"During the middle of one song (I had my eyes closed) ,Chuck took the cables off the Cable Elevators; I immediately heard the sound become distorted and muddy."In a word https://youtu.be/YTY26k0CA0I?t=4
Synergistic Research Cable Risers?
Recenty Synergistic research brought out some cable risers. https://www.synergisticresearch.com/accessories/cable-risers/
The audio press said they made one of the biggest differences when taken out of the system, then re installed back in. Does anyone have first hand experience with these ?
That being said, they seem like quite a bit of money for what you get, however if they work at improving the sound it would be worth it. I do use Synergistic products which have made a definite improvement in sound but am quite skeptical on this product.
The audio press said they made one of the biggest differences when taken out of the system, then re installed back in. Does anyone have first hand experience with these ?
That being said, they seem like quite a bit of money for what you get, however if they work at improving the sound it would be worth it. I do use Synergistic products which have made a definite improvement in sound but am quite skeptical on this product.
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From my System Page comments https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/8367 "During the middle of one song (I had my eyes closed) ,Chuck took the cables off the Cable Elevators; I immediately heard the sound become distorted and muddy." Heard it with her eyes closed. Her own words. This stuff works. Deal with it. |
Regarding the SR cable risers at 4 for $400, I hope you have two foot cables to each speaker or your gonna need at least a couple of packs of them.Yep, another ripoff aimed at the gullible, if you REALLY!!! believe it makes a difference, you can get 100 of them for $20!!!! At least this rubbish is in the correct forum. https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/353393544686?chn=ps&norover=1&mkevt=1&mkrid=705-139619-5960-... Or take your pick https://www.ebay.com.au/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2334524.m570.l1313&_nkw=Plastic+Pizza+...+ Cheers George |
Have been using SR cable risers for a while now. Quite happy with them, although correct positioning is PIA. And this is the only complaint I can come up with. The effect is similar to that one of Orange fuses and ECTs. However, in my friend's system they worked slightly different - substantially widened the soundstage but because of that he got a hole in the middle. Took him a couple of days to fix that. Said he had to change a few cables ( he has over a hundred of spare ones and is the most knowledgeable person I have ever met ). Anyway, looks like it's a valuable tool which may require certain skills to be used. But it definitely works. Those who already know what ECTs, HFTs and Orange fuses are should give it a try. Chances are you won't be disappointed. |
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f208frank ... And, SR gives a 30-day trial on all of their products. Therefore, if they don't work out for you in your situation, you get a full refund with no questions asked. You only pay for the return shipping. What a scam, right? Frank |
Just found this thread and I got curious... Below are things I did and experiences I had. I apologize in advance if my experiences were trivial... First thing... Lifted all cables off the ground with kids bike helmets, egg crates, small boxes. Most cables were touching each other. Every cable were at least 2 inches off the floor. What I heard... Loss little smoothness, warmth, but gained a little focus, clarity, transparency. No more added air or resolution, just tiny changes in the presentation. Details were easier to hear. Took me a few minutes to realize the trade off was good. Second thing I did... Put some small boxes and very light weight golf balls between cables. Every cable was separated by at least an inch. Even my interconnects were separated. My USB wasn’t touching anything either. What I heard... More instrument separation, more focus, easier to spot instruments within the orchestra. Every instrument sounded more convincing. Realism was at a different level. Clarity was amazing. There was much much more depth. Sound stage set back a little but felt much more real. Music was more dynamic. Sometime you get speed that made music sound fake. This improvement made music sound real. Over all, just more realism. You may not feel the difference right the way, but after a while, you will realize realism. I sat through recordings that I found to sound annoying before. My conclusion... I am unable to say anything about Ted’s cable risers. Five and a half minutes worth of work made enough differences for me. Before buying any cable risers, try getting your cable off the ground and separating all of them. Disclaimer... 1. I have Oranges fuses in my integrated and DAC. They were amazing, much better than the Blues. Ted did something right. 2. I don’t like SR because I had pricing and delivery hiccups with their dealers. SR also has not acknowledged my complaint which was sent before the breakout. 3. I want to try Ted’s cable riser to see if they worth $400. Be safe everyone and enjoy the music! |
I second Frank's post. I've tried some SR products that didn't work for me despite their claims that they need HFTs to work (I use 32 HFTs instead of elaborate/expensive/large quadradic diffusion paneling on front and rear walls). I also use his upscale fuses and duplex outlets. They are cost effective for the sonic improvement. My cable manufacturing friend who derides all tweaks was convinced that the difference in standard versus blue fuses is amazing and chose to retrofit his fuses with circuit breakers (sounding equivlent to blue fuse sonic improvements). I found out recently that due to the design of my cables and extension power boxes that a certain tweak does not work at all despite it working in Frank's and 40 others systems quite nicely. Tweaks are just as system dependent as amps mating to speakers, amps to pre-amps, cartridges to tonearms, etc. |
heaudio123 ... Agreed. Without engineers, as weird as they are, we wouldn't have the technology that we enjoy today. They put the satellites in space that allow us to talk on our cell phones. They design our infrastructure. Even traffic control requires engineers. Without their planning, our streets would be a chaotic mess. So, in their own sense, they are American heroes too. By the way, P.T. Barnum was a promotional genius. I fail, however, to see what he has to do with engineers. Please elaborate. Thanks ... :-) Frank |
I'll be the first to say proudly that Ted Denney is a salesman ... and a damned good one at that. He's also a promoter ... and good at that too. He's a manufacturer in a very competitive business ... and he excels at that as well. Starting out living in his small factory because he couldn't afford rent on the business and an apartment at the same time, Ted has brought, what was once a little start-up company, into an international success. All of this while his detractors stand around with their fingers up their noses, wondering what the hell happened. I don't have much of Ted's products in my system, just the Level III power cords, a ten-pack of HFT's to help treat the room, and a full complement of SR's new Orange fuses. I've reviewed all of these products on this site. Synergistic Research products have been very helpful in allowing me to attain a level of sound in my system that can only be described as spectacular. And this with speakers that were built to a price point. Speakers, that can be purchased today on the used market for under $2000.00 per pair. I find it interesting how salespeople are disparaged, not only here on this site, but in society in general. Interesting, because nothing moves in this country without a salesperson on the front end of each transaction. Think about it ... every semi-tractor/trailer you see traveling down the highways of this country, carrying goods to the marketplace, every item in the retail stores, every automobile you see on the road, had a salesperson at the front end of the transaction, even before the pen hit the contract of sale. The plastic, copper, gold, and circuitry in our smartphones, the aluminum, steel, plastic, and leather in our cars, had a salesperson at the front of those transactions too. The lumber, the nails, the roofing material, the drywall, and the siding in our homes all needed to be "sold" before it came to the marketplace and eventually went into building the homes. The concrete, steel and all of the material that went into building our roads and bridges had a salesperson upfront even before construction began. Same for the heavy equipment used to build those roads and bridges. Someone sold that equipment, and someone sold the tires, axels, pistons, and valves that allow that equipment to move. I've often said in my 50-year sales career that any recession could be ended if every salesperson in the country would just take the time to knock on just one more door every day. The indisputable fact is, that without salespeople, there wouldn't be an economy, period. Ted Denney a comedian? Hardly. In the true sense of the American tradition, Ted Denney is a hero. Get over it, Frank |
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Ted is a sales guy and a good marketer. Fun talking to him at shows. He is very passionate about stuff he knows nothing about. After all these years maybe he even drinks his own koolaid, though I expect that since he will never put his money where his mouth is, perhaps he knows it is a house of cards. I glad you enjoy your system, but those speakers are so far from state of the art by today's standards that any tweak is just going to be duct tape. Seriously, if you are as passionate about music as you claim, they need to go. It will take and adjustment period and some acoustic tweaking but those speakers are a serious limitation in what can be achieved. |
Ted is no comedian. Ted is right up there with Tim and Keith and Eric and Peter. Some I know for damn sure because I got em- or had em. Others I have no doubt because I know the reviews and feedback.https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/8367 Ted is right up there with the very best of them. Their work is all over my system, which would drop your jaw if you heard it. A lot of which is due to Ted. And that's no joke. |
Prof, I think you are taking the wrong approach to this topic. You appear to be approaching it from a standpoint of logic and physics. So what that every claimed reason for working including static electricity, dielectric/capacitive effects or vibration could be easily tested to be real or not .... you know that 1) vendors never will because they won't be able to show a difference, 2) the people that advocate for them will not test for the effects as they are unable and 3) the people that do test for the effects and show they are not there will be insulted with any number of ad-homs. Just consider what it is ... Ted is the comedian extraordinaire of the industry, the "press" in the room are his faithful audience, and you and me, wolfgarcia, etc. just don't seem to get the joke. |
So after many trials, I have decided that with my speaker cables (Cerious Tech Matrix) the SR risers just did not provide enough bang for the money and I sent them back for a refund. I mention my speaker cables because they are made with an internal damping fluid that probably negates the improvements that other cables may exhibit with using the SR risers. But, I may put a couple of the SR HFT's on my porcelain elevators. ozzy |
wolf_garcia5,339 posts03-06-2020 1:47pm Hmmm...and Thyname...I can only assume you were joking as indeed, the cables inside your speakers (and the amps inside my subs or any "active" speaker) are not on the floor (a brilliant observation) and are exposed to nightmarish levels of Evil Vibes but somehow miraculously manage to work...I suggest putting SR cable risers inside speakers and electronics and stick ’em to your head to insulate headphone cables as, clearly, that's the only way to insure the issue is remedied and SR gets more snake oil residue.An interesting mythical creature you are .... Read the title of this thread. It says ".... cable risers". What do internal speaker wires have to do with cable risers? I guess you were fighting the anti-snake-oil (holly) war in multiple fronts and forgot which thread you were posting this to (LOL!!) |
Isolate speakers from their internal cables? Hmmm...and Thyname...I can only assume you were joking as indeed, the cables inside your speakers (and the amps inside my subs or any "active" speaker) are not on the floor (a brilliant observation) and are exposed to nightmarish levels of Evil Vibes but somehow miraculously manage to work...I suggest putting SR cable risers inside speakers and electronics and stick ’em to your head to insulate headphone cables as, clearly, that's the only way to insure the issue is remedied and SR gets more snake oil residue. |
The problems with most audio system user is the lack of priorities and lack in method... To assess audible differences by anyone for anyone there must exist a scale of priorities in the different embeddings controls and methods... There is no minimal consensus about this scale... My own experiment about 4 embeddings is only a beginnings and makes me able to discover more and more....It seems people are more interested by their taste in audio gear and their own opinion generate by their limited audio system... How to create a top audio system for peanuts is my goal.... I succeed to a great degree...Not with "opinions" or my "beloved brand name gear ", but my systematic experiments, simple, homemade, low cost... Discussion about cables are ridiculously sterile, because the 2 armies does not know to speak one another in a common language about the priority scale concerning increase S.Q. in an audio system .... |
Duh! the cables inside your speakers are NOT on the floor. |
Baloney...vibration from music (or sub sonic tectonic vibes generated by an overly fertile imagination) isn't the horrible thing people claim it is, and getting your cables off the floor is utterly unnecessary and, by the way, vibration still gets to the cable (unless you isolate it in drainpipes filled with cotton balls or tiny bits of fuzzy audiophile paranoia) causing zero audible distress. What about the cable INSIDE your speakers? Wait...don't think about that last one as you won't be able to sleep. |
All materials have a sound.......I would not think that a ceramic riser would be best. You do not want to induce any microvibs into the cable. Also the ceramic risers do not raise the cable very much. I like to use cardboard. I have found cardboard to be very dead and clear sounding. You can make cardboard risers for essentially nothing and make them any height you want. For instance, you can cut a piece of cardboard 13 inches by 4 inches. You bend the cardboard at 5 inches from each end. You cut a slot in the middle of the end of each of these 5 x 4 inch parts and tape them together using electrical tape, scotch tape or glue.....even string, I would think PVC tape is less prone to static than scotch tape. The slot holds the cable. The deeper you cut the slot the more area it holds onto the cable. It looks something like a pyramid when done. Here is a link to some pics where you can see a very crude one I made years ago and still use today (no WAF here....he he): http://tweakaudio.com/EVS-2/Cheap_stuff__Cool_stuff__Tweaks.html If you have ceramic risers you might want to make some out of cardboard and compare. You can make them higher and you can make more of them so they support the wire even more. And they cost basically nothing. Fun stuff. The Mapleshade three stick jobbies raise the cable 8 inches off the ground. Check these out: https://shop.mapleshadestore.com/Triad-Cable-Lifts_p_1294.html You can make your own out of dowels, chopsticks or whatever. Be creative.....but get those cables off the floor. |
I’m sure there is a big difference. But that’s comparing risers to floor. Ozzy is comparing risers to risers. Cable Elevators are already really good. Also, and I know this is gonna cause even more eye-rolling, but moving cables around does indeed create a situation where they sound worse for a while. How much worse and for how long depends on how much they’re moved and how good you hear. Usually you can count on a few minutes even with careful handling. This complicates matters only to the extent you’re not aware and able to hear. Obviously the listener who became aware of this himself is able to hear it, while one who has to be told still has some skills development waiting out there to be explored. So the sooner you start.... Hopefully ozzy what you are doing is swapping them out one at a time, carefully removing with one hand and replacing with another keeping the cable hardly moving the whole time. This should take no more than 30 seconds to a minute. Using music you’re familiar with late at night when the system is really warmed up it should be easy to hear the difference. Oh and while you're at it, if you're one of these guys who plays the same little bit over and over again now would be a good time to stop. Just play music you like. Don't even pause. Listen the whole time. You do this a few times, don't be surprised if you notice you start hearing the difference even bent over the wrong way with your back to the speaker. Btw I think you’re right about the ECT, or HFT, whatever he calls it. My bet is you could stick either one ECT or HFT on the Cable Elevators and, uh, elevate their performance to the same level for less. Since you already have the Cable Elevators I mean. You should try it and if I’m right you could get the same or better performance while saving a few bucks at the same time, the Holy Grail of audio. |
@ozzy Based on your limited experience with the SR risers, it is apparent that something is wrong with the SR Youtube demonstration which indicates a vast change in sound with only 3 risers per channel, installed and removed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVIKxulyLNY
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So I have had the SR Risers now for about 2 days. I must say that checking the difference in sound perceived between the SR and my original porcelain footers is/was a royal PITA! By the time I get repositioned to listen, I’m not quite sure if the difference is still there. Until I get a helper to help switch these out I’ll state my opinion to those who care based on my experience thus far. I used Jackson Browne -"Running On Empty" Road Out/Stay for the musical trial. To my ears, yes there is added depth and realness to the sound with the SR risers. It’s not immediately apparent, that is why having a helper switch them out while playing music is important. But I’m going to keep at the testing. I don’t think it is so much related to the risers themselves but to the red HFT that is attached to it. At least that’s what I am thinking so far. BTW, I also have 2 FEQX4's and about 20 of the HFT's. ozzy |
@rspyder You said that you have had SR cable risers for several years. I thought the SR cable risers with the ECT like device is new. What do your cable risers look like? Are they the same? @tyray Thanks, I'm going to buy those right now as they look superior to the wood and rubber pucks I'm using. The SR cable risers benefit (or not) from the ECT devices rather than the stand itself. |
@geoffkait Grab em up second hand when they go on sale. 🙄When I first started reading and actually learning things here I did not quite understand your posts at all. But now I find them quite refreshing because of your capacity to always find humor. ;) @bdp24 You can get a package of 20 Grip Rite brand "Plastic High Chairs" (supports to elevate the rebar in concrete foundations) at Home Depot, product no. IHCP21420R (sku 7 64666 53838 2), $3.60 for the bag of 20. Put a "suspension bridge" across the gap (as Shunyata does on their cable riser) if you wish.Well I’ll be damn! I work in concrete construction and never thought about using the plastic chairs used to elevate rebar to elevate subwoofer and speaker cable off of the carpet! I can get any height, width size and as many I want for free! Now I have something to go along with the clear Gorilla Tape I’ve been using when running cable on the baseboard molding. Thanks! |
I have 9 of the SR Cable Risers in my system, which has two 10' SR Atmosphere Level 4 speaker cables. I got them because I have carpet in my dedicated listening room and I was worried about static build up within the cable, particularly in the drier winter months. Their design is superior to others, including Nordost, because of how they insulate against static transmission. Do they make a noticeable improvement in system (i.e. speaker cable) performance? Its hard for me do say because I have had them in place for a few years. I have not bothered with an A/B. I will say two things about them: first, I can't recall a noticeable performance uptick when I installed them, so there may not have been one in my system; and second, I really like them because they make the speaker cables more noticeable so I don't have folks stepping on them and it allows for easy vacuuming without having to lift the cables all the time. The paradox is these admittedly expensive risers likely work better, from a performance perspective, on cheaper speaker cables. Well constructed cables with excellent insulation or isolation from RFI and other forms of transmission interferences likely don't benefit as much from cable lifters. Bottom line is: each to their own, and if you like the look and intuitively presumed benefits then what the hell. I will say they look good. Ray |
I read all the posts. +1 goose. Without the 32 HFTs in my custom listening room I would need extensive quadradic diffusion paneling on the front and rear walls. The side and ceiling surfaces have extensive absorption paneling. The sound in this room is comparable to at least $250,000 in electronics despite using a 30 year old $2500 pair of Legacy Focus speakers. (The entire room cost $160,000 to build which eliminated the need for bass traps). However, the Shakti Hallographs do make a more significant benefit in imaging. The HFTs provide a huge soundstage and focus the sound. In my previous listening room, I had underground speaker wire conduit installed prior to pouring the concrete. The wire sounded much better under the ground than laying on top of carpet (25' speaker runs). I decided that inexpensive cable risers were at least adequate on the new build with no reason for anyone to walk near the speakers (previous room had 42,000 LPs/CDs/78s-so I would have to walk over the wires occasionally if they weren't underground). |
I haven’t read all three pages of posts yet and will delete if necessary but these are not ordinary cable risers. Note that they have a red ECT looking device on each one. This is probably the reason that using these risers focus the sound. Whether or not they act like the Black Box which was a failure in my system (cut off highs at 8Khz and above) I don’t know. I plan on trying them out in the future. I gave back the Black Box. P.S. I 100% disagree with drbarney’s conclusion because there is an art to constructing cables that is currently not quantifiable and cannot be test equipment verified. The sonic differences are obvious as I have been a cable tester for a manufacturer for two decades. |
A reasonable question for "exotic" cables and embellishments thereto is what kind of engineering and/or physics background does the designer who invented them have. I tried to find out what training many famous cable "engineers" have and there is no mention of it anywhere to be found. If they were trained physicists they would know how to calculate the effect of such things as electric field dipole energy introduced into and later released from the floor your cables are on. Such energy from the minuscule electric fields surrounding loudspeaker cables is so slight it could return only a tiny fraction of a micro-Volt signal to the speakers. Skin effect is another example of junk science. Cable manufacturers advertise the steps they take to address the problem of skin effect causing high frequencies to be attenuated by the loss of conductivity of electricity flowing through the center of a conductor away from the surface where skin effect concentrates the current. Some use litz construction; many thin conductors individually insulated to make them thinner than the skin depth at high frequencies. Others use ribbon cables because the thickness of a ribbon conductor is less than the skin depth. Here is the problem: you can use a graduate E&M physics text to do an integral of current density at a given voltage taking into account the diminution of skin depth and conductivity of the cable, or there are free online calculators which do the integration for you and give you the resistance of a length of any gauge cable for any frequency. My 8 gauge speaker cables have a DC resistance of 0.008 Ohms. At 20 kHz skin effect increases that resistance to 0.016 Ohms. In series with my 4 Ohm planar magnetic speakers, the ratio of resistance, and the ratio of signal current through my speakers, is 4.008 to 4.016. This means at 20 kHz, a frequency almost nobody can hear, the sound pressure is reduced by 0.017 dB, proportionally less at lower frequencies. Cable designers either did not know how to calculate this or they knew the public would have a superficial idea about skin effect and fall for it. Any physicist in today's culture where authority no longer has to be earned the way marketing does not will be dismissed for want of charisma if he/she points such things out. For me, these selling points of cables is so extreme and so fraudulent none of their rationalizations for cables costing hundreds or thousands of dollars has any credibility. How many people who have already invested in such things can suffer the loss of bicycle tire pumps to their self-esteem to admit they can't hear the difference they paid for? That is why I trust myself to design my own amplifiers, preamplifiers, and cables more than I do most manufacturers. Like all other industries, there is more and more dishonesty. |
I had my speaker cables suspended, primarily to keep them away from power lines, which IS a good thing. But realized it was putting a little too much pull at the posts so I swapped them. Cables on floor, power suspended... made no difference what-so-ever in performance... just MY experience. YMMV. We truly can convince ourselves of anything... |