I don't believe cables make a difference, any input?

[fdegrove]

Hi,

So if you believe silver sounds better, make sure you match the silver cable up with a speaker voice coil wound with silver wire.

Unfortunately replacing voicecoil wiring with a different wire type such as silver isn't as simple as it seems.

Most driver units' specs take the voicecoil wire's spec into account so if you'd simply replace it with an identical gauge and length of wire but having a different series resistance_ as would be the case with silver_ chances are the x-over would need a redesign as well.

There are units around using silver as a voice coil wire but these are often FR units, rare and pretty expensive too.

I think B&W carries a line of speakers that use silver extensivley as a conductor but I'm not sure this extends to the voicecoil of the units themselves...

Also the differences that LCR would contribute with would be a very small change in Fr that can not explain the difference in resolution and noisefloor.

Having a lower DCR should help, generally speaking, but it doesn't tell the whole story.
Different metal conductor do seem to sound different from one another even when DCR is compensated so there must be other factors at play.
Purity of the metal, crystal size and orientation are all said to contribute to the final performance of a conductor.

There's a lot about wires that one can learn from high-end MC cartridge manufacturers.
As these have to deal with such miniscule signals it seems rather obvious that attention paid the smallest detail will have an impact on the final results.

Cheers,

[Pan]

Kilowattski,

you "can not" compare the sound of cables if the speakers did not stand in the same position with the different cables.

/Peter

[janneman]

Finally a Hi-Fi glossy did a blind listening test on cables. The following cables sets (both interlink and speaker, as sets) were tested (set price in UKP, multiply roughly by 2 to get US $, in brackets):

Nordost (UKP 6500), Siltech (UKP 7700), Stereovox (UKP 10300), Audience (UKP 2000), Chord (UKP 1650) and QED (UKP 120).

Blind test, three listeners, using 3 separate pieces of music each trial, two trails (with different equipment set up).

They did a clever setup: the first cable set was by definition rated 10 points, so each following one had to be rated more or less than 10, better or worse, as to preference rather than specific attributes. A neat way to assess preferences without going into the numbers fight.
Sounds pretty well thought out and logical, right? Wait till you see the results and what they did with it...

Below are the results in raw data. Now, some of you will tell me this is copyrighted material. I know. I looked up this issue, and it appears that it is accepted practice to quote some limited parts from an article with the sole purpose to facilitate discussing the issue and with full acknowledgment of rights, and without any commercial purpose. So here goes:

The table below is from Hi-Fi+ magazine, UK, Issue 34, page 22. Copyright Hi-Fi+.

What do you think of this? Hint: look at the 1st group score of the Siltech (approx US $ 15.000) and the QED (aprox US $ 240). What would you do as the editor of the magazine?

Jan Didden




__________________
/ The brain is logical - the mind may not be

[bear]

I haven't read what anyone has said so far! I did read Jan's last post...

Here's the bottom line, as far as I am concerned:

- Comparing *anything* with multiple variables leads to uncertainty. (like cable A to cable B, etc..)

- Ergo, the best comparision would involve otherwise identical cable with only *one* factor changed. (admittedly hard for a non-manufacturer to do)

- All published AB, ABX and cable "tests" that I am aware of are essentially meaningless for a multiplicity of reasons - or at best they are not definitive (let's not argue this point, it's my "educated opinion" on that subject)

- The average user who experiments with cables is guessing and trying, understandably. AND, probably does hear "differences" or *not* for very good and explainable reasons.

- The average cable switching audiophile is trying to use a cable to accomplish some sort of fine tuning of the overall sound presentation. (...which for various reasons will never be entirely satisfactory, if at all satisfactory)

- People *do* process sound differently, and people do have different physical levels of hearing accuity. For the latter, getting worse with age!

- Most systems, mine now, yours, and almost everyone else's *especially* those who have thus far "tested" cables are demonstrably below an objective technical level where the effects of any "cable differences" that *might* be due to any factor OTHER THAN R,L, and/or C are likely to be clearly audible to the extent that the perceived effect is clear. (number one parameter here is that the distortion levels in most speakers are too high)

- Many differences *can* be measured, but there is no means currently to correlate what it measured to what is percieved. This includes gross distortion figures, they do not correlate to perception. (there has been some recent work that addresses this issue, with some degree of sucess)

- This all comes down, given the state of the art to one thing and one thing only: "If it sounds good, it is good" - Count Basie

_-_-bear

[janneman]

Hi Bear,

I agree with most of your post, but that wasn't really my point.

The way they set up the test seems quite professional. And since they did such a good job, I am allowed to accept their results, no? They published them, so they must stand behind them. And the results say that in the first trial ALL cables, including the lowly $250 QED, were preferred over the $15.000+ Siltechs, by all listeners with all music. Doesn't that tell me anything about cables?

But there is more:

"[the Stereovox did poor wrt their prices] "Yet having listened to them in isolation I'd consider them worthy of higher marks", and goes on a search for arguments.

There, in one fell swoop the guy completely ridicules his own carefull blind test and exposes his nakedness. This is an insult to any half-intelligent reader!

Either you do a blind test because you thing it is a right thing to do, and stand behind it, or you think it's all a load of Jacksons, and you don't do it. But doing it, and then afterwards going to great lengths to fudge the results unashamedly to make them match your preconceived beliefs, its unethical to say the least.

Jan Didden

[Pan]

Bear,

since you do not claim cables all sound the same I´ll try to behave here .



"- Ergo, the best comparision would involve otherwise identical cable with only *one* factor changed. (admittedly hard for a non-manufacturer to do)"

Why... if two cables are geometrically identical but with different conductor materials and insulation, what makes it wrong with such a comparison?


"- The average cable switching audiophile is trying to use a cable to accomplish some sort of fine tuning of the overall sound presentation. (...which for various reasons will never be entirely satisfactory, if at all satisfactory)"

IMO yes and no. What I mean is, since cables have different sounds why not try a couple and use the one that sounds most natural? For me it´s not about tuning the subjective FR but to use a cable that has as little grain as possible. The voicing taken care of where it should, in the XO.

"- People *do* process sound differently, and people do have different physical levels of hearing accuity. For the latter, getting worse with age! "

The mechanical/ear part may degrade, but listening is a skill that is trained and gets "better" with time.

"- Most systems, mine now, yours, and almost everyone else's *especially* those who have thus far "tested" cables are demonstrably below an objective technical level where the effects of any "cable differences" that *might* be due to any factor OTHER THAN R,L, and/or C are likely to be clearly audible to the extent that the perceived effect is clear. (number one parameter here is that the distortion levels in most speakers are too high)"

It does not matter if the speaker gives 0.2-0.5% distortion or so, components earlier in the chain that have magnitudes lower distortion (and flat FR) still affect the sonics.


"- This all comes down, given the state of the art to one thing and one thing only: "If it sounds good, it is good" - Count Basie"

I´ll sign that!



/Peter

[Stuart Easson]

Hi,

Dan Wiggins wrote a nice piece on the practical aspects of why copper is the best material for voice coils, used to be available on the Adire Audio website, he considers and compares copper, aluminium, silver etc. Though his criterion for selection do not include percieved sound quality, he is more showing the measurable speaker criteria, such as thermal compression, cost, VC mass etc

Stuart

[bear]

Originally posted by janneman
Hi Bear,

I agree with most of your post, but that wasn't really my point.

The way they set up the test seems quite professional. And since they did such a good job, I am allowed to accept their results, no? They published them, so they must stand behind them. And the results say that in the first trial ALL cables, including the lowly $250 QED, were preferred over the $15.000+ Siltechs, by all listeners with all music. Doesn't that tell me anything about cables?

Yeah Jan, you can accept their results. But what meaning do these results have??

And no that test tells us nothing whatsoever about the merits of said cables!!

It does tell us what the preferences were in this test - which may or may not be meaningful with equipment other than the equipment and environment where the test was held.

But there is more:

"[the Stereovox did poor wrt their prices] "Yet having listened to them in isolation I'd consider them worthy of higher marks", and goes on a search for arguments.

There, in one fell swoop the guy completely ridicules his own carefull blind test and exposes his nakedness. This is an insult to any half-intelligent reader!

Please don't make me responsible for anything that other people are writing!!

Either you do a blind test because you thing it is a right thing to do, and stand behind it, or you think it's all a load of Jacksons, and you don't do it. But doing it, and then afterwards going to great lengths to fudge the results unashamedly to make them match your preconceived beliefs, its unethical to say the least.

Jan Didden

_-_-bear

[bear]

Interesting, Pan...

Originally posted by Pan
Bear,

since you do not claim cables all sound the same I´ll try to behave here .



"- Ergo, the best comparision would involve otherwise identical cable with only *one* factor changed. (admittedly hard for a non-manufacturer to do)"

Why... if two cables are geometrically identical but with different conductor materials and insulation, what makes it wrong with such a comparison?

Sure you can do that, but which two cables are identical except for these two factors? That's the first problem.

The second problem is that for your own personal tests, fine. But for published tests, this makes it impossible to determine if one or both of the two variables are responsible for the percieved difference and to what degree...

"- The average cable switching audiophile is trying to use a cable to accomplish some sort of fine tuning of the overall sound presentation. (...which for various reasons will never be entirely satisfactory, if at all satisfactory)"

IMO yes and no. What I mean is, since cables have different sounds why not try a couple and use the one that sounds most natural? For me it´s not about tuning the subjective FR but to use a cable that has as little grain as possible. The voicing taken care of where it should, in the XO.

Well, this is your theory of how it works...

My view is that you're not all that far from the way I've perceived things, but there is an important difference here.

The reality is that it is just about impossible to "unfilter" something once it has been filtered. Since everything in the signal chain from start to finish *is a filter* this presents us with a paradox of sorts. Which is that "perfect sound" is an exact analog of the original, but the entire process *removes* information from the original!

What we end up with is essentially an approximation of the original that fails to embody all of the characteristics of the original, in fact it loses certain factors completely.

So, we're in essence creating an illusion, a set of cues that our mind can accept as being "realistic." Herein lies the crux of the matter.

My philosophy (and that's what this really is about) is to do everything possible to attempt to do as little to alter the signal from start to finish as can be done.

(IF I was going to impart a "color" - like a "tube sound" for example - I'd want to do that with the *control* of being as accurate and neutral as possible *first* before "dialing in" anything at all)

So, the problem comes (imho) when you take a system that is in essence *random* elements (filtering here and there) that are unclear or unknown in terms of what their specific effects may be and string them together and expect that to "work" in terms of a system that will reproduce the required "cues" properly. What tends to happen quite often is that one will use a "warm" amp, and a "neutral" preamp, bright speakers, and "dark" speaker cables, and three different types of interconnects, power conditioners, AC cables, etc...

Now this is not to indicate at all that some of these things are not appropriate or good - but that what this system consists of is trying to filter a filter to filter that into being right... and so on... logically you've got precious little chance of getting that to work properly!

You've got a far better shot at it *if* you have some sort of knowledge and control over each step of the system and process, and you've altered the signal a minimal amount each step of the way...

What I am saying is simply that merely selecting a cable or component that happens to yield a "good" result in a given system does not insure that this system is "good" or that it is able to reach to the *limit* of what is possible to recover from the source material.

Clearly, the ideal system is one where the *source* is the limiting factor, not the reconstruction of that source.

Ok, hope that made sense to someone besides myself...

"- People *do* process sound differently, and people do have different physical levels of hearing accuity. For the latter, getting worse with age! "

The mechanical/ear part may degrade, but listening is a skill that is trained and gets "better" with time.

Unfortunately, not true.
It *may* or may not be true for you.
Some people simply are not able to listen as well as others.
A good example is the contrast between a person with perfect pitch and a person who is "tone deaf."
This is a simple one, but illustrates how wide a range there is between people in terms of what they are hearing and perceiving!

"- Most systems, mine now, yours, and almost everyone else's *especially* those who have thus far "tested" cables are demonstrably below an objective technical level where the effects of any "cable differences" that *might* be due to any factor OTHER THAN R,L, and/or C are likely to be clearly audible to the extent that the perceived effect is clear. (number one parameter here is that the distortion levels in most speakers are too high)"

It does not matter if the speaker gives 0.2-0.5% distortion or so, components earlier in the chain that have magnitudes lower distortion (and flat FR) still affect the sonics.

That is fine. But "effecting the sonics" and being *definitive* or dispositive are different things.

And most speakers are somewhat higher in distortion than the figures you quoted...

"- This all comes down, given the state of the art to one thing and one thing only: "If it sounds good, it is good" - Count Basie"

I´ll sign that!



/Peter

The good part of this, is that this is still a personal experience and that the hobby or avocation is still something that reflects each person's own personality and preferences.

I'd suggest the late Harvey Rosenberg's book on the experience, and how to enjoy it... if you are one who only focused on the minutia of technical detail, especially if you are fighting this "cables make a difference" battle!


_-_-bear

[madinoz]

Subjective objectivist seeks LATE NIGHT meaningless ramblings with same.