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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
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celander's avatar
celander
1,503 posts
 
Yep..my ex-wife "dusted" my turntable shortly after we married. The Soundsmith cartridge cantilever and stylus were removed with the dust..That was not the reason for the divorce, however..
geoffkait's avatar
geoffkait
23,365 posts
 
But it would have been sufficient, one imagines. 
jetter
3,052 posts
 
Just an update on my barb cabling. Don’t evaluate it immediately, it sounds much better after a break in period of at least two weeks. Also, finally located our cat Boots who has been missing for a three days caught up in the wire. Not sure whether to remove him or not since there is a noticeable improvement in imaging and soundstage.
douglas_schroeder
3,281 posts
 
Regarding something that actually has potential to benefit audiophiles' systems, last night I disassembled the digital source, as I am sending back the SONORE Signature Rendu SE for an upgrade, and I reverted back to my MF transport feeding the Exogal Comet DAC and Ion Power DAC combo. I will be reporting on the upgrades to the Signature Rendu SE and Exogal Ion Powerdac's HyperDrive upgrade in due time at Dagogo.com 

The pertinence of this post is that I once again used the Schroeder Method of Interconnect Placement with the transport's AES/EBU output. It is superlative, definitively high quality as a link. I did two different cables in this configuration, the much less expensive Audio Sensibility manufactured Schroeder Method XLR 1M with their least expensive IC cable. It was very good, well worth pursuing by budget oriented audiophiles. 

Then, I went to the assembled Clarity Cable Organic IC put together with Audio Sensibility's silver XLR Y Cables prepared for Schroeder Method. WOW! I am stunned and VERY happy with that outcome! I have never heard any Redbook source, even $10K players using single ICs, in my room with close to this erudition (I presume similar benefits could be obtained by those with high end players)! The Kingsound King III electrostatic speakers sound wonderfully pure, coherent (they are what I described in the review as Line Source ESL; multiple ESL drive units stacked), and now with the Ion with HyperDrive phenomenally powerful in the low end. Assessed by distinct, separate comparisons from the cable changes. 

Imo the digital application of Schroeder Method with digital source in the two instances I have tried is a rousing success. AES/EBU with this unit is very sensitive to such cable changes. I do not wish to overly boast of this, but it is becoming clearer to me that this has the potential to revolutionize passive system setups. In the end active systems may sound flat out worse than passive speakers with Schroeder Method cabling. I would expect our skeptics to mock that assessment, but if they actually ever tried things they would find out.
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