Why Do Cables Matter?

If you understand the principle that the original recording can't be made any better (you can't add information) to the signal then audiophiles should know that no recording studio uses boutique expensive cable. So cables that are more expensive than the original recording studio or production cables are illogical. Where am I wrong? 
 

@yoyoyaya thanks for your response. 
#1 You can't add information to a recording.

#2 Recording studios don't use very expensive interconnects and speaker cable.

#3 Since #1 and #2 are true it is illogical to use cables that are more expensive than the recording studio is using. 

Please don't be silly and point to an exception in which a studio uses very expensive cables i'm speaking in general terms with nearly 40 years of recording experience at the highest levels. You didn't think statement 1 and 2 went together, they do because of the agreed upon idea that there is entropy in information you can't do better than the original. Try arguing that cables or any piece of hyper expensive playback equipment can add information / fidelity to the original. It's going to be tough without AI.

@hilde45 

There are exceptions to the "can't add information" rule such as speakers. There are very few studios that use speakers over $50k there are good reasons for that but as far as audiophiles that commonly use speakers over 50k they may be hearing things that the original recording and mixing engineers never heard. I've mentioned before I was in the studio with Al Schmitt (the greatest recording engineer ever) and his personal speakers at Capitol Studio A sounded pretty bad. I of course never mentioned that but the reason why he had more gold records over the years than anyone was because he knew the system in which the recordings worked, he didn't use much EQ he used mic placement to change the sound so there was no signal limitation. It didn't matter that he didn't have very good hearing anymore before he died. That's to say the bottleneck in his system was very large he didn't fuss with EQ, compression and limiting he left the signal as open as possible. Speakers can reproduce a signal that is larger than the bottle neck that the recording engineer ever heard but those frequencies and dynamics are not part of the mix they are  flavors that the engineer hopes don't detract from the music. As far as interconnects and speaker cables they are bottlenecks if the current audiophile ideas are correct and since they are supposedly limiting the original signal path they limit everything. That's why I say using cable more expensive than the original recording is silly. Hope that made sense. 

Also curious why the worlds most complicated and refined machines mankind has ever made that literally have to be accurate to within nano meters in making electronic chips use regular power cables. These are $500M machines, look up the power supplies that ASML uses. 

@knownothing My argument was just called a name it wasn't dealt with as you say. My argument is that you can't get more information out of the recording than the original. I recorded original recording for 35 years I've been to the Oscars and Emmys and technical Emmys all more than once. The principle is easy if you put a Ferrari body around a Volkswagen it doesn't make it go faster or turn better. If you original recording has an information value of 7 you can't change any component and get 7.5 out of the recording this is a physics idea not an audiophile idea no matter how resolving your system is. 

Bottlenecks are parts of the recording that limit the amount of information you can put in the recording, you can have a movie with 192hz sample rate music and then mix the movie in 48k sample rate ant the 192hz music will not stick out as higher quality in the mix, the signal is limited to 48k. Audiophiles use examples explaining how cables tune their system, it is only possible to tune their system down not up because you can't create more information via the cable no matter how expensive it is. When AI is incorporated into audio that's another story but for now just understand it is a law called entropy not an idea that is limiting as well as audiophiles not understanding simple physics. 

If you would like to interact with the argument that would be great the first thing you have to do is disprove the 2nd law of thermodynamics (entropy). 

@tjag I think you make a good point about Paul of PS Audio, I've met him he seem like a great guy, what could make him pick another companies very expensive cables over PS Audio's own (I've bought them myself)? The answer is Paul needs to make money and he can make much more money selling Dragon cables than his own cables (especially at $34,100). Simple.

I spoke to some of the highest end cable makers at AXPONA this year they all told me the same thing they shrugged and said something like " I don't know why it woks it just does" the only exception was an old engineer at Beldon, I asked him how expensive cables between cheep PC traces, fuses, random connectors, internal speaker cable, crossovers, and on/off switches could justify expensive cables. He went off for 30 minutes about the speed of the signal, dialectrects and such. I said if the timing difference of the dialectrect was an issue why isn't the latency in digital circuits an issue? At least he had a reason no other manufacture had any idea why expensive cables made a difference.

@yoyoyaya I'm saying that the audiophile view of cables is not one of science but religion. People on this forum and on YouTube along with salesmen at EXPONA often describe the characteristics of their components as creating something in the music while using their 100k components that are much better and finer tuned than any recording studio. This is not possible because despite the statements of $80k DAC's or $40k XLR's with the same neutrik connectors on the ends covered in 3x colored shrink-wrap, you are not going to achieve anything better than the Canary or Beldon star quad XLRs that were used in the studio. Logically $80k cables will get you close to simply welding the amp to the speaker but that cable is never going to give you anything positive. 

As far as getting to the point in audio quality as the original recording I think that level can be surpassed in speakers but with musical attributes that are not mixed and A.I. in the near future will be able to give us all very high quality by filling in the musical harmonics and subtracting the unintended noise in the recordings. The mindset in the audiophile world is not trying to get back to zero (the original recording) but it is buying exceptionally expensive things like cables in which at the original studio used cables 1/10th the price and therefore theoretically is not capable of producing a fraction of the quality of signal in the playback recording if all the thought in modern audiophile cable technology is correct. It's always the same picture. Super turbo mega cables inserted between a skinny fuse and the crossover wire a speaker can't make a difference just like inserting a firehose between two garden hoses can't make a difference. In physics in called Kickoffs law. 

@thyname Well I can say I believe @yoyoyaya is a recording engineer and he does know what he is talking about. I appreciate your advice and I'm learning you are right. I honestly wanted to see what the view of this group was about entropy and the bottleneck of components assuming that smart people pay a proper amount of money on a percentage basis to get the most out of their system. Best

@yoyoyaya 

Yes

So why doesn't  the worlds most complicated most expensive machine (the ASML Semiconductor chip makers) use fancy cables. These machines need to do the most exact measurements in the world. Why don’t audio test equipment like Audio Precision testers come with a boutique AC power cable? If your argument @nonoise is:
"The signal is there all the time just waiting to be freed from the confines of a poorly made cable."

Then why don’t these machines need their information freed? You arrogantly put me down and won’t deal with anything I’ve said. You call me a name dropper I simply used Al Schmitt because he is a known commodity and spoke of the principle we are talking about, maybe you would listen to what he said. Try to be nice.

@yoyoyaya That is an interesting way to look at at recording. That statement has a lot to do with how you set up your playback system at home also. Todays recordings rarely sound like live performances being multitracked and remixed as standard. I have over the years set up 1 stereo mic over a performing group and loved it but if I did that today the sound would have to much depth, the producer must have close sounding instruments and singers. If you set up your playback system to be simply an extension of the original recording then you are really doing the old fashioned way of reproducing the live show. Today generally everything in music is not natural  I've set up hundreds of microphones on orchestras that sounded fine but it definitely wasn't natural it sounded better than natural. So perhaps there are no rules and even in playback there are no rules concerning fidelity to the original recording because recordings today don't have fidelity to original concerts anyway. As a recording engineer how do you feel about that? 

@knownothing Sorry I didn’t answer your well thought out response. Here is where we were talking past each other.

you said:

I also maybe misinterpreted your point to mean it is hopeless to use way more expensive cables than the recording studio, because you might be trying to score a 12 out of 7 in replaying the recording, and that is just such a ridiculous concept, right? Nobody would claim that. Right? At least I haven’t read a single post in this thread where anyone claimed that.

I assumed that smart audiophiles wouldn’t waste money by spending such large amounts of money percentage on particular components like boutique cables. This is what I mean by creating information because of the money audiophiles spend on cables. Have you ever hear of anyone using the proper terminology saying this cable is closing the deficiency in my signal by adding such and such frequency, easy to say nope they say as well as every manufacture say these cable add air, space, musicality, depth, soundstage to the presentation...... It’s not a matter of semantics it’s a matter of fraud.

Nobody will answer the question - if you put a firehose in-between two garden hoses everyone knows it will do no good why is it that so many people think inserting an expensive cable between regular conductors is going to make a difference? That is exactly the question I asked all the cable manufactures I saw at AXPONA none of them had an answer. Thanks for being thoughtful.

@knownothing I hear you and understand what you are saying but no one who doesn't believe in very expensive cables advocates using poor or "leaky" cables. I use Kimber cables for speakers, AC and Canare star quad for interconnects definitely better than the average recording studio. I was the first person to ever be fully digital in my location recording system one of the reasons why it was so effective was because I bypassed cables all together being digital and wireless gave me exact signal continuity and I didn't have to worry about cables always causing a crackle or a hum at exactly the wrong time. I've thought a lot about cables in my career. I've been trying to understand why so many people are willing to spend so much money on cables, when no studio does, easy question really, 0 answers but plenty of attacking me and not the arguments. Best

@tjag Here is something I bet you don't understand, 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. I've done $200,000,000 dollar movies in which the carpenters had to keep working over the Oscar winners dialogue because it was the next shot up and they weren't ready. listening is generally always stupid because you have no idea what your listening to, liking the sound means nothing, arbitrary. I've said it before when you're working with Anthony Hopkins in a movie then have lunch with him and hear his voice when your sitting next to him you have an idea of how his voice really sounds, (even so, many actors and musicians don't speak nor play the same as when they are practicing or simply talking) but still listening to changes in the system means nothing unless you know how it should sound originally. The way music recording are made today that is practically impossible also, all you have to go buy is if the producer and artist like what you are doing and then hire you again. The entire foundation of "golden ears" on the audiophile side is ridiculous. Demos are BS, if you know how a particular microphone sounds because you have used it everyday for years you can go out and record a voice or an effect of someone or something you know exactly how it sounds to your ears  and the temperature isn't abnormal or the subject isn't feeling a bit under the weather, then you have a chance of making a proper judgement on if a system sounds accurate during playback. How do you know the component or cable isn't just adding frosting to the signal or double frosting and you enjoy it more? Demos will let you evaluate if you like the new component more or less but will practically never tell you if it is making the signal more accurate. Hope you can understand my poor way of communicating, I know Im not very good at it.

@knownothing Thanks for your understanding you get what I’ve been saying. Yes I have been a recording engineer for many decades, I retired about 4 years ago and now have a studio in my listening room as well as a regular system just for fun. I have always been at the front end of making music doing live sound and recording dialog/sound for movies I haven’t been in the audiophile world long, I started in acoustics and putting in sound systems into churches and performing arts rooms mainly. I have tried a few speaker cables before my system wasn’t tuned in as well as it is now so my tests were meaningless. I just spoke with my dealer last week about upgrading cables because now my system is sounding as it should (it took so much longer than it should have). My mixing setup makes a lot more sense to me as far as accuracy all the speakers are internally powered and put together with Canare star quad cable. My professional system still needs work and I’m starting a movie tomorrow luckily it’s only 5.1 so it won’t matter that the rest of the speakers are not where they should be. In the professional world no one ever talks about cables, just speakers, preamps, microphones, room acoustics are the main details. When your making the product you don’t test it to see if it’s good the fact is you won’t get hired if your product isn’t worth the huge budgets of the movies and TV shows there is no room for error or poor quality. I know in the audiophile world cables are considered a component, I was a physics / engineering major in college and understood how cables could make a difference, audiophiles don’t understand that in the professional world making a difference only degrades the sound because you are making the original first recording everyday. Professional sound guys that I know don’t have good sound system in their homes the entertainment industry is incredibly grulling and generally takes 14 hours of the day then driving to the studio or location everyday leaves no time to listen to music. Here are my credits (some, just in the movie/TV industry)

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0213104/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1

Ok, I didn’t communicate my point. I’ll try one more time and you don’t have to read my notes.
-Listening- to what? I mention Anthony Hopkins because everyone knows his voice but few have heard it in person, I’m not name dropping, If you have had season tickets to the London Philharmonic for 40 years you buy a record of the latest season, you still don’t know where the microphones were placed to record the performance, you don’t know what effects were put on each microphone, you probably aren’t even familiar with those microphones nor all the components and mic cables that were used in the recording nor the components in the mixing. You nor I or anyone other than the mixer has any idea what to -listen- for because you didn’t do the recording.

People with -golden ears- who evaluate sound systems who don’t do the recording and the mixing (which is very rare) have no right to say there is to much of this and not enough of that, the entire "listening" based on accuracy is silly. Sure some people are good at picking adjectives to describe what many people like but the idea that a cable is accurate is impossible. -More- is not always proper I used to use an old EV mic cable to record tubby sounding women in the studio it worked like gold we would go to a mic like the Sennheiser 421 dynamic first then if that didn’t smooth out her voice we’d use the special mic cable because it was screwed up which made it perfect to record big powerful women’s voices.

Cables are not a consideration in a recording unless there is a problem, you obviously always use good quality cables and if you do use cables you have to run them in ways they don’t get interference from the lighting/power guys who are set up right next to you in concert situations, this is why Dante and digital networking are used in concerts today because 1s and 0s stay 1s and 0s all the way to the decoder or else it doesn’t work at all.

What are you listening for? Answer, simply to enjoy the music.

Also with todays digital EQ and dynamic tools its easy to change the signal, for some reason audiophiles don’t want to manipulate the signal in the digital realm with no phase or harmonic coloration problems you used to have with analog manipulation. Why not save $80k on cables and boost the bass or whatever frequency to exactly match the way you like the sound?

@rodman99999 Yes I read that post, and that is perfect exactly what I'm saying but that is the exception, you understand. I'm asking honest questions so smart audiophiles will give me their view. You mentioned being obtuse, that is what you did when you mention using bad cables, again, again, again no one on either side of the discussion advocates using bad cables (strawman). You are wrong about DSP not making up for problems in the signal. Have you ever used ProTools and the amazing plugins that are available in it? If you are good with audio tools you can make recording sound much better. I have a friend who mixed the Sinatra Duets album, Frank said no efx, the original recording was so unmixable they did it anyway, something you don't do when Frank say no, the album was great and no one ever knew. 

BTW I'm not stating normal anti cable argument like saying they aren't testable or they don't sound better, I never said anything like that. I've spent millions on sound equipment over the years believe me I know sound equipment on the professional level I'm just trying to understand it at the audiophile level. Honestly.

@yoyoyaya Yes I've been right on set when huge productions were waiting for me to untangle cables getting screamed at by the first Assistant Director. To me cables are like plumbing they should only get noticed if there is a problem. 

@johnk Gold should be used on connectors not because gold is a good conductor but because there is 0 residue, in 1000 years there will be no oxide on gold connectors maybe dust but no oxide. 

So many on this forum have such knee-jerk reactions to anyone not bowing down to the cable religion, I never said cables don't make a difference, I never said I haven't tried different cables (only a few I'd have to say) I've spent 10s of thousands on cables, I never said my mind is made up and I won't demo cables, I'm just pointing out logical problems with the audiophile community as a whole. It is very poor thinking to point out some friend or a studio that is an exception to a general statement about a large group.

Why doesn't the worlds most complex and exact machines use special AC Cables and interconnects?

Why don't audio test equipment makers like Audio Precision send their equipment out with boutique cables?

Why does the audiophile community constantly throw up straw man arguments by saying something like " well if you wan't to use cheep (leaky) cables then you obviously want to stay in your state of willful ignorance"

Why does the audiophile community think that cables bring out the design of the components. 

Why don't engineers design components with particular cables in mind if they are such an important part of the systems fidelity?

Why doesn't the audiophile community understand that nearly every channel has DSP on it when mixed. Limiting dynamics, EQ, reverb, phasing, imaging, airiness, and all the other toys used all the time. 

Why do audiophiles think the electronic signal goes down the strands of the medium (the signal moves in a field on the outside of the conductors). 

Why do audiophiles think that inserting a very high quality AC cable between the romex and the Amp fuse makes the audio signal change (there is no audio until after the transformer where the power is changed to DC). (Also I've spent 100 of thousands on Power conditioning personally).

Blind tests vs. ABX tests vs. visual confirmation cable tests. As you all well know the visual test with the very expensive cable always sounds better. 

Why is it that audiophiles generally can't accept the idea that an amplifier designed for a specific speaker driver is the best practice for more accurate sound. (I watch a guy on YouTube who has gone through 300 exceptionally expensive power amps). 

Why is it that the "break in period" is not testable, I understand cables aren't always quantifiable but break in changes should be, and they are not.

Why is it that sample rate information has so much BS, the AES did a large study on this years ago and showed experienced listeners were not able to hear any differences between CD, SACD and 96/24 (I spent $8k on my SACD player).

Why is it that audiophiles think that resolution (sample rate) is the same as resolution in pixel rate in vision, it is not. (this myth still hasn't gone away).

-little harder question-
If boutique cables are so important to the sound than why is it that cables with similar resistance, capacitance and inductance sound the same, you immediately say "they don't" but if there is a problem one of these characteristics is damaged).

And again why is it that audiophiles think they can add any information to the sound with expensive equipment and cables (yes, some people have delt with this question but I think they were all recording engineer who understand this concept.) 

@yoyoyaya As a serious answer with the 2nd law in mind it would mean that at the smallest point of information flow in the signal path would be the limiting factor. If digital (which is usually the problem these days) the smallest sample rate is the limiting factor in analog you can just turn up the signal creating noise.This is why 48khz is still the norm, could have recorded many movies at 96khz but there would be a particular piece of equipment that couldn't deal with it so 96khz never caught on for movies. In music analog front ends (mixers) then recorded to 192khz ProTools is about as good as it gets in my opinion, yes it's a little noisier in the front end (same idea as tube amps) but the signal is digital in the mix and can be changed any way you want without losing fidelity. Many audiophiles speak of cables in such stellar ways if you don't use expensive cables not having them creates a bottleneck in both the analog and digital world. in analog bad cables are very easy to hear if you have experience with the system and microphones (tube mics are harder) usually a bad mic cable crackles very very loudly because the ground is broken and 48v phantom power rips your head off, in the digital world cables that don't pass the proper 1s and 0s don't work at all. Great engineers whom I've learned from felt a lot of responsibility to the original recording and the format in which that recording was preserved for posterity, no one considered that AI will easily put together the missing pieces in the future. AI will be the added information in the 2nd law definition in the near future. 

@nonoise You are full of blather but short on direct answers to your religion of cables.

It's easy to throw out put downs, you can do better than that.

Why are expensive cables so important:

"When everyone is special no one is special" 
 

@thyname //And again why is it that audiophiles think they can add any information to the sound with expensive equipment and cables (yes, some people have delt with this question but I think they were all recording engineer who understand this concept.) //

It is the definition of hypocrisy when you leave off the end of my statement 

(yes, some people have delt with this question but I think they were all recording engineer who understand this concept.) 

Sad.

@rodman99999 
//

   #2: 

 You are wrong about DSP not making up for problems in the signal. 

Yes you can fix many problems with DSP there are programs like Isotope RX that can pull out sounds in front of other sounds using machine learning that was not possible even 5 years ago. Today vocalists routinely use Auto Tune or other programs to even make the singer bearable, or use with great singes if you want to go into a key change earlier or make a change while the artist isn't available. DSP is super important on even classical recordings, you can use very live mics (wider polar pattern) that are further from the musicians (to get a better image) and then use DSP to take the unwanted ambience (or air condition) down. Digital DSP sounds generally perfect today with no phase problems or latency as old DSP units introduced.

@knownothing Thank you for your great response, I really appreciate it.

@tjag Thank you for your answers without getting so upset, believe me I challenge people at my church about theology and they give me the same upsetting responses I get in this forum strange that the reactions are so parallel.

I have a question for both of you, I use 2x P20 power regenerators from PS Audio they are about $10k each and seem to do their job. So my question is why do I need my fairly expensive AC cables to and from those power reconditioners, (I have isolated 20 amp circuits and audiophile Edison connections installed) the P-20s take AC power turn it into DC then regenerate it back to AC with hopefully perfect specs. Also in general I don't have any problems with RF in my system with any cables I've tried.
Thanks

@tjag Thanks for that, I don't believe in very expensive power cords like $2k and up, I have many thousands $ in power and interconnect cables over the years but it was never for sound quality but to save the power supplies and safety, I just know that if you get DC in your cables from bad power through unbalanced positive and negative waveforms the capacitors that cross your transformers will carry that DC voltage across the transformer into your equipment. But I haven't done any tests after I bought my power reconditioners they made all the AC power just fine. What kind of power condition do you use? I understand that it makes a difference but I don't understand how AC cables after reconditions should make any difference if RF is not a concern. Thanks

@rodman99999 Sorry I misunderstood your statement. 

@yoyoyaya Yes your correct on both points, I should have been clearer. Transfer facilities will not take time to resample your production sound if it is the wrong sample rate / bit rate or time code rate. Standard is 48k sample rate, 24 bit and 23.976 ND Time Code. When digital first came in I was the first to have an entirely digital system. It was hell, everyone was an expert and no one would listen, I nearly got fired from CSI: Miami on the first year by CBS. There were huge problems with time code flags and sample rates because some, not all recorders use the sample rate to generate time code and there was no standard with metadata. That was really a difficult time in movie sound. 

On the subject a great myth that practically no one understands is that a 48k sample rate and higher sample rates like 96hz or 192hz  converted back to analog have exactly the same wave form. I honestly knew this but didn't really understand that the wave forms are exactly the same the bit depth only helps the noise floor. 

Thanks for making that clear.

No one has answered this easy question.

Why is it that the worlds most expensive and accurate machine made by ASML does not use AC cables that are in any way like expensive audiophile cables?

Why don’t audio test equipment, oscilloscopes or DNA scanning scientific test equipment use (MIT/Transparent) AC cables if they are more accurate?

******************************

Also I'm not just trying to cause turmoil I'm honestly trying to get answers from passionate people who love audio like I do. 

@recklesskelly 20k on regenerators is stupid. No argument there. I bought one for my listening system and it wasn't big enough so I bought another simple as that. Now I use one for the listening system and one for the professional system in my listing room. 

@rodman99999
So your educated answer is, deflection.
Everyone understands there could be an unquantifiable aspect of cables that helps sound systems sound better. In engineering, physics and math you look at an extreme example like the worlds most sophisticated machine or the most sophisticated audio testing or an extreme example like DNA scanners. If the fidelity of the signal changed when using normal quality AC cables then these machines wouldn’t use them as you surely know these machines couldn’t work if the quality of the AC cable allowed infidelity.

Engineers at a company that flashes Tin molecules with light to use the vapor as a reflection to cut 3nm semiconductors on a half a billion $ machine could use MIT AC cables if it somehow made a difference in the accuracy and fidelity of the signal.

I just saw your post about the NASA cable, thank you I’ll read it soon. I genuinely appreciate it. Best

@rodman99999 I read your link to Home Audio. It was great and reiterated many of my frustrations with the audio cable industry. Home run! I would buy some of this cable.

This site answered my questions, I don't have anything more to ask.

Thank you!

@kevn Thank you for your thoughtful post. 
Anthony Hopkins is one of my favorite people I've ever worked with, we did a movie in the Czech Republic. Understanding how something should sound like an actors voice is a really hard job, what the boom operator does is he or she listens to the way the actor is projecting and places the microphone just off the frame line all the while listing to the polar pattern and off axis collation of the voice. I used the Sennheiser MKH -50's as my go to microphones for most actors but even then behind the mixer I can't really judge his voice as well as the boom operator. When I spoke to hime directly, I got an idea of how his voice actually sounded. 
The reason why I mentioned him was because I could only evaluate the recording after it went through all my microphones and electronics it is rare that you hear someones voice like that face to face, and most everyone knows what he supposedly sounds like.
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.
The best way to evaluate an accurate set of speakers is listen for mistakes, maybe a punch-in that is off time or a reverb setting on the 2nd viola that was brought in late If the studio mixer left those mistakes in he didn't hear them if your revealing speakers did pick up the problems you probably have better speakers than the mixer did.

Your 2nd question - I will test some new cables I have over 70 speakers in my house and 4x dolby atoms systems so new expensive cable would cost a fortune. I'll order some of the cables that @rodman99999 showed me I agree exactly with their philosophy about cables.

I really liked what you said about audiophiles and logic, I may be barking up the wrong tree about technical issues, but these guys on this forum are not dumb they would know that a logical fallacy or a physical law always trumps feelings about electronics. I was wrong. Professional recording and audiophile communities are completely opposite of course there are exceptions.

I also loved what you said about the nuance and beauty of the electronic field around the conductor, true this idea is so misunderstood probably because electronics were not taught like that. 

Last question you asked, Yes some cables sound amazing compared to others, this is a scary thing to say cables are simple compared to the internal electronics in components that put the audio signal through gymnastics all the time.

You have a great attitude, hopefully you didn't think I was trolling or just wanting to fight as many here think of me. Best

@thyname 
Yes I do have a dedicated room for 2 track. This afternoon 6/22 a person from Steinway and Sons is going to look at my room so everything may change. I'm a little intimidated because of a lot of things I don't have on par with great audiophile systems. I have a Steinway Spirio grand piano that plays back perfectly, it is the best hifi piece of equipment I own it is in its own room built for the piano, no transducer of any kind, it's perfect (well it has 1000 levels of dynamic resolution for every key which is good enough. I've recorded 1000s of pianos but never got any recording to sound like a real one. I'm convinced by @rodman99999 and his article he pointed me to that cables do make a difference in a measurable way. So you all have convinced me! See I wasn't a troll after all. Thanks.

@cleeds 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. They don't want to do looping and you are always on defense in production sound there are HMI light that are often buzzing and if you need to tell the DP his light needs to be fixed he'll tell the director the sound guy is going to take an hour out of your day for his sound while I relight, there is constantly problems like that even on huge shows. Recording a single actor or 20 actors in a room is the hardest mixing and recording I've done by far you can't make a mistake in live the mistake is over in studio you can simply fix it (studio is the easiest). You couldn't be more wrong about that part of your post. Sure recording an actor in the studio is easy except for matching the production sound in a studio takes a lot of talent and listening effort. The microphone boom operator IMO requires the most talent for listening, when I did that I would cary the boom with the main microphone everywhere I went with my headphones on all day so I would get to know the polar pattern of the microphone, in the studio you point the microphone at instrument that doesn't move or interact with other noisy things while they are changing positions, recording music is easy compared with production sound. 

I have no extreme reverence for knowing what the original record was I'm just saying 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 make the tightest bass ever just add gating, ducking, and lots of compression. Tighter and wider on every recording isn't always correct.

@knownothing @thyname Wow thanks for understanding, honestly I came from physics, engineering, and acoustics in these fields they aren't understanding on audio goals being unverifiable they are antagonistic to it. I had the American rep of a big audio company at my house  yesterday (not name dropping), we hit it off perfectly and I was telling him how I was understanding the immeasurable attributes cables can make in a system because of you guys. He said his company felt the same way all the engineers fought very strongly against psychoacoustic principles so they didn't let in any "magical" effects that real people have in the audiophile world. He told me about a test they did with a CD player being set on 4 different kinds of racks like glass, wood, carbon fiber and such using long cables and everyone could tell the difference, this is a group of engineers that fought against "magical, unquantifiable" ideas, this experiment has a lot to do with changing these German engineers minds. 

I understand the frustration and I have a thick head I always put logic and physical laws above feelings, but it's clear I don't know everything and the magic is why I can't stop listening to music all my life. Thanks and Best!

@cleeds My point about recording an actor making $20M and the amount of money a musician gets paid was not what I was talking about. If you have an actor like Tom Cruse, Anthony Hopkins, Jack Nicholson making $20M there is a boat load of pressure on the entire crew perhaps 150 people to do your job perfectly with no mistakes. Here’s what you have to understand, in an orchestra you set mics as you have for years, violins sound good with this mic at this distance if the trumpets are this far away and so and so. In movies you generally have 2 or 3 actors moving around a set or walking down a hallway through many different lights and with all the noises that the crew and efx people make inevitably. The miking in most cases means that you must remember all the dialogue first of all to get the cues correct then move the microphone based of the projection of the actor and look at his or her body language to guess on how loud they will deliver there lines and move the microphone so there is no shadows on any part of the set that the camera is seeing all the while making the actors sound consistent remembering that you can’t simply mic the actors over their heads you have to give them space considering proximity effect, and listening to the acoustics of that room to mic moving actors closer and farther from the frame line while making them sound the same and all this as you are walking backwards holding a 12 foot boom pole that is so sensitive that you can hear your own heartbeat in it. Orchestras are a walk in the park. Hope that helps.

@tjag I agree I like my tube system much better than my professional system that is much more accurate. Again I think the only way you can tell accuracy is to have a system that images razor sharp and reveals mistakes that the mixer didn't hear or he would fix them. Best