Sharing my experience with cables


Almost 40 years ago, a dealer in Montreal loaned me a pair of MIT cables. My scientific background refused the idea that cables would have any impact on electrons propagating at the seed of light.

The impact on the soud was so evident that I bought them. Since, I have tried many cables of all kinds and spent over 20 K on cable for two systems, one in Montreal and the other on the lake.

My criteria for all my components is physical:  if my arms and neck hair are raised by the music, it works for me. The other critical aspect I discovered over the years is distortion, which I think has a lot to do with crossovers. I beleive that crossovers are powerful filters whose job is to kill music.  Electrostatics are clean because they don't use such filters. But i still prefer normal drivers, , 2.5 ways because somehow the roll off frequencies are away from most of the music is. 

My latest speaker are Wilson Sophia 3, Raidho X3 and Q Concept 500 .

The Transparent speaker cables work fine with Wilson and Q Concept. For the Raidho I use  Luna Red for speakers and usb from the Aurender to the Devialet amp.

All of this just to give you context on what I a m about to say.

The cables I foud to have the most impact is the Power cable to the power amps (solid state)!  Here are my recent experiments:

Audioquest Blizzard makes the Raidhos sound dark, as if the riboon tweeter were dead !  

My most expensive cable is a DR Acoustics Red fire ultra ( 5K).  It makes  the Qconcepts too bright.   

Custom made Furutech are  much better with the Q Concepts.

I will try the DR power cable with the Raidhos next week.

They are all way better than the 5$ cords supplied with electronics. 

Finally, I have found litthe effect of cables on Aurender streamers and Dacs. This is aanother subject though.

 

Thank you for any suggestions. This is my first post here, so be indulgent !

 

lucmichaud1

Showing 1 response by mgrif104

@lucmichaud1 

I’ve enjoyed reading this thread of your journey. I had a somewhat similar path, starting as a complete skeptic (because i hadn’t heard the differences in initial experimentation) to now having a significant investment in every cable category (power, interconnect, digital and speaker). I never expected to get here.

On your most recent post detailing experience with the Niagara adding volume. I can speculate a bit on why that might be the case. But, you might also consider that the Niagara unit is quite effective at reducing the noise floor such that any given volume seems higher because the background is now “blacker”. 

That was certainly my experience when I first installed a Niagara 5000. That unit is now in a lake home system replaced by a Nordost QB8 in my primary, but the effectiveness of the noise reduction circuitry in the Niagara was startling when I first heard it. 

Kind regards,

mgrif104