Reasonable but not outragious interconnects

For the past 15 years, I've used Transparent Music Link interconnects. They sounded fine with every amplifier every tried, be it tube or SS.

Recently auditioned of a pair of tube monoblocks. Sound was just awful. No stage, harsh, grating, no air, unlistenable.

Since the amplifier is well regarded, I replaced cables with some mid 80's Monster Pro prototypes from the bin. Much better. Better still were some Hitachi star quad test cables from the same era.

How much better? These amplifiers maybe the best KT-88 amplifier I've ever heard, besting customized Citation II, Michael Fraser custom KT-88, PrimaLuna PL5, a few I can't recall and every AR bottle rocket owned or auditioned. The sound is gorgeous. Effortless, expansive, detailed, liquid, etc.

Currently building up some silver star-quad PTFE which sh/could be even better.

Anyone who says that a particular cable will perform identically well in all systems is sadly mistaken. Either inexperienced or malicious. In the first, either lacking an understanding of basic electronics or having only limited exposure to altering system sonics via interconnects. In the second, a Snake Oil Peddler.

There could be a third possibility. Inability to hear differences.

ieales writes:

For the past 15 years, I've used Transparent Music Link interconnects. They sounded fine with every amplifier every tried, be it tube or SS.

AND ieales writes:

Anyone who says that a particular cable will perform identically well in all systems is sadly mistaken. Either inexperienced or malicious. In the first, either lacking an understanding of basic electronics or having only limited exposure to altering system sonics via interconnects. In the second, a Snake Oil Peddler.

There could be a third possibility. Inability to hear differences.

Believe it or not, that's not only the same guy but the same postt! Either he's calling himself an inexperienced snake oil peddler, or he doesn't have much in the way of reading comprehension.

There could be a third possibility. Inability to remember what he himself wrote?

easy, millercarbon. What’s your beef?

There is no relation to the quotes leaving out the intervening paragraphs. Other listeners may have turfed out the Music Links on first listen to alternate electronics. "sounded fine" means only they did not cross any particular threshold of irritation. With the tube monoblocks, they did.

Your position that a particular cable will always sound good with all electronics means that cable parameters do not interact with electronics’ parameters. In that case all cables should sound the same. I think we agree that they don’t.

If cable and electronics’ parameters interact, then cables with different parameters must interact differently with different electronics’ parameters. As shown in Cable Snake Oil Antidote, cables do interact differently when electronics’ parameters change.

Surely you’re not saying that frequency and phase response are inaudible? If that were true, every system would sound alike.

I have quickly browsed through some of the responses provided to OP. I remember seeing someone suggesting to pay attention to "ends" (aka terminations at each end of the cable), I completely agree with that and couldn’t emphasis more on the importance of quality terminations. I tried DIY myself many times for the cables (such as Mogami, Canare etc) with some success. I recently got my cables from Benchmarkmedia.com, and I immediately felt the difference in sound staging, channel balance, tonality along with some gain. I think benchmark use Canare cables are very reasonably priced. I have compared their cable with AQ (XLR) and didn't find any difference. So my advice would be to use reasonable priced cables with best possible terminations. All the best.

If you are using balanced connections, the screen should be lifted at the destination end.
If you use single end termination at the destination, it forms low-pass filters for common-mode noise resulting in degraded CMRR at higher frequencies.

Unbalanced cables using more than 1 center conductor, i.e. twin screen or star-quad should also have the screen lifted at the destination end.