Cable "burning": Real or VooDoo ???

Today was the day, I was finally going to get this cable thing figured out. After been told by an accomplished recording engineer here at AudiogoN that cable makes no difference either scientifically or in any measurable way, I thought I'd look into what his pears thought. To do this I went through some of the recordings I personally find to be well recorded with above average sonic achievements. I found some extremely enlightening results. First I looked at what the Engineers at Chesky, both Bob Katz and Billy Pilgrim have been using in there recording procedures. I have come to the conclusion that Chesky is actually a puppet corporation of George Cardas's. I was amazed to find that Cardas cables and interconnects are used on all the Chesky recordings I own, oddly no reference to Radio Shack or standard 12Ga spool wire. Knowing this was a fluke and a subsidiary of a larger company I simply moved on.
Next on the review list was Groove Note, surely they have no affiliations. Well I was surprised to find that Michael C. Ross, recording engineer for Groove Note was using Audio Quest cabling. This seems easy to under stand in that we all know Audio Quest gives all the recording studios cabling for free, that explained to me why so many mid-fi studios I looked at also were using Audio Quest. It was at this exact moment that I realized Audio Quest is the "king pin" in the hi-fi conspiracy. Audio Quest, Audio Tekna, Audio Magic, Audio Prism, Audio .... All these companies are mere fronts for the great audio empire run by some as yet undetermined organization with the sole purpose of brainwashing naive audiophiles. At this time I was sure the C.I.A. and organized crime had moved on from the Kennedy assassination to audio, I knew this to be true until I found Keith O. Johnson from Reference Recordings was using M.I.T. cabling, this seemed odd to me, how could a company as respected as RR remain on the outside of the great conspiracy?
Still with no answers I went to the Mapleshade label. This was a no brainier, Mapleshade was surely using Mapleshade cabling. After all they make and sell cables so they wouldn't use another brand, right? Wrong! Pierre Sprey the engineer for Mapleshade used Audio quest and Maple shade. Man, another front corp. I then read the information in the Mapleshade (Wildchild) disk of a fantastic Rasta band *Midnight* "Ras Mek Peace" and a description of the never ending process Pierre went through trying to get the best possible sound. Twice he talks about trying different cables and interconnects, and further discussed using a "weird new silver double-tube wires" on the tape machine that added half octave of base responce. I further learned that they were also using Omega Mikro interconnects in the system. How odd it seems that the one known cable maker is using three or four different brands.
These people, in my opinion are the leaders of the industry and they have all found cabling important enough to list in there bio, and yet "the great engineer" of AudiogoN sees no benefit.
In Architecture the majority of the Architects I know I would not seek out for advice. I know in other businesses that meritocracy is the norm, greatness takes creativity and risk taking. There are bad Doctors, bad Lawyers, bad store clerks, you name it. I hate to say it 70242.241, but I believe you may be just another very average engineer and maybe are not in any position to lecture to us about the state of the art of audio. So for now good-by, J.D.

JD, you been busy. Most excellant post, my friend. I must say that you're getting much better at your stand up since your last attempt! Very enjoyable!

Thanks Angela, I have a bit more now to add. I just spent about a half hour looking through the M.I.T., Cal Poly and Stanford research programs. I recommend any of you who have a true interest in the science of the art to please spend some time at the very well written M.I.T. site. If a certain area of research is of interest to you, I know from personal experience that a quick note to the proper professor will give you direct information.
In my short research I've been able to find out that there are some scientists (I'd call M.I.T. fairly informed) who are taking some of the issues of dielectrics, wave technology along with measurements of such quite seriously. I think the people who have knowledge and interest of engineering may find this a great read.
The following are some direct pastes of web pages followed by the address to further reading:
"The proposed program is to develop and apply dielectrometry technology to non-destructive testing of materials and systems. Interdigital frequency-wavelength dielectrometry can be used to measure stratified distributions of dielectric permittivity and conductivity of insulating materials. The complex dielectric permittivity is directly related to other material properties, such as moisture content, temperature, concentration of impurities and additives, density, aging status, etc. The analysis of spatial and temporal variations of these properties lends valuable insights into physical phenomena that take place in materials, electric power apparatus, and civil infrastructures; provides instrumentation for system monitoring and diagnostics; and can be used for optimization of design and performance characteristics." http://web.mit.edu/lees-lab/www/full/frames/index1024.html

"The proposed research is for the continued analytical, computational, and experimental study using optical tomography measurements of high voltage insulation, conduction, prebreakdown and breakdown characteristics in dielectrics. The methodology uses electric field induced birefringence (Kerr effect) with an improved sensitive optical measurement system and a new advanced mathematical formulation that allows calculation of electric field magnitude and direction in any electrode geometry from optical intensity measurements. Because the physics of high voltage charge injection and transport, prebreakdown and electrical breakdown are not known for most metal/dielectric systems, the electric field distribution cannot be calculated from knowledge of system geometries alone. Optical measurements provide a direct approach to determining electrical constitutive laws and learning the physics of the electrical breakdown process and so offers a research methodology for major advances in increasing the breakdown strength of dielectric systems."
http://web.mit.edu/lees-lab/www/full/frames/index1024.html
for general knowledge:
http://www.mit.edu
Finally I went to the Kimber Kable web site and looked at there library. The following is the opening paragraph of there library listing.
Over one thousand volumes exist in the private library at Kimber Kable. A comprehensive library resource is critical in developing and manufacturing the finest products. Cable manufacture requires significant expertise in many disciplines; plastics, metals, plating, extruding, machining, soldering and magnetics, to name a few. In addition the cable must be tested and evaluated which requires knowledgeable expertise in acoustics, electronics and test instrumentation. The final link is the correlation between tested results and subjective impressions, access to previous research in this area is very important. Products that are developed with a great library resource are much more likely
to be technically advanced, more cost effective and consistently manufactured.

What I found here was just how little the "experts" here at AudiogoN understand. Listen to there statements, then look here to see all they chose to ignore. It's amazing, and I'd like to say most of use are one hell of a lot closer to understanding audio than the quite vocal few who have been asked to change there approach. Enough said, I hope some of us take the time to learn from this knowledge available and continue to update each other. Maybe a "research" section of the site would be helpful. Have fun reading! J.D.

Jadem6, Just to throw a little more oil on the fire, you state "To do this I went through some of the recordings I personally find to be well recorded with above average sonic achievements." I believe a more accurate statement would read "To do this I went through some of the recordings I personally find to sound good on my system."

I think this is THE huge variable in how systems are evaluated. We tend to use the same recordings to evaluate various components. For instance, I may have a recording that has been deemed to have excellent bass. Perhaps it is a little bass heavy, but on some systems this is just the ticket to sonic excellence. Using this recording, I would judge more neutral systems to be bass deficient.

For this and other reasons, I advocate spending most of your budget on components, and saving the big "cable question" to the end when you are putting on the finishing touches and have a system of sufficient resolution to make these megabuck decisions.

Happy listening

Sound jugement Bruce, in my opinion.