WHY DO PEOPLE FEEL THE NEED TO COMMENT ON CABLES AND EQUIPMENT THEY HAVE NEVER HEARD?

@designsfx the owner of infigo was working with another company and when he decided to start infigo he told me about the amp and I kind of blew him off the he said he would fly from Canada to my place in Dallas and he did it. We listened to my amp on Friday. Then on Saturday we put  his amp in let it play all day to let it burn in a little and open up. Then on Sunday invited most of the same 10-15 folks we had over the previous Friday. His amplifier blew my 9k integrated out the water. Which for 8 years was my reference. That’s when I decided to work with Hans. I truly saw he was an audiophile at heart. Some folks wanna just sell gear he actually enjoys improving the gear. Pushing the limits and getting the gear to sound better. Reducing noise floors, cutting out distortion, building power conditioning inside the equipment. Isolating internals so that the heat generated limits distortion. In our Method 4 dac. He literally showed me the measurements of each dac chip that we use and each chip down to the 10,000th of a point and he uses a program to update that dac that will allow it to use its settings to limit distortion in the second and third harmonics that is created by the differences in each Sabre dac chip. He even isolated each dac chip from each other. I chose to purchase the gear instead of just keeping it on loan from time to time because he is actually doing things to improve the sound. In addition to that he has done it in a way that still sounds musical. I chose the gear because of it. I chose my Gato Fm6 speakers in a similar fashion because I knew the owner of Gato was a former lead designer at gamut audio whom makes super high end speakers. The Gato along with my Infigo gear and cabling has me in ear heaven right now. I got a great speaker that competes with more expensive ones but Infigo electronics with my Gato has me in a good place. Expensive but really ear pleasing place.

@everyone I’m not downing anyone else’s equipment but I have learned in these years in the hobby that materials, matter, parts matter, technology matter, transformers matter, isolation, matters, shielding matter, cabling matter, implementation of technology matters, eliminating distortion matters, equipment design matters, proprietary programs and technology matters especially in the high end. I know my system costs quite a bit of coin but I chose each piece based on what was in it and how it performed. To some I spent too much but at least I’m musically happy. I’ve seen people spend more and be unhappy and less and be happy. At the end of the day it’s up to what you like, can spend and willing to spend to get there. Some folks it’s not worth it but for me music touches my soul and in my current system it really does that for me. I have an Infigo method 4 Dac. Method  6 stereo amplifier, fluvius streamer and all infigo cabling going into gato fm 6 speakers and I’m extremely happy with the results. For others their happy place is with what they have. Enjoy it. Some people like watches, cars, jewelry for me it’s audio. Whatever you like just enjoy the music. I enjoy mines.  

Today, everyone is an expert on everything with a complete disregard of the scientific methodology.  

And we have  members who do not believe you have had or heard things you actually did have, owned, and heard, so they attack them because they spent more money than you did. 

We also have a population who clearly does not understand the fundamental laws of physics. That's OK as they don't teach that in Marketing.  They DO in engineering which mystifies me how some claiming to be engineers don't have the slightest clue.

An example is suggesting the direction a cable was extruded  has any bearing on an AC signal transmission.  Micro diodes?  OK, RG-59 is good to about 50 MHz.  What harmonics do you think it is filtering in audio?  I run about 100 feet of RG-6 and manage to get perfectly fine HD TV OTA. Can you measure the rectification you claim to exist?  How high is it in relation to the DC leakage in the driving or receiving stage?  This is a case of marketing taking an actual but insignificant property and advertising to folks without the technical background to know it is total BS.  So, do they hear a difference? Sometimes. Placebo is very strong, so enjoy your mono-crystal-silver-air-core-directional-skin effect, cables. 

There is a lot we don't know, a lot we know but don't measure, and a lot we don't know how out brain interprets it, yet we have those who insist they hear things that violate the laws pf physics in this universe rather than what we don't understand.  There are plenty of real problems looking for innovation. 

There has been tremendous innovation in class D amplifiers, DACs, A2Ds, switching supplies, and DSP.  A lot of work has been done improving linear supplies to get the artifacts down to modern DAC noise levels. A year ago I had never heard a class D amp I could stand, now I am looking to buy a Purify based amp.   I was waiting for the AMT patents to run out, but as of yet, every AMT driver I have heard is terrible.  I give them time to innovate.   There has been some significant analog circuit innovations recently allowing commodity priced units with classical measurements we never dreamed of 10 years ago. Think of the progression from OP-1, 741, Tlo72, Ne5558, to the current TI amps.  Lots in IEMs and cans. 

I will repeat my direct experience:  Some interconnect cables do sound different. Three classes of cables.  Those so cheap they are not properly shielded and in some instances can pick up interference. The second class are the esoteric snake oil that actually degrade some aspect of the signal to show a difference.  They seem to have a very large positive effect on the owners ego.   Fortunately there is the third large class of perfectly good cables.  They all sound the same as they don't degrade the signal. Many boutique cables are in group three, just fine, only overpriced BS advertising to invoke the placebo magic improvement to the purchaser.   

To the "believers""  No cable can improve the signal it is carrying. It can't add actual depth or detail.  It just can't. Not in this universe.  At best it does not degrade it or add distortions. Fortunately, that is easy.

@tvrgeek i agree with most of what you are saying.  Innovation has been a game changer in audio. We have some great improvements in the dac and amp market. I also agree that some attack others just because they have an expensive system. The take it upon themselves to tell you how much of a fool you are and what you are not hearing. We designed our cables to be shielded from outside interference also nit to be a bottleneck to allow the music to flow through.