What is wrong with audiophiles?
dent dog has a request: Could we go back to cable elevators for a minute. Never tried any but with my relatively recent experience with power cords and interconnects being positive I might be interested. Especially if it expands my sound stage. Right. There's the brand name Cable Elevators sold in sets like this https://www.musicdirect.com/best-budget-tweaks-under-99/cable-elevators-cable-supports and there's also cable elevators sold on eBay as ceramic insulators which as you can see are the exact same thing for a lot less https://www.ebay.com/itm/2-Vintage-Ceramic-Porcelain-Insulators-Brown-White/183480810613?_trkparms=a... Yeah turns out people collect the darn things as bric a brac, pieces of interest, decorations, etc. Because of this prices are all over the map. But also because of this you can find them in all kinds of shapes and sizes. They are also in electrical supply catalogs. Okay so what's the big deal? Well being a logical kinda guy I decided to test it out. Which you can do too. Tried wood, cups, carbon fiber, anything handy to support the cables up off the floor. Every single thing worked- more air, better image, more palpable presence. Finally after a while a dealer friend got Cable Elevators in said they were the best he'd heard so I bought a set. Easily the best thing yet. This was many years ago, late 1990's. More recently, moved some stuff around, got some much more expensive interconnects, bought some more of the generic sort off eBay. Made some little wood stands to hold the cables up and away from each other. As far as I can tell they are all very close in performance. If you go eBay look for the ones with the appearance you want and then look for electrical resistance. The resistance comes from forcing charges to travel the greatest distance over the most curves. They are all curved on the outside. The best ones will have extra curves on the inside so when you look underneath the bottom is curved back over on itself. Cable Elevators don't do this, the ones that do usually are more expensive. If you find them in a parts catalog with specs they will have the highest resistance, 40 to 80 to even 140kV. They seem to work by reducing static charges. Static charges definitely degrade sound, something you can test as easily as wafting some Static-Guard laundry spray over your cables. Another flat-out cool tweak to have on hand for those special late-night sessions. The improvement from a set of cable elevators is flat-out obvious. The people who deride this are everything that is wrong with audiophiles- ignorant, deaf, opinionated, uninformed, pretentious, I'm running out of derogatory things to say of anyone so obtuse as to not get it. Pay attention, almost never will they say they tried them and they don't work. Yet they see no problem telling you what's what. So add arrogant to their list of faults. As if their uninformed opinion matters. When every single person hears it, not most, not a lot, every single one, you know its for real. Like I said the first time, one friend noticed he could hear the difference removing just one. One. On one side. Out of 6. Sound stage collapses, midrange and treble loses its detailed smoothness, grain and glare increases, depth flattens and the whole stage that was deep and wide becomes flat and almost in your face. Since you had the experience of noticing what a good power cord can do then you for sure will appreciate this. Highly encourage you to experiment with a few things first. Possibly you will find enough improvement to stop right there and enjoy better sound almost for free. Main thing is as long as you try something and go with whatever it is that you hear and like then at least you will be a shining example for all the world to see what is right with audiophiles. |
