Inter Connects - What I know and don't know

Not much can add here. Usually hear lot of negative comments about cost of cables. But reading lot of good comments about different types of cables. Yes, usually get better as pay more, but clearly there are deals. Kimber Hero is on my home theater and is award winning, very good for the money and known for its bass. Definitely better than PBJ which is good, but edgy. Biggest issue is personal, fitting the right sound into your system. So perhaps use say cable company where can try out cables. Believe that is a credit system though. But definitely try to get trial periods which number of sellers have online. Be aware of burn in, though, controversial but I have heard it myself where cable is edgy at first and then fine after only 15 hours. Last comment, Nordost Odin 2, ouch, lot of money spent there. Have Cardas Clear, copper, but less expensive. But is difficult, many brands, mainly American manufacturers that you could test out. Might have to read lot of reviews, too, to get some idea of the different sound comparisons before you try cables out on your system.

While I have found that more expensive cables tend to have a bigger change in sound quality, I have not found that the change was consistently in a good direction.  Better to have a cheap cable that is neutral than an expensive cable that is too dark.

Also, a lot of cables which emphasize sound stage do so by darkening the overall sound.

Crimped/cold welded connections > screws > solder

There’s a reason why your 200A home panel is not soldered!

I don’t know if silver measures better, but using simple silver wire IC’s got me 100% off the cable merry-go-round.

Hi,

I took a look at your system from your profile and I'm thinking before you do anything pull those speakers out a bit from the wall and you'll notice immediately a change in the spacial imaging soundstage etc aspects. Ie. It should sound better.

Cables are highly dependent on a system. Better systems appreciate better cables. Yes all cables sound differently to the extent your system can distinguish them.

I'm not a big fan of the blue sound Device as the dac is not the greatest, but it can be bypassed so that's good

@69zoso69

My assumptions:

- You get what you pay for ($300 Brand X will produce more detail than say $60 Mogami Gold).

The cable companies can charge any price they want to. Doesn’t mean it’s going to be better. Reading too much of their marketing material may result in too much wishful thinking.

- The larger the gauge the better.

That depends on the length of the interconnects. Long interconnects should be lower AWG to avoid slight losses in gain, therefore preserving overall performance.

- Crimped and soldered connectors are better than screw tightened.

Yes. They are also more reliable.

- Two or more large braided strands are better than several smaller gauge braided strands (all things being equal).

That’s true.

- Silver conductors are better sounding and measuring than Copper conductors.

True. Silver is the best conductor of electricity. Why isn’t it widely used? Well because of how much it costs vs copper. If silver were the same price as copper, your home would be wired with silver wire rather than copper.

- Rhodium, Gold, Silver, Copper, & Brass, connectors objectively sound different. (as opposed to in your system).

True to an extent. When rhodium and silver plating are combined for example, it results in slightly better gain and lower noise. inexpensive/light 6.3mm adapters that are gold-plated can sound a bit warmer. Higher conductivity with silver is the gold standard.

@jumia Thanks but those photos are out of date. The presentation was slightly bass heavy, so I pulled them out so the front baffle is now about 40 inches from the rear wall. The frequency response is much more balanced now. I've never heard the DAC on the Node 2i, it's bypassed into my Pontus DAC.  

I also went from an equilateral triangle to the much improved Jim Smith rule. (X/Y = 83%: Where the listener to left/right tweeter = X and the distance between tweeters = Y) But that's a whole other thread/topic. 

After hearing all the great feedback here I've decided to get the hardware sorted out first before cable matching. There's just no way of knowing what's going to sound best (to me) unless I make the effort to listen to several typologies. 

So step one is to hold a shootout between my Atma Sphere Class D mono blocks and the Decware Zen amp (25th anniversary) on order. I'm also adding a Burson 3X preamp to the mix, taking the pressure off the DAC to drive the load to the amps. I'm really hoping the Atma Sphere's win out since I'm less enamored with tubes these days, just too many variables and fuss. And the Atma Sphere mono-blocks would allow me to keep all the interconnects balanced. The Decware is single ended only.