Interesting reading for ESL owners

Albert, The information that I thought would be helpful and interesting, was about the differences or suggested characteristics that speaker cables should have when driving ESL's. I thought this may be interesting or helpful to others as well. My post also said you may be interested in what they had to say about interconnects, I did not mention that I was in agreement with anything! But come on now, admit it, it was interesting! maybe not what we want to hear but certainly interesting.

Their comments on speaker cables for ESL's to me, sounds credible. I have been searching for an answer to that exact question for several months. To date, I have received views from members of Audiogon, read cable testing reports, have spoken to ESL manufacturers, and several cable manufacturers, and dealers. Not anyone had given me an accurate understanding of the differences until I stumbled into the Innersound web site.

I do not own any of Innersound's equipment. I do feel however that if they are manufacturers of ESL's, and amps designed specifically to drive ESL's, and cables as well, then they must be doing their homework.

There is alot of controversey about interconnects and cables. My feelings are, that even if I didn't agree with one opinion by someone, that shouldn't mean that I should discount everything they believe or have an opinion on.

As far as their statement about interconnects, I dont know if their opinions are true or not. I have not yet prooved to myself whether there are actually differences in high quality interconnects or not. I just plain - don't know!! (does anyone know for absolute fact) I do know this however, I have a system i'm not all that happy with, which includes some ESL's. A friend of a friend was kind enough to dismantle his system cables (speaker & interconnects)and come to my house to help me.
We took his high dollar reference MIT interconnects and my $69.00 IXOS interconnects, put them to common outputs of my cd player and two separate inputs of my preamp. We played several songs, switching with my remote between preamp inputs, which transfers in less than a nano second (practically switched on the same note) and the both of us concluded that there was no question, they sounded absolutely identical!! On the other hand, we took a typical 99 cent interconnect and compared it also. They were so different that it was kind of comical. Hell at this time, we needed to laugh and smile anyway.

Albert, I was just trying to be helpful to anyone who was seeking the same type of information. It was truly a sincere post. I didn't mean to offend or upset anyone in any way. My apologies, and thanks for ending your post by leaving me with some dignity.

Sfrounds. Agree with you on most points, except that in my system there is absolutely no problem in hearing the difference between high end interconnects. I can put Audioquest, Cardas and Purist in my system between the turntable and phono stage, or between the phono stage and preamp and hear distinct differences.

That being said, an engineer that claims there is no difference in interconnects, leads me to believe he has not pushed the performance of the system he designs with. I would hope that every high end manufacturer would have a system at least as good as the posters at Audiogon.

As far as your comments about the information being useful as applied to electrostatics, I agree. There are different requirements for electrostatic speakers, and the choices in interconnect, speaker wire, and the power cable to the speakers all matter a great deal.

Thanks for sharing the site address, I will look for these people at the next CES, it will be interesting to see how their speakers perform.

I suggest that if you connect two interconnects at the same time to the CD output, it should not be a surprise if they sound similar when switching between them at the preamp. You just need to think about the circuit you have created. Secondly, short term switching has never convinced me of anything. I am with Albert.

Innersound's thoughts on speaker cable are indeed interesting, but like Albert, I reckon the credibility has been dented.

Ultimately, the proof is in the product and the Innersound speaker is an excellent product. The fact that their thoughts on cabling may be outside of the standard audiophile orthodoxy does not detract from the magnitude of their success in speaker production. As with nearly all manufacturers of high quality audio equipment, they have well defined recommendations on how to maximize the performance of their products. As audiophiles we are under no obligation to follow the manufacturers guidelines.

If you get a chance, I strongly recommend you give the Innersound ESL a listen.

Albert,
I write/talk with Roger fairly often, we own a pair of EROS and a pair of ISIS and have a new center channel for the HT on the way.
He is a speaker genius, in my opinion and I have learned a lot about the design of his speakers, especially about transmission lines.
I found out in one of the first conversations with him, that he is of the EE "camp" that cables are cables.
I personally don't hold that belief, but I know him to be really serious about great sound.
So....I am a little dumbfounded by it. I am tempted to buy a set of cables for our surround speakers in the HT and compare them to the Goertz MI2's we are using now and really like.
Cheers,