To All,
This was educational on several levels. I expected more defensiveness and hostility, and instead received supportive and intelligent responses on both sides of the issue (sometimes from the same person). I also enjoyed the humor of "Rip Van Winkle" who thankfully stopped short of suggesting that I must have been incarcerated to have been out of touch for so long.
I certainly hear differences in single-ended cables (to which my experience is limited). Yes, even ten years ago we had choices in wiring, and as often as not a steep increase in cost reflected a marked decrease in sound quality (I'm remembering some expensive offerings from Tara Labs in particular that worked horribly in a friend's high end ARC/Genesis system). So in the last eight years, I take it that cables have not exactly become a science?
Certainly grungy mains, overloaded circuits and stray RF have the potential to degrade sound quality, but how much can shielding cost? There is a certain perverse logic in separating the transport from the D/A converter, for instance, only to require connecting the two with an expensive external "digital" cable instead of building the two components into the same chassis to begin with (and let's not get into outboard "jitter reducers," "naturalness restorers," stick-on discs and magic bricks, all of which admittedly affect the sound somehow).
I recently bought a $30 analog Mitsubishi MGA tuner in a plastic cabinet with fake heat-sink ridging on the sides and cheap built-in interconnects that looks like it might have been sold by Sears in 1971 for about what I just paid for it. The whole component must weigh close to four pounds and has a power cord so thin I wondered if I should shorten it. Yet the honest-to-goodness truth is that it completely blows away any other tuner I've ever owned, including the venerable Luxman T-117, which rose to Stereophile Class B, where it remained for as long as it was in production. It's scary how good this Mitsu is, especially when you start considering the *possibility* that our components could be designed to sound great using virtually any conductor of relatively nominal cost.
I appreciate the suggestions you have made, and I'll look into the more reasonably priced models you've mentioned. If you have other suggestions for wire that is priced at least somewhat proportionately to the components with which they'll be used, I'd love to hear about them. I was heartened to hear that people still buy Monster products, for instance.
By the way, a "high-end" reference mic cable that several studios are using is the B.L.U.E. Kiwi, which is the cable I referred to that costs $49.95. Lynn Fuston and 12 other engineers used it for their mic and mic preamp shootout CDs (3 CD set $110 delivered from 3DAudioinc.com). I don't know anything about "balanced" when it comes to playback -- is there any difference between a mic cable and a balanced interconnect?
Also -- another one you correctly identified -- the $125 mic cable I referred to is indeed made by Monster.
I'll tell you this -- I think a whole lot of intelligent, thoughtful people have joined the hobby in the last 8 years. You all are a cut above what I remember from the "letters" pages of Stereophile in the early 90s!
Again, thank you for the links and the advice, and for your patient and kind responses.
Sincerely,
Mark Hubbard
