@audphile1 uh, look up ^ 😉
ABX testing with AQ Dragon power cords
I was talking to my dealer about how good the system sounds that he sold me. I mentioned that I had tried some new speaker/interconnect cables from a local amp/cable manufacturer & both I and the company boss agreed that there was little discernible sound difference between his cables & mine. He couldn’t understand why. He also told me that my room acoustics were amazing, top notch. He’d like me to bring my cables (& his) to his listening room & we’ll compare there. That’s for next week.
My dealer said that in his 40 years this has never happened & he was ready to rise to the challenge. He said he would send me a couple of AQ Hurricane power cords to try on my amp/pre and I’d be amazed. I said why bother, send some Dragons. He told me to connect them to my amp & preamp & I should be amazed within 10 seconds of comparing. Today I received a Dragon HC & Source power cord. I listened to some music I’m very familiar with through my Lumin T3 playing FLAC files from the attached USB. Then I swapped the amp & pre to the Dragons and listened to the same songs. No difference that I could tell. So I redid the test, one song at a time, switching back & forth. Still no difference.
I invited two neighbors over (separately) and asked them to look at my FLAC library & choose a song that they knew well. I played that for them with both sets of power cords. One said he couldn’t hear any difference between the two. The other said that one (mine) sounded like it had slightly more treble, the other (Dragon) sounded like more bass. I played a third version (turned out it was mine but he didn’t know) and he said that was the bass version. He was wrong & admitted that the differences were so small that he really couldn’t choose between the two.
I called my dealer & he asked if the difference was earth shattering. I told him no & he asked how that was possible when he just sent similar cables to another customer last week with a similarly priced system as mine & that guy said that the SQ improved 50% and was ecstatic. I said that that guy must have decided already that he was going to buy them and determined that for that money they must improve the sound. My dealer said that either my ears are those a near dead 95 year old or his last 40 years experience have been a sham. I suggested that he was selling & demoing a product to people that had a propensity to believe it worked & therefore it worked for them. I offered to have him drive here (4 hour drive) and listen for himself & I’ll swap cables while his mind is blown. We may get there yet.
I hesitate to post a photo of my listening room as experience tells me that those that are strong proponents of cables will pick it apart and blame a myriad of other crap rather than recognizing that the 3 of us heard no difference on a high resolving system situated in a room would good acoustics... but here goes.
McIntosh MC462/C2700, Pure Fidelity Harmony TT, Gold Note PH-10/PSU-10 phono stage, Lumin T3/Sbooster, Sonus Faber Amati G5 speakers, Sonus Faber Gravis V sub.
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Lol thx @mclinnguy |
@mclinnguy read your thoughts on the comparison. The UHQR are very nice. I have Steely Dan and Miles Davis. The sounded superb when I had the table. When I read you heard sibilance with mogami xlr vs Absolute Copper that’s exactly one of the biggest differences I heard in my system when switching between Mogami studio gold and AZ Absolute Copper. So I don’t think you imagined it. In any case, it is what it is. |
@dwcda , Hmmm, your account is a lil over a month old. You had to have existed somewhere else before you joined here....I see some symptoms of an ASR scientist incognito by the nature of your posts since then. What"s your username there? Tell Majidimehr I said hi. On to this topic, if you can’t hear any differences, isn’t that a wonderful thing?? You can sport 10 dollar amazonbasics wire and save thousands. Here are the reasons cable difference can’t be heard though.... the 3 Ts - Terrible room+untreated room - Terrible gear (not all gear/speakers is resolving, it can be sht packed in a pretty chassis) - Terrible ears (combination of unfortunate genetics, age and/or accumulated hearing damage) In either case, you are good, count your hidden blessings and save thousands by sticking with 10 dollar Amazon basics wire.
Future Prediction (I could be wrong): I also get the feeling you could soon start a thread on ’all amps and dacs sound the same" like ASR scientists. Well, how about that? That’s tens/hundreds of thousands in savings headed your way soon. You can throw away all the dacs and stick with the 2 dollar realtek dac in your pc. You can throw away all the amps and get a Pyle amp for 40 bucks.... Savings....Savings....Savings...Bravo.
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No, I have no account on ASR. My room is square but treated and is vastly better sounding than when it was untreated. My McIntosh/Lumin/Pure Fidelity gear seems like it should be able to resolve properly. If my ears are bad then so are the ears of 4 others who came to my house to compare cables... including a guy who manufacturers cables. He also complimented the room acoustics and my equipment. I doubt I'll be swapping my MC462 for a Pyle amp and my Lumin T3 for a Realtek DAC. I assume that's the gear you're sporting so you've got that covered. Funny thing, you're proving how correct my quote was about how similar the treatment of dissimilar views here is with ASR. |
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