Ebm,
I agree, of course. It's very interesting because the common wisdom is that you buy a pair of interconnects and a pair of speaker cables, you connect your power conditioner and components with a single power cord, and away you go. The common wisdom is that if you want to improve the sound you change to a different cable brand or you mix and match brands and you try tweaking a bit.
My experience is that this approach may improve the sound somewhat but it will never get you to a much higher level -- a level that you may be able to attain if you think differently about your system and start to experiment with putting your cabling in series.
The way I came upon this idea was when I had two pair of excellent interconnects from two different companies -- each with a set of excellent non-identical attributes -- and I was trying to figure out which pair of interconnects to sell off. Then it came to me. Maybe I did not need to compromise. Maybe I could combine the sonic attributes of both cables by figuring out a way to connect both of them to my system.
Since both pairs were balanced cables I simply plugged one into the other and connected them to the system. The sound was awful. Then I reversed the two cables and BINGO!! I hit the jackpot. This is easy to experiment with if you have two good-quality XLR interconnects at home with one in the closet. Connect them and see what happens. It may work, but it may not. This is a story of trial and error. There is no way of telling what the results will sound like with any two or three cables in series until you connect them and power up. Give it a go. You may be pleasantly surprised.
I agree, of course. It's very interesting because the common wisdom is that you buy a pair of interconnects and a pair of speaker cables, you connect your power conditioner and components with a single power cord, and away you go. The common wisdom is that if you want to improve the sound you change to a different cable brand or you mix and match brands and you try tweaking a bit.
My experience is that this approach may improve the sound somewhat but it will never get you to a much higher level -- a level that you may be able to attain if you think differently about your system and start to experiment with putting your cabling in series.
The way I came upon this idea was when I had two pair of excellent interconnects from two different companies -- each with a set of excellent non-identical attributes -- and I was trying to figure out which pair of interconnects to sell off. Then it came to me. Maybe I did not need to compromise. Maybe I could combine the sonic attributes of both cables by figuring out a way to connect both of them to my system.
Since both pairs were balanced cables I simply plugged one into the other and connected them to the system. The sound was awful. Then I reversed the two cables and BINGO!! I hit the jackpot. This is easy to experiment with if you have two good-quality XLR interconnects at home with one in the closet. Connect them and see what happens. It may work, but it may not. This is a story of trial and error. There is no way of telling what the results will sound like with any two or three cables in series until you connect them and power up. Give it a go. You may be pleasantly surprised.