Quack System Upgrades

Cable elevators.  Pure snake oil.  I would use them for aesthetic purposes and as a conversation piece; nothing more.

Blue Jeans cable are a great product.  Canare, Belden and Canare are all studio grade(and used in studios).  BJC makes no wild snake oil claims.  

I have yet to hear a difference between twisted-pair speaker wires of the same gauge.  I find it funny that someone will spend thousands on an interconnect that feeds an RCA jack that then uses bulk copper wire inside the component from the jack to the innerds.  If you upgrade your internal wiring I'll give partial tweeker credit to you.

I also find it funny that people spend big money on digital interconnects.  It's 1's and 0's, folks...as long as they arrive intact, a 99 cent cable is as good as a $10,000 digital cable.  My free Comcast HDMI cable performs as well as a price-no-object cable on my 4K HDTV.  Digital Audio is no different.  1's and 0's...

im a big fan of blind listening evaluations.  My wife and I do them all the time when evaluating choices.  Speakers, pre-amps (tube vs. SS) and phono stages all have very audible differences to my ears.  Cables?  Meh...just buy proper gauge twisted speaker wire and decent gauge analog interconnects and call it good.  Lampcord works fine in a pinch.  

@astro58go

Your reply is well articulated and more than fair enough to warrant a response. Thanks for that, as some others on the forum immediately take offense and can never "agree to disagree". Please allow me to answer your points/questions.

No, I am not an electrical engineer. However, I did study electrical engineering at Thomas Edison Technical/Vocational high school for four years and as a general rule tend to give more "weight" to all things that can be explained scientifically/objectively as opposed to opinions/subjectively.

As you indicate "listening is truth" and this is the basis of your assertion regarding cable performance, you certainly are entitled in that case to claim one is "better" than another. Whatever your preference and pragmatic findings, so be it. Nevertheless, there is nothing "quack" about BJC, because, among other things, they do not claim (in writing) their cable sounds or is better than anyone else's. The merely point out that resistance is by far the most dominant factor.

I personally do not believe in cable "burn-in". I do believe if you run more current through it than it is rated to handle, you can/will notice something burning.

As for directionality, there are numerous threads on the forum about this. One recent thread https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/interconnects-some-have-directional-indicatorss-why? suggests this could be the result of one end being shielded to ground. However, this is something that could apply to RCA interconnects, not speaker wire. There is (or should be) no directionality where speaker wire is concerned. 

But again, given the "positive sonic differences" you are hearing, by all means use whatever you prefer. I believe I also pointed out elsewhere in this thread that while "differences" can be heard, I simply question whether or not they are truly "positive".

gdhal,

I responded to this thread entitled "Quack System Upgrades" because others had mentioned BJC in their response to the thread. I went out of my way to say the opposite if you'll re-read my initial post.

Positive differences can only be determined by one in one's own system and listening preferences. I posted mine.

dimora,

"Cable elevators. Pure snake oil. I would use them for aesthetic purposes and as a conversation piece; nothing more".

Where do I start?.... Do you agree that vibration has an/any affect on audio performance? Do you agree that the delicate audio signal is affected by vibration/resonance?

If you'd consider using them as a conversation piece...why not to improve your listening experience?

I know I'm going to regret this.....

astro58go, all good. Sorry for any misunderstanding. I believe I already responded to your original post in this thread, dated 12-29-2016 10:57, on 2-29-2016 12:48pm. I was trying to convey I wasn't entirely sure what you meant. I took it to mean you do believe in speaker wire cable directionality and BJC is wrong in their position on the matter.  Am I misunderstanding?

Somewhat related, here's yet another recently and lively discussion on the forum. https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/who-thinks-5k-speaker-cable-really-better-than-generic-14awg-...