I don't know anything about physics and cable specs. I try stuff and if it sounds better to me I keep it.
audiophile folklore - cables and claims from manufacturers
The cable debate.
Cables make a difference, sure.
But SHOULD they?
I have been grappling with this question for the better part of 20 years!
Fanatical claims from manufacturers, talking about how their cables will improve your system in specific ways, sonically.
More accurate bass, cleaner midrange sounds, treble resolution... etc. soundstage and imaging, you get the idea.
The fundamental disconnect is - they have never heard YOUR system!
So then, how do they know what their cables will sound like in your system. Not to mention, astronomical prices on some of these interconnects. The wilder the claims, the higher the cost.
The behavior we should be looking for is passing on the signal, with as little losses as possible. That can be done relatively cheaply, with well made professional interconnects that cost less than 100 dollars in most cases.
If you could build an audio system (all of it) from thrift store finds and cables really did make that much of a difference, then wouldn’t the sound quality scale that way?
It seems many audiophiles I know are in denial. And even worse, some use cables as TONE controls! This is where audiophoolery becomes a religion. Audio dealers promote it, because it impacts their bottom line!
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ANYONE who has owned Nordost cable, and specifically Valhalla, KNOWS that that damn cable needs extensive break in. In the beginning, it was so screechy that I had to leave the room while listening to a Motown Supremes anthology CD. (Everything else was screechy too, but that disc stood out worse than any other disc). At first I thought it was the CD, but after playing a classical selection, I realized (again) that the cable hadn’t burned in, and it had been playing non-stop for weeks... With Nordost, unless you are completely deaf, you will hear an utterly piercing quality, a brightness, which is SO offensive (at least back in 2013 and I’d had Nordost before), you won’t be able to listen to your CDs. I couldn’t. I confess to being surprised people still debate this, after 20 years, when I was in the business (no longer). But then, I don’t know peoples’ setups, whether or not they have room treatment (with Nordost, room treatment or not, it will singe your ears, as though you’d turned up the treble on a cheap integrated to +15). But I also find that most people aren’t listening to music composed of mainly acoustic instruments or un-engineered voices (which eliminates the great, great, GREAT majority of pop music, going back to the 1980s). Burn-in is real, although I have to say I didn’t notice it as much on the MIT "Magic Hose" cable of the 1980s, or even Transparent cable of that time. Or Ocos or Straight Wire. I notice it more on cable introduced after the mid 1990s (Nordost, in particular). And I don't hear it on the Synergistic cable I have in another system, although I did note that the violin sonatas improved over a week's time. Nordost is really the "king" if someone wants to hear what an un-burned in cable sounds like. I'd like to be sitting there with someone in person when somebody challenges me on that and they have brand new Nordost cables in the upper leagues. You'll hear it; of that there is zero doubt. You'll feel like someone is continually scraping their fingernails across a blackboard. I guarantee that. I noticed it less on the Shunyata Theta cable I bought a few weeks ago, but then, Shunyata stated, 5 years abo, that they had discovered a way to eliminate the long burn-in periods for their older cable (such as the Anaconda Zi-Tron I have, or the Sigma V2 cables I had), and experience is the best teacher, so it appears they have eliminated that. And I agree with Tomcy6 about packing the board with more resisters, capacitors and the like causing minor issues. Goldmund used fully separated chambers to isolate components in the Mimesis line (their top line in the 90s), which was great for the sound, but made the Mimesis 9 weight 150 pounds. Still, one couldn’t argue with the sound quality... |
@frank009 perhaps you have never heard of Astoria studio, it's David Gilmour's houseboat studio that uses 14 miles of audiophile cables. They also burned the cables in. They did blind listening tests to determine what sounded best. |
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