Honestly, do you think Interconnects and Cables make a difference?

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stevee1966

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Right then, i've just bought a Roksan M2 Caspian amp and cd player connected to Monitor Audio Silver RX6 with Qed Silver Anniversary cable. The Roksans are connected with an old Gotham interconnect. Would a more expensive cable give me any benefits with my setup ?
 

fr0g

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stevee1966 said:
Right then, i've just bought a Roksan M2 Caspian amp and cd player connected to Monitor Audio Silver RX6 with Qed Silver Anniversary cable. The Roksans are connected with an old Gotham interconnect. Would a more expensive cable give me any benefits with my setup ?

To answer the question truthfully...

No, not unless you "believe it will".

An aside, it's quite funny reading through this 3/4 year old thread and seeing how people have changed :)

Seriously though, cables (as long as they are up to scratch) are pretty much the same...and I also would challenge anyone to tell 2 apart in a scientifically held test. You hear so much crud about cables, when in truth they are for folk with Hi-Fi-OCD only...Gotham are as good as anything.
 

datay

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Yes, QED are reported as poor by various people. It was a two or three year hype bonanza for WHT when they came out, they then moved on to Chord Carnival Silverscreen, which you hear nothing about these days.

At low cost, you'd do far better with the oft-recommnded, vfm and no nonsense Van Damme. Dealers like Purite North will sort some out for you terminated at very fair prirce (no home loand sadly),

From there, you can start to experiment, if you have the inclination. Remember, given the very nature of a blind test (everything sounds the same - it's just bloody music, it's a magic trick dressed up as science, which ball is the cup under, say "Yes, Paul!"), you will not notice any difference when swtichng cables. However, and many find this unacceptable, when a set of cables have been in your sysyem for a few days, you may start to notice the kind of subtle details often attributed to them (of course, in markerting speak,and in reviews, these differences are apparent the moment you plug them in. Simple fact - they're not). If you notice and appreciate the differences,(you may not, depends how familiar you are with your kit) then you either demo more or pick according to whether having a "loom" bothers you or whether you're matching amp-speaker according to manufacturer's recommendation (e.g. NACA5).

Since the guys at Roksan have launched into some pretty esoteric cable designsby the name of Vertere - some cheapish (<£100), some astronomically expensive (>£2000 iirc), you could well start there.

Equally, you could buy Van Damme for a few quid, and put the money towards up the range MA GX speaker, or whatever takes your fancy. The VDH will of course work fine with that.

You can go around in circles trying the get a "definitive" answer, the fact that you're asking, ableit in a "I'm a bit sceptical me but I still find my certainytly easily underminded by groupthink and marketing", it would appear you'd like to try some others. I think i've laid out a route that includes suggestions from both campsm("believers and non-belivers).

Onee important caveat - stick with what you have for at least a month, then any changes you make will be far more arent. The whole "instant switching/abx" thing can only reveal the most gross of differences. You bought it to enjoy it, stop fretting, watch your cable anxiety melt away and come back if it still seems important.

EDIT: I didn't know I was replying to a three or four year old thread. I hate it when people dredge those up, you don't start conversations with people that ended three years ago. Start a new thread. Anyway, my points stand.
 

CnoEvil

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datay said:
Since the guys at Roksan have launched into some pretty esoteric cable designsby the name of Vertere - some cheapish (<£100), some astronomically expensive (>£2000 iirc), you could well start there.

Touraj Moghaddam left Roksan and formed Vertere.......so they are totally separate companies.
 

Covenanter

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Everything makes a difference! Moving your seat 1mm to the left will make a difference. Everything in the signal path from source to ear makes a difference. There ain't no such thing as a component that doesn't affect the signal in some way.

The $64,000 question is "Can you hear the difference?". The corollary is "Is the difference you can hear real or imagined?". Much of the debate on this forum revolves around these two questions.
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Chris
 
A

Anonymous

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No difference whatsover. Smoke and mirrors. Same with power cables.
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andyjm

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Covenanter said:
Everything makes a difference! Moving your seat 1mm to the left will make a difference. Everything in the signal path from source to ear makes a difference. There ain't no such thing as a component that doesn't affect the signal in some way.

The $64,000 question is "Can you hear the difference?". The corollary is "Is the difference you can hear real or imagined?". Much of the debate on this forum revolves around these two questions.
smiley-cool.gif


Chris

Chris,

While you are right about the analogue stages in the process, the magic of digital is that none of the digital links in the chain (and there may be hundreds) will impact the signal at all.

That file you downloaded from Apple's Cupertino server farm will sound the same however many times you download it, no matter how many different routes the data took.
 

andyjm

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ShannonNyquist said:
No difference whatsover. Smoke and mirrors. Same with power cables.
smiley-surprised.gif

Well, it can make a significant difference. Try running really thin cable to your speakers, or unshielded interconnects from your DAC to your amp, or twin and earth to your satellite dish. Interconnects do matter, they have to be correctly specified to work properly.

The problem is that pretty much all of the interconnects discussed on this forum are perfectly good. So the endless debates about this perfectly good speaker cable sounds different to this other perfectly good speaker cable, or this perfectly good mains cable does this to my amp while this other perfectly good mains cable doesn't are almost certainly due to suggestion bias.
 

MakkaPakka

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Surely the super super duper 500 quid a metre cable in your hifi is always going to be limited by 5 quid a metre cable was attached to the microphone to make the original recording?
 

hone_u2

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Covenanter said:
Everything makes a difference! Moving your seat 1mm to the left will make a difference. Everything in the signal path from source to ear makes a difference. There ain't no such thing as a component that doesn't affect the signal in some way.

The $64,000 question is "Can you hear the difference?". The corollary is "Is the difference you can hear real or imagined?". Much of the debate on this forum revolves around these two questions.
smiley-cool.gif


Chris

Completely agree!
 

Running Images.Com

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Hey!

When I put my first system together back in the day I really didnt want to believe spending additional cash on cables would make a difference - but I was proved wrong! Still each to their own guy!

Dont know anything about Bi-amping do you lol
 

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