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Small difference equating to a big difference?

My system had started to sound a bit dull and lifeless to me ever since I put in some blue jeans interconnects. I'm getting a lightspeed attenuator in a week or two so I purchased two pairs of short, inexpensive interconnects with a really low rated capacitance in order to use them with the lightspeed. Anyways, I replaced a pair of audioquest diamond back rca's between my dac and pre, and a pair of signal cable silver resolution xlr's between my amp and pre amp with the blue jeans so that I could have them broken in by the time the lightspeed gets here.
Anyhow, my system had, what I thought, lost a lot of detail and "life" and couldn't really figure out exactly why. So I grabbed two pairs of analysis plus oval interconnects to demo tonight and voila, right from the first song, I had my detail and "life" back. When I a/b compared them to the blue jeans I couldn't spot big differences like I thought I'd be able to, but for some reason it does in fact sound like a big difference and I can't put my finger, errrr, ear on it. The analysis plus do have slightly more detail and sound slightly more fleshed out but the don't sound day and night different but they do; does that make sense to anyone?
At the end, I a/b compared the original diamond back from dac to pre, signal cable silver res xlr between the pre and amp to the analysis plus between dac and pre and also between pre and amp. The diamond back / signal set up had more bass and equaled the analysis plus in all other areas but for some reason I still slightly prefer the analysis plus.

I've found also that sometimes it's hard for me to give a product an honest assesment if I've read reviews on the product before I listen to it because I'll be anticipate hearing the pros and cons about that product before I even begin to listen.

So what do you think is going on here with such perceived slight differences making a bigger difference? Is it possible I'm picking up on things in the sound that I'm not consciously aware of analysing like tone or prat?
128x128b_limo
schubert
7,386 posts
 
I have enough IC's required to make a "full Loom" (4) from
AP,Straightwire, Morrow, MAC,ZU, MIT, DH labs,AudioArt and Wireworld.
Most are middle range except the ZU and MIT which are upper-middle to low highend .
In any possible combo of above ONE AP makes a difference,DH and ZU sound good on about anything.
b_limo's avatar
b_limo OP
2,271 posts
 
I think once I get my lightspeed I'll buy the ap ovals for $84 each pair and also try some signal cable silver resolutions also. Those mac ultra silvers and quads are probably ones I'll try also. I really don't understand why some people don't think cables sound different. Why not just run 24 guage radio schack cable to your $2500 mcintosh amp then? I guess all cables sound the same, and stereos sound the same, all speakers sound the same. Shoot, I guess all cars are the same too; doors, tires, windshield, they're all the same. I don't understand why my rig sounds the same as a bose wave radio, and why that 420 hp m3 isn't any faster or badder than the 220hp mini...
csontos
1,311 posts
 
I think the thing with cables(and I'm probably wrong about this)is that just pulling them out and then plugging them back in changes the sound. So the connection skews the perceived improvement in that the same change would have occurred had you simply re-plugged the original. We're dealing with the flow of millions upon millions of electrons so does it not stand to reason achieving a level playing field is literally impossible? The best connector is no connector at all. I wonder what differences you'd hear if these cables were hard wired into the component. In any case, I don't think the differences are important enough except in cases where a component requires a very specific characteristic. In which case differences among those wouldn't amount to more than with other cables.
b_limo's avatar
b_limo OP
2,271 posts
 
Csontos, the best cables are no cables? I tried this configuration and couldn't hear any sound; very black background, but no sound.
csontos
1,311 posts
 
Read on, read on:)
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