Strange Cable Experiment

Did you do a blind listening test? If not, such is the power of expectation bias. Any change is perceived as positive in a majority of the times. 

Don’t mind Jason. Cables can and do make a difference. Better quality materials, construction and terminations.

However, I always do an ABA (original-new-original) test—revert to the originals and play the same record. Just to be sure.

No I did not do a blind test. I really wasn't thinking about keeping the set up and put them in just for fun and on a whim. But, my goodness golly gosh jee whiz!!! One wouldn't need ears to hear this improvement!! not close. Not just different. But I went from el cheap to almost a $1000 worth of cables. Shielded maybe made a difference but BOY HOWDEE! Huge improvement...like crazy time

Glad you’re so happy with the results, and I guess in the scheme of things it’s still cheaper than upgrading the turntable/cartridge/phono pre.  I’ve always found interconnects closest to the source make the biggest difference. 

Congratulations. Great when something this counterintuitive works out. Certainly not an approach that would likely always work, but it can. 

A dealer of mine was so overwhelmed by the performance of some phonostage interconnects that he sent me a pair to try. Although my phonostage was only valued at around $2.5K... it was worth the $2K for the Nirvana interconnects. It happens

I am not at all surprised by your findings.

Strange? Not at all. It would be strange if the cables didn’t make a difference in a resolving system. No blind test needed. Although with those cataract glasses I bet Jason is an expert in blind testing. 

"Any change is perceived as positive in a majority of the times."

Despite this pronouncement from our resident "voice of doom", congratulations on your epiphany.

Makes a person wonder how often inexpensive gear gets bad reviews because it was tested with cheap interconnects.  I certainly wasn't using expensive interconnects with my first systems. 

I recently experimented with some $200 interconnects that were considerably less expensive than my Black Cat Silverstar 88.  I listened with the real expectation that the less expensive cables could be as good, or even better.  Alas, they aren't.  Very good cables for the money, but not better than the Black Cat.

I remember way back more than 30 years ago when I first started getting interseted in better gear and sound  I bought an M&K subwoofer as my first "better gear" purchase and at the time M&K had a very patient and polite telephone tech guy, Doug Osborne, who patiently took my barrage of phone calls with countless questions, and as we were discussing "better sound" I remember he asked me:  "Which do you think would sound better--a $500 CD  player using the cables that came with it, or a $200 CD player using $50 cables?"  Obviously it was intended to be a rhetorical question.

(To JasonBourne71) I totally respect your observation above. The mind is a funny thing. Since the blind experiment train has passed, I critically revisited more LP's and told myself it was mere placebo effect. I did discover some vinyl only sounded marginally better. Nuance. But some records, especially well recorded ones with vocals were profoundly better in many ways. Crappy recordings were still crappy, maybe even more annoying. The value of quality cables is camouflaged by the typical audiophile habit of creeping up product lines to hear only debatable improvements. Jumping from Pangea ($50) cables to $1000 cables exposes clearly  that some pricey cables do dramatically reveal more of what's in the media. Not just a different sound but more details, more musical, and engaging. As stated cables act as filters in a sense. Apparently cheap cables do more than their share of this filtering. Now I'm thinking where else I might be "strangling" my music!

Now I’m thinking where else I might be "strangling" my music!

power. Get good quality outlets and power cords. Don’t have to be super expensive.