Too good a post to waste

Thanks for that clarification, Geoff. To be sure it's clear, though, I was not referring to you when I referred to "subsequent responses insulting my system."

Regards,
-- Al

Gentlemen (and others), this thread is not about me or my system. My initial lengthy post which precipitated much of the recent argument provided technical explanations supportive of the belief that cables can sound different depending on the application in which they are used. That belief being widely (and IMO correctly) held by many audiophiles.

Subsequent responses insulting my system constitute "argumentum ad hominem." As stated in that Wikipedia writeup:

... argumentum ad hominem is a term that refers to several types of arguments, most of which are fallacious. Typically this term refers to a rhetorical strategy where the speaker attacks the character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself. This avoids genuine debate by creating a diversion to some irrelevant but often highly charged issue.

Regards,
-- Al

Millercarbon:

... if everyone really believed this then no one would be recommending any wire (or anything else) without saying it only works this way with such and such an impedance. Otherwise its "exactly the opposite (or at least very different)." Which no one ever does!

... Nevertheless we cannot conclude from this that everything works " exactly the opposite (or at least very different)" depending on what its connected to. If this was the case no one would read a review on anything. Why bother? If its going to sound completely different connected to different stuff, why bother?

Your use of the words "otherwise" and "everything" signifies a complete misreading of what I said. I cited three very specific situations in which, depending on the specific parameters that are involved (capacitance, impedance, etc.), the sonics of a specific cable may be the exact opposite or at least very different depending on the application in which the cable is used.

I cited those three very specific examples to illustrate that the following statement you had made ...

Actually no, they sound the same regardless of what they’re plugged into.

Either that or the wire somehow magically knows what its plugged into and is able to change accordingly.

Just one more bit of nonsense everyone believes without evidence and keeps repeating simply because someone else did.

... is incorrect. I certainly was NOT claiming that "EVERYTHING works exactly the opposite (or at least very differently) depending on what it is connected to." I’m surprised that you misread (or perhaps mischaracterized) my post in that manner.

I’ll add that in addition to being technically invalid, as I perceive it your statement that I quoted just above is inconsistent with the findings of most experienced audiophiles. Witness some of the comments in this very thread.

Jetter and Ovinewar, thanks for your comments!

Regards,

-- Al

Glupson, Uberwaltz, Frogman, thank you kindly for the nice words!

Best,
-- Al

A cable forms part of an electronic circuit, together with the output stage of the component providing the signal, the input stage of the component receiving the signal, and potentially with a lot of other circuitry in those components as a result of the cable’s effects on the ground connection.

As with any electronic part within a component the sonic effects of the cable depend not only on its intrinsic characteristics, but on the interaction of those characteristics with the surrounding circuitry.

Here are some examples of how a sonic comparison between two cables can yield exactly opposite (or at least very different) results depending on the specific application:

1) If an interconnect having relatively high capacitance is compared with one having relatively low capacitance, and if everything else is equal, the higher capacitance cable will produce a duller and more sluggish response in the upper treble region if used as a line-level interconnect while being driven by a component having high output impedance, due to the interaction of cable capacitance and component output impedance. That interaction essentially resulting in a low pass filter, with rolloff and phase shifts potentially occurring at audible frequencies depending on the specific capacitance and the specific output impedance. While the **exact opposite sonic result will occur** if those same two cables are compared in a phono cable application while being driven by a moving magnet cartridge, due to the interaction of cable capacitance and cartridge inductance. The result in that case being a frequency response **peak** in the upper treble region.

2) Since the impedance presented by an inductance is proportional to frequency a speaker having high impedance at high frequencies, such as many and probably most dynamic speakers, will be relatively insensitive to the inductance of a speaker cable. While speakers having low impedance at high frequencies, such as most electrostatics, will be far more likely to be sensitive to it. That has no particular relation, by the way, to the sound quality or musical resolution of the speakers; it just relates to their sensitivity to cable differences.

3) It is easily possible for digital cable "A" to outperform digital cable "B" in a given system when both cables are of a certain length, and for cable "B" to outperform cable "A" even in that same system if both cables are of some other length. That may result from differences in the arrival time at the receiving component of signal reflections which occur at the RF frequency components that are present in digital audio signals as a result of less than perfect impedance matches, as well as cable-related differences in ground loop-related noise that may be riding on the signal, both of which can contribute to timing jitter at the point of D/A conversion. The happenstance of the relationships between cable length, signal risetimes and falltimes, cable propagation velocity, component susceptibility to ground loop-related noise, the happenstance of how closely the impedances of both components and the cable match, and the jitter rejection capability of the DAC, all figure into that.

A great many anecdotal reports that have been provided here and elsewhere over the years, in which digital cable performance has been reported as having been found to be length-sensitive, support that conclusion.

Regards,
-- Al

Thanks, Grant ( @tvad ). You are correct on all counts. And yes, I am delinquent in updating my system description thread. There have also been a few relatively minor changes in the past year or so (mainly due to problems which have arisen with the vintage tuner and cassette deck), but the major one is the amplifier change.

And thanks as well to some of the others who have posted recently. You know who you are.

Again, though, as I said earlier:

... this thread is not about me or my system. My initial lengthy post which precipitated much of the recent argument provided technical explanations supportive of the belief that cables can sound different depending on the application in which they are used. That belief being widely (and IMO correctly) held by many audiophiles.

Subsequent responses insulting my system constitute "argumentum ad hominem."

Best,
-- Al