2. cables
  3. 1215950921

Cable elevators - conventional wisdom wrong?

Reluctant to put any considerable money in them, the reasons for using cable elevators seemed intuitively correct to me: decouple cables mechanically from vibration and insulate them from the carpet's static. I have therefore built cheap elevators myself using Lego building blocks. (Plastic with a more or less complex internal structure; moreover, there is enormous shaping flexibility, for instance you can also build gates with suspended strings on which to rest the cables)
In their advertisement/report on the Dark Field elevators, Shunyata now claim that conventional elevators are actually (very?) detrimental in that they enable a strong static field to build up between cable and floor causing signal degradation.
Can anyone with more technical knowledge than I have assess how serious the described effect is likely to be? Would there, theoretically, be less distortion with cables lying on the floor? Has anyone actually experienced this?
karelfd
mmarvin19
157 posts
 
If I may summarize the opinions on this thread:

> risers improved SQ by 3%
> risers resulted in large improvement in SQ
> risers resulted in no SQ improvement
> risers resulted in worse SQ
> use plastic risers
> use anything other than plastic risers
> use those glass thingees from telephone poles
> avoid the glass thingees
> collect the glass thingees and sell them to an antiques store
> use one particular brand of risers or don't bother using risers at all
> don't even try risers if your mother-in-law lives with you
dave_b's avatar
dave_b
3,159 posts
 
Yup, that pretty much covers it Mmarvin19:O)
eweedhome
227 posts
 
Mmarvin19 - Truly brilliant summary, although I might offer a slight amendment to the last: don't even try risers if you HAVE a mother-in-law. They'll heckle you even if all they do is visit every now and then...and that will open the door to heckling from everybody in the family, except for the dog.

Speaking of dogs, one of my friends and I both have Shelties, and we've noticed that, if we can get them to lie on the speaker cables, the sound warms up just a bit after about 5 minutes. I'm not sure it works with any other breed.
tbg
5,263 posts
 
Unfortunately, our conventional electrical understanding doesn't allow an answer to your question. If you try raising your cables and using different materials, you will hear differences. There are multiple components to these differences. Vibrations, static, EMI, RFI etc. all detract from the realism you hear from your speakers. My best advice is to leave your ears guide you as science, given our present understanding, cannot.

I prefer ceramic isolators, with one on every wire, including those with no contact with anything except at each end. I have, however, experience the benefits of wood on top these isolators under speaker wires. I also know that raw silk pads under these speaker wires at the isolators absolutely killed the sound. Also, with the exception of the Townshend interconnects, I have always rejected ferrite rings anywhere.
dave_b's avatar
dave_b
3,159 posts
 
Tbg might be on to something...today, after several days of settling in with the Dark Fields, I noticed that some of my favorite recordings were sounding a bit constricted in the midbass and middle C range of the piano etc... Highs were also sounding slightly dry. Hmmm, I will experiment further, but there may be a costly trade off with the risers.
More to discover