Cables, mains, interconnectors and speaker cables

[Native_bon]

Boy not been here for very long time.. G.. you guys still talking cables.. get yourself a balanced system to your ears & avoid the problems of which cable to use. The problem is, cables react differently in different systems.. & in some systems will make no difference at all. Even if u can tell, dnt think most people can in a blind test section.

 

[BigH]

Maybe they should rename this What Cable?

 

[ISAC69]

What you hear is what you hear can't make you hap ear better than you do. As for it they make a difference or not i personally have heard many differences and have had the pleasure of demonstrating to many sceptics here in Norway who have ended up parting with their cash. Baring in mind they were exactly in the same position as you there can't be no truth to the fact. Also some systems are so poorly designed that they introduce more to the signal internally that nothing can be of help.

My wife never hears differences however a few months ago I changed the speaker cables. She came home fro. Work and asked me to turn down the bass as I have no tone controls I said it's not possible, her reply well you've messed with so,etching it never had that much bass before!

go figure lol

The wife/girlfriend scenario, conclusive proof everytime....... :clap:

Seriously, it is possible that you can hear these differences and that you could reliably pick the differences in an unsighted test. You would be a very rare individual indeed if you can do that, but it is possible.

All the collected evidence shows that the differences between cables can not be reliably picked in an unsighted test by any listener, trained or otherwise. Theis leaves many contributers to this forum deeply sceptical that these differences even exist outside the mind of the listener.

The difference between cables is in their ability to enable the system to fulfil its full potential the bad cables ( usualy the no-brand cheap ones )

have a negative effect on the sound the good ones transmit the signal as it is faithful as posbile to the original recording . There is no shortcuts

the realy good cables are made from better materials , shielding act. and thus they are more expensive .

differences does exist outside the mind of the listener and depend on the quality of the cable or interconnect you are using .

 

[the record spot]

Boy not been here for very long time.. G.. you guys still talking cables.. get yourself a balanced system to your ears & avoid the problems of which cable to use. The problem is, cables react differently in different systems.. & in some systems will make no difference at all. Even if u can tell, dnt think most people can in a blind test section.

Nah, just some troll who's turned up (appropriately enough, from Norway) and spouting off. Usual tripe. Passing significant other walks in and is amazed at the change in sound, sceptical friends who work in space and have degrees in astrophysics, have just finished calculating Pi to 3 squillion places, solving Fermat's Last Theorem while cutting their toenails or giving it some Gangnam Style and can't believe how good it sounds.

Oh, not forgetting the "my hearing's better than yours" tripe, that's the other great one.

Tip: to beat this guy at his own game, save thousands and gain a bigger difference in your sound than anything he's mentioned so far.....shift your speakers around a bit. Six inches either way and adjust the toe-in a tad. Every time.

 

[the record spot]

What you hear is what you hear can't make you hap ear better than you do. As for it they make a difference or not i personally have heard many differences and have had the pleasure of demonstrating to many sceptics here in Norway who have ended up parting with their cash. Baring in mind they were exactly in the same position as you there can't be no truth to the fact. Also some systems are so poorly designed that they introduce more to the signal internally that nothing can be of help.

My wife never hears differences however a few months ago I changed the speaker cables. She came home fro. Work and asked me to turn down the bass as I have no tone controls I said it's not possible, her reply well you've messed with so,etching it never had that much bass before!

go figure lol

The wife/girlfriend scenario, conclusive proof everytime....... :clap:

Seriously, it is possible that you can hear these differences and that you could reliably pick the differences in an unsighted test. You would be a very rare individual indeed if you can do that, but it is possible.

All the collected evidence shows that the differences between cables can not be reliably picked in an unsighted test by any listener, trained or otherwise. Theis leaves many contributers to this forum deeply sceptical that these differences even exist outside the mind of the listener.

The difference between cables is in their ability to enable the system to fulfil its full potential the bad cables ( usualy the no-brand cheap ones )

have a negative effect on the sound the good ones transmit the signal as it is faithful as posbile to the original recording . There is no shortcuts

the realy good cables are made from better materials , shielding act. and thus they are more expensive .

differences does exist outside the mind of the listener and depend on the quality of the cable or interconnect you are using .

Let me know the next time you're in the Edinburgh area. I'll put a demo together with my setup (below) that'll have a set of £7, £40 and £220 wires. Good luck with that.

 

[Golden Ears]

Captain happy, I'm sure you know who you are. If cables had no impact on performance and the integrity of the signal being passed through them then there'd be a single gable off everything. In your world your system just sound the same regardless as to what ever cable you've placed in it. There are so many reasons this could be true and nearly as many as to why it provably isn't.

ive heard differences and these differences are nothing to do with the price of the cable, I couldn't careless as to the price. I find the hobby enjoyable and enjoy music at its best, given your closed opinions and the need to look over the fence pointing and laughing like a crazy person at the thought of another idiot getting ripped off I'd like to know the following :

1. Are you saying you have only the pavkaged cables in your system of you visit the £ store for cables

2. Have you bought door bell wire for your speakers as clearly not worth spending a penny more as ALL cables are the same

3. Do you actually enjoy music?

4. Would you consider yourself an enthusiast

5. Would you say your eye and ears are open? You're willing to take things as they cone without walking into the room with a closed mind?

i can honestly say that there are too many people listening with their wallets and not enough with their ears! As fior blind tests I'm pretty sure varying cables played through a set system of high quality will convey the cables characteristics and that I've grad A/B tests sounding alike with most material then suddenly a difference on a single track, that's the way of Hifi nothing is able to be placed in just a single box.

 

[BigH]

Do they use them in recording studios?

 

[Golden Ears]

So you have an AV setup? And it's this setup you are basing your extensive opinion on? It very hard for an AV setup to deliver an honest stereo production. There are few that do it to a stand where you are able to hear high resolution materialized get the sense of what is happening. I enjoyed an AV setup for many years, the stereo playback was entertaining and in most part excellent but I could never say it was the sum of a dedicated stereo pre power combo.

I'm surprised you've spent more the £2 on any cables as clearly you're not fooled into parting with more the cheapest thing you can find as there is no reason to spend a penny more than that.

So I guess the system has been wired up with the RCA cables supplied and the speaker wire is probably from a hardware store. Who knows it might sound great!

But if you ever fly across the pond I'd gladly let you hear for yourself. If you hear nothing that's fine (if highly unlikely). Only a wind up merchant could visit and not hear a difference or a person with damaged hearing in which case that's not a laughing matter!

Enjoy your ivory tower as it must get a little lonely looking down on all the fools who've parted with more than £2 for their cables while you've saved all that money! Good on you if you hear no improvement

 

[Golden Ears]

Most things are balanced there. And the studios use active speakers mostly. There are many studios using certain brands and they don't really invest (at least not always) in the most expensive gear.

Ask yourself another question does every CD you buy sound great? Probably not, and the mastering in those studios is probably done on inferior quality rigs.

 

[CnoEvil]

Life jackets on folks, as the ride is going to get choppy!

 

[BenLaw]

What is your kit GE?

 

[John Duncan]

Second language isn't what it might be! But given Norwegian is my first I'd like to think some people would have a little more respect for people trying to communicate.

+1

Post in Norwegian, that'll mess with their heads...

 

[John Duncan]

Tussentakk for å lytte.

Except his.

 

[Golden Ears]

Hiya!

sure there are times when the majority of tracks played have no noticeable differences, perhaps the recording is poor, there too much distortion etc. These tracks would have no benefit if they were received as conveyed or not as they're not of a high enough quality to have any tell tale sign.

i personally have a selection of tracks (growing all the time) that I used to measure a systems performance to my own tastes. I can't pretend we all hear things the same nor can I insist that the little difference I can hear you must hear. However when I introduce these test tracks to a system I look for Resolution, the macro and micro details, treble quality, bass reproduction and mid range purity. I do my best to listen heard in the audition and listen for the familiar. This is my personal way of testing a systems balance and it often leaves me with a feeling of the quality (according to my ears) of the said system

As for cables there are times that the shades of grey enter and the subtle ever so slight differences can be heard but these times the differences are not noteworthy. It's the rare experience (I'm describing) that when you plug a cable into the system and you feel like you've move from shades of great (maybe you loved the sound before) to full colour and never knew it possible. These revelations are those I strive for. I care not sitting listening for the slightest treble enhancement that I can pick out on a single track. That is unrealistic and probably where the non believers are coming from. That's fine with me, I live for the large scale changes and not the shades of grey as they ultimately mean little or nothing.

So to end my lengthy feelings I believe cables do impact on a systems performance, do I sit there listening for slight changes (yes if auditioning) in general NO if I hear that fabled defined change in quality then and only then am I convinced it is worth any sort of modest investment. I've 2 pairs of Transparent Audio speaker cables and a transparent mains cable all of which perform fine, but none of which I've parted with money for. I could never justify spending several hundred pounds running into thousands on any cable. I like to make. Y own and enjoy putting them up against the giants. Here in Norway we have a brand called Blackmagic I've made and sold cables to owners of those well made and engineered cables as the cheaper variants I've dreamt up have out performed their costlier cables. It these rare individuals that make me happy! They listen with their ears and not their wallets!

cheers!

 

[Golden Ears]

Bare hyggelig , håper at din får en fin helg!

 

[the record spot]

Captain happy, I'm sure you know who you are. If cables had no impact on performance and the integrity of the signal being passed through them then there'd be a single gable off everything. In your world your system just sound the same regardless as to what ever cable you've placed in it. There are so many reasons this could be true and nearly as many as to why it provably isn't.

Cables do have an impact on the sound. But it's so very minimal moving your speakers gives you as much or more of a clearly audible,. detectable and significant change on the sound, why spend the amounts on the cables you quoted art the outset of the thread? Hey, I'm not interested in values at all - why would I be. After all, you quoted what are apparently some very highly priced cables at the outset, so by extension, you brought it up yourself by implication.

ive heard differences and these differences are nothing to do with the price of the cable, I couldn't careless as to the price. I find the hobby enjoyable and enjoy music at its best, given your closed opinions and the need to look over the fence pointing and laughing like a crazy person at the thought of another idiot getting ripped off I'd like to know the following :

Hang on, you're making a reach you can't justify. Nowhere near it in fact. Audioquest Turquoise & Copperhead, Van den Hul The Name, QED Qunex 2, Monster Interlink 400, Computergear generic interconnects, Nordost Blue Heaven, Cyrus Interconnects, Atlas Navigator. So, I think I've had a horse in this hunt which makes me entitled to hold the opinion I do through experience and my own reading up on the subject. Your point's what? That you've been called out?

1. Are you saying you have only the pavkaged cables in your system of you visit the £ store for cables

I've bought a lot of cables over the years, on the back of magazine recommendations. Hence why I have some. I purchased the Computergear ones about three years ago. They were about £7. I had some others from Firestone Audio, generic again, when I received my Spitfire II DAC which were freebies and were excellent.

2. Have you bought door bell wire for your speakers as clearly not worth spending a penny more as ALL cables are the same

I currently 400-strand, 6m. Cost from Maplins was around £4 a metre. I could've bought the same online for about a tenner. I wanted it on the day. Prior to that I'd bought 10m of 322 strand from Digitalis Direct for £5 delivered. That replaced Audioquest Type IV which now retails for around £13/metre.

3. Do you actually enjoy music?

Very much so, of all genres, barring hip hop/rap in the main. Classical, rock, jazz, pop, spoken word too. Heaps of concerts over the last 30-odd years too. Why wouldn't I? Why would my reasoning around what interconnects I use have an impact on what music I like? Seeing as I grew up listening to music from the late 1960s, long before I got anywhere near hifi, my love for music thankfully isn't tainted by the nonsense. Why on earth would you think this?

4. Would you consider yourself an enthusiast

Totally. From the best masterings I can get, to trying out a pile of amps and CD players in the last few years. Yeah, you could call me an enthusiast. An analytical one.

5. Would you say your eye and ears are open? You're willing to take things as they cone without walking into the room with a closed mind?

Of course, but by the same token, there are so many claims made in audio and passed off as fact that just don't happen anywhere else. Where the word of the someone who claims that their hearing is so good, so acute, it's almost superhuman. Or that my hearing/system/whatever isn't up to the task. That I take issue with because by and large it's spoken by some charlatan that's neither got the skill, nor the qualification to utter it in the first place, but passing off secondhand news.

i can honestly say that there are too many people listening with their wallets and not enough with their ears! As fior blind tests I'm pretty sure varying cables played through a set system of high quality will convey the cables characteristics and that I've grad A/B tests sounding alike with most material then suddenly a difference on a single track, that's the way of Hifi nothing is able to be placed in just a single box.

You brought up the topic of cost by the cables you quoted earlier. That's not my issue. My point is you don't need to spend a lot, but you're better focusing on cable construction and what it's physically capable of doing. Forget my word, go check out Roger Russell's site. He used to work for McIntosh.

And cost is a factor; some of these things go for exorbitant sums and potential buyers deserve to be in an informed position where they have both sides of the argument and can then make up their own minds with that knowledge to hand.

 

[Golden Ears]

At present I'm using :

Musical Fidelity Pre 3.2 CR

audio analogue Donizetti

Musical fidelity M1A DAC for use with streaming FLAC and ALAC

arcam CD82T

Monitor Audio RS6 speakers (bi wired)

All cabling home made except an optical cable for by a French company called real cable it uses glass instead of the cheaper plastic variety. I bought it because it has a rotation end I as exchange the source a lot.

I have iTunes with lossless files (No so impressed as they insist in Upsampling to 48khz this sound is very good but not bit perfect)

WDTV live for FLAC and movie playback (much happy that they did a firmware update setting the output to source and down sampling to 48khz for the HD stuff)

 

[BenLaw]

At present I'm using :

Musical Fidelity Pre 3.2 CR

audio analogue Donizetti

Musical fidelity M1A DAC for use with streaming FLAC and ALAC

arcam CD82T

Monitor Audio RS6 speakers (bi wired)

All cabling home made except an optical cable for by a French company called real cable it uses glass instead of the cheaper plastic variety. I bought it because it has a rotation end I as exchange the source a lot.

I have iTunes with lossless files (No so impressed as they insist in Upsampling to 48khz this sound is very good but not bit perfect)

WDTV live for FLAC and movie playback (much happy that they did a firmware update setting the output to source and down sampling to 48khz for the HD stuff)

Frankly if my kit was that EDITED and my hearing half decent I'd also want to try and improve things with expensive cabling.

 

[steve_1979]

[EDITED by MODS - please do not try and bypass the swear filter]

But... but... That's my second favourite forum game.

 

[steve_1979]

...My wife never hears differences however a few months ago I changed the speaker cables. She came home fro. Work and asked me to turn down the bass as I have no tone controls I said it's not possible, her reply well you've messed with so,etching it never had that much bass before!

go figure lol

Well that's me convinced then.

 

[Golden Ears]

I see you've read me as a the cost is king and as such have taken to the high road. Believe I'm on that road too! I do not believe spending stupid amounts of money is justifiable. I was asking in my thread had anyone tried the DH Labs Red Wave mains cable as these are of interest to me having tried and experienced positive effects with their cheaper cable. I found it by the meter for around £66. That wouldn't be the largest investment for me however if the gains had not been experienced by anyone it my by a stretch to gamble with 2m of the stuff

i assimed you you had experienced cables I only eNted to hear it from you as you had claimed no they were all the same before. I in fact share some of your feeling mostly in regards to the rip off high end market that can't really justify their price tags as much cheaper variants can deliver the same sound and sometimes better! So I'm. to too sure why both feet felt compelled to leap in my direction having read your replies you're not too far off the track I enjoy.

I do have so costly cables (all of which I haven't parted with cash) these all sit in under the bed, I used them many years ago before I started sourcing wires and making / terminating my own.

You'll agree no doubt that the difference heard are in the most part an exception and not the rule. The me claiming (I know the name I a little over the top!) to hear differences might get the train rolling but I can't help what I hear. A true story which no doubt everyone's BS detectors will set off (in error!) I like to share.

When I was visiting my father in law (who at the time had a system worth over £100k I heard an annoying crunching sound in the mid range. He heard nothing and claimed it was my hearing and probably because the system was a Valve based system I had not enough experience to know if it was supposed to be there. Well I went home thinking ip his system had taken a turn for the worse as it had always sounded ridiculously good. That Christmas I returned. We went to his listening room (I was prepared to hear that dreaded sound) only for everything to be singing better than ever. I said to him it sounds great this time. He paused and said "Damn you! I changed the valves before you came to see if you were imagining it!"

That is a 100% true story. Incredible what some can and some cannot hear. My hearing in terms of hz is average I'd say but I can detect quality and the production qualities within a recording when played on a decent system.

Well there's not much more to deduce here. You have a similar opinion on the rip off market, you admit there are differences (albeit subtle in your experience), you probably misread where I was coming from as I'm in no way buying any cable costing 100's maybe between 1-200 if I terminate it myself as a test!

Now ow this is cleared up I fell a lot happier! Yikes 23:18 and the night has flown by! Did you have an recommendations for test tracks that you use when auditioning? I've tons! But I'm always keen to hear others you might look up Ane Brun she's Norwegian and has a new album called rarities it's very good IMO she has a very pure voice and as a bonus sings in English!

Here in Norway they've started a new streaming lossless service called WIMP (Hifi) I think they'll be moving Europe wide. It's very good and not the expensive.

 

[Golden Ears]

Looking for a bite? Guess you like fishing with your Walkman

 

[Golden Ears]

Det kan du si!

 

[Golden Ears]

Den hva nesten riktig! Jeg tror at du har brukt Google Translate lol! Den har blitt mye bedre i de siste to år faktisk, hvis ikke perfekt!

 

[BenLaw]

That is a 100% true story. Incredible what some can and some cannot hear. My hearing in terms of hz is average I'd say but I can detect quality

I want to have your babies.