Your opinion on cable spending

You can spend the rest of your life mixing and matching cables. Unless you have some type of constant in the system i.e. a given point of reference, you'll always be playing one type of colouration off of another. In order to minimize this, you have to try to minimize the colourations based upon known and very specific operating conditions and then work from there.

Taking all of that into consideration, there are a few factors that we are already aware of. Input and output impedance varies drastically from any given component to component interphase. No two different components will mate identically or require a feedline ( interconnect ) of the same nominal impedance for this reason. This makes inteconnect selection between two mating components a very specific situation and not open to universal interpretation. Having said that, applying some of what we know about cables carrying audio based signals CAN be applied universally. That is, low series resistance, minimal dielectric absorption, reduced skin effect, consistent signal path length, etc... should all be considered as "standard features" of any given cable. As such, cables using low grade dielectrics or break other "common rules" should be avoided right off the bat.

Given that the parameters involved with the amplifier / speaker interphase remain relatively similar from system to system, we are better off starting here. That is because we already have a pretty reasonable idea of what the output impedance of the amp is going to be ( typically 1 ohm or less ) and what the nominal impedance of the speaker is ( typically 10 ohms or less ). As such, it would only make sense to use the speaker cables as the "cable constant" within the system given the lack of variables from system to system involved.

Taking into account all of the various factors involved with speaker cabling i.e. skin effect, consistency of the signal path, strand jumping, nominal impedance, series resistance, dielectric absorption, linearity over a wide bandwidth, etc... your choices become narrower and narrower as each specific trait or characteristic is examined. That is good though, as it makes it easier to sort through the pretenders that bring their own colourations with them and the true "kings of transparency".

In order to make things simpler, let's look at the electrical characteristics involved one at a time and break things down step by step in an easy to understand fashion. In order to keep this post of reasonable length without repeating the same things over and over, take a look at this thread pertaining to speaker cable design and linearity over at AA. There are a few posts that i've made there that go into specifics.

By using one reference cable within the system that all the signal must pass through, and we can electrically prove this cable to be low in colouration / self induced signal degradation, we've made things a LOT easier on ourselves. Not only have we taken a step towards improved system linearity, but we are no longer playing one colouration from one cable off of another cable to try to balance things out. By keeping the speaker cable as linear or "electrically transparent" as we can, we get a better view of what the other equipment / cabling auditioned within that system is contributing. If you alter one component / cable at a time, you get to see what those contributions are on an individual basis. Not only is this a far more logical approach, it typically ends up in a far more cohesive presentation with a lot less guess-work involved. System building now has a plan of attack with known specifics. Now you can more easily identify other goals or traits within the system that are desirable / undesirable and weed things out.

With all of that in mind, it is quite possible that you might not "prefer" a linear set of speaker cables. Due to poor design of your speakers, your amplifier or the fact that they are not a good match for each other electrically, it is quite possible that an "electrically neutral" or "sonically invisible" speaker cable reveals these flaws. In such a case, don't shoot the messenger just for bringing you the bad news. You can either go about things the "right" way and correct the situation by replacing poorly designed components OR "band-aid" the situation by discarding the neutral cables and using cables of lesser pedigree to add their own sonic colourations. That choice is obviously up to you. As we've seen in these forums more often than not, most "audiophiles" choose the second route because they don't know how to go about the first, more logical path.

The bottom line is that you want something that sounds good to you. If you can do that, more power to you. If you can do it while maintaining high levels of linearity aka "accuracy", all the better. Sean
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Jayctoy: How does one "determine the cable that will match your system"? What happens if one cable selection upsets the balance that another cable selection in a different part of the system was able to achieve? How does one go about knowing which path to choose? Sean
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Here's a brief but simple formula on how to achieve consistent results in system building. This procedure is known as "voicing a system". Most consumers and audio shops do not know or understand this concept, but those that have been around long enough know its value.

Let's say that you have a "typical" audiophile system with multiple sources. For instance, if your phono sounds warm and flat while your digital front end sounds thin and bright and your tuner is compressed and muddy, you will NEVER be able to get balanced sound out of the SYSTEM. You need to set up each source so that they share similar sonic attributes and THEN alter the cabling that operates the "backbone" of the system from there.

Since it is not abnormal for different sources to have different sonic attributes, you may end up with quite different cabling for each of them. This is why "voicing" each individual source to have similar sonics to the others in the system is very important. Otherwise, one will run into problems achieving consistent results from source to source or even recording to recording. Once you've got this done, we move onto the backbone cabling.

By backbone, i'm talking about the cabling that feeds from your preamp to amp and then from amp to speakers. If the sources all sound similar but the entire system is still not exactly what you're looking for, you can then play with the "backbone" components & cabling as they will affect the SYSTEM as a whole. This will allow you to have balanced sound (or the specific sound that you seek) from each and every source through-out the entire system.

As i've mentioned before, i choose to select speaker cables first as the electrical characteristics that we are dealing with there are pretty well known and reasonably consistent from system to system. As such, cables that are "electrically transparent" and introduce the least amount of electrical and sonic degradation should be your first choice. From there, altering the performance of the entire system would be left up to the cabling between the amp and preamp since you've already gotten the "voice" of the system dialed in via source cabling and speaker cabling. Since EVERYTHING in the system must pass through this cable, regardless of how many sources you have, you really need to choose wisely here.

Obviously, most of this is trial and error due to various impedances and loading characteristics from component to component. That is why i've stressed selecting speaker cables as a constant, as the characteristics in this part of the system are relatively universal. After all, if you have no constant's within the system, all you have are variables and that can get WAY too confusing.

Hope this helps. I know it is a bit "generic" in scope, but NOBODY can tell you what interconnect will work best in any part of your system. Sean
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El: That is a completely backwards approach that creates as many problems as it solves. I am NOT recommending cables as a tone control so much as i am striving to achieve a high level of linearity throughout the entire system, from start to finish. Cables that allow the signal to pass through with the least amount of harm are obviously the most linear. The only time that "flavoured cables" would come into play would be if the components selected were not up to snuff or if personal preference dictated their use. This is why i've repeatedly tried to stress that the system is only as strong as its' weakest link. If it has a weak link, you'll end up having to band-aid it. In most cases, the band-aid itself introduces even further problems, giving you even more to deal with than if you had just addressed the faulty device to begin with.

Having said that, EQ's can alter tonal characteristics for the better, but they can do nothing about transient linearity. In fact, they typically destroy transient linearity due to all of the phase shifts involved with the filtering necessary to achieve the desired results. If one has a system that is that far out of kilter that it requires an EQ for tonal balance adjustments, they have either chosen very poor gear that doesn't mate well together, have a very poor room / speaker interphase or a combo of the above. The only other alternative is that they have very specific system preferences that they place of higher value than that of relatively natural sound reproduction. If the latter is the case, they probably aren't worried about "audiophile quality reproduction" or reading these forums. Sean
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