How accurate are cable descriptions for your system?

@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... :)

@jjss49 Good point. I was thinking that, overall, there is a lot of that in audio. Someone says the sound is "bright" or "tubby" or... "musical," etc. and it is often hard to really get a definite or semi-definite sense of what is designated in sensory experience.

As with the sense modalities of taste and smell, we have a vocabulary for aural phenomenon that is comparatively vague -- compared to vision-vocabulary. Still, we do try and often it can take a while. But when something is being sold, well, caution to the wind!