DH Labs - Shunyata Cable Comparison

@mclinnguy 

My thoughts are similar to yours. I was hesitant to start a controversy but it does seem every time there is a discussion about cables among those of us who understand their impact on sound someone is compelled to tell us we’re delusional and wasting our money. I don’t understand the need of some to insert themselves in these discussions when they have nothing to offer but disdain. And yes they are the ones who are always condescending.  

After years of reading threads on cables, I’ve come to an awareness that the people who are complaining demonstrate a number of issues.

1) They don’t listen to acoustic music (meaning minimally invasive engineering while recording the music), and have no idea what a french horn, a Stradivarius, or even a cello sounds like. It seems most of the complainers listen to highly engineered, multi-tracked-to-death music. NONE of that will help in their assessments of cables.

2) They have never trained their ears to listen carefully. They rely on "measurements" instead. So, they fly in the face of EVERY major designer’s dictum (at least those who were designing equipment in the ’70s, ’80s or ’90s) which was:

TRUST YOUR EARS.

The complainants - in every single thread I have argued on - sneer at this. I wonder if they think designers of TRUE high end equipment didn’t use their ears to "finalize" the design. They think the human ear is inferior to a measuring tool. Let me be blunt: they are fools, putting their faith in a 'measuring' instrument. Dumb as heck. The human ear can do things a microphone could only dream of doing. So, without any training whatsoever, they want to believe that no one could distinguish one cable from the other, when the more important argument is: does this cable make a Stradivarius sound exactly like a Stradivarius, or does the cable make it sound like a generic violin. They can never answer this question, because they don’t know. A measuring instrument is helpful, but it should never supplant the human ear. I mean, the hobby is called AUDIO. That means: you listen. They don't. They can't hear. It's that simple.

Furthermore, I’ve noticed that people who came "into" the audiophile community in the 21st century lack any knowledge of how a well-recorded symphony (almost any Mercury Living Presence or RCA Living Stereo) or even solo jazz (Miles Davs’ Kind Of Blue) sounds. (They also lack any insight into a community that existed 30 years before they were born.

Now, having had these records for 50 years, I know what they sounded like on my entirely-mid-fi system of the ’70s. But after I discovered the High End, and got on board with Audio Research, WATT/Puppies, Rowland electronics, and then SOTA, Goldmund and Versa Dynamics turntables, I could hear the significant jump from very good hi fi to good-god-that-sounds-like-a-decent-approxmination-of-the-symphony-I-was-at-two-nights ago. And then came cables.

Cables only became an industry after 1987. HP proclaimed the MIT cables as the best on the market, and then Karen Sumner started Transparent (she had been the distributor for MIT before that, so she’d taken their designs apart and learned what they knew and then she started Transparent. I don’t think that, to this day, Bruce Brisson speaks to her. I COULD be wrong about that). And then, other companies popped up: Kimber Cable, and Monster (who’d been around before nearly anyone!) saw a market to tap into. But back in the ’80s and ’90s (BEFORE the Internet), people were more serious about their stereos, not to mention that the audience that flocked to the High End were classical and jazz music devotees, and most of us KNEW what instruments sounded like. We’d grown up in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, where we were often forced to take a music class, or at least listen to the band perform in the school audiortorium. And we’d gone to parades for years (live music again!).

No such groundwork exists today for that (and I know because my parents were high school teachers). People get thru their entire adolescent and completely unable to tell even a flute from a clarinet. Very often, people listen to electronica (so do I), but use that kind of music to condemn cables, saying " I couldn’t hear a difference." And I’m thinking, yes, you’re using the wrong kind of music. There is very little dynamic range in a HUGE number of albums, especially those made in the ’80s. So, cables are not going to make a difference if one’s choice in music is mainly rock or pop. I used to be a DJ, and I started in the ’70s, so I KNOW the difference between albums in the ’70s and albums in the ’80s. The ’70s albums were very natural sounding, even though they were multi-miked. The Eagles sounded completely "human" even on albums that weren’t that well-recorded. By the ’80s, it was the worst decade for a lot of music I had experienced in my (by then), nearly 40 years of living. In other words, they have nearly NO acquaintance with acoustic instruments. I’m finding it very amusing that - supposedly - Gen Z is getting into jazz. Imagine that. They’ll hear acoustic instruments, because jazz is a bunch of men and women who are into blowing (horns, flutes), plucking (standup badd, guitars, cello, double bass) or banging (drum sets, xylophones).

Don’t pay attention to people who have no experience with naturally recorded music. (I’ve had people respond to a post, saying, "I don’t listen to classical or jazz " and my response was, ’Well, that’s fine, but , how can you assess any component if you are playing processed music all the time?’) The reality is: THEY CAN’T. They are an example of the three blind men touching an elephant. One touches the tusks, one the legs, and one the tail. Naturally, they all get it wrong. And so, the naysayers get it wrong as well. Untrained ears (and they don’t even WANT to learn how to listen correctly/carefully), poor choice in music, and a system with cables sitting on top of each other (if you think you stereo can’t sound any better, try dressing your cables so none of them touch, but ESPECIALLY a power cord touching a signal cable (interconnect or speaker): the sound, if you wait an hour after you’ve dressed your system correctly, will sound cleaner and clearer. But that advice falls on deaf ears. It’s a bit like trying to talk to a 16 year old and tell them they’re making the wrong choice: it falls on deaf ears. I worked with an EMT technician who was in a band, and I asked him, "How many of your friends know what ANY acoustic instrument sounds like?" And the look on his face told the story: he was disgusted, as he replied, "NONE OF THEM." Can you imagine being 50 and never having heard so much as a tuba playing? (And I am not slamming those who have reached 50 but can’t identify an instrument. I’m just saying how uncommon it would have been to get from kindergarten thru 12th grade and not once having heard live music (unamplified, thank you). I’m sure there are some of us for whom this is true, but not as many as people born in the 1990s and after. They would have had to seek out music, because schools removed them as a requirement (no such luck in 1964!)) for graduation.

Don’t waste your time with people who have absolutely ZERO curiosity about how they can improve their system without spending any money, but still observing rules (don’t put your speakers near the back or side walls, for example) that help them achieve better sound. And also can’t identify one single acoustic instrument. I don’t.

@gbmcleod

+1 Thanks for that.

I’ve run out of patience attempting to bring an all encompassing explaination to those that simply don’t get it. I learned more about sound quality by attending the symphony for ten years in the 7th row center than in much of the thirty plus years of being an audiophile before that. live acoustic music, being jazz or classical or a single instrument is the real key to having a reference to compare sound reproduction to. Hours and hours and hours of exposure is the real key to tuning your ear.

@gbmcleod I have this discussion with two of my sons that like to evaluate my stereo. I force them to listen to recordings with real acoustic instruments, horns, percussion, piano, etc.  I eventually give in and let them play their music. Some of it actually sounds pretty good.  Lol. 

The number of cretins frequenting these forums had increased exponentially in the last year or two. Best ones are those who have no system but have an opinion on components and cables. It almost seems as if ASR is down for maintenance on some days and they come here to produce that vomit they consider valuable input into discussions. Properly ignoring them cures the problem.