That's good curly, seem to have done more than *most* audiophiles. (would those on diy be more inclined to do more than *most* audiophiles?? Is that a given??).
Still, no measurements. That is trivial nowadays, esp in the bass region. "I tuned it by ear" does not particularly inspire ME with confidence, esp given the nature of the thread.
THIS line I find fascinating!!!!
Room treatment is on the same level as coupling capacitors and cables to you!!??!!
I guess that shows you have not properly treated your room. (and that's ok, there ARE a lot of limits to what people can do with room treatment)
Ok, got you on not being rude. BUT, you (and others) always fall back to the old standby of 'insufficiently good system'....and will continue to maintain that position EVEN IF you were to partake in a properly controlled test of some sort...and failed to hear these differences...all you would do is find the test at fault.
Ie move the goalposts.
Did anybody here claimed anything else?
Of course, sort out your system first (using reasonable cables at least), then you can start playing around with different cables if you wish. You can fine-tune a system with cables, even hide some bad qualities of less than perfect equipment, not that this is the correct way to do it.
The best cables should be those with least influence on the sound but that may sometimes call for equipment upgrades as they don't hide flaws.
Now can we get back to constructive cable discussions please.
(hmm, looks like the boks too are not performing too well of late). Sorry andre, bzzt. That is NOT what you and others claim.
I don't want to go and find it, but very recently you made a comment that went something like (when talking cable price) 'but the wrong cable can make your $10k speakers sound like 5k'...don't quote me on the exact words ok?
BUT, when it suits, you say cables are just tiny 'icings on cake, subtle,' etc. What you really maintain is that they are essential and can break the system.
THAT is what I respond to. How do I know that that cable belief is completely and utterly wrong??
MY system. ZERO attention paid to cables.
You want cables for your system? go for it, it's your system.
But DON"T lie and say crap like the wrong cables will 'destroy' a system ok? A bit like you imply here actually!
Yes indeed. Spent $5K on an amp and/or preamp, another $5K on a DAC/transport and then use cheap cables. You are certainly in heaven
They all sound the same.
Wow!! Did you note when the first post was made??!!
For sure panikos. Again this comes down to a personal thing, but for me the worst/last thing I could do is be stuck in a neverending experimentation loop, of anything.
Why?? Again, it might only be me, but I would forever be listening/concentrating on systems... not music. And you must, as each time you make a change you will have to evaluate.
When stuck in a loop like that, just where does music fit in?? Only a vehicle to evaluate a system, a tool for the system.
I prefer the other way around, the system for the music.
See, it's all about personal reactions and approaches really.
Like alexfromoz (hi alex)..dunno if he still reads this thread or not.
It all becomes a bit of a religion. He came to a gtg held here a while back, an opportunity to meet lots of new people interested in audio and music etc. Quite obviously something he (like all of you) would be interested in, as he spends time chatting about it on an internet forum. Pretty obvious yeah?
He sat in my lp and listened for half a track till his mobile rang, so he got up and answered it yada yada. that was it. We did not see him again for the rest of the day.
He had the chance to listen to a system that he will never hear bettered. Not said with any bluster, just trying to be coldly accurate. So what did he do??
We did not see him again because for the rest of the day he was in another room calmly treating (with their permission of course) someone's speakers with his enable tape. Took him hours.
See what I mean?? He had the chance to chat, exchange ideas, listen to a system that in his wildest dreams he could never own (he told me that he could never afford to spend what I have spent) yet he would rather spread the gospel, he was on a converting mission, not a social one.
See what I mean about religion?? That NO-ONE heard the slightest bit of difference between cabinets (he only did one) just makes it all that little bit sadder.
He too is a cable believer. I saw the speakers he brought to the gtg (one of his personal sets).....I am afraid that is why I do not necessarily put ANY credence into this idea of 'not resolving enough, system not good enough'.
I mean as speaker transducer technology goes, what he brought was crap. With a capitol C. That's ok as far as it goes, nothing superior or moral here, but I don't buy the 'you don't have a resolving enough system' argument.
In his religious fervor he completely missed out on the chance to learn, to listen to one of the standout systems he will ever hear in his life, to listen to a system in a properly treated room with bass traps, first reflection point control and diffusion, all diy so he is able to do it if he wished to learn, he missed the chance because he was trying to convert all of US to his particular brand of audio religion! He did not come for the social aspect, he came for the conversions he might have been able to achieve.
For all I know he went home to put more 'bass trapping' on his wall with sticky tape and enable.
That is what annoys me about *audiophiles*..they actually in most cases do not want to learn. They would rather state and then maintain a belief from behind a keyboard.
Obviously, those here on diy are FAAR less likely to do that!! and very interested in learning, which is why few of them would be classed as audiophiles!! heh heh
Terry,
Relax and take it easy. If you do not find that cables make a difference in your systems, that is AOK. Some of us do find them to be as important as any other aspect of the final sound of the system.
I have sold high end audio for a very long time and have a very good working knowledge of what sounds good and what does not. I am sure that I could improve little things with regards to setting up a room with a microphone and a computer with RTA, but I am more interested in the soundstaging and imaging aspects when I dampen a room. Bass issues are usually quite audible and hard to disguise. If they are an issue, I deal with them and tune this by ear as well at a specific seated position for each room. I set up more high quality systems for our customers this way and have done so for years. I still get an occasional call to come fix an old customers system, as they had to rearrange a room and can not get it to sound good anymore.
I am sorry if this does not meet your measurement criteria, but I can hear if something is really off and I have a real good idea as to how certain recordings should sound after years of using them as reference recordings.
I am not against measuring rooms by any means, but if this is all that you do, I seriously doubt that you have addressed the bigger issues of imaging accuracy or soundstage.
We all have our methods of achieving great sound, I just prefer to use my ears and my experience in setting up audio systems to achieve what I look for in a sound system.
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Dielectric loss is ridiculously over-rated. There was a paper published (can't find a link to it now) that demonstrated measurable (ie in a lab) dielectric loss (actually, energy storage ie capacitance) - it required 60kVs DC for 10s to be applied for that to build up! I don't think there are many audio signals out there that have 10s DC components and sure as hell not many amps that would sustain 60Vs on the output terminals, much less 60kVs!
WIre gauge has ONE impact on a cable - DC resistance. That's it. Connectors etc also impact on that one area. It's the same with different metals - or any other conductive material - the only difference is in resistivity.
The only meaningful variable in a cable's electrical properties are its RLC characteristics - that's it. Arguably a cable could be microphonic but a) modern cable construction essentially renders that impossible I would imagine and b) the changes in capacitive value resulting would be far too low in magnitude even if they did occur.
How electric cables work is not rocket science. They obey the laws of physics wrt electro-magnetism and that's that. You apply a potential difference and a current flows according to the level of resistance. That's Ohm's Law, of course. If the PD varies over time, then the complex impedance of the cable will come into effect but unless they're badly made cables, there's no way differences in RLC values should be audible and even if they were, the effect would be little more than a microscopic 'tilt' in frequency response.
WIre gauge has ONE impact on a cable - DC resistance. That's it. Connectors etc also impact on that one area. It's the same with different metals - or any other conductive material - the only difference is in resistivity.
The only meaningful variable in a cable's electrical properties are its RLC characteristics - that's it. Arguably a cable could be microphonic but a) modern cable construction essentially renders that impossible I would imagine and b) the changes in capacitive value resulting would be far too low in magnitude even if they did occur.
How electric cables work is not rocket science. They obey the laws of physics wrt electro-magnetism and that's that. You apply a potential difference and a current flows according to the level of resistance. That's Ohm's Law, of course. If the PD varies over time, then the complex impedance of the cable will come into effect but unless they're badly made cables, there's no way differences in RLC values should be audible and even if they were, the effect would be little more than a microscopic 'tilt' in frequency response.
One of the claims of SY in an older post is that he could make a cable having identical LCR to another cable and that theese two cables will "sound" the same.I'm sure he didn't mean to copy that cable,but actually make one of his own having same LCR.However,I have also mentioned the example of audioquest's X,Z and PRO that were three cables with same geometry,same insulations but different metals,X was OFC,Z was 6N copper,and PRO was pure silver.Their solid conductors were 0.6mm diameter for all three.The PRO had as expected different sound.But the two copper versions sounded different too,the 6N X version had clearly superior detail,refinement etc...
For these audioquest cables,we have seen no comments from anyone yet.Similar design differences were present in audioquest's Ruby3 and Quartz3 interconnects.Again the 6N Ruby3 was the better one.
I'm not using any of the above mentioned cables,I just had the chance to try them a few years ago.
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The choice of the final system is always personal.Experimentation is unavoidable before final decisions and that includes cables.I will agree with Andre that even at the stage of experimentation the cables must be of some well known quality otherwise the evaluation of the final system will not be totally correct.The choice of the final cales,I agree with you ,may be the last thing to try.After all is decided,music is what matters most for me,not the system anymore.
You don't want to know. I once Googled for golf records and found that there has actually been a hole in one on a par 5 hole and that someone has putted in from the tee on a par three. So there is probably a thread somewhere that has continued from the beginning of usenet.
Not all are manufacturers.Many are buying from OEM suppliers with their names on.Through marketing they manage to sell these cables at the price they want.Marketing and price do not make "their" cables sound any better.
Original manufacturers though control the quality and price of their own cables.And these are the cables that are best.It is not so difficult to find these original manufacturers.
Hi Panicos,
Point taken.
The people who buy them obviously think they sound better regardless.
I would say that the people who buy them,simply don't care to compare them with anything else
Magazine's recommendations are enough for them.....sadly.
So I clearly understand the obvious implication as phrased, twice: all posters on this forum who compare all cheap cables against all expensive cables always prefer the former.
Or did some shades of grey not make it into your question? I'm guessing, because if 'some' is added ahead of 'people' and 'expensive cables' the question seems to answer itself.
Sounds like fun! I have jug cords.hiya fred - listening tests at Axent then? I'll bring the three cord flex...
I think they got influenced by our soccer team.
As I don't like to reference cable quality with price, my words may have been 'bad cable can make your $10k speakers sound like 5k speakers'. I'm quite convinced that it is possible to degrade the sound of your system enough with cables alone, that you would not enjoy listening to it. Not even talking about 'strange' cables. Differences between good cables may be more subtle but I have not found two different cables that sound the same yet. Sometimes the only difference between cables tested were conductor quality.
That might be the only impact on the cable....
Unfortunately it's not that simple when trying to reproduce music as believable as possible.
The "microscopic 'tilt' in frequency response" is only one aspect and according to me the least important.
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