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Are you buying the right interconnects ?

In the late 90's I purchased a pair of Paradigm Active 20 speakers from Definitive Audio. Prior to buying I purchased a 3 meter pair of MIT interconnects from Audio Advisor. Regular retail price was $700 and they were on sale for 50% off. 
Hooked every thing up and waited a month for a full burn in. Wasn't satisfied. I thought, whats going on here? So I decided to try the Paradigm stock interconnects that came with the speakers. They were twenty feet long and looked really, really cheap like you find in a department store. They cost $20 a pair. I switched them out and was blown away.
The sound from those 20's suddenly sounded, rich, full, very sweet top end and the bass sharpened up to complete focus. I called Paradigm and spoke to an engineer and asked why the sound difference? He said the MIT's are not a match since they are a high impedance/capacitance cable and it has nothing to with the price. He mentioned the impedance/capacitance value numbers vary with different brands. He said you should always talk to the engineers at the amp/preamp companies, and ask which cable values would best match their components. Once you get the specs, go to a local electronic supply house, the one's that sell cables to TV station's and radio station's. Give the measurements to the salesperson to find a match and your good to go. 
audiozen
jtcf's avatar
jtcf
1,620 posts
 
MIT used to sell speaker cables with whatever was in those boxes(resistors?) customized to work with your specific equipment.They may still make them.That still doesn't guarantee they would sound good though.
The fact is you can take several cables from different manufacturers that will measure exactly the same on test equipment but each one will sound different.There's many different theories as to why but nobody really knows for sure.

audiozen OP
831 posts
 
Back in the 80's, Corey Greenberg, reviewer for Stereophile, took a hacksaw and cut the box open longways on a MIT cable, and their wasn't much inside the box, don't recall the detail's, but his impression wasn't that great.
teo_audio
2,197 posts
 
He wasn't a reviewer for Stereophile when he cut that cable apart....

many people have cut cables apart, btw...

re the idea of matched impedance ...device to device as done by the cable, this can be handled differently:

In a fluid metal as a conductive pathway... the connectivity is like an arc strike and is a dynamic flow matching system.

In a wire, this cannot happen. But with a room temperature fluid alloy (fluid at the molecular level, like water) --- it does.

It is not a perfect system, but it is notably better than 'wire'. This is just the straight up physics of it.
tpreaves's avatar
tpreaves
2,687 posts
 
Popcorn anyone?
atdavid
736 posts
 
Unless the MIT cable was specifically designed to have high impedance and roll off the highs, which is completely possible, then the highs should not be affected and the bass not at all. TV and Radio stations will tend to buy from specialty distributors, so this advice seems odd. Most could not tell you the capacitance of their cables I suspect.

Teo_Audio, just looked at your website after reading your point and it is not making sense to me. Impedance matching is a factor of matching source impedance and load impedance to the cables. That would be a factor of unit resistance, unit inductance, and unit capacitance, the latter being a factor of conductor distance, shape and dielectric, inductance primarily spacing and material, and unit resistance obviously exclusive to the conductor. With load impedances 20-100K ohms, matching is near impossible if not impossible as connectors to match that do not exist. Ditto on the source impedance but at least close.
Your cables if I am reading this have a liquid at room temperature conductive, it looks to be pretty much the same as what is in a thermometer? That would conduct significantly poorer than a copper or silver conductor, or even that material when solid. That resistance would increase impedance a bit in cable, but I don’t see how that would make a change significant enough for cable matching. Can you shed more light on that?
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