Who thinks $5K speaker cable really better than generic 14AWG cable?
I recently ordered high end speaker, power amp, and preamp to be installed in couple more weeks. So the next search are interconnect and speaker cable. After challenging the dealer and 3 of my so called audiophile friends, I think the only reason I would buy expensive cable is for its appearance to match with the high end gears but not for sound performance. I personally found out that $5K cable vs $10 cable are no difference, at least not to our ears. Prior to this, I was totally believe that cable makes a difference but not after this and reading few articles online.
Here is how I found out.
After the purchase of my system, I went to another dealer to ask for cable opinion (because the original dealer doesn't carry the brand I want) and once I told him my gears, he suggested me the high end expensive cable ranging from $5 - 10K pair, depending on length. He also suggested the minimum length must be 8-12ft. If longer than 12ft, I should upgrade to even more expensive series. So I challenged him that if he can show me the difference, I would purchase all 7 AQ Redwood cables from him.
It's a blind test and I would connect 3 different cables - 1 is the Audioquest Redwood, 1 is Cardas Audio Clear, and 1 my own generic 14AWG about 7ft. Same gears, same source, same song..... he started saying the first cable sound much better, wide, deep, bla...bla...bla......and second is decently good...bla...bla...bla.. and the last one sounded crappy and bla...bla...bla... BUT THE REALITY, I NEVER CHANGED THE CABLE, its the same 14AWG cable. I didn't disclosed and move on to second test. I told him I connected audioquest redwood but actually 14AWG and he started to praise the sound quality and next one I am connected the 14awg but actually is Redwood and he started to give negative comment. WOW!!!! Just blew me right off.
I did the same test with 3 of my audiophile friends and they all have difference inputs but no one really got it right. Especially the part where I use same generic 14awg cable and they all start to give different feedback!!!
SO WHAT DO YOU ALL THINK? OR I AM THE LAST PERSON TO FIND OUT THAT EXPENSIVE CABLE JUST A RIP OFF?
Teo_Audio wrote: "Part of human psychology. Which is why Jung had it right and Freud was, in the end, an idiot. And Bernays an opportunistic roving butcher. Eating the world, like all his contacts and connections."
Clearly Bernays was a renegade gourmand with meat cleavers in both hands. His assumptions and assertions with regard to the quest for the absolute sound were, in the opinion of 73.8 % of the audiophile community, at best, spurious and self-serving. His sole legacy was, tragically, essentially carnage.
Furthermore, a majority of audiophiles (at least 55.2 %) do indeed agree that Freud was an idiot, but they have an extremely difficult time articulating why. An astonishing 53.8 % of those very audiophiles reference the lyric "more than a feeling" to bolster their world view, as if that somehow remotely validates their subjective viewpoint!
Finally, with regard to Karl Jung, all that anyone can really say, is "may he rest in peace." The poor fellow never really did much care for music anyway, and, to the end, never could get beyond his stubborn and irrational love of 12 awg speaker cables.
I’ve been to the top of the mountain (not just Base Camp) and this is what I found out.
- A rich audiophile has about as much chance of getting into Audio Nirvana as a camel has of passing through the eye of a needle. 🐪
- Necessity is the mother of invention.
- An ordinary man has no means of deliverance. 😳
- Generally speaking, people would be much better off if they believed in too much rather than too little.
Joke: two guys were sitting next to each other in a commercial airliner. One guy looks out the window says to the other, gee, those people look just like ants. The other guy replies, they are ants, dummy. We haven’t taken off yet.
" rolls lack the ability to participate so they troll ... can't afford any expensive gears."
This is a very true assertion and in fact those who cannot afford the cost of a high performance Music Reproduction System actually suffer a form of what they call "confirmation bias" because they can't afford it they think it is not high performance you see this with those who assert that cables do not make a difference because they have science that tells them this when in fact to their credit many admit they have never even tried high performance cables and the reason they have not tried is that they know the better cable will not make a difference!
trolling of this nature is all about saying something and hoping the mirror of it will come back, and make the issuer of such missives..feel comfortable in their own skin. that the ego gets what it wants, which is to be comfortable and in charge. The body’s high level programming, responsible for the voice in the head effect, as a rolling moving awareness loop. It’s not the real mind. The real mind is far more intelligent and is in the unconscious aspects.
Said differently, very few people actually understand and live with the word ’consciousness’. Most are on a rose colored glasses version of an ego driven/filtered autopilot. As in likely...99% of the population. If not more. Not quite 100% --- but frighteningly close.
Generally, +75% of the people reading this will somehow put themselves in that 0.5% or less remainder.
Part of human psychology. Which is why Jung had it right and Freud was, in the end, an idiot. And Bernays an opportunistic roving butcher. Eating the world, like all his contacts and connections.
I have no contempt for investigation and have experimented with many cables, however, this incessant bickering about cables becomes tiresome. I'm at the point where I just don't care anymore.
Read the title of this thread. If that isn't a troll what is?
"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments, and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance—that principle is contempt prior to investigation."
Well, since it's all subjective, the law of diminishing returns is up to each and every one of us. That means that no one can tell me or anyone else if the return is worth it. I can promise you that everyone who's listened to my system with the WEL cables (I guess new around 8k or so) vs my Niagara (I think these are around 1700) have said there is a very large difference and it's all positive.
I have had similar situations with my USB cables also. For me/us it's a huge difference. As much as changing out various DAC's.
IMO: An exercise in futility and a total waste of time and effort. A sucker play to be drawn into such threads. Fogettaboutit! Listen to some music through whichever cables make you feel comfortable.
That’s right, shoot the messenger, not the message. Heaven forbid we could have a real debate on the topic. What we have here is failure to communicate and a bad sense huma to boot. 👢
cd318: You hafta understand Geoff! He absolutely cannot be wrong....and has an uncanny ability to immediately jump on you and pick apart anything you say on this forum; and demand that you understand you cannot be right if you do not agree with him. Therefore, participation in this forum sometimes can be a frustrating experience.
If there is a difference it is minuscule in comparison with those found in loudspeakers, recordings, rooms etc.
>>>>Sorry, that’s an old wives tale. Oft used by newcomers and naysayers.
Some cables (high cost/ poor design) might alter the tonal balance.
>>>>>>Another old wives tale. A naysayer favorite.
Value for money diminishes rapidly as price goes up in audio. Ten times as fast for cables. At least.
>>>>>Guess what? Yup, another old wives tale.
Throwing away money in an effort to get better sound is a sign of desperation. If we must delude ourselves, perhaps we can learn to enjoy our delusion by first laughing at ourselves.
>>>>>When people throw money away do they really actually throw it?
If there is a difference it is minuscule in comparison with those found in loudspeakers, recordings, rooms etc
Some cables (high cost/ poor design) might alter the tonal balance.
Value for money diminishes rapidly as price goes up in audio. Ten times as fast for cables. At least.
Throwing away money in an effort to get better sound is a sign of desperation. If we must delude ourselves, perhaps we can learn to enjoy our delusion by first laughing at ourselves.
While we’re off the subject, when you play an LP, the Time Coordinates from when the recording was made - and that is preserved on the recording - interfere with the listener’s own "internal clock" (local time) and confuses his brain. The human brain relies on a single time source to be able to perceive sound correctly. The human brain is not pleisiochronous. It’s as if the two time coordinate sources produce jitter in the brain.
We had a guy in high school whose IQ couldn't be measured. It was over 200. He was able to memorize long lists of words even when the words were in a foreign language unfamiliar to him. No one ever heard from him again after we graduated. He just disappeared into the cosmos.
TEO - That was some great info on the mind, intelligence and hearing relationships. I have a more technical question for which you may have some insight. I have been thinking about why vinyl and some Ethernet cables can have relatively lousy stats, but sound better than the more technically (verifiable test data) correct. Could it be that more cross-talk is beneficial? Or are there multiple issues that have yet to be measured that result in improved sound quality?
Hearing varies from person to person as much as intelligence and mental orientation and conditioning.
Smart in one way does not specifically relate back to smart ears. Cognitive capacity in the mind can also express itself in cognitive capacity of hearing in ears and mind as a pair. This cognitive variance in speed and precision (as a pair) from person to person (Human IQ of 100 vs 200)... can be as high as a million to one. It’s a non-linear equation.
This definitely DOES encompass human HEARING function as it is a ear/brain function, tied to neural functionality and interconnectedness, tied to it as much as vision, motor drive, intelligence, and so on.
To clarify.. what is that ratio? It is: every increase in 5 ’IQ’ points is roughly equivalent to a required rumination time to reach a functional conclusion with said problem..this requisite time ---is halved. Roughly, and overall, in humanity. Each 5 iq points higher - half the time to figure a thing out.
Thus, the average person, IQ 100, working on a problem, may take lets say..114 years of 24/7 work to reach a satisfactory conclusion in a given problem scenario. the 200 IQ person can reach successful conclusion with the same problem, in one hour. All things being equal, which they are not.
Then comes hearing function, which is wholly integrated with this neural system, and thus suffers similar (not exact but similar) ratios and considerations.
You might have a person who in this lifetime will never hear a given thing.... when someone with really good and well trained ears and connected neural function....might hear it in 30 seconds or less.
No mystery.
Thankfully the brain is plastic so ignorance is a matter of will, in some ways, and it is not truly a native state.
Hearing varies from person to person as much as intelligence and mental orientation and conditioning.
Smart in one way does not specifically relate back to smart ears. Cognitive capacity in the mind can also express itself in cognitive capacity of hearing in ears and mind as a pair. This cognitive variance in speed and precision (as a pair) from person to person (Human IQ of 100 vs 200)... can be as high as a million to one. It's a non-linear equation.
This definitely DOES encompass human HEARING function as it is a ear/brain function, tied to neural functionality and interconnectedness, tied to it as much as vision, motor drive, intelligence, and so on.
From Wikipedia:
Pareidolia is a psychological phenomenon in which the mind responds to a stimulus, usually an image or a sound, by perceiving a familiar pattern where none exists...
This holds true for cable deniers and cable believers.
To hear new things, one has to defeat this mechanism as it is tied to hearing function.
So one can have a dumb ear/brain combination and project this form of blindness, this forced blindness, upon others..others who don’t suffer from it.
And audiophile arguments are born. Like this thread.
The more difficult a problem is to solve, the more fundamental the error in the formulation of the question.
It gets into how the whole thing comes down to small variances in the signal, and some of us who design and work on gear, know how this works.
The lore holder and lore workers are not going to explain exactly how they make a living to the pouting, demanding, demanding, and dismissive deniers . Not gonna happen any time soon.
That: Some may help you.... but they don’t owe the denying forceful types - anything.
~~~~~~~~~~~
Before a given thing is in the textbooks, it gets worked out like this. The lore is the component that is tightly held, or not easy to understand, then it works it’s way into the common lexicon..then it is in the textbooks and is accepted...
Then the deniers move on to the next thing they want to pout about as a being a false paradigm (not in the dogmatic books, so it can’t be real!!) for fools to follow....
@hifiman5 spot on! So many naysayers go on and on about price, or that something is a rip off, or that marketing claims are hyperbole.. as if any of that speaks to the efficacy of the cables and their effect on a system. Tune out all that noise and just listen with an open mind...
Yep. If you can't hear the difference between "garden variety" and "quality cables" then this audiophile endeavor must be most mundane for you. Hold on naysayers...I didn't say "mega-buck, I have to take out a home equity loan to afford them" cables! Just cables with high purity conductors and low loss dielectrics with well made connectors. There are lots and I mean LOTS of them out there. Have at it!
Good point gentlemen and you guys are right .....what I have found out the hard way especially when it does come to cables, is the most expensive is NOT always the better cable for your system or the actual better cable. But, cables definitely make a difference on the sound of your system.
Geoffkait and Dynaquest14, thank you for you supportive insight. I have been very fortunate to work with some very knowledgeable and open minded audiophiles that have very impressive backgrounds in electronics. And we have tried so many things over time to develop better sound. From building circuits to match various tube requirements including amps with full sized transmission tubes. And stuff like tracing over copper circuit boards with silver just to see if it improves the sound of a solid state preamp. And on and on.
So, I may not be an "expert" but i have spent more time and money chasing better sound than I can even believe. But it is the journey that is the fun of this hobby and stops in between are enjoyable. So, when some say that the journey leads nowhere and is waste of money, which implies we are mere stupid fools, perhaps they are correct. I just don't see it that way.
I agree with goeff. This won't "die" because it is an interesting, compelling subject that needs a forum within which it can be discussed. If anyone here finds this particular thread boring or frustrating, they can use the "Unfollow this Discussion" button at the top of the page.
Whoa! Hey, look at it this way. It gives audiophiles something to talk about. These cable debates, discussions, arguments, whatever have been going on for what, 40 years, now? They're the meat and potatoes of audio forums. 🍔🍟
Why doesn't this post die.....enough is enough. You can read the other 647 posts just like this one and with the same answers , same responses with the same listeners / members who know everything.
Just to have something to argue about, I find every component, every tube, every solder joint, every resistor, every capacitor and very piece of wire requires a break-end period. And hopefully, it sounds better afterwards, but this is not always the case.i have had 6 different pots for volume controls to find one that has the sound after break-in that I seek. And i only changed them out every few years after they began to degrade. Today, I have hand-made ball bearing, single resistor in path, dual mono gold plated stepped units that sound neutral. Interconnects? AQ solid silver and silver covered copper. The full silver 1 meter interconnect to between DAC and preamp cost about 3 times the price of the DAC. And yep, I can hear the amazing quality of this cable.
And i bought almost every cable here on Agon and have sold a few too. So, buy a few and if you don't like one, sell it. The cost is minimal and you can keep it as long as it makes sense and swap a much as you like. I bought 4 DACs here and resold 3 and I think the total cost was under $300 all-in, not including the Wadia I kept.
One caution for AQ is that there are fakes out there, If yu have ever owned a real AQ, you will know the fake almost immediately. I have bought 2 of these fakes and they has a very soft, velvet like cable finish that look like AQ in pictures, but every AQ is more of a hard finish tightly woven nylon. And those fakes sound like crap. Fortunately, both Seller's provided a full refund and I believe they did not know or they would not have offered them for sale.
Dialectric gets loaded up and will negatively affect the sound. That's what the AQ DBS units do. They don't them them build up if you would. No expert, but that's basically what happens.
I think some of the major problems high end has had IRT cables are that they are so easy to make, that so many got involved. Many were charlatan's and many folks screwed themselves over paying too much for crap cable.
To do a cable properly and effect a positive change, not just a change, isn't as easy as many want you to believe. The other thing is that the mark up in cables is similar to cartridges. I'll never forget speaking with the Grado guys when I was in HS. I used to sell audio gear on the side to make extra money. I asked what the differences were in the various Grado cartridges. He told me that as you went up in price, they sounded a bit better. I asked him why they cost so much for basically the same parts and process to make. He simply said, because they can. Said that it costs them pennies more for the various tips they were using, but that they could charge 2 to 3 times more for the more expensive and complex stylus. Then we talked about the Polk cables that I was just starting to use with my Polk 10's (loved those speakers, lol). I defiantly heard a positive difference. They were very expensive, but looked teh part too. All of a sudden things went crazy and cable manufacturers were popping up all over the place.
Are 5k cables that much more expensive to produce? Not really, but they can charge these prices, because many will pay as they feel the differences is well worth it in their systems. Should someone use a 5k cable in a system worth 10K? I feel that's a waste as do most. I'm a firm believer that most folks should take that extra cable money adn upgrade their components. That said, you do need to spend a certain about on cables to max out your system IMHO.
Exactly, Geoff...having an opinion, albeit different, and stating that opinion is not arguing.
@ rja: That I believe expensive cabling is filled with myths and borders on a scam is a relavent opinion shared by many...and needs to be in this forum. And it will not go away.
Geoffkait, I'm not done with this evaluation. Stated my experience at 60 hours of burn in. I don't have a clue if it will improve from here or not. All I can say for sure is the cable improved from 0 hours to 60 hours quite a bit and has also improved on the audible experience. I'm no novice at this. All equipment is in a dedicated and treated listening room. Maybe that's why the JW wire sounded also very good.
Per Transparent cable will revert to its original condition if no current is present, for a long period, something about molecules in the dielectric changing when a current is present. I'll take their word for it as my ears have proven it to me. I was as much of a sceptic as anyone. Believe as you wish. I was not attempting to convince only stating my experience.
Not sure I get a "burn-in" on cables that were used for three of the past five years. Do they "un-burn" when not in use?
You talked about improvements in
decay, soundstage, clarity, presence, vocal inflection. I don't believe cables/wires/interconnects can "improve" anything in the media. All I think they could possibly do is (maybe) mitigate other outside influences that might interfere with the transmission of the signal from playback source to speakers. And I'd opine that any cables of proper length and impedance will do all that just fine.
I use a mix of WireWorld, Kimber and Monoprice and they all work just fine....none better than the other. And no "burn-in" (a myth) was required.
Ok here's my take as I recently tried the so called $5000.00 cable. I have been using the JW cryo nova 10.00 a foot solid core wire (can't bring myself to call it cable) which has done a fine job for me. Equipment is Proceed Pav, adcom amp, B&W 803d speakers, Sony TT and Musical Fidelity CD. The $5000.00 cable is a Transparent music wave ultra 12 ft long about 5 yrs old unused for the past 2 years belonging to a friend. So here is my experience, on first connection the expensive cable sounded like crap. Harsh in all frequencies, unlistenable. After about 30 hours burn in the harshness in lower and mid frequency s disappeared. At 60 hours burn in there is still some at the higher frequencies but it's much improved. I will continue burning in until I reach 200 hours at which time I'll form my final opinion on this subject. As of right now I'm convinced there is something to be said for the more expensive cable. I noticed improvement in decay, soundstage, clarity, presence, vocal inflection at this point in burn in. Is the difference worth the extra $$$$$? I don't think so. The extra expense far out weights the subtle improvements. Now I'm also retired and on a budget. We're I to have unlimited income or funds I'd certainly would enjoy the more expensive cable as I find there to be enough improvement to warrant the expense. As is I'll have to wait and win the lottery, but if I do I will for sure get a better cable. Until then my $10.00 a foot Cryo nova wire will just do fine. So finally I'm in the camp that says there is differences in cable and how they perform. If you can afford the expensive go for it with no regrets if you can't be happy with what you got and look for better on the cheap. I am hoping my friend will offer these cables as a Christmas gift. Fat chance. Although I'll try to buy them from him for what they may be worth to me. If he's willing to sell but my offer is not going to be anything close to $5000.00
I like the larger diameter cables for heavier gear. They just never snap when you use them to move things. Sometimes those cheap and thin ones stretch too much when you need them to hold up an 80 lb mono block.
You must have a verified phone number and physical address in order to post in the Audiogon Forums. Please return to Audiogon.com and complete this step. If you have any questions please contact Support.
