| AudioREVIEW's Forum Archives - Cables & Interconnects |
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|   Thank you, Skeptic | FBGraham
Sep 19, 2003 11:32 PM | | Just last week I treated myself to nice Pioneer Elite SACD/DVD-A player, ordered off of E-bay. While I waited for it to arrive, I thought, what better time than now to take the plunge and invest in some "really good" speaker cables and interconnects, to go along with my nice new SACD player.
I had heard a whole flood of information to the effect that good cabling made a tremendous difference--improved clarity, improved midrange, more volume, and so on. I didn't have lamp wire on my speakers, mind you, and wouldn't have dared use the freebie cables on my good equipment, but I was using the low-end Monster cables, and there were SO many great cables that were much more elaborate and expensive. I was barely standing on the shoulders of the low man on the totem pole of speaker wire.
I'm not an idiot although some would argue that because I'm attorney I can't be far off. Seriously, though, I consider myself to be aware of when someone's trying to pull the wool over my eyes. But I had no trouble swallowing the idea that you could improve your sound by using better cables. This did not sound like b.s. to me at all.
Three reasons for this: One, my existing system never did sound as good as I thought it should. It's a nice system as far as that goes--Pioneer Elite receiver and components with Definitive Technology's ProCinema 100 speakers. I spent a good amount of time tweaking it but somehow most of my CDs sounded a little flat. Here's some foreshadowing for you: I really got this notion into my head after listening to my brother-in-law play a Cat Stevens LP on his own system, same exact speakers--but his system had so much more presence than the CDs I play on mine. He told me he had a thousand bucks worth of cabling back there behind his setup,and very proudly showed me this impressive-looking wide and flat cabling. Very nice, and a hell of lot more visually exciting than my shit connectors. So hell, I heard it right there with my own two ears, or so I thought.
Two, bigger just naturally means better. More conductor allows more current to get to the speaker. And bigger shielding and rubber insulation had to do a better job of keeping out unwanted hum. A big, beefy cable surely would get more of that current to the speakers, and would probably even make them sound LOUDER. The details of the music would be more apparent with bigger cable, just like more water comes out of a fire hydrant than a water hose (did I mention I'm not an engineer?)
Three, everyone kept saying they were astonished by the difference in sound quality after upgrading cables. This, I thought, was the "It" factor in quality sound. I ran across a couple of articles on the net that mentioned there being some controversy about whether fancy cables were any better than zip cord. These articles characterized the "yeas" as being audiophiles with a keen appreciation and keener ears, and the "nays" as being geeky engineers with no ear for music anyway. Frankly, that made sense to me.
So I did it. I ordered about 500 bucks worth of really nice, beefy looking cable off the internet.
Then while I was waiting on those cables to arrive, I found this discussion board. I was actually trying to find more reviews on the brand I had just bought. When I saw this board, I thought "so here are those skeptics. Poor fellows." I really thought you (particularly you, Skeptic) were just the sore losers who just couldn't afford the nice stuff and were desperate trying to convince yourself that your shitty little lampwire and freebie comes-with-the-component cables were just as good. Lest you get the wrong idea, let me just point out that when I was growing up my mom always tried to convince me that powdered milk was just as good as 'real' milk. I thought, yeah, right, you're just telling me that because we can't afford real milk. This tastes like shit and you know it, Mom. Hence, same thought when I first saw you f |
| re: Thank you, Skeptic | FBGraham
Sep 19, 2003 11:37 PM | | Part II
Hence, same thought when I first saw you folks singing the praises of $3.00 worth of lamp cord: Powdered milk.
But I kept on reading Skeptic's comments, and many of the rest of yours, and damned if they didn't make sense too although I wasn't convinced yet. Just confused. Fortunately for me, my cables come with a 30-day money-back guarantee, so I could afford to sit back and do some sober assessment of these nice new cables.
So then I got the SACD player (cables hadn't arrived yet), and all I can say is every doubt I ever had about the quality of my system vanished. It sounded awesome. Finally, music coming out of my system sounded like that old Cat Stevens LP did at my bro-in-law's. And I still hadn't changed my cables. I realized that a very large part of the problem wasn't my cables, it was that CDs just don't sound as good as LPs. News flash, I know, but again I had always assumed this was another version of the powdered milk argument--poor saps who never had the money to upgrade from vinyl to CD. Just keep telling yourself your little vinyl discs are better than CDs.
And two days later the cables arrived. Boy oh boy, do they look awesome. Great fresh-soldered smell, beautiful beefy appearance, even felt cool to hold in my hands. I don't want to stick them behind my system, I want to show them off!
I couldn't do Skeptic's test because I don't seem to have a tape monitor function on my receiver and don't have a tape deck. Instead, I made up my own using my A-B speaker selector switch. I hooked my left speaker to the "A" output with the nice nifty new wire and my right front to the "B" output with the B-grade cheapo wire. I tested a mono CD (Beatles BBC sessions). Then, I just used the A-B switch to move between set-ups and listen. I detected absolutely not one bit of difference. No difference in color, volume, midrange, nothing. Just nothing.
Then I tested the interconnects by putting one on the left two-channel output of my SACD, keeping the nice speaker wire on that side as well. Right side had regular old cabling as before. A-B switch again and...I don't know, maaaaaybe some teeny little difference but I couldn't quite be sure. Nothing on anywhere near the magnitude of the step up from CD to SACD. Definitely not $500 worth of difference.
I wanted to like these fancy cables. I didn't want to admit that I'd been had. But while my ears could DEFINITELY hear the difference between SACD and regular CD--it's worthy of some serious hype (come to think of it, exactly the same hype people make about fancy cabling!)--I simply couldn't hear any real improvement in sound from my nice new cables and interconnects.
If it hadn't been for Skeptic and the rest of you, I would never have done any testing at all. Most likely I would have hooked up all those nice pretty cables and, if not marvel over how much better my system seemed to sound, have been pretty damned confident that I had fine quality cabling and could rest assured that I was getting some benefit from it.
Instead, I get to send back those beautiful cables and will get my money back. I have a brilliant idea for what to do with the $500 I'll get to pocket--buy some SACDs. That will definitely increase my quality music experience. So thank you, Skeptic. |
| re: Thank you, Skeptic | pctower
Sep 20, 2003 6:56 AM | | You may think you're scoring brownie points with the boys here, but most will consider you a fool for actually believing that SACD is an improvement over "perfect sound forever" redbook CD. |
| You're welcome Mr. Graham | skeptic
Sep 20, 2003 6:58 AM | | In case there is any lingering doubt, let me clarify a few things.
1. I am not poor. Very far from it. I can afford to buy any stereo equipment in the world if I want it. But I'm not a fool or a sucker. I expect value for my money. If all I am getting is visual esthetics, then I want to know that before I put my money down. I could not console myself having spent a thousand dollars on wires and upon being honest with myself finding out that they don't improve the sound of my stereo system by saying don't they look nice. If I want something that looks nice I'll buy a beautiful painting or a piece of sculpture and proudly display it in my home so other people can enjoy it too. As for wire, that's to be hidden insofar as possible. We do that will all of the other wires in the house because frankly they are not pretty to most people no matter what they look like.
2. I am not ignorant or inexperienced. As an electrical engineer with over 30 years of experience, I earn my living spending millions of dollars of other people's money. I show the same care and responsibility handling my own money as I do theirs. There are lots of things, including very expensive things which are not what the seller represents them to be. Nobody has unlimited financial resources. I'd rather buy a few bottles of fine wine or put the same money towards a cruise or a new camera lens than spend it on products that don't do what they are supposed to do.
3. I never said that expensive wires don't sound different from cheaper wires or from each other. What I said is first of all the people who want to sell them to me have to prove to me that they really are different, secondly they have to prove to me that the sound is better, not merely different, and thirdly that the improvement is somehow commensurate with the added cost. So far they haven't even shown that they meet my first requirement.
As an attorney, I'm sure that you have heard an endless litany of bogus claims and flawed arguements in court. If cable manufacturers presented the kind of case they make for their products with flimsy or non existant evidence in a law suit, they would be summarily thrown out of court. My advice is to use the same degree of healthy skepticism outside of the courtroom. |
| BTW | pctower
Sep 20, 2003 7:58 AM | | From what you said, you apparently wanted to put to the test claims you had heard and read about fancy cables.
Unfortunately, many of those claims have to do with improved soundstage, localization of instruments and imaging, none of which would have been revealed in your test if in fact the new wires were capable of such improvements in your system.
I'm not saying that the new cables would have been any difference. But your particular test was virtually worthless in testing many of the claims you had read. You may have satisfied some deep seated emotional need not to spend money on cables, but you sure didn't prove anything.
Also, did you at least try the new cables on both speakers. Sure, it would have been a sighted test, but apparently you leaped to the conclusion that SACD was far superior based on a sighted test. Why would you not at least want to subject the cables to the same method of comparison as you did with the SACD player? |
| re: Thank you, Skeptic | FLZapped
Sep 20, 2003 8:30 AM | | BTW - Just so you know, if you like them because they are big and beautiful, that's great. It's just all the seemingly miraculous claims made about how these <i>passive</i> devices can actually improve your system's sound.
The physics of interconnects has always boiled down to the shunt(parallel) capacitance being the main factor in how they will affect your sound. As for speaker wire, it is the series inductance.
BTW - you should know that unless you actually add components to your cables, they will behave as a low pass filter - in other words, at some point the higher frequencies will begin to be attenuated.
They cannot affect clarity, soundstage(Unless the electrical parameters vary to <b>EXTREME EXTREMES(!)</b> between individual cables), intrument definition, etc. That is captured in the recording itself.
Good luck.
-Bruce |
| re: Thank you, Skeptic | mtrycrafts
Sep 20, 2003 7:00 PM | | b I have a brilliant idea for what to do with the $500 I'll get to pocket--buy some SACDs. That will definitely increase my quality music experience.
Yes, that is the best solution in the end, enjoying music, more the better :) |
| Well... | rb122
Sep 22, 2003 6:58 AM | | A similar debate rages on the Digital Domain board regarding whether or not SACD is just as necessary as those fancy cables. Without steering you towards either side of any audio debates, I do think you might be interested in some of them and I do suggest you continue to explore.
But above all, enjoy the music! |
| Now there's a deep subject | skeptic
Sep 22, 2003 7:34 AM | | Can't Debate SACD. Never heard one. But I've already stuck my two cents in regarding what it would take for it to displace CDs and I say that the chances are against it. I've said before that I think that the next audio "breakthrough" in storage that will take the market to a new medium will have no moving parts, far greater resolution than any of today's media, and far greater storage capacity. Now how are you going to sell all 41 of Mozart's symphonies on a single card at a consumer acceptable price and still make a profit? |
| Now there's a deep subject | rb122
Sep 22, 2003 2:17 PM | | SACD may have a prayer for its multichannel capabilities but it won't displace CD, IMHO. Does it sound better? Absolutely. However, I'm leaning towards Robot Czar and Mtrycrafts' explanation that it's the mix rather than the medium.
b Now how are you going to sell all 41 of Mozart's symphonies on a single card at a consumer acceptable price and still make a profit?
There will be some folks that will buy a complete set and be willing to pay for it. For the rest, they'll buy one or two symphonies, both on a separate card, that will be loaded (added) by the customer to his own hard drive. He'll have essentially a "Mozart's Symphonies" directory that he can add files to in order to make up his complete directory... or something like that! |
| Now there's a deep subject | mtrycrafts
Sep 22, 2003 11:00 PM | | b Does it sound better? Absolutely. However, I'm leaning towards Robot Czar and Mtrycrafts' explanation that it's the mix rather than the medium.
Hard to compare 2 channels and 5 :) But there are 5 ch DD music that is very nice indeed from Delos. |
| Now there's a deep subject | rb122
Sep 23, 2003 6:27 AM | | Based on what precious little I've heard of multichannel music, it's very promising. I'm tempering my excitement somewhat but I'll be looking into it carefully in the not too distant future. I'm still just two channels at the moment! |
| Creating a niche.... | jsujo1
Sep 22, 2003 11:52 AM | | I read in Absoute Sound or somewhere, an explanation of how a high end speaker manufacturer created a niche for itself by simply charging a lot of money,,,,its a well know boutique brand...
Why cant people see that that is whats happening with the cable stuff...I have read posts of people opening the cables and finding generic Belden wire... |
| Creating a niche.... | mtrycrafts
Sep 22, 2003 11:02 PM | | b have read posts of people opening the cables and finding generic Belden wire...
Belden is one of the largest if not THE largest cable maker. Most, if not all buy from them. |
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