Balanced cables

jerroldls-Well said...

dlcockrum-no offense. I'm sure your familiar with, as most Audiophile's, of gain levels in components. I simply was applying common sense. Wire is wire, and all it does is transfer music signal. Its how the component is configured to the outputs by the designer where the circuit design and gain levels can sound better at one output over another regardless of the cable.

I agree that simply recommending the cable that worked for you is senseless. However, it is very unfortunate that this thread has to once again devolve into the debate as to whether wire is wire. For those that believe that all wire is wire, fine. Maybe with your system, wire is indeed wire, with no perceptible differences and you could put ten listeners in your room and all would compare notes afterward and all agree. And please don't read some intent to malign your system when I say that. It is always possible that in the culprit for Stingreen's perceived harshness with his Vandersteens have nothing to do with cabling and more importantly, can't be successfully addressed with cabling. But one thing is beyond debate and that is this; in some systems and for some people different cables sound markedly different. I say this in the context of IC's and SC's only. Let's leave PC's out of this. Stingreen, I usually read your posts. IIRC, you've been running Are and Vandies for a while now. When did the perceived metallic sound start and what-that you can think of-changed in your system when the metallic sound was first noticed? Absent some change that you purposefully made, it would seem that there are only two possibilities; a change in your electrical grid or a new sensitivity on your part to something that was always there. 

Elizabeth said "sometimes folks need to realize break-in can be used as an excuse for stuff which just does not work."

Bingo!  If a cable is not acceptable right out of the box then it most likely never will be.  I have used tons of cables in my system and break in for me is real but not jaw dropping.

"For those that believe wire is wire, fine"...now let me see, if I take an interconnect cable and slice the side open, guess what, theres copper wire inside. Amazing!!! it must be wire!. You can pretend its the golden hairs from the scalp of Goldilocks all you want, but its just wire. You need to take off your rose colored glasses. And to ignore the post above by an expert recording engineer is disingenuous and disrespectful, acting like the professional recording industry is inferior and has no clue what there talking about because your an "Audiophile" and your "opinion" is much more important then recording engineers or the broadcasting industry because you read "high end magazines" and bow down to the demi-god reviewers who are taking you for a ride. Back in 1998 I purchased a pair of Paradigm Active 20 speakers and a BAT Vk3 preamp. I decided to buy an pair an eight foot of MIT interconnects with the box on the cables. They retailed for $1000.00 and Audio Advisor was selling them at 40% off. Hooked them up and a week later I was disappointed with the sound quality and on a whim, decided to use the very cheap 20 ft. stock pair of IC's that came with the speakers. I removed them from the box, hooked them up, put on a disc and was blown out the window. Completely shocked. The differences were not subtle, a big major difference. Sounded like a completely different speaker raising the performance to a whole new level I wasn't prepared for. I said to myself, "Whats wrong with this picture?" and called Paradigm and spoke to one of their engineers. I asked how much are your stock IC's that came with the speakers? He said $20.00 a pair. He asked me the model of the MIT's and said that IC will not work because its a high capacitance low resistance cable. Our 20's are designed to use with low capacitance high resistance IC's and  mentioned that components from different companies worked best with IC's that match the mathematical values of their designs, and has nothing to do with the price of the cable. The Cable Company in Ohio has complete charts of those mathematical values from each high end company for their amps and preamps. If you go into a broadcasting-recording supply house and buy inexpensive cable that matches the value numbers of those components you will be blown away at the performance of your gear. Quit being a sheep. Quit being a lemming.

As W.C. Fields said.. "Theirs a sucker born every minute"

@audiozen

Many folks simply want to believe cables make a difference - many because they spent a quite considerable portion of their budget on nonsense tweaks.

You will never get these same folks to ever admit they were fools or suckers as W.C. Fields put it.

Furthermore, the mark up on cables and silly fuses and silly contact goo is in the thousands and therefore an army of unscrupulous sellers and resellers will rush to attack anyone who says “the emperor has no clothes”.

Worse, if you look at the sales supporting the economic model of this website you will see a significant percentage is in nonsense tweaks - so moderators are not going to lift a finger to kill a lively business of parting fools from their money....

Nonsense tweaks are to audiofools as expensive rejuvenation creams are to the vain and superficial...