Cable curmudgeon

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.

There are people who are in this hobby and claim that there are not differnces between cables, or that digital transports sounds the same or that diy dacs or speakers sound good or better than hi end products. Perhaps I would argue with them, if I had extra time to spend on unknown people and unimportant subjects.

On the other hand, there are people who are not in this hobby and to whom any properly configurated hi fi system may sound almost the same and who are not burdened by its imanent idiosyncracy.

It would be wise if every such statement should be taken within its context and with proper understanding of its origin.

On the other hand, op has raised some interesting questions, perhaps even unintentionally. Some food for the thoughts...

Does hi fi have meaning beyond listening of unamplified music (other than classical, jazz or similar)

Does anybody really believe that hi fi reproduction can sound like a 'real thing'?(except for the tone and timbre of instruments)...Stereo does not exist in the nature...(there are excellent mono systems, I know)

Hi fi is all about creation of illusion of 'live event' and no matter how big is your room, I doubt that anyone can fit in a symphonic orchestra...Somebody even wrote that his reproduction is even more real than the live event...which is fine if you are fan of hyperrelism...but, some might call such way of expression as artificial, with every right... 

Naming hi fi as a tool which will help as hear the recordings as they were made is another myth. Nobody, except the mastering engineers knows how something sounded before its been worked on. We can only compare the recordings with our imaginary references, that were made on live events or perhaps by listening different gear.

In any case, the op does not deserve the personal attacks. Hi fi should be fun and enterteiment, a hobby (no matter how pointless or expensive it might be) and not the extension of someone's ego...

@alexatpos The following

'In any case, the op does not deserve the personal attacks. Hi fi should be fun and entertainment, a hobby (no matter how pointless or expensive it might be) and not the extension of someone's ego...',

are my sentiments exactly, each to there own, and each to using the equipment and ancillaries where they are most satisfied.

In the OP there is a reference to a experience that potentially caused the thread creator to be aloof, this is possibly something expressed by all to some degree, who have spent time close to the retail side of HiFi.

The results the thread creator has perceived during their own trials with Cables are their experience, perception and assessment, I accept their findings. 

M