Cable curmudgeon

A.) cables get much less attention on the pro side whether it is the recording studio or the electric musician.

Not so. Professional studios have long been cognizant of cable deltas. One studio had Monster, Mogami, Canare, Belden, etc. and some then 40 year old Neumanns. The room, microphones, wiring, console and recorder all contribute to "The Sound" of famous places like Air, Sunset, The Record Plant, Hit Factory, etc. Many’s the time a part was recorded ’cross town for the particular flavor. Sometimes we’d rent a particular recorder to keep that flavor constant and garnish with the other flavors.

OP:

But, for me, spending oodles of money on hyped cables, well... I liked the solid core for my alarm system- still do.

@newbee:

Yet he is gleeful, I think, in making a pronouncement that selection of wires is of minimal benefit in audio systems.

I’m 100% in agreement on the lunacy of spend beacoup bux on cables hyped by FanBoys or salesmen.

About 40 years ago, I ran an AES clinic wherein we compared a pricy Monster speaker wire and THHN. Very few participants got better than a coin toss. A few got very high marks is discerning the difference, which was not subtle. Those same few also got high marks in the valve vs SS and polarity clinics. Bottom line, in any population, some can tell all of the time, some some and some none. IMO, the closer one moves to NONE, the more strident the advocacy. The NONEs who spend the most are perhaps the most strident.

Since we’re ’reading into’, presumably many of the posters here would fare no better than guessing, but ramble on about the benefits of cables they own connected to their gear in their room on their program.

It’s silly to think cables can have no effect and purely unscientific to think that a particular cable will shine in all instances. About twenty years ago, after I’d been out of recording for about 15 years, I upped the HiFi ante a little and auditioned some qualtiy cables. It’s irrelevant for everyone but me & the missus in that room but maybe a bit entertaining ieLogical Audiophilia Redux Cable Quest

Few musicians and engineers I worked with had a HiFi worth mentioning. One top engineer commented that my system was too good as it exposed the LP for the rubbish it is compared to the master tape played on the recording deck in the mix room.

Big +1 @newbee Bingo!!! I’ve played in a band for many years, and there’s very little from playing live music that translates to assessing individual components of an audio system. And I don’t care how good you think your ears are — being able to judge audio components takes many hours of listening to a wide variety of equipment to even begin to be able to make useful, robust, and reliable conclusions. This is especially true for components like cables and digital front ends where differences can be more subtle yet still critical to the overall and ultimate performance of a stereo system, and these components take even more time than other components to get to know what to listen for. When I first started out I couldn’t hear much, if any, differences between wires and CD players, but with time and experience they become obvious and much easier to hear and appreciate. So given the OP’s clear lack of experience in these areas it’s not surprising he’s happy with garbage wire — he has no perspective to know what he’s hearing. But then to make the silly and ridiculous leap to state that more expensive cables are just “hype,” well, that’s where it got uncool for me. Anyway, thanks newbie for reinforcing what I said in my first post.

"This used to be among the absolute best forum. Now its a food fight filled with newbies who are no more audiophile than my 7 yr old niece. But they know it all, like I did when I was 17-18."

Wow! This and similar comments from others in this thread should make people in the industry, hoping to lure new users to the audiophile world weep.

Let me see if I can throw some light on where @exflute was coming from.  To him all music is not the same.  For him pure unamplified live acoustic music is different from other forms.  He's a classical musician.  I think he's got a good point and one I can understand.  For him electronic artifacts are an interference to his listening pleasure, be it an electric guitar, a tape recorder, a digital set-up, whatever.  That's not unreasonable surely.  After all, we all admit there is no perfect hi-fi system; in fact more are a poor substitute for live music. But its all we have.

I am not prepared to concede, as quite a number here have posited, that exflute's ears are good for playing in a professional orchestra but bad for hearing cable differences.

There are people who are in this hobby and claim that there are not differnces between cables, or that digital transports sounds the same or that diy dacs or speakers sound good or better than hi end products. Perhaps I would argue with them, if I had extra time to spend on unknown people and unimportant subjects.

On the other hand, there are people who are not in this hobby and to whom any properly configurated hi fi system may sound almost the same and who are not burdened by its imanent idiosyncracy.

It would be wise if every such statement should be taken within its context and with proper understanding of its origin.

On the other hand, op has raised some interesting questions, perhaps even unintentionally. Some food for the thoughts...

Does hi fi have meaning beyond listening of unamplified music (other than classical, jazz or similar)

Does anybody really believe that hi fi reproduction can sound like a 'real thing'?(except for the tone and timbre of instruments)...Stereo does not exist in the nature...(there are excellent mono systems, I know)

Hi fi is all about creation of illusion of 'live event' and no matter how big is your room, I doubt that anyone can fit in a symphonic orchestra...Somebody even wrote that his reproduction is even more real than the live event...which is fine if you are fan of hyperrelism...but, some might call such way of expression as artificial, with every right... 

Naming hi fi as a tool which will help as hear the recordings as they were made is another myth. Nobody, except the mastering engineers knows how something sounded before its been worked on. We can only compare the recordings with our imaginary references, that were made on live events or perhaps by listening different gear.

In any case, the op does not deserve the personal attacks. Hi fi should be fun and enterteiment, a hobby (no matter how pointless or expensive it might be) and not the extension of someone's ego...