Which cables go with what?????


I never fails to amaze me, the questions people ask on this forum, always trying to find some synergy between cables and their components/speakers.

The fact is: there are two classes of cables:
1) Those that are neutral
2) Those that impose a sonic signature (tone controls of a sort)

If the average audiophile spent his time trying to weed-out the tone control cables and get some neutral cables, then all that would be left is to determine the right synergy between his or her components. This may mean elimination of an offensive component, as painful as that sounds.

Component synergy is real. Amps and speaker combinations definitely need to be selected carefully. In some cases also preamp-amp synergies are important. If you are using tubes, then there are even more compatibility issues. But cables, forget it. If you are trying to compensate for a poor component or speaker design by using tone control cables, you will probably never be happy and likely compromise the sound of the other components in the process. You will certainly never approach a live or "master-tape" sound. There, that's my editorial. Hopefully some will learn from it.
audioengr

Showing 6 responses by corona

Sean:
Maybe this will help; it took us three years to build a ported dynamic speaker with no x-over. Every speaker manufacture we took the project to said it was inpossible. The major reason the speaker works is due to a huge advancement in power cord design. This shows an inherent relationship between power cable performance and its effect on the total system. Without a stable power flow nothing else can function properly.This synergy thing is a bunch of dung, there is a reason for everything and when it is beyond our understanding we call it synergy etc.
I know it is hard to grasp without hearing the reality but A-Bs are difficult to do over the internet mabe you and Audioengr can figure that one out.
There are many strange relations in the audio chain that contemporary engineering has not accounted for and the more I say the more bazaar it is going to appear.
Long before Copernicus,mathematicians were trying to predict the movements of the planets; their efforts never proved successful. Galileo arrives and proves the movement of the planets can never be predicted until the solar model has the sun at its center. Your arguments are like the mathematicians of old; you will never find the answer because your basic premise is incorrent. Traditional engineering principals do not work with cable design.
Our discussions about cable design problems with physicist and engineers have always reached the same conclusion: "To solve these problems you must develop a new technology and ultimately your own science". After 10 years of research we have succeeded, but the answers lie far outside the box of traitional engineering. Faulty methodology never yields successful results.
Sean:

I don’t think you are stuck in the Stone Age; in fact you are one of the few people in this forum who understands how far off the mark audio is. Many years ago an audio engineer friend told me, “You must remember audio is approximately 20% music and 80% distortion”. Presently things have improved but we still have a long way to go.
The “blow hole” effect you mentioned in reference to ported speakers is directly related to the problem I keep referring to: power cords. We have been in business for over six years so why am I now posting on this forum? Why do I not talk about our other products? Why do I keep repeating the same issue? Could it be the answer has nothing to do with business? Could it be this product is so revolutionary that all by it self it could change the entire audio situation? If this is fact than how do you convey such advancement to the public? Well you are certainly not going to do it in an arena that is constantly serving up Pablum. Now don’t get me wrong Pablum is a good thing, but the threads in this forum are drowning in it. I really feel for the Audiogon people that stare at that stuff day after day. We think the only way to promote a product this advanced is through direct experience and this is what we have done. One guy hears a demo, contacts a friend and so it goes. Now, what is the relationship between the speaker and the system’s power cords? There are various electromagnetic disruptions that take place all the time within the cord’s structure; these create all forms of distortions which are passed into the system’s circuits. The music is then superimposed over it and sent to the speaker. The effect of this causes the bandwidth to become “clamped” or compressed, limiting frequency, dynamics, resolution etc. The solution we have found establishes a relationship through tuning the mechanical resonance of the cord in reference to the propagation of its field. I know the E.E. manuals claim that no such relationship exists but this is why, until now, no one has been able to solve the problem. How do we know the effectiveness of this tuning? Because it is done while a signal is being sent through the system and the effect is clearly audible. If you believe this to be either fact or fancy, the performance level of the product still remains the same.

Flex:

The power cord; because it is on the supply side of the power supply is the only device that must endure the entire workload of the system. For this reason they also create/produce their own brand of distortion when not designed effectively.
I can’t give you a number on the reduction in distortion because of the variables;
however, the change is massive especially when one or more is used.
Mechanical resonance is part of the problem but there is an aspect I have not mentioned; all I can tell you is that the design produces negative impedance without the use of resisters, inductors, capacitors; this allows the resonance tuning to be effective.

Sean:

Our “direct drive” speaker (not a product for sale at the present) is full of proprietary innovations like the ports, driver mountings, support structure which the cabinet rest on etc. The power cords are so critical to the speakers performance it simply will not function with and degree of proficiency without them.