Wire can only subtract information (not that all do) from the signal it’s conducting. Since wire is not active, only passive, it cannot add anything. Who would want a cable that attenuates portions of the audio spectrum that they are trying to conduct from one component to another? That means that if you hear a difference between two interconnects it’s because the two cables in question are attenuating different parts of the audio spectrum! That means that neither are neutral, so, it really means that you pays your money, and you takes your choice of what losses or amount of loss that YOU think sounds better than a low loss solution. That’s why I don’t pay any attention (or money) to cables. |
Boxer12;
I have ever made a comment about ICs, cheap or expensive. You have me confused with someone else, I’m afraid.
About your electromagnetic radiation comment. You are assuming that it is always present in all systems in enough quantity to audibly affect the signal being conducted. There is no evidence that I know of that supports that assumption. While possible, it should certainly be easy enough to test that hypothesis. If there was anything to it, I would suspect that cable manufacturers of interconnects whose designs yielded the lowest interference measurements would use those in their advertising to increase sales and making choosing interconnects easier for customers. But no such tests or measurements seem to exist. If “boutique” cable manufacturers actually try to technically explain their product’s superiority, they usually do it with technological nonsense. Most companies don’t bother to explain what even they don’t understand.
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Mocassin2,
When one thinks about what comes before and after The “boutique” power cord: miles of cable before the mains plug including the house wiring and circuit breakers, and a tiny fuse filament and 18 - 20 gauge wire before and after the fuse to the primary of the power transformer through the power switch, it’s difficult to understand what a 1.5 - 2 meter length of cable, the thickness of a baby’s arm (or, perhaps, leg) is supposed to be doing.
But I am a firm believer in isolating one’s audio system from the mains supply. I use a hospital 30 Ampere isolation transformer with LRC filters on both the primary and the secondary windings. Looking at the mains coming out the wall with one channel of a dual channel oscilloscope, and the secondary of the transformer with the other channel, the difference in the interference noise before and after the transformer has to be seen to be believed. The difference in sound with and without the hospital supply is anything but subtle. |
Mahgister-
It’s not that silver cables “add something” over their copper equivalents, it’s that silver subtracts less because it’s a better conductor and has less resistance and possibly less capacitive and inductive reactance.
And in my considerable experience, things like shungite, quartz, myrtlewood, and the like placed on top of electrical components such as amplifier transformers achieve their results through a pair of phenomena called confirmation bias and expectational bias. But if you think these things make your system sound better, then that’s all that matters, isn’t it? Me, I think taking the money that others spend on improvements of dubious scientific worth, And buying more music improves my system immensely. :) |
When I say that cables can’t add anything, they can only subtract, I’m pointing out the passive nature of wire. It is not an active component; ie, it has no gain over any part of it’s pass bandwidth. Therefore cable is what we call lossy. This general description applies equally to the cheapest and the most expensive of so-called “boutique” cables.
Of course, I hook-up my system with interconnects. I buy quality made cables,
purchased exclusively from mycablemart.com. These interconnects have gold plated hardware, good quality molding on the strain reliefs, and most importantly, the wire used is RG59. The cables have the added advantage of being extremely inexpensive while being almost identical in construction to the much more expensive “Blue Jeans” brand interconnects.
Of course, I have no idea what these cables “sound like” vis-a-vis other cables, but since I don’t ever compare cables, it really doesn’t matter, does it? All interconnects sound subtly different, and since none are 100% neutral, whether the cables cost $thousands or pennies, there’s no way to tell which is the most neutral (total neutrality is what I believe the goal of cables to be. Otherwise we are compromising the aim of high-fidelity; i.e. a high degree of faithfulness to the original performance or recording). Hope this answers Oldhvymec’s question.
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Moto_man;
you hit the nail squarely on the head. No cable, irrespective of price sounds the same in any two systems (unless they are identical, of course). So the consumer is always buying a pig in a poke. “Interconnects are like a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re gonna get.” I look on them as fixed tone controls that work randomly and unpredictably. IOW, when you go down that road, you are opening a Pandora’s box that probably can’t be closed again. Is there a rehab center for that?
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Geoffkait;
Please forgive my IC comment. I was a semiconductor engineer for many years. When I see the letters”IC”, the first thing that comes to mind in an audio context is operational amplifiers, microprocessors, DAC chips etc. Not wire! |
Boxster12;
I explained above, but I’ll do it again. Until your post, I had never seen Interconnects abbreviated “IC”. I am a retired semiconductor design engineer by profession. When I see the term IC, I don’t naturally think of interconnects, I think of operational amplifiers, DAC chips, microprocessors, etc. So I misunderstood when you attributed a comment about “cheap ICs” to me.
And yes, mycablemart interconnects are cheap and cheerful. They are also well made and use real RG59U cable. They also seem to be more neutral than other brands like Cardas, AudioQuest, and Kimber. I’ve “tested“ this by listening to the un-balanced output of a “mk II” Yggdrasil to a Stax SRM-700T ESL amplifier and a pair of Stax SR-009s ESL ‘phones and swapping out the interconnects. Since the mix I listened to of jazz and classical symphonic recordings were recorded, live, by me, I know what they sound like. Not terribly scientific, I agree, but since nobody knows why cables alter the sound, I know of no scientific way to test them.Remember, I am not advocating that cables have no sound. I’m advocating that the sound that they impart on the sound of one’s system is unpredictable, the result of attenuating some portion of the audio spectrum, and because of that, they are snake-oil and a monumentally poor value. While, most certainly, YMMV, I choose not to open that particular Pandora’s box.
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It’sjustme
sure Interconnects can smear, but they shouldn’t be able to do that at audio frequencies. Coax can do lots of “funny“ things, but they do them at VHF and UHF frequencies and above. At real low frequencies, like audio, none of these “exotic” cable effects have any or very little affect.
And you are correct to point out that most boutique cables represent merely very minuscule, fixed, “tone controls”. A digital parametric or full spectrum, decade or octave style equalizer would do a much better job than an expensive pair of interconnects. 🙂
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Exupgh2,
I see a lot of you “pro-boutique cable” guys seem to be content that cables sound “different”. But I see very few posts that say that their boutique cables sound better than what they were using before, just different. My question is this: do you cable swappers assume that the higher the price the better the cable will sound? Or do you rely on blind chance and hope that your new cable sounds better than your old one? How many audiophiles just look on expensive cables as merely bling? I ask because I really don’t know. While I have tried a number of expensive interconnects and speaker cables that have been loaned to me, and have, of course noted that many of them impart a slightly different “flavor” to the sound, I’ve never heard one that I found actually sounded better than what was there before. I also noted that the differences disappeared (in my consciousness) after a couple of days.
Right now, I have an AudioQuest USB cable between the MacBook Pro that I use as a music server in my main system, and my recent build “Mark Ii” Yggdrasil DAC. The USB cable is borrowed and is black and has a 72 volt battery hanging off of it which is connected to the cable only on one end of the battery (IOW, not a complete circuit). Initially, I noticed that it sounded a bit different from the “printer cable” quality USB cable that I had been using -not necessarily better, you understand, just different in ways that I found difficult to quantify, or indeed identify. It’s been in my system for several months now, and I no longer notice the differences. I suppose that I will notice the change again when I go back to my “printer cable”. Actually I prefer SPDIF for digital between server and DAC over USB. I suspect that SPDIF has a lower error rate than USB, but I don’t know that for certain. |
Geoffkait;
wire “burning-in”? You’re pulling our legs, right? Would you please tell me what there is in a piece of coax to burn-in? Don’t tell me that it’s the dielectric that’s forming. That occurs in seconds when it is applicable. In cable, It’s not.
What’s more likely is that the component that’s “burning-in” is you, the listener. You are getting used to the new sound of the new cable. The cable hasn’t changed one iota.
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Djones51,
You can’t find evidence to support a negative (I.E. that a diety doesn’t exist) because you can’t prove a negative. Those who believe in a deity can prove that the deity exists by simply producing said deity. However, one cannot prove that the deity does not exist by NOT being able to produce a deity. That’s how faith works. IOW, to the faithful, no evidence is necessary, and to a non-believer, no evidence is possible. |
