Funny, after all these years, people still say things like "you wasted all that money on cables". There are still those who believe cables don't make a difference. I once did marketing for a cable line I consider to be about the best-Stealth Audio Cables. One CES, I walked the rooms with the designer/owner, Serguei Timachev. He carried a pair of his then new Indra interconnects. Going from room to room he asked the room runners to replace their source to preamp IC with the Indra. There was not one that was not completely flabbergasted and said that the Indras blew away what they were using. That was the skyrocketing of Indra and Stealth. The Indra became one of the best reviewed cables ever. Serguei now makes the Sakra-an IC that blows away the Indra! I don't understand why some still do not value cables as much as I.
A company very well known Morrow cables, recommend to his customers to wait at least 200 hundred hours before returning a cable and compare it to others one... They gives themselves the trouble to cook their cable themselves before selling them...
Now suppose you are Mr. Morrow himself , why in the hell ! would you give to yourself this trouble and to yours customers too, advising them to burn the cables you sold to them or burning it for them... Why ?
Ockham razor parsimonious explanation principle suggest to me that Mr. Morrow listening cables all his life know what he is talking about, dont you think? And dont you think a sane mind would spare himself this trouble if he can?
It is not scientific proof for sure here.... Only reasonnable thinking.... By the way i experimented this phenomena myself burning his interconnect Ma 3...This is not also a scientific proof....Only a testimony....
But wait a minute,if you had hundred of similar testimonies, is it not the beginning of a proof in a court of law, compared to a debunker obsession with his misconception of science ?
« Burn the cable, the boat is ready» -Groucho Marx
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.
Like any audio component cables should be considered a Black Box when attempting to find the impact on SQ. But this can be vexing as cables and power cords need time to break in, otherwise what’s the point. It’s not what anybody wants to do - wait a week or two to find out what the cables sound like. So there’s that. Then, after the cables are burned in, what is the cables’ impact on noise and distortion, frequency bandwidth, dynamics? This can be a very long process, trying to decide which cables to use. Perhaps you just buy the cables you fell in love 💕 with, maybe at a show or a rave review, and live with them. Sure, that’s one way to do it.
Now cable breaking-in threads ... that's the smell of napalm.
But I do notice some improvement. Before it was like "cables don't make any difference ... blah blah blah". Now at least the difference is acknowledged to the tune of "difference but not worth the asking price".
I have a dream that one day cable-break-in will be accepted like one their own.
LOL, I use the USB cable that came with my integrated amp. I don't think digital out sounds any better than USB anymore. It's simply my subjective opinion. I always used and thought coax sounded the best until my most recent foray into using USB. I think it's improved a lot the last few years for audio.
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.
And one could easily claim that most differences that audiophiles claim to hear between cables are just that, claims. Difference is people who make that claim would have more controlled experimental data on their side than you. It’s best not to insult others from a shaky position. What’s a more supportable position to assume you have infallible audio memory or to assume it is fallible?
Cue Mr. Pebbles with some pithy yet predictably inane and wrong comment.
hiendmmoe85 posts07-04-2020 1:03pmTo the original question. The people who claim a cable can make a difference are the ones that can hear the difference when a better cable is used. I’ve come to the conclusion anti cable propaganda is associated with a group of people who’s hearing isn’t capable of hearing at a level where a good cable can make a difference.
To the original question. The people who claim a cable can make a difference are the ones that can hear the difference when a better cable is used. I’ve come to the conclusion anti cable propaganda is associated with a group of people who’s hearing isn’t capable of hearing at a level where a good cable can make a difference.
I use clarity cable $750 Vortex power cables. I had a guy get rid of his 4K power cables for it it in his 70k system and he is happy as ever. I also use their $ 1800 Clarity cable the “Natural” IC which he also swapped out his 5k IC and was happy.
“ You have to have good connections between things. Everything in the world is connections. When you have good connections you can build structure. When you have good structure you can build systems.”
The above is from our three-year-old grandson playing around in the “electrical connection“ room at the local children’s museum. (Pre-COVID of course)
I think it might have something to do with this discussion, but then again I don’t know what he’s talking about about half the time
Cables do make difference and sound different, is any asking price worth it, yes till a certain point of price\value.
Friend of mine has his system connected with stealth cables (dream royal for speakers (Tidal), V16 as interconnects (Constellation Pre+Amp) and Helios for phono (Davinci turntable and Nagra classic phono) they are very good but are they X times better than my cables (Cards Clear), don’t think so, not even close, it just different sounding
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. 🙂
The one’s that’d say ... here kitty kitty- received the Darwin Award🏆 That is, for those who believe we evolved from monkeys. 🙉 Actually, a few specimens here may support that theory 😂
It is easier mitch2, when most of the people who throw around terms like
imaging and sound-stage, etc. don't understand the underlying
mechanisms for how those things manifest.
To be fair one can hear without understanding how. We as a species did it for millenia and avoided sabre-toothed tigers just fine. well, sometimes not :-)
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!
At a high level this is pretty true. And the unsaid argument (well, someone else above did say it) against expensive cables is that they simply cost too much given their contribution (or in deference to the above, lack of impairment). In optimizing ANYTHING, sound included, the question must always be "Can i spend this money elsewhere and get more benefit". I would say for $6k cables the answer is always yes. Most often on substantially better speakers (and $6k can buy quite an upgrade, unless you have IRSs or WAMMs or .....
But the above quote - and I'm being picky here -- is not quite technically correct. Cables can do more than attenuate frequencies. They can time-smear them - mostly via the dialectic (insulation). Just like in regular capacitors the linearity of the insulation varies greatly. Teflon (PTFE) and expanded polyprop and polyeth are about the best. Weird capacitive-inductive effects might also cause some overshoot and/or ringing, although I have never seen it on a scope. But we're being theoretical here, so lets include more proven theories.
Is this effect significant? Probably not very. Is it real and well understood? yes. We can also get diode effects from terminations (connectors).
In the grand scheme I find that there are awful cables, mostly pretty darm good ones, especially the ones i make myself, and some exotic ones that are both excellent and terrible. I suspect some of the terrible ones are attractive tone controls in some systems, like to tame the silly rising high end of many cartridges currently popular (yikes, holy screeech batman!)
Ack chew ally, electrons don’t really care since they aren’t moving. It’s the PHOTONS you need to interview. A photon checked into a Hotel, the clerk asked if he had any baggage. The photon replied, no, I’m traveling light. Note to self: It looks like I’m on a roll today and it’s not even time for breakfast.
So far, the ones I have spoken to like to glide on the top of whatever conductor is available, but who knows? At $12,000, even an electron may sell out.
No, unbroken cables of the appropriate gauge are cables. Electrons don't actually care from what they told me.
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