Cable Controversy

I would love to sit down and talk with this person, and I will make it worth their while:

He/she would be an experienced listener with intact hearing, and a good working knowledge of acoustics and electrical engineering.  He/she would be in possession of an excellent playback system, having used it to evaluate cable looms from the most highly regarded brands. He/she would have excellent communication skills, in order to describe his/her findings and conclusions. And finally, he/she would be completely rational, objective, and unbiased in forming these conclusions.

Anyone?

One thing I discovered about some pretty high profile cable manufacturers is - their speaker cables can actually degrade an amp’s performance to the point of failure.

This applies to speaker cables that have a high capacitance - they should NOT be used with some high current solid state amp designs because they can actually drive the amp into an "oscilation state" resulting in blown components.

Naim, is one company I know of that identifies this issue on their web site, but there are several other amp manufacturers who’s products would also be effected by high capacitance cables, but they do not publicly warn of this issue.

And cable companies never suggest their cables are only suited to certain amplifier designs - it would be disastrous for their sales.

It’s up to the customer to discover this - normally at their expense.
- It happened to an acquaintance of mine who blew two high end amps

On another topic....

Infection wrote - "No surprise that WW recommends KLEI...!"

Yes, I promote their products shamelessly because I was fortunate to be able to try pretty much their entire line of cables, and Keith Louie Eichman and I have exchanged numerous emails back and forth on the subject of his approach, theories and cable/connector designs.

However - I have also had the opportunity to compare their performance to a few other well known brands of cables on both my own system, on friends systems and also in-store systems (yes, I take my cables to the store :-) - and I have no problem recommending KLE Innovations products simply because of their level of performance and their cost effectiveness.

They may not be anything fancy to look at, but they are extremely good at what they contribute to a system’s performance - once you burn them in.

Are they the ultimate cable? Probably not, but they seem to consistently improve the performance of the few very varied systems I have tried them on to date.

Back to the music :-)

psag, you forgot something.

He/she would be extremely wealthy, to the point where spending hundreds of dollars per foot is no object.

In contrast: Regarding balanced cables, at least one experienced poster and equipment designer has stated here that all balanced cables perform identically, once a few basic design parameters are met.

I know I subscribe to this.

And its not because I can't hear differences in cables! I used to play the cable merry-go-round a lot in the old days. I knew Robert Fulton who, more than just about anyone else, founded the cable industry. So I've been playing with high end cables since the late 1970s.

I first got exposed to the technology in high school. I had been recruited to play bass in a local college orchestra as they were short that year. While at a concert, I noticed the Neumann U-67 mics hanging over the orchestra and traced the cables back to their source, the inputs of a Crown reel to reel run by a local engineer. Over the years I saw this done many times in various venues. So of those resulted in LPs.

Here is the thing about balanced. What is happening here is that nearly all recordings are done using balanced lines between the microphones and the microphone preamps. The reason is long ago the industry developed a means of preventing the cables from having an effect on the sound.

So when it came to working on a preamp years later, I realized that if one were to get the maximum benefit possible the interconnect cables would have to be taken into account. So instead of a single-ended preamp, I developed a balanced line preamp so you could use balanced cables at home and get the same benefit.

A number of cable companies sent us balanced cables, so we had plenty of cables on hand to do comparisons. At first we used a balanced passive volume control driven by a balanced phono section. As a control, I had a set of interconnect cables that were decades old. Using this setup, we auditioned the cables. The high end cables had various strengths and weaknesses but overall sounded pretty good. The control cable made the system literally sound like it was broken.

After that we introduced an active line section to the auditions that supported the balanced standard. The standard (now known as AES file 48) outlines how a cable should be driven- its operating parameters so to speak. Using this line section (and the amps being able to accept a proper balanced line) what we found is that not only did all the cables seem to sound better, we also could no longer tell them apart, including the control.

The whole point of the balanced line system is to eliminate cable artifacts. That is why it was created. Now you would think that is a good thing, that audiophiles would want that. But there is this thing called the Veblen Effect. That is the idea that if you spend more for a thing, that it should be a better thing. This certainly extends to cables! You can spend a lot on a balanced interconnect (length being irrelevant) and **if the system into which it is going supports the balanced standard**, the result will be that it will not sound particularly better or worse that a much less expensive cable. I've seen this and demonstrated this many times. 

But take away that support of the standard and this is no longer the case! And no mistake- this applies only to balanced lines (there is no way that you can get single-ended cables to be sonically neutral, so you always have to audition them until you find the right one for your system). The thing is, most audio manufacturers in high end audio don't seem to recognize the balanced standard, although there are a few that do. So that means that even if you have a balanced setup you may still have to audition the cable. It shouldn't be that way. But high end audio is what it is.

The fact is that speaker cables can have a huge effect (BTW, the lower the speaker impedance the more profound the cable impact) so its to your advantage to keep them as short as possible. By using balanced lines you can keep the amps near the speakers and the rest of the system where you want it, and actually get *more* resolution (even though the interconnects might be quite long) and impact, as that is what you get from short speaker cables.

OK Atmasphere

Which brands meet the balanced standard, and can use pro XLRs for best sound?

ARC, Pass Labs, John Curl’s, BAT......???