Single brand vs. multiple brand ICs and ACs


Occasionally someone mentions in a post that they use the same brand cable for all their components. At least once I've seen someone say that this is something to be avoided. I'm currently upgrading my system so this is a good time for me to either add or eliminate variety in my cables. Anyone interested in sharing their thoughts on this? Thanks.
abysmillard

Showing 1 response by audioengr

It really depends on the cable company whether you will be sucessful with a full complement of their cables. Many companies use similar constructions for both their speaker cables and their IC's. This is an indicator that one of these is probably a good design and the other is a compromise. The requirements for each of these is so different that they should not resemble each other at all. Other companies try to optimize all of the cables, using their reference series to determine if they are doing the right things.

For my own cables, I have a philosophy. The idea is to enable the maximum bandwidth and minimize phase-shift for all cables up to the speaker cables. Then eliminate all resonant content by filtering ultrasonics at the speaker cables. Many of my customers use my IC's with other speaker cables with good results, but I believe that my own speaker cables will result in a more accurate and better focused image.