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What Speaker Cables Taught Me About Audiophiles

Hold on tight because none of this story ends up where you think it will.

Ages ago I did a half-blind speaker cable test with friends in the building who loved Jazz. The amp was a Yamaha P2100 with Focal profile speakers. Cables were Mogami vs. Wireworld. Source was a CD player through a Theta Casanova preamp / processor (oh how i miss it).

I thought i was going to impress my friends with how great the Wireworld Silver 7s sounded. In particular the imaging I thought was so much better than through the Mogami Sound Runners.

To the surprise of many "scientists" here, my friends did in fact hear a noticeable difference between the two sets of cables. They absolutely preferred the Mogami.

I was a little shocked. I tried very hard to keep a poker face, and not guide them either way while switching. They could not see which cables were connected from their listening location.

What happened? Did they not understand how much better the imaging was with the Wireworld?

Well, actually they did and they didn’t care. Richard and his wife did notice that but felt that the loss of treble and beat was not worth it. Hands down for them the Mogami was the clear winner.

What this taught me was:

  1. Speaker cables can make a small but noticeable difference
  2. The improved imaging came at a cost of treble energy
  3. Most listeners wouldn’t make the trade. They’d rather have the tempo and foot tapping experience over my precious deep into the room imaging.

Over time of listening back and forth between my Wireworld collection and Mogami or DH Labs pure silver IC’s and Mogami speaker cables I’ve given that up. I think my neighbors were right. I’d rather have the beat and energy. It’s a fetish I was giving up far too much for.

I'm definitely not encouraging you to overhaul all your cables, but rather saying that we audiophiles need to be conscious that sometimes our preferences are unique to our culture and that the "normal" consumer may not share them at all. 

erik_squires
tomic601's avatar
tomic601
12,935 posts
 

@snilf nice deeply thoughtful experiential post.

i especially loved the embedded music recommendation…the ECM

Glad you have a SPL widget…. i view ears like turbochargers… as a consumable 

bassbuyer
138 posts
 

Thanks for sharing your story.  I had a similar experience as I was upgrading my music only system.  I was trying out different speakers trying to find a sound I liked without sibilance.  I had a couple of friends over and was A/B testing 2 different speakers and they thought both sounded good and didn’t notice any sibilance, which I was clearly hearing with one pair.  I then shared with my wife who tolerates my hobby/obsession but doesn’t really care one way or the other.  I discovered she heard what I was hearing too.  I’ve since used her unbiased opinion to confirm my listening, although I don’t really need it since I’m the only one at home that cares.  It’s good to have a sounding board to confirm what I’m hearing and thinking.  It helped reassure me that I should trust my hears and choose that which makes me happy.  As Hans says, enjoy the music.  

coralkong's avatar
coralkong
679 posts
 

You like what you like.

Sometimes you like cheaper cables. Sometimes not. It's all about system synergy and tailoring the sound to what YOU want, not what anyone else tells you that you should like.

mitch2
4,022 posts
 

I have been playing around with cables lately, and they do sound different from each other, IME and IMO. I have about 6 or 7 different variants here, about half are manufactured cable and the rest DIY. None sound particularly bad to me but I do enjoy several of them more than the others, for various reasons. There doesn’t seem to be a particular correlation to price, although my current favorite are the most expensive while my second favorite are the least expensive.

I am curious whether you have performed a similar listening test with your Connex BL-Ag interconnects, as I have used them before and was considering trying them again but went in a different direction for now.

jonwolfpell
397 posts
 

If you think about it, other than a live performance of symphonic music in a good hall w/ good seats, when do you actually experience layers of depth in live music? I have been fortunate enough to attend Symphony Hall in Boston for BSO concerts ( going again soon)  & at Tanglewood too & have enjoyed  that quality but at very few other times. Rock / Pop concerts now all use line arrays which by design offer no imaging & good smaller jazz clubs can offer nice natural image width & height but little depth in my experience.

Dynamics, pace, start & stop speed ( along w/ decay), frequency extension w/ power,  midrange clarity all contribute to what makes a system sound like live music which for myself is what I’m after. Image depth is fun & interesting but not a huge priority for me. Nor do I hear it w/ most live music. 
 

That all said, I’m sure many will disagree with this which is one of the things that makes this all so interesting. 

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