Dang it… cables do matter (at least in my system)

@brighamdoc your trial reminds me of when I was demoing a couple of AES cables 2 years ago. A Jorma and a Triode Wire Labs. I’ll be honest, it was tough to determine the difference between them, I went back and forth about 8 times before I figured out I was keeping the more expensive one, but that must be bias, right? As it happened my 25 year old daughter came over and I made her a test subject.

I didn’t tell her anything other than ask which cable she preferred. She saw me swap them, but knew nothing else. She listens through a “regular” computer to a dragonfly, you know, a $80 DAC, into mid-level Sennheiser headphones.

I started with the Jorma, played 70 seconds of the latest track I was listening to: Dire Straits- Brothers in Arms, just a few sentences into the part where Knopfler sings. She is not familiar with the track. I then shut off the DAC and K50, waited for the beep, changed to the TWL cable, turned on the K50, then the DAC, waited for Roon to register, and played again. Well sh!t, it took her all of 10 seconds to say “the first one is better”. I put on a poker face and said, okay lets try another track- you choose something you are familiar with. She chose Florence and the machine- Which Witch. I have never heard it before- not a bad track. She picked out some percussion sound that sounds like clapping, swapped cables, and sure enough it was much better resolved the second time it was played with the Jorma. She nailed the same cable again. She used the word “crisper”.

I don’t know if I was happy or annoyed with her hearing ability. 

But, but she saw the cables! Biased test! Nope. 

I then told her one cable was $1200, and one was $300, which is which- she said the TWL looked like the expensive one and the Jorma looked like the $300 cable. I agree, the TWL looks nice. So definitely the sighting didn’t influence her decision.

I actually planned to trial a couple of others I had on my list at the time, but it cost me over $100 for the free 30 day trial with the TWL, with duties, taxes, and shipping to send it back across the border, so I gave up and just stayed with the Jorma. You guys able to use The Cable Company and its lending program are lucky. 

Good post, thanks for sharing that, and sorry. 

@mulveling 

And to those who mentioned Audioquest Sky - yeah that's a GREAT cable.

I demoed the Sky cables, 15 years ago.  But I purchased the Wild Blue Yonder cables.

I had a very good relationship with the store's owner, and got a nearly 50% discount from the retail price.  It was still expensive, but it was a deal that I could not pass up.

New silver is ridiculously expensive, and that was even before it hit $100 / oz.

I can't imagine the price of Audioquest's (or any other reputable brand's) silver cables, today.

On another site: ANA, these clowns are mostly cable naysayers even when they haven’t listened to the cable, if it costs more than $25, you wasted your money and you listened to snake oil. Quite a few of these naysayers thought the blue jeans cable in question was the best cable to use, I own cables costing 15 times or more than a pair of the blue jeans cables, so I bought a pair, broke them in for a month, and evaluated them. Compared to my reference cables, the blue jeans were lifeless, no soundstage, it was like you put a blanket over the speakers. I sold them.

$1000 or even a little more isn’t that much to pay for a cable if tou have a resolving system.

Someone above commented on trying to upgrade power cords.  I’m about to dive head first down that rabbit hole! Between shunyata alpha or nordost Heimdall 2 for a Cronus dark integrated amp and luxman e-250 phono stage.  

@pmzn 

I recently purchased a Shunyata Sigma-X power cord that is between my store demo Shunyata Everest and the wall socket.  That resulted in my losing my soundstaging, to a relatively large degree.

It took 3 days, of leaving my stereo playing non-stop, for my soundstage to return.  I left my stereo playing all of that time at a very low volume.

According to a Shunyata representative (relayed to me by the store's personnel), you have to have a sizeable power draw demand going through that power cord, in order for it to break in.  Having your stereo in stand-by (components making a trickle draw) is not enough.

I do not know if that is unique to that model power cord.  And I never knew that a power cord could make such a drastic soundstaging change, until broken in.

If you choose to go with Shunyata power cords, keep the above in mind.  Do not judge your purchase based on your first listening session.

I wish that I was given a head's up, because when I plugged it in, and I heard my soundstage shrink, I was borderline distraught.

You mentioned the "Alpha" model.  Perhaps you meant the Alpha-X, which is their replacement for the Alpha (and a step up from the Alpha)?

The Alpha-X and the Sigma-X (the one I purchased) sit side-by-side in Shunyata's model line.  So I am pretty sure that it will behave as mine behaved, requiring a break-in period.