Who thinks $5K speaker cable really better than generic 14AWG cable?

So dill...You took the time out of your busy day to reply to...no, actually defame my previous post.  Do you have a point?  A comment?  A remark? A question?  An opinion? Or was your sole purpose just to assume that the entire audiophile world Is on your side of this issue?  Please don't do that?  State an opinion....don't insult a post.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz like a broken record, over and over again for over a year ...........

Was thinking the other night, after a near two day pause in this discussion. A number of acoustic engineers have been quoted saying that if basic cable requirements are met, spending more on "designer" cables/wire cannot achieve a more superior sound quality...It is a waste of money and a poor value. These engineers/audio experts have absolutely nothing to gain by publicly stating their educated opinions.

On the other hand.... who praises the significant, if not impressive, improvements in sound quality that can be achieved by buying very expensive "high end” cables? Two groups. Those that manufacture, distribute and sell these products at a serious profit and those who were talked into drinking the Kool Aid and would NEVER fess up to being fleeced. Actually there is a third group. This group gulped the Kool Aid and are victims of the incedious audio placebo effect that causes you to hear the advertised, albeit impossible, sound quality enhancement.

"If you got the money honey, I got the wire."

If you  gonna by speakers cable , price must be 5-10% from speaker cost

 More experience in cable listening and comparison you will get only
after 3-4 hours listening  

Glad you have been illuminated 2channel8 with a very good new best word.....lol.
Seriously though my cables probably total $500 for all speaker and interconnects against close to $20k equipment. Really find it hard to bring myself to spend more especially on something like power cords.....
But you never know.......

uberwaltz,

Thanks for my new word of the day: Luddite
As to the subject at hand, I just spent $110 on a cable, the IC that goes from my phonostage to my pre-amp. I spent this exorbitant amount because I tried a $65 IC form the same company (WireWorld) that truly bested an AQ Evergreen IMHO, which favors detail rather than warmth. The $65 cable impact is proven beyond my doubt by two things. A blindfolded prisoner being able to correctly call it out, and the recent purchase of an SHM-SACD that is too bright.  I can use the Evergreen to calm it down. So maybe it was worth it.

As for the $110, not so much. Back to being cheap, but with more certainty.

 
mitch2

Geoffkait: You need to look deeper, grasshopper. Look inside.

Why look inside....does the hook-up wire inside of the $99K amp need to be changed too?

Definitely. If it were up to me I'd use cryo'd pure silver wire or silver over pure copper wire for the internal wiring. With special attention to the directionality of the internal wire. Ditto all capacitors, transformers, and of course fuses. I'm betting the $99K amps don't even have their fuses in the right direction.

These threads can be most entertaining for sure so at risk of upsetting EVERYBODY I am just going to throw this out there.

Surely there are only so many ways you can make a piece of cable whose sole purpose is to transmit signals from A to B?
Surely there is a point where no amount of money is going to improve this function to any measurable degree?
Do not get me wrong, I am not advocating we all hook up our speakers with bell wire but once up to a certain point of construction that is it?
Maybe I am a luddite but I did manage to change out the 30 year old QED 14g speaker wire about 2 years ago for some Canare quad core stuff. Did I hear a difference? Not really...lol. Maybe this old fart is just going deaf from working in heavy industrial plants too long.

And to the point of industrial cable, we have quite a number of wiring installs  that carriy analog signals that ABSOLUTELY have to have no noise or hum or interference of any sorts and the spec is dictated by the manufacturer of the equipment. Now you can ignore this and go with cheaper stuff but do you know what the price difference is? It is roughly double for the high end stuff. Not 10 times, or 100 times or 1000 times.....

You need to look deeper, grasshopper. Look inside.

Why look inside....does the hook-up wire inside of the $99K amp need to be changed too?  

mapman

Mystery not unraveled. Life and expensive wire go on.

There is no mystery. You need to look deeper, grasshopper. Look inside.

Mystery not unraveled.  Life and expensive wire companies go on.   

All of this dancing on the head of the pin and there’s still MORE room to relive the same arguments that seemed to have been settled many, many threads ago.

As this titanic thread sinks painfully into icy waters to a (justifiably) certain death, one can take solace if one were to look to the east and see yet another one on the horizon, steaming closer to eventually meet the same fate: another dance. This has to be a circle for audiophiles in Dantes Hell. Yes? Where’s Bill Murray when you need him? Or is it Rod Serling?

All the best,
Nonoise

For your guidance, the Boulder 2150 monoblock power amplifier’s have stock power cords included. Mr. Fremer asked Audioquest to modify their Hurricane power cords to match the 2150's 32 amp IEC jack.




N

mapman
I’d return my 90k amp if I found out they cheaped out on the cord.

If if you can do a 90k amplifier right and then get the cord wrong and the cord matters then guess what you screwed up and credibility gone.

If you were buying the 90k amp which cord would you insist they put on it? Just curious.

I’d return my 90k amp if I found out they cheaped out on the cord.

If if you can do a 90k amplifier right and then get the cord wrong and the cord matters then guess what you screwed up and credibility gone.

Douglas,

You keep attacking the others. Why not provide all this evidence that you speak of?

If a Boulder amp at a cost of 99K needs a special power cord in order to function then surely the power cord is included in the box with the amp?

Seriously why would anyone sell a 99K amplifier and skimp so much on the design that the power cord it comes with is totally inadequate and it requires the user to buy a special power cord to function correctly?

I dont doubt that these ridiculous issues actually exist, as your experience and Fremer’s have confirmed it.

However, my questions still stands - why buy extremely expensive equipment so poorly made that it is inadequate out of the box? Where is the sense in this? Isn’t an amplifier supposed to maximize source reproduction and minimize everything else that is extraneous - isn’t that what a great amplifier design ought to do?

(I do understand that it is possible to design something that is highly sensitive to power cords and speaker wires and interconnects but WHY would a designer build a 99K amp based on such a terrible design)

Sautan 904,
The proper unbiased test to run is the double blind test that many of us learned about in our Experimental Psychology classes.  You ran, perhaps?, a single blind test. The double blind test is set up like this. One of your friends disguises all three cables. as fully as possible so that neither you, the " plugger in-er",  nor the listener knows what speaker cables are being plugged in. They should be labeled with arbitrary meaningless letters or numbers for documenting purposes. In the alternative, the listener should not be able to even see the person who's plugging in the speaker wire.  Multiple random plugins of each wire pair should be done.  This eliminates any experimenter bias, i.e., when conscious, as you acknowledged, or, unconscious biasing that is transmitted by you to the listener. Also, when you misled the listener about which wire was being played  in your test, you obviously  introduced bias. Maybe your results will then be the same but you, and we, could then rest assured that no bias has been introduced into your experiment. 

Speaking of Michael Fremer, wasn’t he the one who was challenged by the guy from the JREF Education Foundation, I forget that person’s name? Anyway, the challenge was if M. Fremer could correctly identify which cable was which in 10 consecutive blind trials. The two cables in question were el cheaply Monster Cable and the el expensivo PEAR cables that were around $20K. Did I mention the challenge was for $1 Million if M. Fremer succeeded in the blind test? Anyhow, something happened during the negotiations and test never took place. Now, I don’t know if M. Fremer was unhappy with the constraints of the tests, whether JREF got paranoid, thinking maybe this audiophile dude really can hear difference in cables and might very possibly take the Million Dollar prize or what all.

Can't resist one more! Stereophile; Fremmer reviews Boulder 2150 at $ 99K. Power cords effect it? OF COURSE! It would be a POS if not! 

NO amount of sensible evidence will convince a self-confirmed skeptic. It will always be discounted, i.e. "He's a reviewer... can't be trusted," etc.

Re: valuation of cables, we have among us some of the world's most "thrifty" people and there again, NO amount of talk will get them to endorse even modest expense when they got a cord for free! The Wallet rules them more than theory. I know, as I was one of them. The arrogance and self-assurance is off the  charts.

The assumptions the theorists make are lame. In an age of nanotechnology they're thinking like it's the stone age. Listen to them and you WILL build a compromised audio system. 

Finally, Zephyr, I did the same with a boom box and aftermarket power cord; clear difference in sound. With such cheap and easy testing you have to be REALLY pig-headed to not try it. 

All the latest posts are great and start to turn this into a thread again worth reading. Thanks to aberyclark, ptss, grannyring and others for posts over the last couple of days.  I am one of those that has heard good overall in some level of more expensive cables both with 'more expensive audiophile as well as more reasonable cost gear, BUT if you see some other posts from me, you'll know I've also reached a certain point of house sound being overwhelming, cost coming into doubt, etc...where I've ripped them all out, taken the loss, realized I made some costly mistakes, etc... and went back to stock cords to try again making various levels of expenditure, but not the highest available in a line, on the market, etc...thereafter.  I also knew a dealer/friend of mine who invited to his house one day to listen to his personal system and while in his kitchen he took out an AIWA or some other 'boom box' he'd bought and had it playing a CD with it's default (luckily detachable 15-amp) cord after which point he attached a 10-foot long monstrous home-made 10ga (with Analysis Plus $30+/per foot in-wall wire) and terminated with the latest Furutech high-end 15-amp connectors so about a DIY $3500 retail PC on a $200 boom-box...) and later some massive Tara Omega power cord that was even more expensive if memory serves. I'd never make this level (10x cost or more) "wire to component" expenditure but I'll be damned if I did not hear one hell of a difference and that $200 boom-box wasn't MUCH better sounding and almost bearable...

I also happen to think there is a level of reasonable pricing even among SOTA cords and that many cable and component vendors violate even that; for example, IMHO, nothing can justify the price of some of these ICs, speaker cables, grounding solutions (in particular), etc...in the 5 and 6-figure (or very high 4 figure, all in USD$) camp.  Had one guy telling me about a system that had over $200K USD in grounding boxes and cables more than once; I just don't get that at all even though I do favor buying higher-end cables (not necessarily highest price) to a point. In short, I agree there is snake-oil and extreme markup/greed out there in some aspects of the cable industry though not all; there ARE guys out there practicing real audio/aural science and building legit products that sound better at price points that offset their total cost of development, price of innovation, materials cost to experiment/refine, etc... but there's a limit to this as well.    Fact is though, I've heard enough of a difference in my system between cheap/stock cords, ICs and spool-wire on speakers (have tried them all) and something better at many levels that I will forever spend some level of money on 'better' cables.

On a different but somewhat ironic level, I'd also expect to see earlier on this thread some justification that a basic box car like Yugo or something else is what everyone should drive as there is no difference in function between that Yugo and a higher performance/more comfortable cars of any brand....surprising that we did not!!!

Have a great weekend all!

Well, just look at what stamp collectors pay for their little treasures !!!!!!

Abeyclark I agree, my friend has 8ag kimber 7k is the price now, connected to Elac B6 $279, it's sounds crazy but that's him.. the ELac did sound $500 though.,,

Exactly. Everything is relative.  IMO, it would not be wise to buy $3000 speaker cables for a $1500 set of speakers. Again that's just me. 

aberyclark said: "I have to say, if I were able to afford the much higher end gear, I would probably invest in cables of the same level."

Good comment.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, explains why an audio geek who has spent $3,500,000.00 on his stereo audio system would not mind spending another $176,000.00 to purchase Nordost Odin cables and speaker wire to obtain a 5% "improvement" in SQ.

+1 aberyclark. You pretty much summed it very nicely. 

At the end of the day, the audiophile hobby is no different than any other. The hobbyist like to tinker, modify, change on a continual basis. If you are into gardening, you may find an exotic, high priced fertilizer produces more robust flowers. Another gardener may call it snake oil. As a car nut, you may swear that the custom racing air filter brings more "pep" where as the dealer mechanic says it adds nothing. 

I have to say, if I were able to afford the much higher end gear, I would probably invest in cables of the same level. 

Building gear is like a chef cooking at creating in a kitchen. Different combinations of ingredients yield different results. When I build or mod tube gear I learned this first hand. Changing out wire, caps, resistors, diodes, layout, trannys etc... all influence the end sound. The art of it is choosing the ingredients (parts) that deliver the sound one desires. All gear has a flavor, no doubt about it. How the soup tastes, the gear sounds, is a net result of both the parts chosen and design/recipe.  Use cheap spices, get a different result in the soup and in the gear. 

Shadorne maybe a dominant left or right side of the brain thing.   

Playing is is more fun. 

Good or bad, like or dislike, with respect to cable choices are individual decisions.
Therefore, the attempt to convince others that one philosophy is right or wrong is pointless.
The discussions of different experiences and sharing of opinions, articles, and technical information can be interesting but the labeling and veiled name-calling is tiresome and mostly reflects poorly on the name-caller.

I agree. If people say they hear a difference more power to them. I have heard (really minor) differences between speaker cables. Mainly the cheap ones seem to (to me) allow more "noise" vs better shielded ones. I’m quite happy with my Canare star quad speaker cables. Compared to my old Monster basic, background seems more "black" (floabt). I never noticed before until I got my ZU Omen Defs which are quite revealing. However, I have to be listening for it. If I were just at my chair doing general listening, I probably would not notice.

As far as interconnects, I’m using beldon (Blue Jean cables) and see no reason to upgrade. I’m using BJ digital cables as well.

Right now, I do not believe the weakest links in my system are cables. Once I upgrade my Amp, Dac, etc, then I may find it worth the investment.

Good or bad, like or dislike, with respect to cable choices are individual decisions.
Therefore, the attempt to convince others that one philosophy is right or wrong is pointless.
The discussions of different experiences and sharing of opinions, articles, and technical information can be interesting but the labeling and veiled name-calling is tiresome and mostly reflects poorly on the name-caller.

Using your logic, the quality of circuit components should make no difference to the resulting sound.  In other words if the quality of the interconnects between components should make no difference to well designed gear then the V-Cap in my line stage, the silver wire bypassing circuit board traces in that same line stage should make no difference to the resulting sound of my system with those enhancements.  I guess I wasted hard earned cash.  Back to the Sansui receiver I used in the 70s!

drsteve wrote,

"The original poster left out some very important information that makes it impossible for anyone to asses the validity of his tests:

which generic wire did he use?"

None. He didn't use any $5K speaker cable either. He was trolling. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

The original poster left out some very important information that makes it impossible for anyone to asses the validity of his tests:

which generic wire did he use?

I have noticed that when people have no logical or persuasive point to make in support of their position then they just attack the others. I still have not seen a good argument as to why buying equipment that is highly sensitive to wire connections or using wires as EQ filters makes any sense?

Shouldn't high end designs strive for maximum sensitivity to the source and a highly consistent reliable sound that has minimum sensitivity to variables like the bit of wire being used?

or

Should high end designs strive for highly inconsistent sound that is sensitive to almost any change at all in wire and no doubt many other factors too (this extreme kind of sensitivity or instability is not likely to be exclusive to just wires)?

Hi,

I recently switched my expensive hi-end cables to the Belden 1694a and 1696a wire with neutrik plugs ... no complaints.

 Best, Ari.

The arrogance is the worst part of the theorists. Having transitioned from that perspective to a practitioner, it's like being a reformed smoker in a room of people lighting up. They are polluters. As someone who was a cable skeptic but now uses them weekly to build superior audio systems, I consider those who refuse to try the most simple and cheap comparisons the losers. There will always be some who sit in their arrogance and experiential ignorance for a lifetime.  

As for the illustrations about miles of wiring and the last six feet, I guess they never will holistically get systems.  :(
I'm  done wasting breath  on this. The only way to change their mind lies in their action to try. Barring that it's a waste of time to continue debates.

Regarding pro and domestic sound, if you can't see that they are fundamentally different and that much live sound is poor quality  then I can't  help you.i get to use systems that are active and use DSP, and they react identically to passive ones regarding cables.  Let me guess, some won't accept it.

 So, as they say on Shark Tank, I'm  out.

hifiman5,
Yes, every situation is unique and must be addressed accordingly.
I just wish everyone lived downline from some local dam using hydroelectric turbines for around the clock power. :-)

All the best,
Nonoise

@nonoise

Mentioning "your specific solution involves what is coming out of your outlet" is a good reminder that the AC coming into one rural home, may not be of the same quality of the AC supplying an urban dwelling.

Different dwellings have different needs. That’s probably why power conditioners/regenerators are desired in specific locales, let alone different power cables.

Agreed-WAY too much angst here. I should have not generalized as some people get some really crappy power but for me, I've found that just going into the wall with my amp gets me the best sound. Everything else goes in a power conditioner. 

Even taking that into consideration, your specific solution involves what is coming out of your outlet. Yes, some mooks refrigerator directly upstream from you can affect things, and so do sun spots, but do they have equal weight? For everyone? This kind of reasoning is getting into "butterfly wings" territory.

All the best,
Nonoise

Hey folks...too much angst here.  If you're into this hobby and you don't feel you will appreciate the difference an upgraded cable will make to the sound of your system, then be happy with the generic cables included with your equipment.  If, on the other hand, you have messed with different cables and have heard sonic differences that are significant to you then enjoy cable comparing and ultimately purchasing.

My personal situation has me hearing differences in cables, however, least of all power cables.  For me, I've experienced the greatest differences in speaker cables and interconnects. YMMV!!! c'est la vie.

Explain why the Quote below is true.  No woo-woo -- stick to the known laws of physics.

"As for all those miles and miles of cable that are before that outlet and all the nasty and negative effects it's subjected to, it has nothing to do with what you're taking "from" the wall. That is the starting point. The only thing that matters is taking what's right there at the outlet and making sure you get the best out of it."

Since you cannot do that, I will also give you an alternative that does NOT require a mechanism:
  Just describe the methodology and results of your scientifically valid listening test showing the difference  in SQ.

Seems some doctors at least least are convinced of the merit of upgrading the power cords to their medical equipment 😏

http://www.shunyata.com/index.php/news/331-noise-reduction-in-medical-procedures

Sure, what about all the miles and miles of cable bringing power into the gear ahead of the capacitors, output transformers, resistors, tubes etc... in our gear. Surely none of these parts can make a difference? Of coarse that power cord, that high quality output tranny, those NOS tubes, that high end resistor etc.. all make a difference regardless of the miles of wire ahead of it. Sure the quality of the wire in those output transformers and inside the gear also makes a difference. It all makes a difference! This is audio hobby 101 stuff and we need to go beyond milk and into solid food. Time for some baby audio enthusiasts to move into deeper matters and leave the bottle.