Cable curmudgeon
I'm not an 'audiophile" but I like to think I have a good ear having been a professional musician (principal wind player in major symphony orchestras) for 50 years. A number of years ago going into an excellent audio equipment store I talked with, what seemed, a knowledgeable salesman. Being a musician experienced in audio systems but not expert on all the equipment out there I had some questions concerning high (over-priced?) end cables. The salesman assured there was an audible differencet in a demo room switching back and forth etc. After a few minutes I noticed the sound coming out of only one channel. He complemented me on my "good ear." Hmmm? A few years later when setting up my home system I investigated speaker cables. Two sets of Monster, stranded standard cable, solid core copper (used for alarm system) attached with like connecters. There was a difference. However, not in terms of better or worse: bass and treble were acceptable as was clarity loud and soft. Differences were esthetic- like asking "whose the best tenor" (I like Plácido). Now I know as a musician used to live (i.e. un-amplified) music that all I hear coming out of a loud speaker is perforce ersatz. But most everything today comes out of a loud speaker whether a rock concert or a hi-fi system so perhaps my opinion is curmudgeonly. But, for me, spending oodles of money on hyped cables, well... I liked the solid core for my alarm system- still do.
Not so. Professional studios have long been cognizant of cable deltas. One studio had Monster, Mogami, Canare, Belden, etc. and some then 40 year old Neumanns. The room, microphones, wiring, console and recorder all contribute to "The Sound" of famous places like Air, Sunset, The Record Plant, Hit Factory, etc. Many’s the time a part was recorded ’cross town for the particular flavor. Sometimes we’d rent a particular recorder to keep that flavor constant and garnish with the other flavors.
I’m 100% in agreement on the lunacy of spend beacoup bux on cables hyped by FanBoys or salesmen. About 40 years ago, I ran an AES clinic wherein we compared a pricy Monster speaker wire and THHN. Very few participants got better than a coin toss. A few got very high marks is discerning the difference, which was not subtle. Those same few also got high marks in the valve vs SS and polarity clinics. Bottom line, in any population, some can tell all of the time, some some and some none. IMO, the closer one moves to NONE, the more strident the advocacy. The NONEs who spend the most are perhaps the most strident. Since we’re ’reading into’, presumably many of the posters here would fare no better than guessing, but ramble on about the benefits of cables they own connected to their gear in their room on their program. It’s silly to think cables can have no effect and purely unscientific to think that a particular cable will shine in all instances. About twenty years ago, after I’d been out of recording for about 15 years, I upped the HiFi ante a little and auditioned some qualtiy cables. It’s irrelevant for everyone but me & the missus in that room but maybe a bit entertaining ieLogical Audiophilia Redux Cable Quest Few musicians and engineers I worked with had a HiFi worth mentioning. One top engineer commented that my system was too good as it exposed the LP for the rubbish it is compared to the master tape played on the recording deck in the mix room. |
Big +1 @newbee Bingo!!! I’ve played in a band for many years, and there’s very little from playing live music that translates to assessing individual components of an audio system. And I don’t care how good you think your ears are — being able to judge audio components takes many hours of listening to a wide variety of equipment to even begin to be able to make useful, robust, and reliable conclusions. This is especially true for components like cables and digital front ends where differences can be more subtle yet still critical to the overall and ultimate performance of a stereo system, and these components take even more time than other components to get to know what to listen for. When I first started out I couldn’t hear much, if any, differences between wires and CD players, but with time and experience they become obvious and much easier to hear and appreciate. So given the OP’s clear lack of experience in these areas it’s not surprising he’s happy with garbage wire — he has no perspective to know what he’s hearing. But then to make the silly and ridiculous leap to state that more expensive cables are just “hype,” well, that’s where it got uncool for me. Anyway, thanks newbie for reinforcing what I said in my first post. |
"This used to be among the absolute best forum. Now its a food fight filled with newbies who are no more audiophile than my 7 yr old niece. But they know it all, like I did when I was 17-18." Wow! This and similar comments from others in this thread should make people in the industry, hoping to lure new users to the audiophile world weep. |
Let me see if I can throw some light on where @exflute was coming from. To him all music is not the same. For him pure unamplified live acoustic music is different from other forms. He's a classical musician. I think he's got a good point and one I can understand. For him electronic artifacts are an interference to his listening pleasure, be it an electric guitar, a tape recorder, a digital set-up, whatever. That's not unreasonable surely. After all, we all admit there is no perfect hi-fi system; in fact more are a poor substitute for live music. But its all we have. I am not prepared to concede, as quite a number here have posited, that exflute's ears are good for playing in a professional orchestra but bad for hearing cable differences.
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