Everything Does Seem To Matter


Everything does seem to matter.

I purchased the Townshend Fractal F-1 speaker cables and have been impressed with them. Thanks to millercarbon. BTW, I compared them to many other speaker cables including the “hotly reviewed” Silversmith Fidelium’s.

I had them made unterminated because I thought I already had some very good lockable banana plugs to use. The bananas were the stackable kind and look very similar to the Furutech Fp-202 design. I have always preferred bananas because of the ease of connection. I know, I know, bare wire is the best but it is just too crappy looking, IMHO that is.

So, I don’t really know why, but I just decided to replace them with some WBT-0681 AG spades that I also had on hand. Once connected up, to my surprise, the bass became deeper, the treble more extended, along with a more solid sounding soundstage, and, it seems to be playing louder at the same volume settings? Huh? How can this be?

I was happy with the sound quality of the F-1 cables using the bananas for all this time, I just can’t believe that this much sound quality was left behind.

We use high quality wire, even silver only to terminate them with some cheap brass connectors. So, don’t ignore the last end of the connection.

Still some questions I have:

· Was the Banana’s sound quality inferior because of the use of cheaper metal, or perhaps thinner contact points?

· Do spades generally make better contact than bananas?

· Or, is the WBT design just superior in design.

Everything does seem to matter.

ozzy


128x128ozzy
Man, most of you guys are way ahead of me on this stuff, but from what I’ve heard and experienced, this stuff matters. I really DO think you might be able to tune/tailor a system via cables, fuses, and treatments.
The EE types usually design filters with capacitance, inductance and resistance.
(I have only heard a few proclaim that different metals have different sounds.)

If the cables had a different capacitance, inductance or resistance, then a reason exists why it could sound different. And the more secure spades also have a demonstrable reason.
However using higher or lower values in any of those (C/I/R) could be better or it could be worse.
It is not always an improvement.

The accoutsics engineers also say that diffusion and absortion change reflected sounds.
And both of ^these^ disciplines are taught in science departments at many universities “around” the world.\

There are also psychology departments, which is a science as well.

Thank you all for the comments thus far.
At this time, I am only using the WBT Ag spades at the speaker end and the WBT Cu at the amp end. I have ordered 4 more of the 0681 Ag for the amp end.

After careful review (with a magnifying glass), I can’t tell what type of metal is used in the bananas. It looks to be silvery but I am pretty sure it is not silver. I do remember that one of the banana ends broke off fairly easy and needed to be replaced.

I would like to try just a bare connection, but I am hesitant because the unterminated end has a very short length, and some binding posts while clamping down the wire can actually shear off some wire.

So, the termination is just as important as the wire that is used, is it not? We should try to match the wire with the best connector (spade) as best as possible. Anything less will degrade the sound quality of the wire.

That is, in the textbook of ozzy...

ozzy
I once had a nice pair of Acoustat IVs and swapped the binding posts out for WBT posts. Got an improvement there for sure. I swapped out the stock binding posts on my last two pairs of speakers with Cardas copper binding posts. Nice improvements there too. Highly recommended.

Frank
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Thanks for sharing that Frank. It is funny that we spend so much money on auxiliary things but overlook the most critical connection.

That being said, I think that most cable manufactures try to support their design with the proper connector.
At least I hope so.

ozzy