Why Do Cables Matter?

@donavabdear. At the risk of flogging a dead horse, the point is that one is aiming to retrieve the information which is already there and not to add information which is not present in the recording.

Thanks for re-presenting your propositions. There is no connection of any kind between statement numbers one and two. They are just two different statements and so no conclusion can be drawn from them.

Your concluding "try arguing" statement is a prime example of a straw man distraction fallacy.

@yoyoyaya earnest question for you.

You said,

the point is that one is aiming to retrieve the information which is already there and not to add information which is not present in the recording.

Original recordings vary a lot (as you know). When an original recording was something made for car radios or some other mass listening application, they sometimes exhibit qualities which, on a good stereo, sound bad. When audiophiles seeks ways of dealing with that -- say with a tube DAC or EQ or certain cables, etc. -- are they trying to remove information in the original recording in order to make it sound better?

I really don’t know the answer to this, so I would appreciate anyone with experience explaining what is happening to the "information" in the original recording when we try to make it sound better.

Also, consider this analogy: when we take raw steak and cook it and add garlic salt, are we obscuring or reducing the original flavor information in the meat?

You see the analogy I’m trying to make, but perhaps it is not a good analogy? Feel free to attack it!

It’s all about waves. Sound waves are locked into electromagnetic waves in recording studios. At home, that same electromagnetic waves are converted back into sound waves by our electronics and speakers. The objective of our home system is to replicate that recorded electromagnetic waves. But since we’re not in a perfect world, there is no way that electromagnetic waves can exactly be reproduced. We’re dealing with degree of degradation to the original waves by the home equipment. The better the equipment, the closer we get to the original waves. So, everything in the chain matters. Electromagnetic waves are created by electrons. Cable manufacturers strive to get the electrons vibrating to perfection in order to re-create that recorded electromagnetic waves. But there is no such thing as a perfectly pure material or a perfectly shielded cable so the exact reproduction is not going to happen. We have cable makers going for OCC, high purity materials, cryro and sophisticated construction in their attempt to get as close as possible to reproducing the original signals. The closer they get the more expensive the cables becomes. At the end of the day, it’s all about you get what you pay for.

@hilde45, being involved in the hi fi industry business as well as the recording,

The term High Fidelity from my perspective means being faithful to the original recording i.e. being able to reproduce it as accurately as possible. I have to say that in the thousands of recordings in my collection there are actually very few that sound "bad". By bad I mean nasty peaky treble or obvious distortion. However, if that is what on the recording, so be it. I also have to say that in my experience of listening to quite a few audio systems, very high quality systems make less good recordings more listenable than vice versa because they present more of the music and make it easier to listen through poor recording quality.

The question of people using equalisation etc as presented in your post is complex as there could be subtractive or additive elements involved. For example if an amplifier with high levels of harmonic distortion was used, it will add harmonics to the final signal that are not present (or certainly not to the same degree) in the recording. On the other hand if someone uses a tone control to dial down a peak in the frequency range they are removing part of the signal. Or they could be using a loudness control to boost low frequencies. In that case they are not adding information, but they are making part of the signal more prominent than it is on the actual recording.

Finally, an important factor that bears mentioning is that, at the risk of stating the obvious, people's perceptions differ. Some people aren't that sensitive to frequency response errors for example and other's aren't that sensitive to timing errors. And sometimes, people's sonic values are just plain different, which is why there is such diversity in hi fi equipment.

@yoyoyaya

Thank you for your informed reply.

Since there are some situations where adding information (harmonics) is pleasing or taking away information is pleasing (equalization), then there is nothing sacrosanct about "reproducing the original information," at least at the end of the process. Because the goal is not literal reproduction but aesthetic reproduction. This is where the analogy with cooking raw ingredients holds up.

On the other hand, I can imagine the response - "Yes, ok — we need to flavor to taste. Still, at the start of the process, we want to start with the real thing -- 100%, Grade A meat. After that, you can do as you wish, but don’t compromise it before you get a chance to start cooking."

These two responses are consistent with one another. But the notion that the "original signal" should not be adjusted (adding or subtracting information) mistakes literal reproduction for aesthetic reproduction. As you say, tastes vary, and (of course), so do ears and rooms. A lot!

At the end of the day, I don't seek "faithful" or "accurate" but good sounding. It's also the case that I probably don't own the same speakers the recording was mixed on, nor the same acoustic room. Given that I cannot hope for "faithful" I will settle for "good sounding," however I can get there.