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Need Good Advice - Speaker Cable

I have an Audio Refinement Complete driving Soliloquy 5.0 monitors and a Rotel 855 CDP. I've had them a year hooked up with well seasoned original Monster Cables. The last couple of months, I've been auditioning speaker cables to get rid of some grime in the highs and some thinness to some vocals.

The system with my Monsters is actually quite pleasureable. It has a vibrant, room filling, holographic kind of quality that is very exciting even at low levels. Bass is very good and the midrange can really be wonderful with terrific tone and color to the music. Highs can be very transparent also.

I've now tried in my system Transparent Audio The Wave 100 (lifeless and veiled sounding), Analysis Plus Oval 12 (pretty good resolution and good purity, but too rolled off sounding, not exciting), Mapleshade Golden Helix (amazing stuff really, very pure high end, a bit too bright, some sibilance and some nasality to vocals). Just received and now listening to Monster Cable Z-1 (it has the expansive Monster sound that I'm used too, fair resolution, decent bass, but some grime in the midrange so far).

Almost everything has a cleaner high end than my old Monster's, but nothing is as exciting, enjoyable and colorful as they are. I was thinking of trying a low to mid priced Nordost cable next.

This business of testing cables is still fun, but I'm not sure when/where it will end. Can someone who is familiar with my experiences give me some direction?

Thanks,
Chris
ssglx
dragon1952
181 posts
 
QUOTEAre you guys kidding us? Could you really distinguish any of the above mentioned speaker cables in a double blind test from 12 - 14 AWG zip cord?QUOTE

Double blind, schmuble blind! I get so tired of hearing this statement. After starting with Canare star quad 4S11 and switching to my Olympus Audio Demeters I noticed a huge improvement. After a few weeks I switched back just to make sure and the 4S11 sounded pretty darn nice. Then I switched back again and the difference was evident. Double blind test is flawed big time. Listen to both for several weeks and then switch. Then switch back again. If there is a difference it will be obvious.
irvrobinson
295 posts
 
Dragon1952, I haven't heard anyone here advocate DBTs. Having participated in a couple, I don't like them and find them annoying. No value add. On the other hand, some of us can't hear any differences between well-designed cables, and I don't know what a "huge improvement" sounds like, but in your post sounds like the usual hyperbole. Electrically, almost nothing is better than 10 gauge zip cord with closely-spaced conductors.
ssglx OP
203 posts
 
I guess I should have also said that I too went to Lowes and cut up a $12 12 ga extension cord and tried it for a week. Not bad, much livelier than A-Plus and Transparent, much better soundstage than the Mapleshade, but lots of sibilance and some dirt on the voices. Yup, big difference; different than any of the other 6 cables/wire that I have tried. I threw the orange cord in the dumpster, and hooked back up my monsters...

Chris
dragon1952
181 posts
 
QUOTEDragon1952, I haven't heard anyone here advocate DBTs.QUOTE

I was responding to the post 3 above mine....maybe you missed it. And I'm genuinely sorry that you've never heard a 'huge improvement' before. I hope you will someday.
BTW, I don't know about the hyperbole but I am looking forward to the superbowl this weekend. :^
donbellphd
205 posts
 
Well, Dragon1952, forced-choice comparisons are a staple of scientific study of perceptual evaluations, as are double blind procedures. To do otherwise is simply unsupportable. You may dislike such protocals; they can challenge strongly held predispositions, and you may feel they are a test of your ability to discern a difference. But if you cannot consistently identify which is A and which is B in an ABX comparison, then any difference is irrelevant to you. No amount of hand waving nor hyper verbiage will impresse a technical/scientific community. Fortunately for the HIFI business, ABX comparisons are usually cumbersome for consumers to perform, so predispositions prevail, hand waving and hyper verbaige thrive.

db
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