@wesheadley
We get it, you aren't a believer in better cables equals better sound. Duly noted. Just because you don't believe it, doesn't mean you're the authority on whether it exists or not.
Sure, it could have been a defective cable...or....it could have been over priced for the materials. Synergistic Research is notoriously secretive about their cable production.
You want to wax specifics on how a cable can't reproduce 20-20K hz? Easy, conductivity. Silver is more conductive than Copper. That is a fact. Signal will travel faster to source on Silver than Copper will. FACT! High frequency travels more efficiently and is reproduced better over Silver. That is why high end video cables use either silver or silver plated copper. That is why high frequency treble replicates better over Silver. Go read the white papers on HDMI specification. See how they had to alter the cable geometry in order to get the speeds needed to sync video and sound. Gee, if all conductive materials are the same and conduct the same, then why did they need to create specific geometry, over a short distance, just to sync audio and video and later to provide more data throughput for 4K and now 8K. "But, that's digital!" Uh huh....a 1 or a 0 over what? Copper. Using what method of travel? Electricity. How does it know what a 1 or a 0 is? Whether an ANALOG signal is either a full square wave or a completely flat wave. What does it do if the square wave has curved edges? It rejects that bit. What if the flat signal ha a slight bump? It rejects that bit. So....if you can ensure that your analog "digital" signals have perfect square waves and perfect flat lines, you can guarantee that there are no rejected bits or errors. So...how do you do that? With better conductive materials, geometry and shielding. It's just plain facts. Whether you agree with it or not.
The truth is, Synergistic Research's cable simply didn't have the materials nor the geometry to best Lavricable's cable. By having Copper conductors touching Silver conductors, the frequencies meld together and diminish Silver's higher conductive rate. Lavricable uses only pure silver. Synergisitic's RCA connector is Silver plated Copper. Labricable's is solid Silver. Lavircable's cable simply conducts better, and faster than Synergistics. That's just a cold hard fact. If Synergistic's cable is defective, it speaks more to their quality control at $1000 than Lavricable's at $500. Either way, *I* win.
Besides, you've really defeated your entire argument. Because you don't believe better cables equals better sound...so it wouldn't matter if $1000 or $100 was spent.
Price Isn't Always Indicitive of Quality or Performance
I had spent over $1000 on a Synergistic Research Cable. The Atmosphere Level 1 level, to be exact. I was using this as my main source cable to my powered speakers. It was absolutely DE-MOL-ISHED by Lavricables' Grand line for a mere $500. It isn't that the SR cable wasn't good. I was impressed with it and it was a major upgrade over their Foundation line and a phenomenal upgrade over Audioquest's Yosemite cable.
SR and Lavricables use similar tech, but only Lavricables uses pure silver practically throughout.
Here is the over all make up of the $1000 SR Atmosphere cable:
4 conductors.
Conductor: Silver/Copper matrix. Or....silver and copper wire twirled together. Purity unknown. Actual wire gauge unknown.
Dielectric: Teflon
Source Connector: gold plated copper, cryo treated and has graphene applied.
Speaker Connector: Silver plated silver, cryo treated and has graphene applied.
Has a silver-plated copper mesh as a floating shield.
Uses a Tesla Coil to burn the cable in (quantum tunneling) prior to shipping out.
Now...Lavricables' $500 cable:
4 conductors.
Conductor: 20 awg 6N pure silver. Each group is laminated separately in Teflon before being encased in Teflon dielectric insulation. Graphene is applied at key points through out the cable. The cable was cryo treated.
Dielectric: Teflon
Source Connector: Trillium Copper plated with gold. Cryo treated and has graphene applied.
Speaker Connector: AECO ARP-4055 Pure Silver RCA Connectors. Cryo treated and has graphene applied.
The unbelievable sound quality from pure silver was so immense and powerful. It was no longer like listening to music as it was more like experiencing the music. The music was pushing into you. Similar to going to a concert and having the music beat and play in your chest. There were songs that had distortion at either loud, high pitched, or at peak cacophony that I attributed to being part of the recording. The Lavricables proved that it was simply that the SR cable was incapable of reproducing those notes. WHAT!?! I mean, how do you engineer a cable to fail at $1000? I guess so it doesn't out perform or come too close to your $10,000+ cables. In Lavricables, the Grand line is tops; there is nothing higher. They pour *ALL* their knowledge, best materials and techniques in the Grand line.
I thought long about this and I think I figured it out. It isn't that Synergistic Research is necessarily trying to rip anyone off. It's the cost of doing business in the United States. Lavricables are located in Latvia. Synergistic Research and Audioquest are based out of California. The average MSRP markup on goods in CA is 3000%. To compare, Texas's MSRP markup is 300%. So the cost of materials will be higher to make the same product in CA than it would in TX. Synergistic Research and respectively Audioquest, has to charge what they do to maintain living and operating out of CA. But in Latvia? It is clear to me that the materials, tech and know how isn't that expensive there. So it can be surmised that the cost of living and operating out of Latvia is less expensive, which means they can offer the highest grade product at a much lower cost than if the same cable were made here in the United States.
I am thinking of replacing *ALL* my cables. O_O
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- 89 posts total
Well you’re kind of putting words in my mouth so I’ll clarify; Regarding cables-- beyond a certain level of build and materials quality, you, nor anyone else, would be able to rank a series of cables -- all of good build and quality materials-- from best to worst basted upon price. Your HDMI argument is noted-- but at minimum it’s moot because we are (at least I thought) discussing analog transmission, not digital. Silver does have a different sonic signature than copper, and going from one type of metal to the next in a continuous circuit can effect transmission quality in a negative way, but at the level we’re talking about here-- which ain’t Radio Shack-- differences are just not very qualitative. In other words, better cables have different extremely minor sonic characteristics. Like I said, you would never be able to rank cables by their audio quality based upon price assuming good build and materials quality. That’s right, you would never be able to rank say five cables between say $200 and $5000 per cable in a blind test. No one can. No one ever has. It’s just audio booshwa. So buy what you like, spend $20k on a cable if it makes you happy, but don’t kid yourself. Confirmation bias and the placebo effect plays a far greater role than you think. |
@wesheadley |
I disagree that “every model below is broken version …”. I just purchased Siltech Classic Interconnects which has high purity silver with gold to fill in the gaps and they’re in the 9th generation. These cables got a fantastic review by Alan Sircom who’s auditioned way more cables than most others. The top of the line Siltech uses extremely pure silver. Siltech is heavily into metallurgy. Just because one does not purchase top-of-the-line, doesn’t mean all else is broken.
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- 89 posts total