I see the issue with ABX blind testing
I’ve followed many of the cable discussions over the years with interest. I’ve never tested cables & compared the sound other than when I bought an LFD amp & the vendor said that it was best paired with the LFD power cord. That was $450 US and he offered to ship it to me to try & if I didn’t notice a difference I could send it back. I got it, tried it & sent it back. To me there was no difference at all.
Fast forward to today & I have a new system & the issue of cables arises again. I have Mogami cables made by Take Five Audio in Canada. The speaker wire are Mogami 3104, XLRs are Mogami 2549 & the power cords are Powerline 10 with Furutech connectors. All cables are quite well made and I’ve been using them for about 5 years. The vendor that sold me the new equipment insisted that I needed "better" cables and sent along some Transparent Super speaker & XLR cables to try. If I like them I can pay for them.
In every discussion about cables the question is always asked, why don’t you do an ABX blind test? So I was figuring out how I’d do that. I know the reason few do it. It’s not easy to accomplish. I have no problem having a friend come over & swap cables without telling me what he’s done, whether he swapped any at all etc. But from what I can see the benefit, if there is one, will be most noticeable system wide. In other words, just switching one power cable the way I did before won’t be sufficient for you to tell a difference... again, assuming there is one. So I need my friend to swap power cables for my amp/preamp & streamer, XLR cables from my streamer to my preamp, preamp to amp & speakers cables. That takes a good 5-10 minutes. There is no way my brain is retaining what I previously heard and then comparing it to what I currently hear.
The alternative is to connect all of the new cables, listen for a week or so & then switch back & see if you feel you’re missing anything. But then your brain takes over & your biases will have as much impact as any potential change in sound quality.
So I’m stumped as to how to proceed.
A photo of my new setup. McIntosh MC462, C2700, Pure Fidelity Harmony TT, Lumin T3 & Sonus Faber Amati G5 & Gravis V speakers.
I just swapped my Mogami for the Transparent. To me they immediately sounded better but after 10 minutes of swapping it's really hard to tell. So I'll play them for a week, taking notes on individual sections of songs that really stand out for me & then swap back & relisten to those sections. |
Hi OP, I was just about to post something about my own experience going Mogami --> Transparent but it seems you’ve stumbled on a similar conclusion in the interim. I'd be curious to see how your impressions evolve over the coming days. I was a big time fan of Mogami 2549 and especially 2497 for unbalanced connections, but over the past few months I’ve been upgrading all my cables to Transparent Super or Ultra level for power, ICs and speakers. Always buying used because I can’t afford new. The upgrade in soundstage width, detail and, well, transparency, with each new cable is, for me, instantly obvious and well worth the cost. Mogami is no slouch but I find it is much easier to hear changes in components, tubes, HQPlayer filters, etc, with this new loom. |
@dwcda good approach! As I said earlier, quick AB is not the greatest way to do it. How you’re approaching it is the right way. So what model transparent? |
Super! Should be a decent improvement over the Mogami. Good luck! And keep us posted. |
