Why Do Cables Matter?

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

@knownothing @thyname Wow thanks for understanding, honestly I came from physics, engineering, and acoustics in these fields they aren't understanding on audio goals being unverifiable they are antagonistic to it. I had the American rep of a big audio company at my house  yesterday (not name dropping), we hit it off perfectly and I was telling him how I was understanding the immeasurable attributes cables can make in a system because of you guys. He said his company felt the same way all the engineers fought very strongly against psychoacoustic principles so they didn't let in any "magical" effects that real people have in the audiophile world. He told me about a test they did with a CD player being set on 4 different kinds of racks like glass, wood, carbon fiber and such using long cables and everyone could tell the difference, this is a group of engineers that fought against "magical, unquantifiable" ideas, this experiment has a lot to do with changing these German engineers minds. 

I understand the frustration and I have a thick head I always put logic and physical laws above feelings, but it's clear I don't know everything and the magic is why I can't stop listening to music all my life. Thanks and Best!

@cleeds My point about recording an actor making $20M and the amount of money a musician gets paid was not what I was talking about. If you have an actor like Tom Cruse, Anthony Hopkins, Jack Nicholson making $20M there is a boat load of pressure on the entire crew perhaps 150 people to do your job perfectly with no mistakes. Here’s what you have to understand, in an orchestra you set mics as you have for years, violins sound good with this mic at this distance if the trumpets are this far away and so and so. In movies you generally have 2 or 3 actors moving around a set or walking down a hallway through many different lights and with all the noises that the crew and efx people make inevitably. The miking in most cases means that you must remember all the dialogue first of all to get the cues correct then move the microphone based of the projection of the actor and look at his or her body language to guess on how loud they will deliver there lines and move the microphone so there is no shadows on any part of the set that the camera is seeing all the while making the actors sound consistent remembering that you can’t simply mic the actors over their heads you have to give them space considering proximity effect, and listening to the acoustics of that room to mic moving actors closer and farther from the frame line while making them sound the same and all this as you are walking backwards holding a 12 foot boom pole that is so sensitive that you can hear your own heartbeat in it. Orchestras are a walk in the park. Hope that helps.