Why Do Cables Matter?

Wow. A debate about cables. Deja vu all over again.

charliech

Oh, I will add that if you want to get nice cables just because they look nice, that is a valid reason. 

Anyone can select any cables for their system and the choice will be valid. No one here needs your permission or blessing.

tokushi

Specialized speaker cables often incorporate shielding to protect the audio signal from external electromagnetic interference.

I've been at this a long time and have never seen a shielded speaker cable. If they're so common, @tokushi why don't you provide a link to a few?

donavabdear

...listening is futile if you don’t know how the instrument sounded originally it’s futile if you don’t know what mic was used to record it, it’s futile if you don’t know the room and the circumstances it was recorded under.

It obviously disturbs you that so many here are listening, and also enjoying it, in open defiance of your proclamations.

I’ve done $200,000,000 dollar movies ...

So what?

Hope you can understand my poor way of communicating, I know Im not very good at it.

You’ve made yourself very clear. You’d be embarrassed if you knew how clearly you communicate.

Let's cut the nonsense here folks, and get to a simple fact.

What @donavabdear is doing is known as "sealioning."

here's Mirriam-Webster:

'Sealioning' is a form of trolling meant to exhaust the other debate participant with no intention of real discourse.

Sealioning refers to the disingenuous action by a commenter of making an ostensible effort to engage in sincere and serious civil debate, usually by asking persistent questions of the other commenter. These questions are phrased in a way that may come off as an effort to learn and engage with the subject at hand, but are really intended to erode the goodwill of the person to whom they are replying, to get them to appear impatient or to lash out, and therefore come off as unreasonable.

johnk

you insist science doesn’t matter and I shouldn’t be posting here.

I have never, ever, said or written any such thing, here or in any other forum. You seem to be a purveyor of "alternative facts."

johnk

How can I put any credence into any cable suggestions if its all biased opinion with billions of variables.

Only you can answer your question. If what you prefer is to reject all empirical evidence, rely solely on purely "scientific" data devoid of opinion or interpretation, and to challenge or question those who are reporting their experiences, perhaps you are in the wrong place. This is a hobbyist’s group, not a scientific forum.

johnk

Well you sure can troll like the rest any disagreement its wrong ...

Logical fallacy, ad hominem.

I look at what I’m really buying and get what I need.

That’s interesting. I’d have expected you to be one of those who wouldn’t buy without a double-blind ABX test. So it seems you use logic and science when it’s convenient for you, but choose to ignore them otherwise. That’s not how real science works.

Notwithstanding what you might see on TV shows, premium power cables are indeed used in the medical industry, with actual case studies supporting their use. Shunyata has a whole division devoted to it.

When I first got into streaming seriously, I used a cheap but convenient USB cable from an Aurender N100H to my Bryston BDA-3 DAC. To make the install tidy, I later bought a Wireworld cable in the proper length to replace the cheap-o cable. I was surprised at the sonic difference, especially because I wasn't expecting a one.

The two cables were slightly different lengths, so I suppose it wasn't a truly scientific comparison. Oh well.

donavabdear

Audiophiles give me the impression that they can evaluate the proper mixing goal of the artist, producer and audio engineer by saying things like this or that sounds natural or to the presentation or the image is thus and so. It is impossible to make judgements like that if the image is bigger with a particular component or cable how do you know that's what was originally recorded. you can't.

That is why judgment about how a system sounds has to be made over time, and why I distrust "shootout-out" style demos. 

Extreme reverence over the "original recording" is a bit of a red herring. For enjoyment and demo purposes, I like to make my own recordings. But what microphones were used? How far were they from the stage? What mic preamp? Changing those things change the sound.

The notion that it is takes some exceptional, extreme talent or expertise to record, say, a famous actor's voice is absurd. Most people can recognize a familiar voice over a lo-fi cell phone. A real recording challenge would be a symphony orchestra, or a intimate jazz band.

donavabdear

I have recorded and mixed 100s of orchestras and it's much more forgiving than doing a recording of an actor who is getting $20M to act in a movie ...

I don't think there's any correlation at all between what an actor or musician gets paid, and the difficulty in recording them well. It's silly to claim otherwise. Certainly, you're entitled to your opinions, but recording the dialogue of a single voice - something easily transmitted over any telephone - is inherently simpler than recording the complex sounds and wide dynamic range of an orchestra. Of course, fidelity for film must be better than cell phone quality, but the phone proves it doesn't take much to record the identifiable qualities of a human voice.

... if you didn't do the original recording then haw can you or anyone else talk about the proper image or the tightness of the bass ...

You can't rely on any single recording. But you can rely on groups of recordings, some with consistent, repeatable, identifiable characteristics (such as the Mercury Living Presence series), to tune the sound of a system. If you also make your own recordings, as I sometimes do, the task is made easier.

ossicle2brain

Power cables are psychoacoustic nonsense. Placebo effect and expectation bias ... On the other hand, the placebo effect does work.

Not so. Placebo effect won’t cure cancer for example.

As for expectation bias, many a doubting cynic has been surprised by the results a cable can make, so that would be in defiance of expectation bias. There’s a whole thread on just that here.