Cable Wars - ASR Review of Kimber KS 1036 Silver RCA Cable ($4500 pair)

@samureyex Dylan (owner of Buckeye) had also said all "properly designed" amplifiers all sound the same. A ridiculous thing to say.   When asked what’s the difference between his $1,000 Hypex amplifier vs a $17,000 Mola Mola Kaluga (since both are made by Bruno) he repeatedly dodged the question.

When I asked Odyssey’s Amp Designer Klaus vs my Constellation amp, he freely admitted the Constellation was superior.

Frankly, it seems very strange to assume amps sound the same when simply moving up a brand’s product line like Constellation, Soulution, Audionet, Boulder, etc one can clearly hear sonic improvements…for a price. 

@devinplombier Thanks for the boost of morale.

@kennyc If we all had sufficient hearing, there wouldn't be such a debate to begin with. Some of you might be familiar with Erin (Erin Audio Corner). He "reviews" a lot of stuffs. Measures a whole bunch of stuffs too. A respected member of ASR and AVS. He had openly admitted in his Youtube videos that he cannot tell the difference from one amp to another. One time he compared a tube vs a SS amplifier and the two sounded identical to him except for a bump in the bass on the tube amp.

Here's the crazy part. Most amps I've heard sounded different when freshly turned on vs being on for 90 mins. The same amp sounds different depending on warm-up time. Let that sink in....

"@samureyex  Here's the crazy part. Most amps I've heard sounded different when freshly turned on vs being on for 90 mins. The same amp sounds different depending on warm-up time. Let that sink in..."

Whenever a strong comment is made someone's amp and sound is the same at 5min vs 90min, or all cables sound the same - it seems to be much less hassle to agree with them and let it go. I've started to conclude that It's very possible some truly cannot hear any differences. Heck, maybe they are luckier than everyone else because they can settle with a very basic low cost system and stop there. Good for them, and no need to keep measuring if all things sound the same to them. Happy listening. :) 

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@decooney It is true some (I'd even say many nowadays) cannot hear any differences. 

In fact, I was one of those people. Been there, done that sorta thing. During my teenage years and early 20s, I couldn't tell the difference between gear. Most speakers even sounded the same to me. There were many times when I thought my cheap Infinity 362 speakers sounded better than the 4x more expensive Polk Lsi15. 

But even during that period, I knew music sounded more bad than good, and there were a lot of room for improvements. The 3 things that helped me improved and learned what's good and what's bad are these:

1) Headphones, a really good headphones can teach a listener a lot.

2) Good amplification, especially tubes, presents that naturalness of music.

3) Speaker placement - trials and errors. A little shift here and there alters the soundstage, tonality, many other aspects of sound, and we understand and become more perceptive about these changes and understand this and that are changing.

I remember back in 2015 when my hearing experience was still low. A friend brought over the Sennheiser IE800 and I listened to it for hours. At that time, it was a lot better than anything I’ve ever heard. And I listened for hours. I knew it was good but I couldn’t understand what made it good or what was good about it, other than that it was "good". 

Fast forward to 2026. If I listened to the IE 800 now, I can comment about its soundstage, separation, imaging, tonality, smoothness, transparency. Level of graininess. The list goes on. 

Lately, I've been super anal about the dynamic range of music, especially dynamic range of the midrange and the treble.