A Perennial Debate For Which I Seek Help


Wire, Terminations, Dielectric, Solder, in summary, the linkages in our systems, the terminals in the path. Doubting your cabling can only lead to paranoia, and thus, fearing the snub of fellow audiophiles, you shun the Tuesday night shootouts, the gatherings that once made Tuesdays better than Fridays. Please, don't shun the shootout, I know of no gathering more intoxicating. They remind us we are alive and human, no mere beast in search of flesh and sustinance alone.

My Situation - I recently had a pair of speakers upgraded with new caps, chokes, posts, wire, etc... Not until I went to install the reworked crossovers, however, did I realize how cheap the connection was at the drivers. The woofer has a small terminal board mounted on the basket where the lead wires attach to two stamped rivets. The rivets and brackets are both loose. These clips are followed by a 3" wire to the woofer, some sort of tin-coated cotton or wiring of similar texture and tensility.

As for the tweeter, one of the even smaller pins used for the lead wires snapped off. I could try to solder it back on, yet more fundamentally, with all the money spent on speaker cables, IC's, perhaps hundreds on binding posts alone, aren't these shoddy driver terminations, hidden inside the cabinet, an egregiously weak link in the chain, or am I missing something specific about this particular connection? Any insight is truly appreciated.
nycwine1
Learsfool, It seems you are essentially saying that cables are unimportant past a certain price point. You lay out your logic for remaining only with economical cables from a variety of manufacturers. Though I disagree, I respect your thinking. I am inclined to agree with you more in reference to economical rigs, but not agree as the quality of the system rises. At the level of $50-75K systems and above I almost completely disagree.

A question and an Observation:

1. What are you using to clean the connections?

2. If you unplug the cables for a while, some suggest that it "resets" the cable and dielectric charges are lost, thus inhibiting the performance temporarily. It matters not to me, but I was not sure if you knew of this theory in regards to cable performance. I am sincerely curious; do you unplug the cables to let them "breathe"? Do you feel they improve with a "rest"? I'm not being sarcastic, but I've not discussed this with anyone prior. Please describe this facet of using cables.

What fascinates me is that your "let the cables rest" idea is dielectrically opposed (WOA! Fun pun!!) to the "keep it plugged in at all costs" crowd. I want to find out more about your perspective on it.

To me, the "dielectric theory" has not passed my Law of Efficacy. i.e. It has not been significant enough, even on "steeper end" rigs, to be important. :)
Douglas_schroeder - what I mean is that there are good and bad cables at all price points, and that I do not believe that wire will make any more difference in a $2000 system than it does in a $100,000 system, or vice versa. You seem to be saying that the higher the system's price point, the more important wire becomes proportionally in it, and this is what I disagree with. I use the lower price point as an example since the vast majority of us cannot afford $100,000 systems. I don't think anyone should put say $1500 worth of wire in a system if their system budget totals $6000, for example. The money can be spent much more wisely by buying better source components or speakers. The same would be true at a much higher price point. I also believe that if your source components or speakers or amps are poor (again, regardless of price point), wire is not going to somehow make them better. There are those who would argue that it does, and my opinion is that you should run away from a dealer trying to "fix" your system by selling you much more expensive wire, an all too common trick. Again, I never said wire was unimportant, just that it is overrated by some.

As for the "breathing" theory, no I am not specifically aware of that. I am merely repeating advice given to me from several different sources, which is that if one cleans the cable connections every so often, you will maintain a better electrical connection, and that unplugging them and plugging them in again every so often helps to do this. I do not pretend to have a knowledge of the science behind these recommendations, but I did hear a difference when I tried it. I am a professional orchestral musician, and my knowledge of the science of music includes a working musician's knowledge of acoustics and some basic practical recording knowledge (things like mike placements, basic knowledge of different types of equipment, etc.). I use my ears to judge equipment, not specs or price points. I wish alot more recording engineers and audio equipment makers and dealers and audiophiles would do the same. :)
Learsfool, we're not so far apart; there's many things we see similarly. Most different is the amount we would each contribute to the cables in a system and their "importance" overall. Everyone has to decide that for himself.

At first it sounded like you were indicating leaving the cables unplugged for a short period of time, hence my choice of the term "breathing". It seems you're rephrasing the action of unplugging and plugging them in again. If there is indeed an audible effect I would never experience the degradation of sound from leaving cables connected too long, as I break down and rebuild systems on a regular basis.
I agree that we are not very far apart at all, that's what I was trying to say in the first place. I also agree that everyone needs to decide for themselves what is the most important to them in their own systems. For me, I go back and forth between whether speakers or source components are the most important, usually siding with speakers. Amplification would be third, and recent experiments/reading are beginning to convince me that power conditioning may be more important than cables and interconnects as well, though I am undecided there. Unfortunately, being a musician, I don't have the financial luxury to switch things in and out all the time, so I did an awful lot of listening and research for quite a long time and bought the best I could afford, and don't anticipate being able to change or upgrade anything for a long time yet. I still listen to other stuff as much as I can, and read about a whole lot more, including things I will never be able to afford. And I am very fortunate, as I said, to play in a great concert hall almost every day, and have played in many others all over the world, so I have an unusually large frame of reference which no audio equipment will ever truly live up to, of course. Sure is a fun hobby, though I am really much more interested in comparing recordings than equipment. It's all about the music for me, the equipment being merely a means to that end.