How accurate are cable descriptions for your system?

The only worthwhile piece of advice anyone can give you is only buy returnable cables.  Try them out and compare.

There are far too many variables in audio to say anything with certainty with regard to someone else’s system.

In my experience, the skill of the recording engineer swamps everything else!

@hilde45 after comparing a cable in my own system, when fortunate to do so, I like to try and take the same cable to a few different friend’s places and compare again with a completely different system and room setup. While it can seem to be a bit of a swag, it can be interesting to listen for characteristics that do carry over with the cable. It can be much more interesting and valuable when comparing on another transparent system.

I often read folks stating a cable should not have a sound. My thought is all cables can impact sound, and which ones impact the sound the least and let the music through is what I enjoy listening for. Some hear differences, while others don’t. Finding the "giant killers" at a lower cost has been another reason to evaluate different cable designs.

@hilde45

i use the tuneful belden cables from the fellas in brooklyn... very happy with them - excellent sound irrespective of their modest price - very balanced presentation, very good detail and ambience retrieval with some midrange warmth - i also very much like the spring loaded bananas they use - i like them especially with my dynamic speakers (harbeth, spendor, fritz)... for maggies which pull alot more current from the amps, i move to heavier gauge wire, shorter runs

kimber xlo nordost mapleshade/clearview and zu are zippier sounding, cardas duller/warmer - for less money, i find the tuneful ic's and speaker cables sonically equivalent to most good copper cables (from straightwire, ww, audioquest, et al)

Hi all,

I appreciate the advice but I should probably state it plainly -- I’m not shopping for cables, I’m not really interested in upgrades at this point, etc.

My question arises out of interest in the phenomenological, epistemic elements involved -- and also in the way in which people interpret online (or other) advice.

There is a tremendous amount of conceptual looseness in this hobby, and one way I’ve been able to create what I think is a very decent system is by figuring out who to listen to, who to ignore, what control factors matter, etc. If you look back at a lot of my posts, they’re often (not always) driven by my wider project of establishing linguistic, sensory, and psycho-acoustic metrics. Otherwise, acquisition becomes a Sisyphusean guessing game.

@hilde45

’conceptual looseness’ is a nice, respectful term for what happens way too often in the cable business, with is pure b-s to suck $ out of wallets, playing on frailties of the audiophile mind and ego...

i am not quite as nice as you... :)