Why Do Cables Matter?

@thyname 
Yes I do have a dedicated room for 2 track. This afternoon 6/22 a person from Steinway and Sons is going to look at my room so everything may change. I'm a little intimidated because of a lot of things I don't have on par with great audiophile systems. I have a Steinway Spirio grand piano that plays back perfectly, it is the best hifi piece of equipment I own it is in its own room built for the piano, no transducer of any kind, it's perfect (well it has 1000 levels of dynamic resolution for every key which is good enough. I've recorded 1000s of pianos but never got any recording to sound like a real one. I'm convinced by @rodman99999 and his article he pointed me to that cables do make a difference in a measurable way. So you all have convinced me! See I wasn't a troll after all. Thanks.

@cleeds I have recorded and mixed 100s of orchestras and it's much more forgiving than doing a recording of an actor who is getting $20M to act in a movie. They don't want to do looping and you are always on defense in production sound there are HMI light that are often buzzing and if you need to tell the DP his light needs to be fixed he'll tell the director the sound guy is going to take an hour out of your day for his sound while I relight, there is constantly problems like that even on huge shows. Recording a single actor or 20 actors in a room is the hardest mixing and recording I've done by far you can't make a mistake in live the mistake is over in studio you can simply fix it (studio is the easiest). You couldn't be more wrong about that part of your post. Sure recording an actor in the studio is easy except for matching the production sound in a studio takes a lot of talent and listening effort. The microphone boom operator IMO requires the most talent for listening, when I did that I would cary the boom with the main microphone everywhere I went with my headphones on all day so I would get to know the polar pattern of the microphone, in the studio you point the microphone at instrument that doesn't move or interact with other noisy things while they are changing positions, recording music is easy compared with production sound. 

I have no extreme reverence for knowing what the original record was I'm just saying if you didn't do the original recording then haw can you or anyone else talk about the proper image or the tightness of the bass, you can make the tightest bass ever just add gating, ducking, and lots of compression. Tighter and wider on every recording isn't always correct.

@donavabdear : having a dedicated room solely for two channel audio is huge. It is a great starting point. Now, in addition to two (matched pair) speakers, you would need the 2-channel equipment. Preferably dedicated to two-channels (stereo), and not multichannel. Amp(s), preamp, DAC, etc. etc. All two channel. And of course, room treatments, which I think you are pretty familiar with and knowledgeable. You can then experiment with cables, ideally with a return policy and no risk trial. There is no substitute to experimenting for yourself. And it is fun. That is if you enjoy experimenting. Not a chore, if it becomes a chore, and frustrating, it’s not worth dealing with. We all do what we enjoy. This is a hobby, not a job.

Enjoy the process, and hopefully the results.

donavabdear

I have recorded and mixed 100s of orchestras and it's much more forgiving than doing a recording of an actor who is getting $20M to act in a movie ...

I don't think there's any correlation at all between what an actor or musician gets paid, and the difficulty in recording them well. It's silly to claim otherwise. Certainly, you're entitled to your opinions, but recording the dialogue of a single voice - something easily transmitted over any telephone - is inherently simpler than recording the complex sounds and wide dynamic range of an orchestra. Of course, fidelity for film must be better than cell phone quality, but the phone proves it doesn't take much to record the identifiable qualities of a human voice.

... if you didn't do the original recording then haw can you or anyone else talk about the proper image or the tightness of the bass ...

You can't rely on any single recording. But you can rely on groups of recordings, some with consistent, repeatable, identifiable characteristics (such as the Mercury Living Presence series), to tune the sound of a system. If you also make your own recordings, as I sometimes do, the task is made easier.

@donavabdear 

It’s refreshing to see the two-way learning in this thread.  I had written you off as coming here to make a point, rather than share a point of view and accept that it might be challenged and your initial perspective may be improved.  I was wrong about that.

Many of us who have developed strong opinions about hifi cabling based on our unique empirical experiences and some understanding of both theory and uncertainty associated with connecting a bunch of boxes with various electronics inside with wires forming a complex “system” driven by variously clean power from the wall and played in infinitely variable acoustic room environments.  Every time there is a thread on here or another forum containing the word ‘cable’ some collection of theorists join the thread and talk about graphs and what they know about resistance, and many of us have developed sensitive trolling antenna.  To folks that have learned to keep an open mind and trust theirs and others’ ears, it resembles a chorus of the flat earth society.  It’s tiresome and interferes with productive sharing.  So forgive our collective fatigue.

I do have to admit I am taken aback by your name dropping, even if it is sincere and in support of a point.  I am much more convinced and interested in your description of the physical and acoustic challenges of recording sound in complex and noisy environments with the sources moving around, and then trying to mix that in ways that make sense and support the moving images in a film.  That’s cool.  I regularly work with rich and famous people, and I find that name dropping NEVER succeeds as a validator of my thoughts or points, and it is almost always a turn off in a conversation.  Just a suggestion of something to consider in this and other discussions.

Back on topic, you said;

”I have no extreme reverence for knowing what the original record was I'm just saying if you didn't do the original recording then haw can you or anyone else talk about the proper image or the tightness of the bass, you can make the tightest bass ever just add gating, ducking, and lots of compression. Tighter and wider on every recording isn't always correct”

The improvement by good cables with respect to reproducing soundstage width and depth and timing aren’t some technicolor hallucination that appears on all recordings.  Mono doesn’t become stereo, flat or not particularly well-miked stereo recordings don’t grow width or depth that wasn’t captured or mixed into the final cut.  Good gear and wires just tell you more of whats going on, good and bad, and sometimes that can make you want to listen to certain recordings on your Bluetooth speaker in your kitchen rather than your two-channel big rig.

Enjoy the journey,

kn

Every time there is a thread on here or another forum containing the word ‘cable’ some collection of theorists join the thread and talk about graphs and what they know about resistance, and many of us have developed sensitive trolling antenna. 

Yup! And cannot blame us. It becomes tiresome. Take a look for example of Jason Bourne trolling in EVERY SINGLE CABLE THREAD. Always the first to reply with 3-4 consecutive posts saying the same thing. Over and over.

Therefore:

... forgive our collective fatigue