What Matters and What is Nonsense

hifiman5,

I respect your experience with your system!

I’m not looking to turn the thread into a "cable" thread beyond simply stating my experience and view. And since you asked...

Over the years I have had experience with fancy cable. Especially having done some reviewing long ago and knowing other reviewers, people in the industry, high end shop owners etc, I’ve had some experience with quite a number of fancy cables over the years.
And often enough I would get cast off cables from higher-rolling friends, or if I have to borrow a cable, I’ll end up with some far higher priced cables than I would buy.

So various cables have been in and out of my system, and I’ve heard tons of the highest end cables in reviewer’s systems.

Nothing ever convinced me to spend money on the high end cables. (In fact I did some blind tests on some Shunyata AC cables that cured me of ever wanting to spend money there...)

I’m not at all adamant that high end interconnect or speaker cables can’t sound different. In theory of course they could be made to sound different. (Though "different" and "more accurate" aren’t the same of course. I’m a bit more skeptical that super expensive cables are passing higher fidelity signals than a competently built cheap cable - which would seem capable of passing everything in the source signal just fine. None of the the many incredible old recordings (let alone many new) that are still reference quality today were using boutique cables and the cables used in recording, mixing, mastering etc seemed to perform just find. And I’m even more suspicious of AC cables. But, again, I’m no expert and I’m just making inferences from my own experience and the most trustworthy info I can find elsewhere).

If anybody is keeping a tally, one more vote for mostly agreeing with the original post. I would add a few points to amplifier, though.

As far as cables go, I feel it is worth investing in them a little bit for cosmetic/visual effect. I have not yet, but would.

The only tweak I did was add a Monarchy Audio AC Regenerator to my system (tube preamp and tube phono stage) and it made a significant difference - more low level information. Nice.

@markalarsen 

I’d disagree about electronics being more important than speakers.  I’ve demoed B&W 804 D3s powered by an Integra receiver running through a Magnolia switchboard and they still sounded excellent, and a clear step up from the CM10 S2s even with what would be considered a big electronics mismatch.  

Can electronics sound different?  Sure, and tubes in particular can introduce euphonic distortion that many find pleasing.  I’ve heard some tube amps that sounded great, and I may play around with one in one of my systems at home, but they’re not necessarily more accurate (which may or may not matter to the individual listener). 

Still, tubes aside, once you’ve found an amp that’s capable of handling your speakers’ load (which will be more demanding for difficult to drive speakers like Revel Salon2s, certain electrostats, or a notorious amp killer like the Apogee Fullrange), you’ve found enough power to drive your speakers to the desired dynamic peaks in your room, and the specs on the amp are good enough to not introduce audible crosstalk or noise, the differences between electronics should be pretty slim, other than DSP features which can have a dramatic effect on the sound.  

The distortion introduced by speakers and room effects will be orders of magnitude greater than that introduced by electronics.  Spend the money on the speakers and the room, and enough on electronics to drive them without limitations.  

I don’t know why I rise to the bait of these provocative posts, but I do. If the OP had just added a small caveat that this is his humble opinion then all would be well. But no, we have an objective position described, even down to scoring each element out of ten. Oh dear.

I have 40 years in audiophilia (I mention that as the OP states his/her 50 years gives him/her some God-given right to be right) and 30 years working in the music industry including much time spent with mastering engineers at one of the UK’s biggest recording and mastering studios. I can categorically state that the OP may be stating his beliefs, but they are no more than that, and by no means are they definitive truths.

Let’s take the mastering studios as an example: very expensive amps, cables and DACs are present. And remember these guys, as mastering engineers, need the most accurate sound from their source. And interestingly different engineers spend different proportions of their budget on different elements. But if you only take the elements in the studio that match home Hifi, none of the engineers would recognize your assertion of truth, and indeed in none of the studios are the speakers the most expensive item from the dac/amp/room treatment/cabling.

And my own system? Having heard near perfect audio reproduction in the studio I knew what sound I wanted to achieve. After endless home demos along the way, only spending when an improvement was heard, I ended up with the following spends:
cdp/dac (34% of the total cost),
integrated amp (38% of total cost),
speakers (14%),
cables/rack/grounding/isolation (14% - and yes, these have made as important a contribution as the speakers).

The sound I have achieved is not as perfect as the mastering studios, but it’s pretty amazing.

The difference is, I would never say that you or anyone, should follow my spending allocation, nor that of the studios, nor that of the OP. Every person is different, every room is different, every system is different. Let people find their own truths and please stop proclaiming yours as THE truth.