Audiophiles and Our Chase for Perfection

@jijoh123 RE: ...

A perfect example of this is speaker cable. You can spend $50 to $100K or more on them, but as soon as they hit the next connection, junction or conductor, for example, the speaker terminal, you’ve fundamentally nullified any “perceived” benefit from those cables. Not to mention the soldering materials and their impact.

That’s not strictly true.

Having the right speaker cable can improve the sound of a system immensly.

Granted, the type/quality of the connector + the wire internally and the quality of the crossover does also impact the overall sound, but the wire is very important

• Cable geometry impacts the performance of the cable
• cable metals can improve or impact the dynamics of the cable
• cable insulation definitely impacts the noise generated in the cable 
• cable gauage is perhaps the most misunderstood aspect of good cable design

All of these points contribute to getting the purest signal to the actual speaker.

At the end of the day, just get some reasonably good 14 to 8 Gauge cables that are made of sound conducting material (e.g. 99.99% copper, or Silver if you prefer) because that same logic can be applied to ALL of the materials in the signal path. 

Do that and you’ll never know just how good your various systems components really are - sorry :-(

Your system will remain - "mediaocre"

How do I know this?

I developed my own cables over a 12 year period, from scratch using OCC silver and OCC copper with very low capacitive insulations and a cable geometry that rejects and cancels internal noise generation.

I tried the cables on systems from $350 to $70,000 and the net effect was the same - i.e. significant improvements in sound quality

take a look at this thread for more info

• What makes good Cable

I have also rewired the crossover and the wire inside the speakers - you you are correct in stating 

The bottom line is, there are so many contributors in the path that, unless you tear the entire speaker apart and replace them all with your idea of the “gold standard” or perfect material/component, you’re still only going to be as good as the weakest component in the path.

You are correct to a certain degree - but the quality of your cables do actually impact the the performance of the connected components. So using mediocre cables will actually impact the components it connects

Regards Steve

+1 @williewonka I have been toying around building my own interconnects lately, and exploring the impact of dielectric materials, specifically cotton. How much you use and how tight drastically affects the sound. Then add geometry, and conductor makeup, and you have quite a palette for adjusting your sound.

@zizione I prefer to think of my cable practices as "refining" the sound, as opposed to adjusting the sound, simply because with each development the system revealed more and more details rather than changing a particular attribute of the sound e.g. bass, mid or trebble

Granted, the details did change the sound somewhat, but also changed the imaging, pace and the dynamics of my entire system resulting in a more realistic reproduction, especially with respect to the micro details of the venue acoustics

Regards - Steve

@zlone

Just something to think about. 

Long ago I decided to evaluate interconnects. I had a system that I knew inside and out. I started with my current cables... don’t remember, they were good. I acquired cables from a dealer friend of mine. He’d send one at a time and let me keep them for a few months. So, first I had to break them in... 200 hours, sometimes a bit less... but you have to make sure they are broken in. 

Then I came up with a rating system. I think I had about six or eight different variables, which I rated on a ten point scale. I used my original (Harmonics I think the silver plated copper) as the standard. So, then I would do  quick A/B and rated them. Then let them in my system and listened for a week or two, Then switch back. The switch back was typically the time all the differences were really obvious. Sometimes I would need to do the two weeks for the reference and the new ones twice. Then I would get another pair... break them in and rate them. 

So I evaluated about six brands... along the way I found Nirvana... wow. They were $2K per pair and my components were only $5K each... but wow. Worth it. This was about five months of effort and dozens of hours of listening and weeks of breaking in. 

Anyway, I think you may see the point. If you are going to do this. Consider what you are going to use as a reference. What standards are you going to apply when evaluating. And for god’s sake get a cable cooker. It always seemed too expensive for me... but it would have paid for itself in a couple years. I have spent soooo much time breaking in interconnects, power cords and speaker wire it would have paid for itself in a year or two. Instead I have gone decades without one, would have saved thousands of hours using my main system. 

Good luck.  

@ghdprentice Thanks for sharing. Yes, it is definitely a significant undertaking evaluating cables, and it requires a lot of time and patience. Swapping cables in and out to compare is pointless, as they can take days to settle, and as you have found, and weeks to evaluate. My mission here is more to understand what goes into the design and how it affects the sound. Once I know what is possible, I would likely look for something professionally built that comes close. Part of what started this was an upgrade of my speaker cables from firehose size to thin Audience cables. It got me thinking and experimenting with ultra light interconnects.

@williewonka Yes, refining is a better term than adjusting. It is uncanny how much sonic latitude exists through design and materials, I have learned a lot.