DO CABLES REALLY MATTER?

@retearl What does he know? He’s only an engineer with highly sophisticated measuring technology at his disposal! Where is the evidence that he’s measured every cable on the market? What gives him the right to sit on his high horse and pontificate as if we’re all simpletons? The sheer nerve of people who dare to suggest that cables are the biggest money making con in audio makes my blood boil!!

No seriously, thanks for that, and thanks too to Mr Dunlavy for having spoken up on the behalf of integrity.

I like the first part of his closing paragraph.

"I sincerely believe the time has come for concerned audiophiles, true engineers, competent physicists, academics, mag editors, etc. to take a firm stand regarding much of this disturbing new trend in the blatantly false claims frequently found in cable advertising."

But as for the second part, it’s far too late regarding the press as far as I’m concerned.

"If we fail to do so, reputable designers, engineers, manufacturers, magazine editors and product reviewers may find their reputation tarnished beyond repair among those of the audiophile community we are supposed to serve."

Dunlavy is the poster boy for a sadly mistaken old dude who clung to his ancient beliefs of physics and reality to the bitter end in the face of a mountain of evidence. You can find quite a few old school guys around who are at least two paradigm shifts behind the power curve of reality. Whether it’s cables, cable directionality, aftermarket fuses, power cords, power cord directionality or whatever you can always find some manufacturers somewhere who stubbornly refuse to enter the 21st century. Wake up and smell the coffee ☕️ dude!

Mountain of BS with absolutely no evidence, just anecodotal stuff. I have never seen an AES paper proving sound differences of various cables and won’t ever see one because it is all equipment and component performance related.

I was having an issue with brightness in my system, and was attempting to address it through interconnects. It turned out that an isolation transformer was needed, but it took a lot to convince me to try it. After all, with conventional power supplies you are already using a transformer, a step down transformer in your power supply. Obviously they must be designed differently. Anyway, that left me with a lot of what I considered to be expensive cables, so obviously I had to make a determination as to which sounded best. Years back I had made ICs using LAT International's hookup wire, but as they are now defunct, I was unable to compare their products, which I believe would have at least been in the finals. Anyway, after spending several thousand dollars, I found that in my system, and there were a hand full of cables that were really tight contenders, Signal Audio's silver coated copper wire edged out the rest. I have always preferred a silver/copper mix it seems, but after hearing about the "diode" effect of silver clad copper wire, I was a little bit surprised that Signal Audio, the LEAST expensive IC's that I tried, beat cables costing many times as much. Mind you, impedance between devices, and a host of other issues come into play, so it's even possible that Signal Audio's cables may be the worst sounding cable in other systems, but when I buy cables in the future, Signal Audio's cables will be on my list of cables to try. Of course as I already have them in my system, I can just move them in order to test them with a particular device.

shadornem

Mountain of BS with absolutely no evidence, just anecodotal stuff. I have never seen an AES paper proving sound differences of various cables and won’t ever see one because it is all equipment and component performance related

Perhaps you've never seen such as AES paper because you are not a member of AES. Would that be correct?

Are you familiar with Richard Black's "Audio Cable Distortion is Not a Myth" treatise? It's from 2006. You might want to review it before you repeat your claim. If you're an AES member you can read it for free.