Have You Heard Exotic Audio Cables Improve Sound Quality? - Page 9

While not "unsafe" in the literal sense, I found the way the poll was presented quite offensive.

Generally, presenting the option of "better" without also presenting the option of "worse" sets up bias, and is offensive.

Funny how all these alleged changes are always for the better, no?

My actual experience is that "exotic audio cables" do one of two things:

1) absolutely nothing, or

2) screw things up.

Thanks for this. I wanted to post the same thing.

People lifting their speaker wire off the ground with feng shiu guideline wooden oak blocks etc. All this crap people do, and it always makes an improvement. I've never seen one of these gullible idiots go "Oh so I got this special mat to put my CD player on top, and the MUSICALITY was severely tarnished. My mids seem more metallic and less wooden."

I love going through discussions like this and hand-picking who to stick on my ignore list. Any mention of jitter and they are GONE.

Casinos are proof that "luck" exists. That's why a 60/40 split in a double blind test is still not good enough to be meaningful. As for expensive cables making things sound worse, so long as we are discussing strictly cable then exotic cables can no more make anything sound worse than they can make it sound better. The "exotic cables make things sound worse" argument only holds up when some other form of electronics are thrown into the signal path. Pure cable is pure cable, barring any need for shielding with analog interconnects, which I think is one area where many people agree that cheap doesn't quite cut it.

Assuming you aren't comparing the junk to good, not much. I've used specialist cord, 12 ga zip, and for giggles, coaxial cable. Once you use decent stuff, no audible difference.

If you compare Monster Cable or such to the 22 gauge speaker wires provided, or compare discount RGB RCA cables to something robust, you'll hear a difference. Once you get to "good", though, no difference.

my 2 cents. I've decent high end sound stuff, wish I had better speakers, but I'm sure my room acoustics overwhelm wires....

My favorite is 12 gauge heater wire...the copper is better quality.

when you put a few thin stranded wires with a plastic sheath near a cordless phone or power source it comes through on the speakers, just like when you hear an incoming txt before you receive it.

I can get this effect when i use 4 strand copper cabling with no shielding and i can also hear this on a standard telephone handset lead.


Its obvious then that one of the most important aspects of cabling is the environment it is subjected to and the subsequent shielding (or lack of) that may play a part in signal transmission.

I would say making sure your cables don't run near power sources (that are also lightly shielded) or sources of local EM is the first step. The second step is to get a cable with some shielding and i mean proper shielding which amusingly leads the conversation to how good coaxial is (if it was only more bendy) as its highly shielded and uses better copper.

your non nonsense OFC copper is good but with all these transparent plastic sleeves you can see that it isn't protected from the envrionment at all

Not quite.. *Some* listeners (and I doubt it would in a room where there's typically an 'audience' ) could reliably do it -- and that's why the .2dB limit is there. It applies especially in the midrange (vocal) frequencies were we are most sensitive.



Rigorous DBTs are indeed rigorous -- far, far more rigorous than the procedure a typical 'audiophile' undergoes to decide that some exotic cable 'sounds better'. You want the listeners to be trained beforehand to hear various kinds of difference, you want program material and a signal chain that is likely to reveal the putative difference, you want positive controls, you want negative controls, you want randomized order, you want instant switching between A and B and X, you want synchronization of playback , and of course you want double-blinding. In short, you want to give every chance to Nature to reveal this supposed difference.

That said, typical audiophiles saying "i hear this difference between cheap and expensive speaker cables' are saying 'my ears are already trained enough to hear this difference'. OK,then let's test that proposition. Show me the DBT results. Until then, the more *reasonable* assumption, based on established engineering and psychoacoustic principles, is: expect no real audible difference between competently made & gauged & connected speaker cables. It's not like we have to start at ground zero, with all propositions being equally likely to be true.
Edited by krabapple - 3/7/13 at 11:31am

Nothing. It's the sort of 'sciency' bafflegab tactic that DarqKnight employs on audio forums. NO ONE would dispute that certain aspects of system setup affect imaging -- e.g. speaker position and aiming. I highly doubt the 1961 article claims that choice of speaker cabling does.

Here is a negative review from a user Audiogon

04-26-07: Glenn_garza
I had one Cardas Cross PC for a year or so. I tried it in different positions, and although it added nothing remotely resembling brightness, the system seemed to have a disparity between the highs and lows. There was a nice midrange, but the highs and lows were totally different, with the midbass on down being thicker and less defined. I blamed it on the Cross PC and sold it. I have since had the same effect, even worse, at different times depending on the combination of ICs, PCs, and power conditioners. Even had the same effect with Golden Reference PCs at times, but with them working great at other times. Perhaps other things contribute to the characteristic (speakers, room, amp), and certain combinations of cables or conditioners exacerbates it. At any rate, it may not have been the Cross PC (otherwise it was pretty good).
G

Raife trots out his 'paper' as proof that any form of blind testing isn't relevant. I had my wife pull the paper since she works at University. It's a joke. His findings are inconclusive, never been peer reviewed as far as I know, and never presented in any audio related forum. Not even so much as a poster session.

All from a person with over $40,000 worth of electronics driving some ~20 year old Polk SDA speakers. Think about it.
Edited by Jinjuku - 3/7/13 at 3:33pm

trust fund babies must buy this stuff. i know some people with large sums of money but they are super bright and i doubt they would throw down this kind of cash for speaker cables.

I have large sums of money, I'm not very bright and I still don't buy this stuff. Monoprice for me.

Absolutely no science whatsoever to these claims. Yet people fall for them all the time. Normal stranded wire is fine -- just do the standard resistance calculations for wire size versus length to determine if you will get adequate frequency response and that the power loss will be. One of the cute things these guys do is sell short lengths of cable. If there was any performance problem in the first place due to long lengths of thin cable well, IT WILL sound better. It's nothing more than a scam.

Occam's razor says one of the sets was faulty so you heard a difference or one allowed for a small increase in volume due to higher gauge wire being used. Just a thought. If something made no sense within the framework of the laws of physics I'd look for the trick rather than look for an alteration in the laws. Just sayin'
Rgrds-Ross

Case closed these high-end cables are 99% profits

I buy the highest quality cables possible. Like my super expensive speaker wire, which was like $30 for 100', and it only cost that much because it's all 12 guage from Monoprice. I think there is value in the "premium" cables, but the "premium" cables don't have to cost more than a few bucks, thanks to Monoprice, and they do all the extra shielding and plating and all that crap.

Seriously though, the super high-end stuff is itself beyond what humans can perceive, so at that point, nothing matters.

Also, no matter how rich I was, I'd still buy Monoprice cabling, and good 12-gauge speaker wire from someone else for in-wall use (after the whole insulation fire rating thing).

Well I did vote that I don't have enough experience to say.. just to be fair. But honestly, I think as long as you have a decent gauge for what you are running and how far you are running it, the only other difference is build quality. For that reason, I usually buy the 10 dollar cable instead of the 2 dollar version. To each their own.

There really isn't such a thing as better copper, that's an audio myth for the most part. Most copper even in cheap wire is 99% or better. Even if you had 50% pure copper and the rest was whatever conducting metal you think they'd mix in, it would still boil down to proper gauge for distance.

Sheilding is pretty much a comon sense thing based on environment, and really the plastic coating is usually fine for most. I use twisted pair speaker cables and coaxial interconnects. Never had an issue with EM.

I'm aware that hearing loss affects the frequency range we hear but does it affect the dynamic range? I'm inclined to think not, but don't know for sure. If by hearing loss you mean amplitude, is it not conceivable you'd just have to turn up the volume to hear the extended highs, and sweetened mids and tight bottom end of esoteric cables...

The true goal of high performance power cables is to reduce the amount of cash in your wallet.

If a power cable makes a difference there's only two possible reasons, one is it's a conditioner not a cable, or two, your previous one was broken. Basically, if it's the former you have serious power issues in your home or you have a faulty power supply in the unit in question. The act of converting A/C to D/C in the power supply should eliminate any A/C noise in the first place.

There's a delicious irony that those that buy the $1000 power cords are usually the owners of uber high end gear, so I guess as you spend more money, the power supply sections get worse?

Love it

Hilarious and completely accurate! A fairly small handful of relatively inexpensive components (except for the transformer) turn whatever junk is on the AC line into relatively clean and stable DC. Yet somehow an exotic cable on the wrong end of the power supply (that only fills maybe six feet of the total distance) makes a difference with respect to the sound? Fascinating!
Edited by Fat Dave - 3/9/13 at 1:31pm

The other ironic part is that what's in the walls? On the street? Surely not silver oxygen-free multi-core hyper sealed whatever the heck they sell for tons of money!

Never saw 3ft of religion fix 100 miles of sin.

Awesome! Maybe the last three feet is like repenting on your death-bed, and all sins are absolved?

I like many after 40 years of audio have tried a lot of the "High End" cables and power chords. I have never heard a diffrence in the speaker(under 12' run) and power chords. I have heard a diffrence in using 98% silver I/C's and so has my wife-more detail.

From sound.westhost.com;

"The use of silver wire is a complete waste, since the only benefit of silver is its lower resistance. Since this will make a few micro-ohms difference for a typical 1m length, the difference in signal amplitude is immeasurably small with typical pre and power amp impedances. On the down side, silver tarnishes easily (especially in areas where there is hydrogen sulphide pollution in the atmosphere), and this can become an insulator if thick enough."

I can't think of any reason for one metal to sound different than another providing it meets the electrical and shielding requirements of the transmission distance. Silver will handle the electrical requirements with a thinner gage than copper but that's about it, no reason for it to audibly affect the audio signal.

If both you and your wife noticed the difference without knowing the cable had been changed, then there would be greater validity to that observation. But the most powerful tool in audio is "perception" or the subconscious brain... just knowing you changed the cable can lead to a pre-determined outcome. It's not personal knock, I'm just pointing out a common occurance and I've fooled myself enough times to understand I'm no different..... we're all suseptible...

A question for the EEs: Would a copper wire electrocute me less than a silver wire?

What kind of power chords were those, big windmill types like Pete Townsend or more like Joan Jett?

need more pictures in this thread i love pics...



maybe its all in the plugs or spades used at the termincation point..?



im happy with my diy cl 2 12 awg 65 strand ofc from mono price looks good sounds good..



but i wonder should i go to cl 2 10 awg for a 50 foot in wall run..?

thanks