audio cables? Is there anything in the construction or design of home cables that makes them superior to studio cables in a home system (and therefore worth paying more for)? If any of you can shed some light on this, I would truly appreciate it.
daddyo

Showing 1 response by jnovak

I'm one of those people who went out and bought or demo'd
Transparent and MIT cables. They can make a difference.
My experience; I owned at the time of "the great experiment"
Threshold T2 preamp, T400 amp, Krell KPS20i cd player. MOST
IMPORTANT, THE ROOM!! 7.5' ceiling,13'x 21' The floor is con
crete as were the walls. The wall behind the speakers was
block covered over with fake stone. This worked GREAT! With the Snell Type B's six feet apart and two feet out from the wall, they were perfect. I used Transparent reference balanced between preamp and cd player and between amp & preamp. I used Reference speaker cables. The sound was as good as I've ever heard from a set of speakers. I tried stepping down one set of interconnects to "Ultra". A heard
less tight bass and the sound stage was not as open. When I tried stepping down to Super bal interconnects, the level
of soundstage, imaging, focus and bass also decreased. I didn't care for any of the MIT at the time and I'm soory as I can't remember which models whey were. Moster Cable etc.
were ALL a joke in this test. I couldn't hear a difference between ANY of their cables. My friend borrowed all of these
Transparent cables to try in his system. We could not hear a difference in ANY of the cables in his system or room.
He had Infinity IRS beta's, VTL 300MB's, My Krell 20i and Adcom monoblocks. The Krell 20i also had no significant improvment in his system. His gear was on a third floor attic maybe 7.5 x 16 x 24. My conclusion is that the room
is paramount in importance. If your setup doesn't sound good
already and you try changing out cables and experience
a minimal effect, your room is probably the problem.