To me, all you need is low L, C, and R. I run Mogami W3104 bi-wire from my McIntosh MAC7200 to my Martin Logan Theos. We all know that a chain is only as strong as its' weakest link - so I am honestly confused by all this cable discussion.
What kind of wiring goes from the transistor or tube to the amplifier speaker binding post inside the amplifier? It is usually plain old 16 ga or 14 ga copper. Then we are supposed to install 5 - 10' or so of wallet-emptying, pipe-sized pure CU or AG with "special configurations" to the speaker terminals?
What kind of wiring is inside the speaker from the terminals to the crossover, and from the crossover to the drivers? Usually plain old 16 ga or 14 ga copper.
So you have "weak links" inside the amplifier, and inside the speaker, so why bother with mega expensive cabling between the two? It doesn't make logical sense to me. It makes more sense to match the quality of your speaker wires with the existing wires in the signal path [inside the amplifier and inside the speaker].
As a promenant cable designer once stated: "Cables can’t make a system sound better. They can only make it sound worse. It’s all about damage control."
Me: There are some who claim there are no sonic differences in cables. My opinon is that it is impossible for 2 different cables of varying designs not to sound different from each other.
To the OP’s point about the "internals": I published the topic: Thinking INSIDE the Box, which drilled down pretty deep in to what’s inside our speakers, amps, etc. I found that even short cable runs (less than 12") matter and connection/termination methods are critical. That being said, generally, "we have what we have" unless we’re willing to "hack" our components and take out the stuff that makes them sound worse, or improve connection/termination methods. For the adventurous, the sonic dividends can peg the needle on the "sonic improvements meter." Taking all that into consideration, getting the right cables to and from your components is still a good strategy.
My advice is to do some research and try some things at home in your system. If the items are returnable, I’d try some things ABOVE your comfort level as well. Three things could happen here: 1) you don’t see/hear the value in them, which will solidify your decision in the lower priced pieces, 2) you like them and put them on the radar for a future upgrade, or 3) they whacked you upside the head (sonically) and you’ll just have to reevalute how you allocate resources related to the system.
After you spend mucho dollars on cables, some jerk moved your chair, 5 inches to the left or right or back. Then you’re buying more cables what a laugh.
I am new to the forum, but learn a lot from all the postings. @robbydouglas2, I too purchased MIT RCA ICs and speaker cables in the late 90’s for my 5.1 HT system. After we moved into our new house, my HT system was banished and most of the equipment is stored in the basement. I did have a need to use some MIT ICs for my kids’ college systems. One of them was DOA, and I couldn’t recall what those little boxes on the MIT cables were for? Was it hype, or was there a bona dude purpose?
i had forgotten about the MIT gear until I read your post 😉
The problem I have with the "water hose diameter requirement for the sprinkler" analogy is that the sprinkler company is specifying a requirement for their sprinkler to work properly. A requirement that they’ve tested. Kind of like "use high octane fuel" for a performance car (and why using it in a car that doesn’t call for it is a waste). Still not a great analogy because it doesn’t take into consideration other parameters like your initial water pressure but whatever...
To make the comparison to speakers, do speaker companies specify the engineering requirements of the cable to make their speakers work properly? And how can they do that for some cables when the cable manufacturer keeps their "sauce" secret?
Is there some cable spec that the speaker designer is engineering into their product so that the result is what the engineer is shooting for?
The Magnepan 1.7i manual just says it supports cables up to 10AWG. I know the Vandersteen manual is way more specific on what cables to use.
The wires INSIDE the components (whatever quality they are) are there based on the engineer’s choice (balancing performance, marketing, and cost) so that wire is in those components purposefully.
If the manual says use at least 12 AWG, that’s probably the right route to take. Are there any speaker manuals that call for "use only oxygen free copper" or "use Audio Quest cables for best results"? They would if there was a marketing partnership!
Personally, I fall on the "buy a thick cable that looks nice but other than that, it’s not going to matter much" camp. But if the manual for a speaker said "use X gauge" I probably would.
So you spent money on all these improvements. Better cables, better fuses better feet better better better better better better and better. What happens when the better is 20 years old? If you reconnect all of the better on a new system, is it still better or is it no longer better because it is an older version of better. an older version of better. If somebody tells you that cable that we made 20 years ago it was better. Is no longer better than the new batter that is shinier and a different color. Does that mean that the older ones better disappeared and you go with the new shiny better?
When cables get old and they lose their better, is there any way to obviously see that they lost their better?if you bought cables now and measured them on those fancy machines that scientist use….do the measurement numbers change as the years pass and they lose their better?
when a fuse company comes out with a purple fuse, does that mean that it nullifies the red fuse because it’s better? How exactly does that happen? If you took all the different colors of fuses and mix them up, would you be able to tell which one was better if you randomly put them back into your system?
if you change all of the feet on your system, does that make it sound better or is that a styling change?
i’m trying to figure out how much of this better is actually measurable. Do the measurements change once the item doesn’t look in style anymore?
do any of the better believers believe in a machine called the null tester?
I’ve been an audiophoo for a long time.
Along the way, years and miles gone by, I’ve learned one thing…the most important cable is the Power Cord.
Without it, you got nothing.
People hear what they want to hear. If it exists in their head, it's real. To each their own. Cheers to those spending thousands on cables, and cheers to those who don't.
The way I see it is if you think the cables make your system
sound better then buy the cables. If you don’t think the cables
make your system sound better then don’t buy them. Not one of us here
should say that cables do or don’t make a difference on someone else’s
system. You have a set of ears like everyone else use them
and see what is best for your system. I wonder if some of this comes from the fact
a person has a 10,000 dollar amp and a 8,000 dollar pre-amp and a 9,000 dollar c/d player etc. you get all this money wrapped up in the components. And then it’s in your head that there is no way a 200.00 set of cables will sound as good as let’s say a 5,000 set of cables. BTW I am a Cardas fan and use all Cardas cables on my system. Because I think they sound better on my system and the build quality is very good
The ones who can’t hear the difference wage the most ferocious fight. Look..after I had COVID I couldn’t taste my favorite steak and couldn’t smell and taste my favorite scotch. I was pissed! So, trust me, I know exactly how you feel.
So you have "weak links" inside the amplifier, and inside the speaker, so why bother with mega expensive cabling between the two?
because it is all in a continuous chain, so any part of it can affect the sound, alot, some, a little, or none... irrespective of what is happening in other parts of the said chain
This has actually been a fairly reasonable and mature discussion! Normally I skip this subject but I'll add my $.02.
To my knowledge there has never been an ABX blind test that showed that audiophiles can hear the difference between cables if they can't see them or know how they were constructed. [If anyone here has information to the contrary please post it.] There are dozens of tests that show that when you test cables "blind" you simply can't hear the difference. Even a few brave cable manufacturers have failed when challenged with this test.
I use Blue Jean and Mogami cables mostly but I decided to try a pair of AudioQuest silver interconnects because I read so many comments that they had a distinctive sound. I have two CD players hooked up that sound identical to my ears and I have several CDs with two copies. I can rapidly switch back and forth and I can set the volume equally between the two players. I swapped the regular cables on one of the players with the silver cables hoping that I could hear the difference. I left the cables in (they are still there) and over the last year or so and every so often I compare them. So far I cannot hear the difference. When I am listening to the player with the silver cables there have been many times that I thought "wow, that seems to sound better than I remember" but when I put the CD in the other player it always sounds just as good. [System is Krell KSA300S amp, KRC2 pre, Thiel CS6 speakers]
On the other hand, if people think they can hear a difference in cables then there is a difference. If the music sounds better to them that's all that matters. They are perfectly capable of deciding where to spend their money. I am the first to admit that the appearance and story behind a component affects my decision to buy and my pride of ownership.
I'm fortunate because I have been able to assemble an affordable system that goes toe to toe with most of the best systems I have heard at several audio shows. In many cases the cabling for those systems costs more than my entire setup. If the cables or power conditioning is causing some sort of magic to happen I can't hear it. Speakers, on the other hand, are night and day. It would seem to me that an audiophile shouldn't spend too much on cables unless they have no upgrade plans for their speakers. An extra dollar spent on speakers is infinitely more effective than an extra dollar spent on cables in my experience.
Oh, I will add that if you want to get nice cables just because they look nice, that is a valid reason. It's like buying a rack or furniture for your gear to sit on. You could use cinder blocks and 2x4s to support your gear and it would solve the problem and work just fine.
Buy if you are going to spend the cash on some nice stuff, have some nice stuff around it.
I certainly have tried cables that made my system sound worse...but I just returned them, no reason to try to convince myself that I liked them - some were more expensive, some less...
OP: Are you aware that higher quality preamps and amps are ’voiced’? How do you think the manufacturer does that?
This article was written in 1985. It found that capacitors and resistors affected sound quality. Yes, the ones built into the circuits inside your fancy metal boxes. (Scroll down to the bottom of the article to find out about the author.)
This article was written in 2020. It found that the connectors on power cords affected the sound quality.
this is a very useful tool for comparing components or cables (no xlr connections though) ... mine has been very helpful over time
they used to be $999, when i bought mine, prices have certainly gone up... for reasons we can all understand
whether one can hear differences reliably among cables depends on a lot of factors, one’s hearing acuity, resolution of one’s system, what is being connected, and so on... one must really try for oneself to determine if different items make a sonic difference, not just for cables, but anything we try to improve our sound
folks arguing here, asserting their view, is no different than one person insisting their food item ordered is too salty... but will that same item be too salty for me???
So you guys are trying to tell me that in a blind listening test I would not be able to tell if my system had cables connected or not? Preposterous. Now could I tell in a blind test if it was the power cord that was missing vs. speaker cables? Probably not.
My point is after 40 years of arguing about this topic don’t you think the cable business would have died out by now if they provided no sonic benefit?
I can hear the difference in the direction of my network cable into the music server. It is not subtle either. I really wish they would put arrows on those cables.
I’ll add as I’d missed in my first post here a critical element - speaker positioning and distance to listening chair. This is something that I continue to be amazed with how a slight change in speaker placement can break it or make it. This of course comes together with room acoustics right after your components and before cables.
An objectivist is just a subjectivist who thinks he/she has the better argument.
@nonoiseThe funny thing is that it’s subjectivity itself which clings to the mental belief system that subjective discrimination has no worth and no validity. The radical materialist and the diehard skeptic are thus hoisted by their own petard.
If someone was curious to hear more clearly what various cables do to the sound, it seems they could be tried with long cable runs, like maybe 100 feet. Surely that would exaggerate whatever change the cable is making compared to another cable of the same length. They might both sound bad at that length, but in different ways.
This brings up a potentially complex issue, where a particular cable might sound better at certain lengths, while another sounds better at other lengths, even in the same system.
Have you optimized all your cable lengths? I haven’t. I tend to assume shorter is better, but I haven't tested that notion. It just makes sense to me.
The argument about cables is purely objective from what I can tell. Nobody is arguing against anybody’s subjective experience. We take it for granted. What’s being argued is the technical explanation for that subjective experience. For some reason the idea that any power of suggestion is involved in the experience is flatly ruled out, while at the same time blind testing is also flatly ruled out. So, an art of cable apologetics has developed, and that seems strange. Why insist against the power of suggestion? How does one know that is not happening, and why does one care? If it works for you, and you’re a subjectivist, why does it matter how it works? What’s wrong with power of suggestion as an explanation? This is meant as an honest question, not some kind of taunt.
Nobody is arguing against anybody’s subjective experience.
They are there, you just have to go a little further back in the discussion to find their comments. The tenacity of those repeatedly interjecting the same limiting beliefs and even ridicule across many, many discussions is what brings up their refutation.
I'm trying not to get drawn into this discussion but I can't help myself. So as someone who has been fortunate to buy some higher quality gear I will share some of my experience. I are an engineer not a professional stereo reviewer but I will try to communicate the contributions I have heard from the various cables.
Power Cords: 1st preamps and amps- as I moved up the line of power cords the two main things I heard were blacker background. It's not about sticking my ear to a tweeter and listening for noise. It is something else. In a dead quiet room the first thing I noticed with a better power cord was just quiet. The music comes out of nowhere without warning. The second thing is the sound. Bass is firmer and edges on the highs are smoother. It took some pretty expensive power cords to experience this level of change. Mid grade power cords not so much. When I upgraded the power cord on my DAC I immediately noticed the grain in the highs was gone. And I am using a tubed DAC. I'd say the DAC was impacted the most with a better power cord. Some songs that were bright sounding to me, causing me to turn the volume down were now much more pleasant sounding.
Speaker Cables- I'm trying to remember what they did for my system. I think it was mostly better clarity and bigger soundstage. Bass got tighter too, but I will get to this in a minute- the interconnects affected the bass too. Power cords and speaker cables are enough to start inducing goose bumps.
Interconnects: I am using all XLRs so I cannot speak to single ended designs. When I upgraded my cable from preamp to amps the bass changed completely. I thought it was great before. Suddenly, the clarity was like crystal. What I thought was a kind of fuzz in some low bass guitar notes tightened up so that now I can hear the strings. It was a startling change.
Networking: This is a technology that is far from mature and so many people have experienced varying results with a nearly infinite combination of components. In my case, as I said earlier, the network cables impact the sound. I did not buy super expensive ethernet cables (well, I have an AQ ethernet cable going into the music server) but I got some $35 Pangea ethernet cables to go from modem to router and router to network switch. These cables have silver plated Cardas wire in them. They improve the sound of bass when streaming music and added clarity. I probably could not tell the difference in sound between CD and streaming now. They are very close.
Cables are the icing on the cake. So you could eat the cake without icing but it is not nearly as good. Probably the most frustrating part about cables is the almost infinite choices and the inability to try more than just a handful. After all, it takes hundreds of hours for some cables to settle in. In fact, the new power cords on my amps got so bad sounding in the 50 hour range I could not listen to the stereo at all. I just had to let it play low and walk away for a day or two.
People who own the really expensive stuff and still find it lacking assuming its well set up look to whatever else they can at that point to make further tweaks. Wires are a prime candidate. The logic is you have expensive stuff and don’t want to skimp on the wires. Wires can make a noticeable difference in the sound in many cases, like seasoning in soup, but not always and cost may or may not be the reason.
For most people I would recommend get the major components and their integration into the room right first and cost is NOT the primary factor for that. Bigger rooms will cost more in general, that’s the only rule. Mogami wires are always a perfect choice. So are most any commercial grade balanced interconnects if an option. If you must play around from there, so be it. If that involves throwing more money at the wires, more power to you. To each his own.
I own the expensive stuff and I did not feel it was lacking- at least not until I tried some upper tier cables. I don't see it as tuning or tweaking. It is refining. The music is there, the detail and the soundstage is there. Its more like polishing the mirror to get a clearer, sharper picture.
One other thing I'll add that I thought of. Cellos and Bass violins sound like they are there now. Before it was mostly a cello like sound. Now, all the nuances and resonances of the cello are present- even when streaming music. I stood 10 feet in front of a cello player in April and listened closely to all of those nuances. For all I've spent that gives me a lot of satisfaction. I think the lower registers are the toughest sounds to reproduce correctly which requires both room, electronics and cables to all come together. Speakers help a lot too, of course.
Accolades to my wife who has patiently permitted me to round out my system with some nice cables. (She got some benefits from it all too in the form of things she likes.)
@tonywinga ...Interconnects: I am using all XLRs so I cannot speak to single ended designs. When I upgraded my cable from preamp to amps the bass changed completely. I thought it was great before. Suddenly, the clarity was like crystal. What I thought was a kind of fuzz in some low bass guitar notes tightened up so that now I can hear the strings. It was a startling change.
And 3rd down on your list too. Some try it, some don’t - yet strive to debate it more. Hilarious posts by those debating something they’ve never actually tried before.
As a promenant cable designer once stated: "Cables can’t make a system sound better. They can only make it sound worse. It’s all about damage control."
another grenade thrown into a contentious subject, by an OP (in this case, that has 1 original post and 3 responses...since 2017), and then runs from the battlefield...laughing from afar
It was NEVER my intent to throw a grenade in. And I do visit Audiogon occasionally ... mainly looking to buy. I normally do NOT go to the forums. And I am not laughing.
I read equipment reviews - as I'm sure most on here do - and the reviews usually have photos that show the "innards" of the equipment - and from the photos, the wiring inside amps and speakers looks pretty ordinary and routine [certainly nothing special].
If you have cheap or routine wiring coming off, say a transistor collector to an amplifier binding post INSIDE THE AMPLIFIER, and if this [because it is cheap wire] degrades or chokes the signal, kills any soundstage or imaging or clarity or whatever, and THEN you add very "good wiring" from the exterior amp binding post to the speaker binding post, how can the "good wiring" improve desirable characteristics at that point BECAUSE the cheap wiring INSIDE THE AMPLIFIER has already "damaged or degraded" the signal, and I don't understand or see how "good wiring" from that point forward can "recover or fix" the signal - a signal that has already been compromised by the use of cheap wiring. I don't believe "good wiring" can fix or improve any signal. But instead, it may make readily apparent the shortcomings of a poor signal. That was the point I was trying to make.
I agree in all likelihood #10 speaker wire will sound better than #18 speaker wire - for a host of demonstrable engineering explanations. But I don't think ANY speaker wire can fix or improve a signal that been compromised by the use of inferior wire upstream of the signal. And from the equipment review photos I look at, MOST of this wiring inside equipment seems to be pretty routine.
In further follow up to the robbydouglas2 post, I also love these kinds of declamatory statements like: "My system sounds amazing. Most people that have listened to it have never heard anything better." Statements like this are utterly pointless since we don't know what the listeners to this purportedly amazing system have also listened to by comparison. It could be sound down a string and a tin can for all we know. But if it was, I'm sure it was nicely coloured string.:))
+1 for @snilf for pointing out that "just listen" is, when stated so simplistically, a quixotic imperative. I would point out that some people claim that only listening for longer periods is effective at discovering subtle differences. One must take notes during those longer periods of listening. The question of whether fast-switching or longer-listening is more effective at discovering enduring qualitative differences is a very interesting one to me.
+1 @audphile1 for noting the reasons people can't hear a difference with cables. And for explaining what needs to be done to make it *possible* to eventually (possibly) hear a difference.
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