Some Expensive items...

I agree with Buzz on this (as I do on many things).

However, while I understand that there are no "measurements" that can quantify why's it's happening, I can attest (as can my bride) that Nordost cables, in my system, to my ears, sound best. We listened to about 6 brands and these came out on top.

Where I agree with Buzz (and John, but that's a given!) is that the cables were the final touch on a system that has had the fundamentals addressed: killer speakers (Wilson WATT/Puppy 7's) , front end (SACD), amplification (all Mark Levinson), electrical (dedicated 10 gauge, isolated ground, hospital grade outlet and PS Audio Power Conditioner) and room treatment (Echo Busters and ASC Tube Traps).

Does all this preamble make the "differences" in cable more apparent or noticable? I think that, like a better set of optics, you can "see" or perceive things in greater detail or more readily than with lesser gear.

The knife analogy I encounter that most closely resembles the cable issue is a buddy scoffs at your $300+ knife, opens his $5 POS cuts once and says, "See? Mine cuts too and costs less." You stress quality of construction, better steel, performance, fit/finish, etc. He cuts a piece of paper again and says , "That's all I need it to do." Like connecting speakers and components. That's all that's needed at times.

And, yes, I know that I'm an audio geek. And this thread is the most civil discussion of this I've encountered ever (and I do this for a living!).

PS -Gary, your cables are packed and ready to go, but 12" of snow stopped my wife from her appointed rounds! Will go out to you tomorrow or Friday. Sorry for the delay.
 
mmmm..... Mark Levinson. I'd sell my first newborn for a couple of Levinson monoblocks. Feel free to send me the tube traps in the same package. Tube traps can do some serious good to any room (other than an anechoic chamber :D ).
 
The thinking man says, "The science doesn't support it

Chuck, science has never advanced by relying solely on what was already known to be fact, or at least thought to be. Once upon a time some very learned men were convinced that if you sailed out far enough, you'd fall off of this flat disk we live on. Then someone did an actual experiment and proved that while existing theory might have seemed sound, there was actually more to the matter than was originally known. This has happened repeatedly ever since.

If you're of the opinion that we know all there is to know, and can measure and quantify every aspect of a particular phenomena such as how an audio signal can be be affected while traveling over a network of wires, no one will ever sway you. Personally, I don't believe that science has finally reached it's peak and that mankind will continue to learn new things for some time to come. One might even learn why different audio cables sound different. You can believe your theory and I can't dispute it on paper(although I'm glad to see another EE jump in) but I've spent extensive time listening to the stuff and there are differences. Sorry if that doesn't line up with your theoretical reality, but it's true.

As always, I'd encourage experimenting. You live in Oregon. There should be a Magnolia Hifi store somewhere nearby. They sell Audioquest (no disclaimer needed, I'm not ascociated with them). They also have a liberal return policy. Go there and buy a couple different sets, say a $50.00 per meter and a $150.oo per meter cable, long enough to go between your CD player and your receiver or preamp. Measure them to your heart's content. Then listen to some of your favorite music, on your own system in your own home for a while as it exists now. Then, without changing the volume swap in one of the AQ cables and listen to the same music again. Then go back to your original cable. Then try the more expensive cable, again with the same music at the same volume. Then again go back to your existing interconnect. In my experience, when listening to different wires, people might notice a small improvement when moving up, but tend to sence a larger difference when you take that small improvement away. If you still hear absolutely no difference, then you can rest assured that your theories and formulas are completely sound. If on the other hand, you do actually hear a difference, even if it's subtle, you can attribute it to a change in the ambient room temprature and humidity as you start to sweat and realize that while there is surely marketing and hype in some manufacturer's claims, there is also a basic truth that there are differences in the sound of some wires and that the real world does not always line up with accepted scientific formulas.

After that it's a value judgement about whether the change was for the better or worse, and whether the expenditure represents a value to you.

John
 
Originally posted by MikeD60
I agree with Buzz on this (as I do on many things).

I agree with Buzz for a lot of things as well...:)


PS -Gary, your cables are packed and ready to go, but 12" of snow stopped my wife from her appointed rounds! Will go out to you tomorrow or Friday. Sorry for the delay.

Thanks Mike, heavy snows here as well, mighty understandable and I really appreciate your help, with the slew of so many cables out there, it helps to have a guide in this, while my system pales to most of the ones mentioned in this thread, it does give me a rest from work when I get home at night...usually late at night.

Last night, watched the movie "Open Range" while the movie was filmed very well, I felt it was a little slow most of the times, except the gun fights...whoa were they rapid! The DTS sound track on this is exceptional, thunderstorms were real sounding, but what is really impressive were the shots fired, AMAZING, worth the rental for that!

Picked up my first SACD, Billy Joel "The Stranger" nice in SACD, though a few songs the vocals were more narrow than on some tracks, none the less, impressive sounding. I'll probably not build up a collection of SACD, just can't collect everything! But if any of you guys/gals like Diana Krall, catch her on the dvd she did in Paris, stunning, though my wife doesn't seem to be that drawn to her singing style at all, just my luck ;)
G2
 
Buzz,

I find your post interesting. I didn't even know Goertz was still around.

Regarding an anechoic chamber, they really don't make for a good listening room, only for a good measuring environment. They are so quiet and so good at absorbing reflections, that you can hear your blood coursing through your veins and your heart beating. Many people find being in one somewhat stifling and disconcerting. A good listening room needs a combination of diffusion and absorbtion. A room that is overly damped will tend to sound dead and lifeless. VideoJoe might chime in here as in serious studio construction, much attention is paid to the decay times in the room monitoring and mixing rooms.

Chuck, I find your info about the string of pearls undersea amplifiers quite interesting. From what I've experienced, burn in in speakers tends to mostly be the break in of the mechanical suspension of the drive units whereas with wires, it seems to be more related to the forming of the fields in the dielectric surrounding the conductors, which take time to fully form, and decay when voltage is removed. It's not all instantaneous. You're familiar with the Miller Effect in capacitors I assume.

John
 
Speakers, which are moving mechanical things, certainly can experience a "break in" period. Notice, also, that speakers wear out over time. And they wear out just where they break in.

But wire doesn't. It doesn't break in and it doesn't wear out (at least electrically).

Consider The String Of Pearls. That wire has been in continuous service since 1947, approaching fifty years. It doesn't carry just 20-20KHz, but almost 1MHz of bandwidth. It doesn't carry just the 35V or so that is typical on a speaker wire, but five thousand volts (to power the amplifiers all the way across the Atlantic). And it's not used just a few hours per day, but 24/7. It was, of course, the highest quality cable available... in 1947. It wasn't, I can assure you, made of oxygen-free copper (I have a picture of the wire being extruded and there's a gentleman standing right over it breathing on it). It wasn't encapsulated in epoxy damping material. It's "encapsulated" with Gutta Parcha. It wasn't encased with carbon fiber. It's "encased" with Jutte wrapping. And it doesn't sit upon a thick acrylic plinth supported by four adjustable feet, to insure stable 4-point contact and decouple the network from room borne resonance. No. It sits on the floor of the Atlantic ocean where it's been for almost fifty years. And it hasn't worn out yet.

Some types of capacitors do, by the way, undergo break in (which is usually characterized by a rapid decrease in capacitance), and do wear out. This is due to mechanical factors too. The dielectric deforms mechanically when exposed to the electrical field (this is how you make a pizoelectric buzzer like the annoying buzzer typically found in smoke alarms. Some tweater speakers use this phenomenom too.).

I talked earlier about filters for AC power lines. These filters, such as Mr. SteelDriver's, usually contain capacitors. Those capacitors are directly across the AC line and also from each leg of the line to ground. Such capacitors are exposed to the AC line 24/7 even when your equipment is switched off. And AC power lines have surges and spikes and other nasty stuff on them frequently. So, these capacitors are subject to a lot of abuse. If one of those capacitors between the line and ground (these are called "Y" capacitors) was to fail shorted, you could be electrocuted. And if one of the capacitors across the line (these are called "X" capacitors) was to fail shorted, it could start a fire. UL requires that such capacitors be special "safety rated" capacitors. You can spot these if you open your equipment up four ways: first, they're typically near the AC inlet. Second, they are physically quite large for the amount of capacitance they have. Third, they have all sorts of safety rating logos and insignia stamped all over them. And, fourth, they have a very glossy coating on them. That glossy coating is self-extinguishing so that if they do catch fire, they'll put themselves out. The dielectric used in these capacitors is a pizoelectric dielectric. It expands and contracts with every cycle of the 60Hz line. So, if some spike does manage to punch a small hole through the dielectric, this constant expand and contract cycling will actually heal that hole. It's called a "self-healing dielectric." These capacitors also have other internal design features that make if virtually impossible for them to fail shorted; they always fail open and without fire. When one of these capacitors self-heals from a punch-through event, it's sort of like breaking in all over again.
 
If your like me... and A: Spent to much time around grinders and farm equipment... or B: Spent to much time around loud stuff...

Then you probably wont care "that much" about the difference in sound quality once the speakers are decent... everything else can be solved by just turning up the volume! :)
 
Originally posted by jmxcpter
I find your post interesting. I didn't even know Goertz was still around.

I couldn't tell if they are still in business or not. I'm not even sure how old the Goertz cables are that I tried. They looked pretty new, so they at least weren't used for very long. All I know is that they are as ugly as sin. The 1/2" wide thin copper strips stick out like a sore thumb in my listening room. They at least could have enclosed them in black plastic instead of that clear stuff. On the good side, the cables were set up for biwiring from a single set of binding posts on the amp end. They were a breeze to install on the Vanderscreams.

The MIT cables were pretty cool. They had those screw-down connectors so the cables couldn't come loose from the jacks. I wish my inexpensive Audioquests had those screwdowns.
 
people who spend their money on interconnects,speaker wire and room treatments are into subtleties. things like imaging-depth of sound-the stage, where you can actually see where the various artists were standing in your own listening room-incomprehensible to most-this is why people spend the kind of money thats being talked about-i have spent so much time in an industrial environment i doubt i could here them anymore-also once took an old phillips cd player and traded it in on a nachamichi-800.00 at the time-the nachamichi had a very tinny sound and the phillips(in my mind) had a much richer sound, its definitely an individual preference thing. also i would like to say to buzzbait that i had most of the reference recordings that he mentioned earlier and spent a lot of time enjoying them. telarc and mobile fidelity produce some nice recordings-which also cofirms the comments earlier about the importance of the source.could probably start a whole new conversation talking about the kind of money you can spend on high end cd`s-without the components mentioned along with interconnects and wires it would be a total waist of funds to purchase these. i remember a statement that i heard about high end audio-"your system is only as good as its weekest component" and your wallet ofcourse.:)
 
Interconnect and power may help change the sound a bit, but this $500 Volume Knob will make your systems sing. ;)

It just goes to show that there is quite a bit of snake oil out there. A beautiful and natural sounding audio system is made up of some complex science and black magic. Cost is not always the main issue.
 
John Dunlavy, formerly of Dunlavy Audio Labs and Duntech, has frequently posted on rec.audio.* on the subject of speaker cable snake oil, the necessity for double blind testing, etc.

If you really want to know about high end speaker cable, read the details from the man himself.

http://home.austin.rr.com/tnulla/dunlavy6.htm
http://home.austin.rr.com/tnulla/dunlavy7.htm
http://home.austin.rr.com/tnulla/dunlavy8.htm
http://home.austin.rr.com/tnulla/dunlavy9.htm
http://home.austin.rr.com/tnulla/dunlavy0.htm
http://home.austin.rr.com/tnulla/dunlavy1.htm

Here's one quote:
So! Along with many other competent investigators, we have concluded that no audible improvements are available from the use of any expensive, hi-tech appearing cables compared to an equal length of quality 12 AWG ZIP Cord (such as that made by Belden and sold by many audiophile companies - as well as Home Depot, etc.)

Perhaps, the most important attribute of any loudspeaker cable is the quality of the connections at both the amp and loudspeaker ends of the cable. For best long-term results, these should be gold plated types, soldered or competently "crimped" to the wires.

Once again, I suspect that a few posters will ask why I designed (and DAL sells) loudspeaker cables? Well, as I have said before, it began as an "engineering exercise" to determine whether a reasonably long, nearly lossless cable with a 6-Ohm "characteristic impedance" (not resistance) and almost imeasurably low losses over the entire audio spectrum could yield an audible improvement within a typical high-quality audiophile system.

Our numerous, carefully controlled listening tests have consistently revealed that not even DAL's Z-6 cable can achieve an audible improvement over other cables, ranging from 12 AWG ZIP cord to the most expensive offerings of well known audiophile cable companies.

Comparisons of lab measurements of the loss Vs frequency of 20 ft. lengths of different loudspeaker cables reveals why: even a 20 ft1length of 12 AWG Zip Cord added only about 0.2 Ohms (at 20 kHz) to the measured resistance of a precision 2 Ohm "load resistor" - hardly an amount that would be audible within any audiophile system. And the measured phase angle with the 20 ft Zip Cord was less than about plus 10 degrees at 20 kHz.

John Dunlavy is an EE with numerous patents for his military work with radio antennas. More than any other high end speaker manufacturer, Dunlavy has focused on measured technical performance. The DAL SC-IV, SC-V, and SC-VI are probably his best known products.

Btw, I do not have any DAL products, so I'm not shilling for something I own. :) I have a Paradigm/Paradigm Reference system which I enjoy immensely.
 
this $500 Volume Knob will make your systems sing.


If I told you that changing the thumb stud on your knife to my special $500 one will make the blade sharper, you would say, "BUNK!"
 
Your original thumb stud is probably made of ordinary steel which can create micro vibrations which find their way into the delicate sharpness path and cause degradation.

But my $500 knob is custom made with beech wood and bronze where the bronze is used as the insert to mount to the blade. The beech wood is coated several times with C37 snake oil -- errr... I mean lacquer.
 
The real point here is that knives are apparently simple. We all know just by looking at the thing that there's no "delicate sharpness path." We all know just by looking at the thing that micro vibrations from the thumbstud can't somehow degrade the sharpness.

But electrical circuits... that's a horse of a different character. Your amplifier, for example, is, for most people, a mysterious box. Very often it literally is the proverbial black box. There are input and output connectors and a few controls, but how much do you know -- I mean really know and understand -- about what goes on inside that box? For most people, it's a mystery. And it is that mystery that opens the door for the snake oil salesman.
 
after giving this information a great deal of thought: I think you have to know what you want-and equally as important know when you found it: if you demo a 20.00 section of cable or wire and a 300.00 per ft or better with the same results-its a no brainer. But as with all things- the buttons and whistles are what costs you, and knowing what to look for is everything-i think this thread would help anyone to spend their money wisely-and avoid the snake oil salesman-good stuff:)



I no longer have a higher end system, but went ahead and bought that knob-my knife cuts a lot better now:D
 
You'll be happy to know that I'm now offering special light bulbs. These bulbs replace the ordinary bulbs in all of your house's fixtures. These bulbs may look like ordinary bulbs, but they've been specially treated at the molecular-level to elliminate harmonic light energy rays that dull knives. If you replace all of the light bulbs in your house with my special bulbs, your knives will be sharper and stay sharper longer. I have all common bulb sizes and types including florescent and halogen available. And they start at just $99 each.

For a complete catalog, just sent $9.95 to: Professor Harold Hill's Lightbulb Catalog Offer, C/O General Delivery, Sherwood, Oregon.
 
Chuck, there's a potential source of distortion that hasn't been addressed yet, and I'm worried about it. I wonder if you might have a product that could help me.

Looking at a cable from the core outward, there's a conductor of some kind at the core, whether it's solid or braided, there's a layer of insulation around it, there may or may not be some shielding from electromagnetic radiation outside that, and then outside that -- there's atmosphere. That's what worries me -- the atmosphere. I'm afraid that some of the various substances I might be smoking might be distorting my perception of the music. After all, even with the insulation and shielding I know the magnetic field of the cable extends into the atmosphere around it, and for all I know the atmosphere could be affecting the signal, by magnetism or inductance or capacitance or ohmerage or one of those field thingies.... I have tried double-blind tests having a friend load up my pipe without telling me what he's putting in it, and then I listen to my favorite Grateful Dead songs, and I have noticed as the atmosphere gets more magnetized there seems to be less sonority in the silences between the notes ... is there an atmosphere demagnetizing spray I could use?
 
Cougar... If I could kiss you, I would (in that sort of fraternal way that French men do). You're brilliant! This is the market opportunity I've been looking for! This is better than magnetic sponges, better than knife-sharpening lightbulbs. This is the best snake-oil scam yet! I'm going to be rich, rich, rich!

Audiophile-Grade Air!

Yes, you've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on your stereo equipment, thirty thousand of it on speaker cables alone. You spent thousands on special knobs to prevent microvibrations for disrupting your delicate signal path. But you've missed one thing. THE AIR IN THE ROOM! Just as the cables are the absolutely-critical component that carries the electrical signal from your amplifier to your speakers, the AIR is the even-more-critical component that carries the soundwaves from your speakers to your ears! If you spend $30,000 on speaker cables, but you've got bad air, then what good is it?

Ordinary room air is filled with environmental contaminantes and pollutants that not only clog your lungs but also introduce air-bourne resonances and harmonic divergances and standing-wave effects that can rob even the most expensive sound system of its ambience, depth, and timber.

Fortunately, the research scientists at Harold Hill Audio Labs have formulated the prefect air for audio listening. Our Audiophile-Grade Air is micro-filtered to remove magnetism, inductance, capacitance and ohmerage to give you the cleanest possible sound. And it's only $99.99 a cubic foot.

Don't wait another day. Send for Professor Harold Hill's Audiophile-Grade Air, C/O General Delivery, Sherwood, Oregon.



Thanks Cougar. This is my big break!
 
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