Speaker cables letting the team down?

[Anonymous]

At least you are making some progress, and letting your ears be the judge is the only way IMO.

Sorry to hear about your wallet, we have all been there!

 

[Anonymous]

Just to make sure changing the bridging links are not the source of improvement, cut a couple of inches off the end of your QED cable. Strip both ends and bridge the terminals for left channel, and repeat for right. You are replacing your supplied jumpers with a piece of 2 inch cable.

I sometimes swap over the bridging strip with speaker cable, if I don't like the look of them.

If you still get your improvement, you know it is the supplied bridge that isn't any good.

 

[hifikrazy]

OK, thanks for the tip TNTTNT.

 

[Anonymous]

One thing I would note is that the Chord Oddysey cable is in my opinion a little on the bright side. Many think its a really good cable and fairly balanced however if you think your system is bright you are probably more likely to think that the Oddysey is a bright cable.

Many Cyrus owners use the said Chord cable and find it fine, but for me while being fairly detailed it was too bright and became tiring on long listening sessions, particularly after I upgraded my mains cables (yeah, I didn't think it was going to make a difference but it did!). It also seemed a bit boomy if that makes sense interfering a bit with the midrange.

I managed to get a relatively cheap pair of Townshend Isolda cables to replace the Chord (with the added benefit of these cables being matched so that a different pair length pair should sound the same - in my case 5m and 3m). It made a huge improvement (I was really surprised). The treble is no longer harsh yet is even more detailed, the midrange boom is gone and the bass is tighter (maybe because of the boom being dissapearing). All in all very pleased.

I have also heard many people (particularly Cyrus owners) recommending the Kimber 4TC and 8TC for being detailed and neutral sounding.

Cables really do make a huge difference in a revealing system (I am a converted sceptic)!

 

[Anonymous]

The better the cable the more revealing it is. Sometimes this is too much for a system which may be fundamentally bright or boomy. This is where less revealing cable comes in. Just my two pence worth. If the cheaper cable sounds right to you then you're quids in!

 

[JoelSim]

My 4 lengths of QED SA XT in biamp config sound great, detailed, lean, clear and precise. I can imagine with brighter kit it would be erring on the harsh side but I feel I have it just right at the moment.

ÿ

 

[Anonymous]

I would consider the Kimber 8TC speaker cable as it can calm a overly bright system down. Also if you still want to Bi-wire your speakers you can get some Jumpers also made from Kimber 8TC that way you have the best of both worlds. You have them Bi-wired and you are using a more refined cable.

Have you tried The Silencer from Russ Andrews, the top end can be tamed down with one of these and allow more musical sound from your system to come through. the good thing about buying from Russ Andrews if you do not like them you can send them back and get a full refund.

Hope this helps.

Sonai

 

[Anonymous]

sonai:
I would consider the Kimber 8TC speaker cable as it can calm a overly bright system down. Also if you still want to Bi-wire your speakers you can get some Jumpers also made from Kimber 8TC that way you have the best of both worlds. You have them Bi-wired and you are using a more refined cable.

Have you tried The Silencer from Russ Andrews, the top end can be tamed down with one of these and allow more musical sound from your system to come through. the good thing about buying from Russ Andrews if you do not like them you can send them back and get a full refund.

Hope this helps.

Sonai

Do you mean the attenuated versions of RA products? I've tried some -12Db attenuators and to be honest when I removed them recently I preferred the sound. Worth trying if you can return them with no fuss though.

As far as 'The Silencer' goes - that's mad money - try a Tacima CS929 for £20 or so and their shielded mains cables for slightly more and they do the same job. Work for me. If your mains noise is as bad as RA say get in an electrician!

 

[Anonymous]

hifikrazy:OK, so I just concluded a listening session, the main purpose of which was to determine if biwiring works on my system or not, thereby determining my choice of single wire or biwire when I upgrade my cables.

The sad result (for my wallet that is) is that biwiring is clearly better. If you recall, I'm currently running QED Silver Anniversary XT Biwire, so all i did was to remove one pair of the connections from each speaker and connect the links. .

Based on my experience* you should retry this test, using first your bi-wire configuration, then connect up you cables to make single runs of parallel line & connect the jumpers at the speaker end. I doubt you will hear much difference between bi-wire and doubled-up single run.

If this is the case, don't worry about bi-wiring, just get some really good quality OFC wide-gauge cable for a few quid per metre and bask in your achievements. Honestly, you might be amazed.

When I got my first system (second hand) it came with some pretty ugly Linn K-20 speaker cable. This is heavy gauge, unshielded copper stuff and I felt compelled to get some decent 'hi-fi' cable. After reading a lot of reviews I settled on QED SA XT with airlocks. 50 quid for a couple of metre stereo pair! The best way I can think to describe the difference is that the Linn stuff was bold, easy and full, whereas the QED was squeaky and lean. Lo-tech won out over hi-tech.

I would be interested to hear how you get on.

* Caveat: limited, biased & possibly ill-informed; but it works for me and took an age of trying this 5* product and listening to that 5* advice before I actually did some research on this. Then sense prevailed and I started to enjoy hi-fi again!

 

[Anonymous]

I import the DNM Cables into New Zealand. A shop I supply recently changed the 9 metres of Chord Odyssey they had in their main listening room to the brand new DNM Stereo Solid Core. This is 1mm thick solid copper as opposed to the DNM "Precision"'s 0.65mm.

They have told me it is a big improvement, especially using it biwired which is easy as it has the four wires on the same strip. It is working very well with Sugden and Living Voice which are both very revealing brands.

I feel it is superior to the 'Precision" model. Same smooth top end but with more 'weight'.

It is available online directly from DNM.

Now back to our gorgeous summer!

 

[Anonymous]

Do not blame your speaker cables it might be something else.

I was in the same situation as you a few years ago, I could not resolve my sound issues. The cables I bought either give better bass extension, more top end or a cleaner midrange. Overall though it never seemed to come together at the same time.

I kept spending lots of money. I even changed bits of my Hi-Fi, but that did not help either.

I have almost overcome my problem by running a dedicated spur to the hi-fi and used a 30 amp fuse. Then I improved on my mains cables to the Hi-Fi System, the interconnects were next and penultimately my speaker cable. The rack is my next thing I need to sort out and hopfully I may have the sound I want.

It may seem to be a long winded approach to getting the sound you want, but it is worth it.

After all if you change your speaker cable and it sounds closer to what you want to listen to all well and good, but remember there may be a cable in the infrastructure that could make it sound better. Your speaker cable could be preventing you from hearing the full potetial of your system and hiding a different problem. So I would start from the begining of the hi-fi chain the consumer box and end with the speaker.

 

[SonofSun]

From the PMC website

"PMC recommend using a high quality think multi-strand Oxygen Free Copper (OFC) cable between the amplifier and speakers. The use of 'exotic" cables has limited improvement on sound quality, so we would not advocate spending great quantities of money. However, if you are prepared to spend a great deal of money in this area, we would strongly advice you listen first to determine whether the outlay is worth the improvement."