Why Do Cables Matter?

@donavabdear 

PS#2 - nice system and room by the way.

kn

@knownothing Thanks for your understanding you get what I’ve been saying. Yes I have been a recording engineer for many decades, I retired about 4 years ago and now have a studio in my listening room as well as a regular system just for fun. I have always been at the front end of making music doing live sound and recording dialog/sound for movies I haven’t been in the audiophile world long, I started in acoustics and putting in sound systems into churches and performing arts rooms mainly. I have tried a few speaker cables before my system wasn’t tuned in as well as it is now so my tests were meaningless. I just spoke with my dealer last week about upgrading cables because now my system is sounding as it should (it took so much longer than it should have). My mixing setup makes a lot more sense to me as far as accuracy all the speakers are internally powered and put together with Canare star quad cable. My professional system still needs work and I’m starting a movie tomorrow luckily it’s only 5.1 so it won’t matter that the rest of the speakers are not where they should be. In the professional world no one ever talks about cables, just speakers, preamps, microphones, room acoustics are the main details. When your making the product you don’t test it to see if it’s good the fact is you won’t get hired if your product isn’t worth the huge budgets of the movies and TV shows there is no room for error or poor quality. I know in the audiophile world cables are considered a component, I was a physics / engineering major in college and understood how cables could make a difference, audiophiles don’t understand that in the professional world making a difference only degrades the sound because you are making the original first recording everyday. Professional sound guys that I know don’t have good sound system in their homes the entertainment industry is incredibly grulling and generally takes 14 hours of the day then driving to the studio or location everyday leaves no time to listen to music. Here are my credits (some, just in the movie/TV industry)

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0213104/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1

@donavabdear you can discuss and argue here till the end of time about your expertise and how cables don't matter, or you can just go to a hifi store and ask them for a demo on a system of their choice and get converted.

You will never ask for a demo. 

😀

@tjag Here is something I bet you don't understand, listening is futile if you don't know how the instrument sounded originally it's futile if you don't know what mic was used to record it, it's futile if you don't know the room and the circumstances it was recorded under. I've done $200,000,000 dollar movies in which the carpenters had to keep working over the Oscar winners dialogue because it was the next shot up and they weren't ready. listening is generally always stupid because you have no idea what your listening to, liking the sound means nothing, arbitrary. I've said it before when you're working with Anthony Hopkins in a movie then have lunch with him and hear his voice when your sitting next to him you have an idea of how his voice really sounds, (even so, many actors and musicians don't speak nor play the same as when they are practicing or simply talking) but still listening to changes in the system means nothing unless you know how it should sound originally. The way music recording are made today that is practically impossible also, all you have to go buy is if the producer and artist like what you are doing and then hire you again. The entire foundation of "golden ears" on the audiophile side is ridiculous. Demos are BS, if you know how a particular microphone sounds because you have used it everyday for years you can go out and record a voice or an effect of someone or something you know exactly how it sounds to your ears  and the temperature isn't abnormal or the subject isn't feeling a bit under the weather, then you have a chance of making a proper judgement on if a system sounds accurate during playback. How do you know the component or cable isn't just adding frosting to the signal or double frosting and you enjoy it more? Demos will let you evaluate if you like the new component more or less but will practically never tell you if it is making the signal more accurate. Hope you can understand my poor way of communicating, I know Im not very good at it.

@donavabdear "I've been trying to understand why so many people are willing to spend so much money on cables, when no studio does, easy question really, 0 answers but plenty of attacking me and not the arguments."

To provide at least part of the answer to your question. There are two overriding reasons why specialist hi fi cables are not more widely used in recording studios: cost and logistics.

Recording studios are businesses - usually businesses struggling to make money these days. When they publish a gear list they want product that will attract customers and generate a return for them. So to make a comparison, if the studio spends six grand on microphone cable versus the same amount on a Neumann U67 microphone, it's a slam dunk as to which will generate the better return.

Secondly logistics - and I'm using the term widely. A lot of hi fi cables are too unwieldy to use in long runs. In addition, studio mic cables are effectively consumables. And, back to cost, consumables need to be cheap.

Finally, it is not to say that hi fi cables are not used in the recording industry. Van den Hull makes quite a range of microphone cables.  For example, Channel Classics' Jared Sacks uses them. Bob Ludwig's Gateway mastering is cabled with Transparent Audio cables.

PS Could you clarify your various references to the second law of thermodynamics as I'm unclear as to what you are driving at there?