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Can "worse" sound "better" ?

Greetings,

I recently retired and have been migrating my gear from two places of residence to my main house. Since I have a dedicated music room, moving forward, I will only use the main system. During this process, when mixing equipment, selecting which component to keep, I came across a strange situation, which I do not understand. Hopefully someone can help and shed some light on what's going on? 

I am perplexed by the sound difference when connecting my pre and power amps with my interconnects. I own: Nordost Freys (original, not Frey2), Van den Hul The Orchids and Van den Hul The Integration Hybrid.  The best sound gives The Integration Hybrid, which I believe is about a third of the price of the Nordost... The Orchid also doesn't sound as good as the cheaper Integration.  Why it is peculiar, is the fact that between any of my sources and the preamplifier the Freys and Orchid are significant better than the Integration... The Integration sound better only between the preamplifier and power amplifier.  Can anyone explain why? 

The sense of "better" I can describe as: a lot more air around the instruments, even those at the very back of the stage, more precise soundstage (you can hear the distances between orchestral rows, for example second violins and wood instruments, brass also exhibit space and air around them). 

My system:

Krell KSA 100 mk2  power amp 

Krell KAV-280P  preamp 

Dynaudio Contour 3.4 connected with Frey speaker cable

Sources:

Nottingham Analogue AceSpace + Space Arm + Ortofon Kontrapukt B; 

VPI Aries Scout, AT33;  Phono Stage: Trichord Delphini mk2 with separate power supply

Marantz SAKI Black Pearl  and also Arcam CD37 as a transport

Chord Electronics Hugo TT with linear power supply 

Cables : Nordost Frey speaker cables, Nordost Freys, Van den Hul Orchid and Van den Hul The Integration Hybrid mostly unbalanced

All audio equipment is connected to a dedicated and separate power line and the preamp and power amp is on a separate circuit, only for them. 

 

Have a great weekend everyone :) 

Steven

 

 

 

zbig06
jallan's avatar
jallan
414 posts
 

I learned a great deal from this conversation- thanks all to those who made contributions!

knotscott's avatar
knotscott
1,384 posts
 

Gotta love synergy when it falls in your lap!  Better is better.  Once confirmed, I generally don't question it!  

audphile1's avatar
audphile1
7,850 posts
 

My take on it is your VDH is a fuller and warmer sounding cable. It balances out the speed and analytical nature of Frey. It’s just synergy. 

itsjustme
695 posts
 

I think you begin with a dicey premise: that "less expensive" is "worse".  Often untrue.

Next cables often impact sound through subtle filtering and vary based on the characteristics of two components - both sonically and electrical interfaces.  So "better and worse" need deep definitions - and we have no consensus but could maybe define at ;east broad measurements (warning: I never made them correlate well).

So oyu found your best mixes. Good. You are confused why less costly sounded better: don;t be.

ghdprentice's avatar
ghdprentice
9,413 posts
 

Early in my pursuit of the high end, I had assembled a mixture of high end (amp) , revealing ribbon speakers, pretty good preamp and "wanna be" CD player and DAC. I decided to try some really good interconnects. Straight wire ... really expensive... like the early 80’s. I was really disappointed they were shrill and trebly sounding. I was really disappointed. I threw them in the closet. Played with copper and silver coated interconnect of much lessor value, 

Years later my system had gotten many times better. I found the interconnects. Just for fun I plugged them in. My jaw dropped they were incredibly good... transparent... incredible bass and dynamics.  Same story with a set of speaker wires. These were Transparent. Now passing all the frequency range through the wires was a good thing. 

If you have a system that has lots of high frequency hash, high frequency distortion (fatiguing sound),  with revealing speakers... then really good wires can make your system sound terrible. You want warm copper interconnects to cover up the deficiencies in your system.

Lower quality components have inexpensive power supplies and often have a lot of high frequency or noise floor you do not want to hear... so covering that up can be a good thing. This is why the Cardas strategy is to have their lowest priced interconnects and cables the warmest and least revealing and their highest end the most transparent. It is a brilliant strategy to match the cabling to the components. I used Cardas extensively early on in my pursuit of the high end. 

All, my components are top notch and natural sounding... so now I want the very best transparent wires. 

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