Many years ago I had a very modest system with Carver amplification and Platinum Audio's $800 entry floor standing speakers. I bought them from my local Platinum dealer who often let me take used equipment home on a Saturday afternoon to have a weekend audition. I took some XLO $1200 IC home one weekend. One of my friends was into car audio and was a judge for competitions in Toronto. We did A-B to my $40 MIT IC over and over and neither could ever tell a difference.
I don't recall the publication but the article was titled, To Tweak or Not To Tweak. It was an extreme comparison of two systems where the only common piece was the speakers and everything behind the curtain was uber cheap on one and nice on the other. He had a panel of 10 that ranged from the typical house wife who couldn't care less to audiophiles and had them guess which system they were hearing. It was a complete toss-up where audiophiles would swear it was the upgraded system and was his homemade amp with 50 feet of radioshack zipcord for wire.
Back to my Platinum dealer. I told him I couldn't hear anything and he asked me with sincerity....do you want to hear the difference?? He said it is a learned skill and that if I did....we would spend a couple hours in his store and he could teach me. The problem he said was once I learned and truly heard I could never go back and would forever want to add cabling to my list of upgrades. I passed on the lesson.
Today I hear obvious improvements when I change amps, preamps, speakers and cartridges. I simply don't ever try different cables. I use stock power cords. I bought a bulk used lot of Audioquest speaker wire many years ago and have added the DiamondBack line of IC and have simply just left it alone.
I trust people that swear by this as they crossed over that bridge and now know. Maybe one day I will experiment, but I am not there yet.
I don't recall the publication but the article was titled, To Tweak or Not To Tweak. It was an extreme comparison of two systems where the only common piece was the speakers and everything behind the curtain was uber cheap on one and nice on the other. He had a panel of 10 that ranged from the typical house wife who couldn't care less to audiophiles and had them guess which system they were hearing. It was a complete toss-up where audiophiles would swear it was the upgraded system and was his homemade amp with 50 feet of radioshack zipcord for wire.
Back to my Platinum dealer. I told him I couldn't hear anything and he asked me with sincerity....do you want to hear the difference?? He said it is a learned skill and that if I did....we would spend a couple hours in his store and he could teach me. The problem he said was once I learned and truly heard I could never go back and would forever want to add cabling to my list of upgrades. I passed on the lesson.
Today I hear obvious improvements when I change amps, preamps, speakers and cartridges. I simply don't ever try different cables. I use stock power cords. I bought a bulk used lot of Audioquest speaker wire many years ago and have added the DiamondBack line of IC and have simply just left it alone.
I trust people that swear by this as they crossed over that bridge and now know. Maybe one day I will experiment, but I am not there yet.