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Too good a post to waste

On a thread that is a running example of the textual equivalent of nonstop cat videos. So here it is again.


I could understand the cables are snake-oil doubters and take them seriously- in 1980. Back then there was no internet, Stereo Review was pretty much it, and Julian Hirsch was the Oracle of all things audio. Stereo Review and Julian Hirsch said if it measures the same it sounds the same. Wire is wire, and that was that. 

Even then though J. Gordon Holt had already started the movement that was to become Stereophile. JGH took the opposing view that our listening experience is what counts. Its nice if you can measure it but if you can’t that’s your problem not ours. 

Stereo Review and the measurers owned the market back then. The market gave us amplifier wars, as manufacturers competed for ever more power with ever lower distortion. For years this went on, until one day "measures great sounds bad" became a thing.

Could be some here besides me lived through and remember this. If you did, and if you were reading JGH back then, I tip my hat to you, sir! I fell prey to Hirsch and his siren song that you can have it all for cheap and don’t really have to learn to listen. Talk about snake-oil! A lot of us bought into it. Sorry to say.

But anyway like I was saying it was easy to believe the lie back then because it was so prevalent and also because what wire there was that sounded better didn’t really sound a whole lot better.

Now though even budget wire sounds so much better than what comes off a reel you’d have to be deaf not to notice. Really good wires sound so good you’d notice even if you ARE deaf! No kidding. My aunt Bessie was deaf as a stone but she could FEEL the sound at a high enough volume, knew it was music. The dynamic punch of my CTS cables is so much greater than ordinary 14 ga wire I would bet my deaf from birth aunt Bessie could "hear" the difference. Certain so-called audiophiles here, I'm not so sure.

Oh and not done beating the dead horse quite yet, according to my calendar its 2020, a solid 40 years past 1980. Stereo Review is dead and buried. Stereophile lives on. A whole multi-billion dollar industry built on wire not being wire thrives. Maybe the measurement people can chalk up and quantify from that just how many years, and billions, they are out of date and in denial. 
128x128millercarbon
mahgister's avatar
mahgister
12,961 posts
 

If something sounds markedly different when I change an interconnect, then it was always because something was wrong.


I am not sure to understand.... When i change my cheaper interconnect between my amplifier and my dac for a Morrow m3 and i immediately hear a better sound, this is because the first interconnect was wrong or something else wrong, not because the Morrow was a better interconnect? is this your saying?

  
millercarbon's avatar
millercarbon OP
12,531 posts
 
What he's saying is he's a lousy listener. What he's saying is the only way he notices any difference is if he's broken a wire. Which he does not consider unusual. So he's also saying spaz, or using really old poorly made crap. Take your pick.
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cleeds
5,713 posts
 
roberttdid
... It is not unusual to loose the ground on just one of the interconnects.
You must be using very poor quality connectors and/or have equipment with poor quality jacks. Connectors may be even more important that the cable itself, so it’s not a surprise if you don’t hear differences between cables.
roberttdid
534 posts
 
I was talking about Miller claiming his $1,200 bargain system was magically transformed by $1,200 interconnects which is ... which the nicest I can put is questionable.   If you have left right interconnects, RCA, and the ground breaks on one of those cables (workmanship, rough use), the system will still work just fine, but perhaps not optimum. This was just one of many things (like dirty contacts), that was a far more likely reason for a big change in sound by changing interconnects.
rickytickytwo
88 posts
 
All I can think of when someone suggests that cables that measure the same sound the same, is that they may be leaving out "color". 
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