What do audiophiles want from a cable?


What should a high quality interconnect or speaker cable do to the sound of a system? Make it more transparent? Improve the sound stage and focus? Soften unpleasant highs? Tighten the base? Bring out the mids?

To me, a good cable should reveal more of what is on the recording and more of the true nature of my components. So when trying new cables, I look for more detail and accuracy without becoming cold and clinical. This seems logical, and yet after reading reviews and trying a few of the cables in the reviews, I find that the cables that have received glowing endorsements are not especially transparent or revealing. They modify the sound, but they don’t take me where I want to go. I wonder if the reason I don’t hear what the reviewer heard is that I don’t know what to listen for. Am I too focused on cable accuracy and resolution, and not enough on actual sound quality? Or is it just a case of no two systems sounding alike so why trust a review anyway? Thanks.
mward
Only two things are required:

Resolution. Everything that comes in goes out again. Unchanged.

Linearity. Resolution is the same for the entire audio frequency range. 

The better cables maintain these characteristics with a variety of components.
Inna...yes all systems are different in one way or another.  How is mine very different?  Just curious...

 I feel like the Jade Audio cable sounds a bit better from the Lampizator than Venustas does.  But PAD excels between preamp and amp, and then again as speaker cable in this system.  I've experienced best results with the last legs of cabling being the same.  I can take the excellent foundation that PAD lays there and mix the qualities of the Jade ic, the WyWires USB cable, etc to get the sound I'm looking for.  You see where I'm going with this.  The full loom of PAD is still solid and well balanced, it's good stuff.  Just kinda bland and lacking the liveliness, attack, and refinement in the upper end of the frequency range that WyWires or Jade cables bring to the table.  

Sounds like you also enjoy the PAD cables Inna.  Yes Dominus are incredible and had me drooling over the emmense soundscape.  Dominus are out of my reach at present.  If I had a loom of Dominus, my opinion regarding the mixing of cable brands might change Inna.  They are certainly special and there's no denying it.

imjerrys, does all that linearity and perfect resolution ever get boring, sterile, overly analytical?  I hope you are not trading off full bodied musical sound that is harmonically rich?  It's so hard to have both in this hobby.

randy-11
59 posts
10-15-2016 3:52pm
What most audiophiles want from a cable is confirmation bias.

That cannot be confirmed.
randy-11
59 posts
10-15-2016 3:52pm
What most audiophiles want from a cable is confirmation bias.

That cannot be confirmed.

In my best computer voice - Negative ,this cannot be confirmed