The never ending.....

[Anonymous]

idc:...Having spent many years being certain different cables sounded different because I was constantly told so and I knew that was correct because I could hear it, now I have evidence to show that is wrong I cannot hear the difference anymore.
Therefore the difference was in my head and not the cable.

Well said, idc. I've had a similar experience and the truth is a bit hard to accept at times.

 

[Anonymous]

cables (speaker, interconnect, hdmi) can only give better sound (or picture in the case of hdmi cables), compared to other cables, if they lose less data, information, electrical signal etc.

a cable that is deemed to be worse than others must therefore be losing data, info, electrical signal.

data, info, electrical signal loss has to be random.

random data, info, electrical signal loss would mean random sound.

random sound (or picture) would mean just that, each time a track is played or a movie scene is watched it would sound (look) different,

that is never reported, i wonder why?

 

[Anonymous]

Somebody once did an experiment where they swopped the colour of wine. They made red wine white and white wine red. They then asked wine tasters to describe the flavours.......you can guess the rest.

 

[Anonymous]

RMutt:Somebody once did an experiment where they swopped the colour of wine. They made red wine white and white wine red. They then asked wine tasters to describe the flavours.......you can guess the rest.Er - no. Can you provide the link?

 

[Anonymous]

Sorry no link. I read it somewhere on paper! The red which was actually white was described as rich, giving hints of blackberry etc. the white which was actually red was described as sharp,citrussy etc.

 

[basshead]

i recently changed my speaker cable from clear audio silver sky (2 stars on whf review) to some chord co carnival silver screen (5 stars on whf review). could hear no difference at all. but the chord co cable looks better to me, so for £30 was a worthwhile upgrade for cosmetic reasons alone.

 

[basshead]

RMutt:Somebody once did an experiment where they swopped the colour of wine. They made red wine white and white wine red. They then asked wine tasters to describe the flavours.......you can guess the rest.

i have seen a similar experiment done with jelly - a purple coloured orange flavoured jelly, and an orange coloured beetroot flavoured jelly. when we were asked to taste the orange jelly, we all said it tasted of oranges, same with the purple one tasting of beetroot. we were not told before the experiment that the colours had been changed.

i think heston blumenthal did ths on one of his tv shows.

 

[MUSICRAFT]

tommelitn:
Thanks Rick, stories like this I want to hear 🙂

Hi tommeltin

Your welcome.

Keep it simple and your components/system will breathe

All the best

Rick @ Musicraft

 

[Anonymous]

For myself:

I think two core mains cable is as good as anything as far as speaker cable goes.

For digital stuff I have yet to see any difference in hdmi cables.

Others will disagree but then it is a matter of opinion.

Best thing to do is to find a friendly dealer and get them to switch between cables without telling you what they are changing to and from. Blind testing in effect.

If you can see/hear differences then buy what you consider the best.

 

[RobGardner]

As someone who has spent a lot of money on interconnects I am bound to say that interconnects can make a huge difference. However I will say the it depends on the kit that you are using, and don't expect a cable that costs 10x more to sound 10x better. I spent an engaging few hours a couple of months ago swopping digital inter-connects around between my cd player and dac. I lined up a 50p cable, one I had purchased on ebay for £10 (van den hul something or other) a VdH tri-axial pro, a Nordost Silver Shadow, a Wireworld gold eclipse 5 and a Chord Indigo analogue and a Chord Indigo digital. The fact was the most expensive cable sounded the best, the next best was the next most expensive, but this didn't run true as you progressed downwards in price terms - but the 50p cable was actually quite good and not at all disgraced in the company of some very expensive competitors, in fact it sounded better than the Chord Indigo analogue cable used as a digital inter-connect.

At the end I kept my Chord Indigo digital cable and sold most of the others (apart from the 50p cable - you never know when you are going to need a digital interconnect). Is a high end cable worth it? Well in absolute sound quality terms you can't beat them. Are they value for money - of course not! Are they always worth it? No of course not. If someone took my Chord Indigo away would I buy another - no of course not - I would buy a Chord Sarum digital cable.

 

[idc]

Rob, do the same test, but this time so you do not know which cables is being used.

 

[vonchief]

You only have to read some of the cable reviews in WHF to know the wrong cable choice can ruin a system.

Take the Mark Grant G100 interconnect review for instance, when used on their reference kit top end frequencies became brash,the system showed an inability to get to grips with dynamics, the words jumbled and confused were used to describe the sound and the sound lacked cohesion and definition ending up as a soggy mess.

This is not the type of sound quality you would expect to hear from a reference system so it must have been the cable.....

 

[Mr Morph]

RobGardner:

As someone who has spent a lot of money on interconnects I am bound to say that interconnects can make a huge difference. However I will say the it depends on the kit that you are using, and don't expect a cable that costs 10x more to sound 10x better. I spent an engaging few hours a couple of months ago swopping digital inter-connects around between my cd player and dac. I lined up a 50p cable, one I had purchased on ebay for £10 (van den hul something or other) a VdH tri-axial pro, a Nordost Silver Shadow, a Wireworld gold eclipse 5 and a Chord Indigo analogue and a Chord Indigo digital. The fact was the most expensive cable sounded the best, the next best was the next most expensive, but this didn't run true as you progressed downwards in price terms - but the 50p cable was actually quite good and not at all disgraced in the company of some very expensive competitors, in fact it sounded better than the Chord Indigo analogue cable used as a digital inter-connect.

Maybe I'm missing something here? But you shouldn't be able to 'hear' any difference between 'digital cables' because they are only carrying binary information. The signal isn't reconstructed back into the analogue waveform until it hits the D/A converter, so anything before that shouldn't actually matter. The fact that a DAC locks onto the signal is an indicator that the binary information is being recieved correctly, so I can't put my hand on my heart and recommend something like expensive digital cables. If it's being recieved correctly via a normal copper 75ohm cable, why would you want to spend more money on an expensive cable that does the same thing? Do those 'binary bits' change into something else on their journey into the DAC simply because it's a more expensive cable?