John Dunlavy On "Cable Nonsense"

I have read thru this thread probably 3 times so far, Im not trying to start this argument back up, but I would like to try and say something to justify experimenting with cables to newbies.

I think cable prices are the biggest rip-off in the entire industry and cable manufacturers are complete a'holes. I have been to several cable manufacturing facilities and making any cable in mass is relativly inexpensive(for most designs) and I am talking about Category 6 cable AND fiber optic cable. Cable prices are completely inflated by the manufacture to pad their wallets. I would love to see some little company ruin the entire cable industry thru good products/pricing. Good justification ehh?

I would also like to state that Bose is also a doctor ;P and we know the general opinion of the products released under his name. Being a Dr. doen't mean crap, BUT being a good speaker designer does mean something, and what does it mean in this case, nothing. A signal is a singal right? NO, because was we would all be using class B solid state amps and chugging along happily. But differences are percived, and more, try running 1000Mbs on good ol' copmusa Cat 5...what do ya get? Packet Loss, signaling errors, and carrier drops; Is this all from cross talk...no, because I can get some Cat 5 to run at 1000Mbs. So what does this tell me? Use the right cable for the right job. Does this apply to audiophilia? Maybe.

Can I hear a difference between my kimber PJB and my homegrown pure silver lace interconnects which have very similar cable geometry(ahem like cat 5, try signaling over cable thats not twisted pair, props to bell labs), you bet your sweet a** I can, I can prove it six ways of sunday and Ill even do it with some headphones; can I measure it? Not yet. Yet being the important word.

Now don't gimme these stupid lines about being system dependant, that is irrelevant in a disccusion on cables in general. We are dicussing weather the phenomenon exists at all. My point being, that if in any system you can percieve diffenerces in cables, then there is something going on. Just because some people cannot hear the difference does not mean that they dont exist. What about measuring, well all I can say is that I dont trust anyone's lab techniques but my own, and what exactly were they measuring for, how accurate were there results, what was their base line measument, what was their list of uncontrollable variables(i.e enviornmental RFI, EMI), what kind of power were they getting, what kind of gear were they using etc etc etc...

SO, whats my point...there is none, this fight is for scientists who still believe the universe is heliocentric and its impossible to travel faster than the speed of sound.

If in your system you cannot hear the differences between cables then you are lucky and do not have to worry about cables and you probably dont like your power chords either, you can sell this stuff to me ;P

(if your feeling generous and want a definite answer then donate the equipment, have some good hunches I will find that answer for which all the measured and docmuneted evidance shows, my lab skills are excellent)

Remember, there are 3 fundamental structures to be successful in business; production, marketing, and sales. They are interrelated but have different goals. The cable industry is marketing driven. Marketing people will alot of times just pick a number, they never spend money upfront, they depend on sales to drive money. By marketing, I mean packaging, ads, websites, reviews, any print, etc...Just read the ads and website claims, makes your mouth water. Look at some of the slick packaging. Marketing will make commitments that sales can't possibly deliver in many cases, but 20 million percent markup will cover no matter if sales makes projection or not. BTW, I hear differences in interconnects but no so much in speaker wire, IMO diminishing returns come quicker in speaker wire. Just my 2 cents.

Detlof, I have no qualms about anyone listening to anything and enjoying it. If someone gets pleasure from a Radio Shack or Wal-Mart rack system, that's more than fine with me. If someone thinks that a 12K cable is just the thing, so be it. My point being that things don't look the same, and are not the same, whether you are looking ahead, so to speak, and designing/building any element of a sound system or simply getting the end product and, ex-post facto, auditioning, analysing it. I think that it is dishonest to put out a product, make outlandish claims that cannot be substantiated and ask a price that is absolutely out of step with the cost of bringing the thing to market. When the upshot is that part of the ploy is to say that what you are selling is beyond any scientifically verifiable procedure, that nothing can prove or disprove your claims as a manufacturer, what you have is a situation where people will be had. Now whether they enjoy being had or not is another issue. I fully agree that live music is the yardstick against which to measure the performance of a sound system. I also agree that human hearing is the final arbiter of what constitutes a good system. What I cannot agree with is that our individual hearing is so different from one person to the next that anything goes. That we are not subject to so many vagaries in our ear/brain processor that any number of variables can be thrown in, helter-skelter, and that, somehow, the result will be of some value to more than the one individual listener. If someone wants to provide something significant to listeners in general (and I am not suggesting the population at large, but audiophiles in general) and make some contribution to advancing the state of the art, it has to be based on more than random possibilities and blind faith. Once the product is on the market, people are free to do what they want with it and to claim that it provides them with any manner of contentment. In closing, I have two thoughts: firstly, I believe that a guitar (and any other instrument, obviously) is just that, a musical instrument and, aside from the fact it needs to be tuned properly (and, hopefully, to stay that way for a while) has to be judged on its own merit, and that a sound system is not; the latter is a sound reproducing system and, therefore, there always is a standard to judge it by: the original sound, and, secondly, if cables are now seen as an acceptable means of fine tuning a system by, I guess, adding or subtracting something to make it more euphonic, why have audiophiles eschewed tone controls long ago as being low fi?

Is Dunlavy really an electrical genius? I can easily improve every one of his speakers with a very simple circuit modification to each of his speakers' drivers.

Now don't get me wrong, I do feel that John is better than most speaker designers, and he offers tremendous value in terms of what his speakers sell for, but to use his opinions as the benchmark to base this cable argument is a quite a stretch.

Pbb, I do not have the least difficulty with your argument. Besides I think it is very well written and thought out. My experience is, that people who have trained their ears to judge the performance of live or reproduced music,.i.e. in judging the performance of a given system, generally "hear" pretty much alike, although their emphasis on the parameters given for their judgements may differ. Of course, you could use tone controls instead of selected wires to fine tune a system. Only tone controls mostly degrade the sound over a broad spectrum, whereas a well chosen IC or speaker wire may in fact enhance it.
In reading your lines again, I am wondering what your basic hypothesis or assumption is, which you are building your arguments on. Would you assume, that a well designed music system, built and devised to the state of the art of accepted scientific knowledge, would, apart of the vagaries and uncertainties of room influences, be able to reproduce the original musical event in your home, provided the software is of the very best quality? And.... again, say in a truly SOTA system, how much is there "science" in its design and how much "intuition" and "art"? Or in other words, is there sufficient measurement savvy, to design a truly first class system through measurements alone?
Regards,