Can you all please give me some recommendations on rca interconnects lets say in the $50-$75 per pair range for 3’?
I have the new b&w 804 d3’s, Classe amp and Marantz pre amp. I’m not looking for $200/ft cables. Just something decent and reasonable. I know a lot of people on this forum go super expensive. I will admit I am running monoprice cables on it now and it sounds really good but I think I could get the little bit more out of this system with better.
++ Morrow AudioCables - MA4 XLR cables, and DIG4 digital co-ax....Mike Morrow indicated to me that the Level 4 class cables are the best bang for the buck in his line up, and I am incredibly satisfied. These cables MUST be broken in, I used the 20 day (480 hour) break in service they offer.. Right now they have an anniversary sale they've had for several months, Level 4 cables are 50% off of list price....also have a generous trade up program
++ Anti-Cables speaker cables, Level 2.1 and level 3.1 - NOTE: These MUST be broken in, 100 to 200 hours. The 3.1 speaker cables will probably remain in my new reference system....have tried their interconnects, but did not like them....especially compared to the Morrow cables.....too bright and fatiguing Have a generous return and trade up program
You have some great gear. So the synergy of your system should include selecting good quality cabling to maximize your musical enjoyment. This does not mean you have to spend a fortune on cables and interconnects. That is where "Snake Oil" is often touted in the audiophile community.
Every cable manufacturer claims to be the best. Perfect marketing strategy. on their part. You will read glowing reviews online from many so called audio experts. Ultimately, what works well in one environment may not work in your own personal environment. You have a limited budget and it is prudent to use that money wisely.
The best way to make a intelligent decision is to see if your dealer will loan you some cable to try in your own environment. Then you can make a intelligent decision that works best for you both financially and sonically.
Blue jeans cables is a good bang for the buck producer. They do have a 30 day return policy. The price is good. They are around $38.00 a pair. It would be nice to be able to compare them with some cables that you can get on loan from your local dealer. Your ears will tell you what the best selection is. You don't have to spend a fortune on cables. Good Luck.
Blue Jeans Cable in Seattle - http://www.bluejeanscable.com/Nice guys, very solid physically, they'll custom cut to your length and it's usually out the door USPS the same day.
just go buy the first one you see $75 wire will drive you nuts comparing the junk, Even $150 wire won't get it you will find out the hard way. also in less then a year be ready to sell the junk spend as much as possible on all wire Maybe then you might be happy. Let's get that right Good luck on that wire Big Marv.
I understand there is a lot of skepticism about the value of cables and power supplies. I think one has to use common sense, as well. If your listening room is next to a construction site, cables are not your problem. It also does not make sense to put cables on equipment where the cable are worth more than the equipment. But in my experience, high quality cables and power handling do make a material difference in your sound in general if you have a decent room with decent enough equipment to take advantage of your upgraded cables and power handling. If you are skeptical. Start slow. Get Shunyata Venoms or get AQ NRG line cables. Get an AQ 1000 or a Shunyata PS8. You can buy all these things used and below retail here on Audiogon and elsewhere on the used online market. Try it. You like it? Great upgrade and sell your starter stuff. Don’t like it? Great. Sell your below retail starter stuff back on the used market. No biggie. But I think if you have a decent room, decent music material, and decent equipment, you should hear an improvement. I personally have heard blacker backgrounds and better soundstage, amongst other improvements. Enjoy!
For the purpose of this conversation, I was telling a long time audiophile friend of mine I am surprised these take away from the midrange considering I was running the cheap monoprice interconnects. Figured they would be at least as good in that regard. Of course there is burn in and I have only played them for a few hours but can definitely hear the difference.
Bingo. Burn in is C.S.O.
EVERY cable will affect a different part of the frequency range depending on the connected components.
We become conditioned to how something sounds. When evaluating, take your time. Initially impressive can become annoyingly fatiguing. Listen to a wide variety of material. Adjust the gain up & down.
The naming of cables after a dangerous black snake is pure marketing hype designed to suck you in. Read the 'story' of the Mamba II genesis here https://www.audioadvisor.com/prodinfo.asp?number=AQBMII Pure marketing baloney.
AND there is absolutely ZERO reason to use the same cables throughout. Devices differ. Cables should as well. Use the best cable you can find in the place where IT and IT ALONE sounds best.
Subwoofer cables are a bucket of C.S.O. The range in which they operate is well below where cable artifacts are most prevalent. Beefy connectors are pure marketing hype. They are delivering the identical voltage and current at 20Hz as a main amp cable is at 2KHz. They have limited need of transient response as the harmonics are outside of the frequency range they carry.
Used Grover Huffman ICs with the ZX or EX designation are excellent choices if you can find them. The Empress and new Pharoahs are 5X and 10X your price range but the ZX and EX have most of the newer technology.
OP: I’d recommend a decent set of Canare IC’s per the suggestion of others. I’d go further and recommend Schroeder Method Dual Canare assemblies per “Celander Specification” from HAVE, Inc. Speak to Gary P. in sales.
These IC’s are far better than anything you can obtain for the same money.
You didn’t mention your sources nor the nature of the amp design (class A, AB or D). If your amp is a class D amp design, then you might not want to use these particular IC’s without first consulting the amp manufacturer about the stability of their amps with respect to potential amp (and speaker) destroying oscillations created in their amps by using these ultra-wide bandwidth IC’s. The IC’s are fine with source-preamp interconnections.
I’m a little surprised no one has mentioned Surf Cables. They seem to try to take the “snake oil” out of it and just use high-quality materials and solid construction techniques.
I’ve used their products for most of my system, and John, the owner, is great to work with. The cables sound and work great.
I use and love Anticables. The owner, Paul Speltz, is very helpful and friendly. They have all price points and have a trial period and an upgrade option within 30 days I believe. I'm very happy.
You have good components and speakers. What you put into your system is what you will get out of it. Ideally one wants to spend 25-30% of their budget on cabling. By utilizing inexpensive cables you are not realizing the full potential of what your system can produce. I would say maybe 35% as it stands now.
Think of your cables as the veins and nervous system. The power cables transport energy - the blood of your system. Interconnects and speaker cables transform Information. The less quality the cables the less energy and information you will have.
You do not have to spend a fortune, but you do have to be realistic and as you are already doing - research
There are a lot of good suggestions provided to already - but check this out as a resource before you invest.
I am on day two with the audioquest black mamba ii interconnects. My initial impression is I don’t like them in my system. They seem to mute the midrange a bit which is what I probably like the most about these speakers. I ordered the Audioquest silver extreme’s. I will try them and then return what I don’t like.
For the purpose of this conversation, I was telling a long time audiophile friend of mine I am surprised these take away from the midrange considering I was running the cheap monoprice interconnects. Figured they would be at least as good in that regard. Of course there is burn in and I have only played them for a few hours but can definitely hear the difference.
I went ahead and bought the audioquest black thunder ii subwoofer cables because they seemed like a good deal and I think copper is probably the way to go for subs. Just hooked those up so we will see if I notice any difference. Actually as I am listening right now the bass does sound smoother but that might be premature.
Take a good look at the Cabledyne website. Excellent high end cables for reasonable asking prices. Ed Bowman, owner, is a gentleman, knowledgeable and very helpful.
From a purely technical standpoint the two considerations with interconnects are the the connectors and whether or not the cable is shielded. All else is snake oil. The problem with most bundled, non-DIY cables such as some of the ones named above is they usually have OK but not great connectors. If you can at all use a soldering iron then opt for high end connectors and shielded cable such as star quad microphone cable. Finally, have you thought of the most neglected, cheapest tweaks for cables: have you cleaned the connectors and jacks lately? Caig DeOxit is one of an audio hobbyist's best friends.
Grannyring on this site makes great interconnects for reasonable price. I purchased a pair from him and they outperformed all other very expensive pairs I’ve had. He will make them with whatever RCA’s you want! Highly recommend you give him a shout. Just search for him or “Acoustic BBQ” which is his cable brand here on this forum.
I re-cabled my whole system with these, IC and speaker, and I'm very happy, for a low cost. (Used to run far more expensive Kimber, I heard no loss in sound quality when I cheaply re-cabled). Plugs and termination quality are excellent, so is customer service.
If you are using balanced connections, the screen should be lifted at the destination end. If you use single end termination at the destination, it forms low-pass filters for common-mode noise resulting in degraded CMRR at higher frequencies.
Unbalanced cables using more than 1 center conductor, i.e. twin screen or star-quad should also have the screen lifted at the destination end.
I have quickly browsed through some of the responses provided to OP. I remember seeing someone suggesting to pay attention to "ends" (aka terminations at each end of the cable), I completely agree with that and couldn’t emphasis more on the importance of quality terminations. I tried DIY myself many times for the cables (such as Mogami, Canare etc) with some success. I recently got my cables from Benchmarkmedia.com, and I immediately felt the difference in sound staging, channel balance, tonality along with some gain. I think benchmark use Canare cables are very reasonably priced. I have compared their cable with AQ (XLR) and didn't find any difference. So my advice would be to use reasonable priced cables with best possible terminations. All the best.
There is no relation to the quotes leaving out the intervening paragraphs. Other listeners may have turfed out the Music Links on first listen to alternate electronics. "sounded fine" means only they did not cross any particular threshold of irritation. With the tube monoblocks, they did.
Your position that a particular cable will always sound good with all electronics means that cable parameters do not interact with electronics’ parameters. In that case all cables should sound the same. I think we agree that they don’t.
If cable and electronics’ parameters interact, then cables with different parameters must interact differently with different electronics’ parameters. As shown in Cable Snake Oil Antidote, cables do interact differently when electronics’ parameters change.
Surely you’re not saying that frequency and phase response are inaudible? If that were true, every system would sound alike.
For the past 15 years, I've used Transparent Music Link interconnects. They sounded fine with every amplifier every tried, be it tube or SS.
AND ieales writes:
Anyone who says that a particular cable will perform identically well in all systems is sadly mistaken. Either inexperienced or malicious. In the first, either lacking an understanding of basic electronics or having only limited exposure to altering system sonics via interconnects. In the second, a Snake Oil Peddler.
There could be a third possibility. Inability to hear differences.
Believe it or not, that's not only the same guy but the same postt! Either he's calling himself an inexperienced snake oil peddler, or he doesn't have much in the way of reading comprehension.
There could be a third possibility. Inability to remember what he himself wrote?
For the past 15 years, I've used Transparent Music Link interconnects. They sounded fine with every amplifier every tried, be it tube or SS.
Recently auditioned of a pair of tube monoblocks. Sound was just awful. No stage, harsh, grating, no air, unlistenable.
Since the amplifier is well regarded, I replaced cables with some mid 80's Monster Pro prototypes from the bin. Much better. Better still were some Hitachi star quad test cables from the same era.
How much better? These amplifiers maybe the best KT-88 amplifier I've ever heard, besting customized Citation II, Michael Fraser custom KT-88, PrimaLuna PL5, a few I can't recall and every AR bottle rocket owned or auditioned. The sound is gorgeous. Effortless, expansive, detailed, liquid, etc.
Currently building up some silver star-quad PTFE which sh/could be even better.
Anyone who says that a particular cable will perform identically well in all systems is sadly mistaken. Either inexperienced or malicious. In the first, either lacking an understanding of basic electronics or having only limited exposure to altering system sonics via interconnects. In the second, a Snake Oil Peddler.
There could be a third possibility. Inability to hear differences.
Analysis Plus Micro Ovals are not chopped liver. Plus I like their whole freewheelin’ hollow oval thing. They say they use “first rate materials.” Is that too hyped up?
I am far from an expert on cables and up until about 7 years ago you could call me a skeptic. I had to hear it for myself before I was convinced, and I was shocked the improvements decent cables can make. And the crazy thing is it’s all the cabling not just the interconnects but also speaker wire and line cords. My suggestion is go online and type in “the cable company” they have consultants that know which manufacturers works well with your equipment and you can return them if you don’t like. My vote is DH labs encore it’s they entery level cable and pretty cheap. I run there silver Sonics and I love them very good value for the money.
millercarbon" Talk about snake oil! System dependent? Not that I have ever seen!...if its good it will sound good in every system. Period. Or it ain’t good. Its literally the definition of good...the vast majority of cables are crap. Granted even the vast majority of cables touted all over boards like this one are crap...Its easy to parrot the party line. Snake oil."
If anyone here is advancing, promoting, or repeating the "party line" it is this poster with his multiple, repeated, incessant claims of "snake oil! snake oil" and claims, assertions, and pronouncements that the vast majority and percentage of this product market segment are crap and that a good cable will sound good on any system at all which is pure, sheer, utter nonsense perhaps he should design, manufacture, advertise, market, and distribute his own line of cables for Music Reproduction Systems that he will certify contain no artificial snake oil!
Seriously, the one bit of good advice is to audition first before you buy, or never buy what you can't return.
To all the rest I say- bunk!
System dependent? Not that I have ever seen! And no, not saying the same cable will sound exactly the same in every system. Get real. But while it will not sound the same, if its good it will sound good in every system. Period. Or it ain't good. Its literally the definition of good. Get your mind around it if you can.
Granted its not easy. Granted the vast majority of cables are crap. Granted even the vast majority of cables touted all over boards like this one are crap. Grant all of that and more, it does not change the fact there are good ones out there. Its easy to parrot the party line. Snake oil. Save your money. Much harder to do the work of searching out, listening, and comparing.
Only one of these however will get you a really good sounding system.
That’s funny. I am upgrading from monoprice interconnects as well. For the power side I already have pangea power cords connected to a panamax power conditioner.
I started out with Monoprice interconnects. My system sounded fine or so I thought. I was a newbie to the concept of cables and power cords and power conditions making a difference. But I took a leap of faith and Invested some money in, initially Shunyata cables, power cords and power conditioners/strips. What I can tell you is that you don’t know what you are missing in your system’s potential until you switch out those monoprice cables for better ones. I suggest biting the bullet and go beyond your price parameters if you can. Your system will grow into your better ones. If you don’t go to the likes of Shunyata, Cardas and upper end Audioquest yet (but I recommend that you do. You will hear a difference) you can try bluejeans or Surf Cable or others. Everything makes a difference. But while you are changing out interconnects, I suggest you also make upgrades on the power end. Get an AQ 1000 or a Shnuyata PS8 with Defender. Get some good AQ or Shunyata power cables. You will like what you hear and what you don’t hear.
I'm not endorsing Shunyata (although I have some) or AQ (although I tried some) but rather the part about the importance of trying and listening:
What I can tell you is that you don’t know what you are missing in your system’s potential until you switch out those monoprice cables for better ones. I suggest biting the bullet and go beyond your price parameters if you can. Your system will grow into your better ones.
Just keep reading and re-reading that until it sinks in. Because its really important. Especially when you try expensive cables that do nothing. Or even make things worse. Don't draw conclusions from that. Because frankly most of what's out there is overpriced crap. So you have to keep that in mind. More important though is you have to keep focused on the reality that the really good stuff is so good, so unbelievably impossibly good, that it will indeed improve your system even more than the same amount of money spent on anything else.
Since cables don't really wear out, it makes sense to purchase used. You can find some really high quality cables at a fraction of their original price on various sites including this one.
Chord c-line interconnects or atlas elements interconnects. I own both and they seem of very high quality....I am partial to british made stuff though....either one can be bought for 65-75 bucks for a 1 meter pair (3 feet). If you want to go one step further, I would recommend buying audioquest type 4 speaker cable....good bang for the buck and a neutral cable that will neither add or subtract from the signal. Audio advisor can make these to your specs on the cheap.
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