Having read through the whole of the "Snake Oil" post, http://www.whathifi.com/forum/hi-fi/snake-oil which is in reference to the relative benefits, (or otherwise), of expensive after sales interconnects and speaker cables, I have a theory which is based on my own experiences with cables.
I began my journey in to hifi in the late 1980's. I started with Rotel, progressed to Cyrus, then through to Audiolab, back to Cyrus via Marantz and finally on to Bryston. Speakers have been Kef and PMC with a brief dabble in to EB Acoustics.
Over the years my ears have mellowed and my love for a purely analytical sound has somewhat dwindled, so I recently changed my pre-amp from a Bryston BP26 to an Audio Research Ref 3. This shift to valve pre-amplification was to remove some of the harsh sibilance that the solid state Bryston can bring to the party in its quest for detail at the expense of musicality. This the Audio Research duly did without removing any discernable detail, but I felt after a lot of listening that perhaps it did round off the top end a tiny bit too much for my ear.
This is where I believe the choice of cable comes in to its own and can really make a difference. Note the word difference is used here and not the word upgrade. Cables cannot upgrade a system because they do not add anything. What they can do however is to supress something that is unwanted, preventing certain frequencies within the signal from passing from source to amplification, or from amplifier to loudspeaker. In this way they can be used to tune a system or component.
Based upon its silver content I added a Cleareraudio Silverline Optimus 75 Ohm interconnect between DAC and pre-amp. Hey presto, the perfect balance for my ear was achieved. Had I needed more or less bass suppression to suit my acoustic tastes, bass suppression being what this cable is doing, then I would have tried different cables until I got to where I wanted to be.
The humble bass, mid and treble tone controls disappeared from British Hifi a quarter of a century ago. Perhaps all of this cable fiddling is the audiophiles way of asking for that extra control knob to be put back on our systems? Many of us think we want “straight out of the studio” sound to come out of our loudspeakers, but do we really? I would say clearly not considering how often I read post on here entitled “more bass required”, or “bright sounding system”.
Snake oil? No. Upgrade? No. Tuning instrument in the absence of tone controls? I would say most definitely yes.
I began my journey in to hifi in the late 1980's. I started with Rotel, progressed to Cyrus, then through to Audiolab, back to Cyrus via Marantz and finally on to Bryston. Speakers have been Kef and PMC with a brief dabble in to EB Acoustics.
Over the years my ears have mellowed and my love for a purely analytical sound has somewhat dwindled, so I recently changed my pre-amp from a Bryston BP26 to an Audio Research Ref 3. This shift to valve pre-amplification was to remove some of the harsh sibilance that the solid state Bryston can bring to the party in its quest for detail at the expense of musicality. This the Audio Research duly did without removing any discernable detail, but I felt after a lot of listening that perhaps it did round off the top end a tiny bit too much for my ear.
This is where I believe the choice of cable comes in to its own and can really make a difference. Note the word difference is used here and not the word upgrade. Cables cannot upgrade a system because they do not add anything. What they can do however is to supress something that is unwanted, preventing certain frequencies within the signal from passing from source to amplification, or from amplifier to loudspeaker. In this way they can be used to tune a system or component.
Based upon its silver content I added a Cleareraudio Silverline Optimus 75 Ohm interconnect between DAC and pre-amp. Hey presto, the perfect balance for my ear was achieved. Had I needed more or less bass suppression to suit my acoustic tastes, bass suppression being what this cable is doing, then I would have tried different cables until I got to where I wanted to be.
The humble bass, mid and treble tone controls disappeared from British Hifi a quarter of a century ago. Perhaps all of this cable fiddling is the audiophiles way of asking for that extra control knob to be put back on our systems? Many of us think we want “straight out of the studio” sound to come out of our loudspeakers, but do we really? I would say clearly not considering how often I read post on here entitled “more bass required”, or “bright sounding system”.
Snake oil? No. Upgrade? No. Tuning instrument in the absence of tone controls? I would say most definitely yes.
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