2. cables
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The Science of Cables

It seems to me that there is too little scientific, objective evidence for why cables sound the way they do. When I see discussions on cables, physical attributes are discussed; things like shielding, gauge, material, geometry, etc. and rarely are things like resistance, impedance, inductance, capacitance, etc. Why is this? Why aren’t cables discussed in terms of physical measurements very often?

Seems to me like that would increase the customer base. I know several “objectivist” that won’t accept any of your claims unless you have measurements and blind tests. If there were measurements that correlated to what you hear, I think more people would be interested in cables. 

I know cables are often system dependent but there are still many generalizations that can be made.
128x128mkgus
bsimpson
167 posts
 
My situation hopefully would not apply to all of you:

My expensive cables always sound better if they cost more than my local audio club buddies'.  But strangely, the same new cables typically sound much worst than my last ones from their perspective.

So in a nutshell, who cares what other people think.  Each person has different perception and sensitivity to sound.  Go buy the ones that make you feel happy, even if they cost thousands of dollars due to the very advanced anti-EMF nano snake oil helix structure that would take 10000 hours to break in.

douglas_schroeder
3,281 posts
 

bsimpson, would you like to try Schroeder Method of Interconnect Placement? It likely would be more efficacious than your selection of speaker cables and would also likely be something your audio friends would appreciate. Not a hint of any, "very advanced anti-EMF nano snake oil helix structure that would take 10000 hours to break in," because, like you, I'm not into wasting my time and money.


geoffkait's avatar
geoffkait
23,365 posts
 
Uh, trying to sell tweaks to hardened pseudo skeptics is like trying to sell refrigerators to the Eskimos. ☃️
taras22
412 posts
 
Well sorta, I mean, at least the Eskimos have the decided advantage of understanding knowing what cold is, and why its important.
boxer12
8,656 posts
 
So I adopted the DS method about a week ago between my DAC (Audio Alchemy DDP-1) & preamp (Jeff Rowland Consonance) using audioquest yukon cables & 4 well dampened splitters. Since the splitters are new I wanted to wait until I had some time on them before commenting. In my system there is not one drawback from this. The stage is wider & deeper which is a great improvement in and of itself, but what really surprised me is the overall improvement in clarity. This "tweek" is the real deal. Thank you Doug for bringing it to our attention.  
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