Audio Cables: All the Same?

@jmeyers

I agree with you completely. I no longer pay any attention to the you-must-be-crazy-to-think-you-hear-differences-in-audio-cable crowd. BUT, I suspect that there are three factors that figure into this:

The biggest one is:

1) They have little to NO experience with live, unamplified music as one would hear it in the symphony hall, the jazz clubs, or parades. This means they couldn’t tell a flute from a piccolo (or a clarinet for that matter), and therefore have no sense of the actual tonality of acoustic instruments. That will make evaluations difficult if they’re using KISS records, for example, to evaluate equipment, as very few rock records are well-recorded (Brothers In Arms, Trinity Sessions notwithstanding).

2) They don’t understand terms such as "low level detail" or "harmonics" or most of the vocabulary that was invented 30 years before they arrived on the planet, and so they invent the meanings of the terms, and then sneer at the established terms because none of their peers know any of this either.

3) Their systems - and the music they play - do not have the resolution level to hear the differences. (This was actually put forth by one of the Founding Fathers of High End Audio, Ivor Tiefenbrun, who said, ’If you haven’t heard it, you don’t have an opinion." His other comment, when told people could not hear the difference between his turntable and say, Ariston, "Then your equipment does not have the resolution to show you the differences." And he said this in the late 1970s, if my memory is correct.

AND, a fourth!

4) They have completely untrained ears. Training one’s ears is not hard, but it does require patience and discipline. I knew music LONG before I discovered audiophilia, and spent decades in symphony halls, jazz clubs, cello recitals (from friends who were teachers and demonstrating their pupil’s proficiency), but I wouldn’t have known how to integrate what I heard in the symphony hall with what I heard a piece of equipment was NOT doing (but SHOULD be doing) to something I KNEW was on the record. It took a year or so for me to "hear" how recorded music varies from live music. But I still had to train my ears. No way around that. And they haven’t. It’s that simple.

That seems to be asking too much of many posters who have zero experience with much of the high quality equipment (which, unfortunately, is also priced higher than they can spend), so they speculate. Now, my mother DRILLED into me when I was young, that if I didn’t know about a subject, I should keep my mouth shut. That no longer seems to matter to the unknowledgeable - on ANY subject.

Hence, people on forums who want to tell me - someone who can read, write and play music (none of them great, but still...) - that I must be hearing things to think I can hear the resonating cavity of a nylon guitar, or that I cannot hear the tape splice in The Nutcracker Suite (Mercury Living Presence). I just mentally realize they don’t have the tools (equipment, experience with live music, and trained ears) to "get" what I’m hearing. You cannot SPEAK knowledge into someone. Anyone with children knows this (and some of the responses on here remind me of 14 year olds with their ’nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah’ responses), otherwise, none of us would have burned our finger on the stove even though grandma had said, ’don’t touch the stove. You’ll get burned.’ Same thing with sharing insight or knowledge. It can’t be "transferred." It can only be experienced.

If people want to remain unknowledgeable and ignorant, I say, LET ’EM. It’s no skin off my nose if they like being that way. Anytime someone sneers before even asking ONE question, they’re not interested in learning. They’ve had a bad day, and they came to a forum to discharge their anxiety/fear whatever. They write their dismissive response and get a temporary fix of "GOTCHA" but it goes away after 10 minutes, so they return and spend none of their time learning, and all of their time bitching. Why fight with some complete stranger over what they don’t even know? Waste of time! You’ll drive yourself crazy.

@gbmcleod

Totally agree with what you are saying, but you have to give more credit to more of the non-acoustic recordings for having the ability to discern sonic differences between cables (and gear). I agree it may be easier to hear differences with acoustic music, but I personally find it just as easy with some rock, pop, or even metal music. In a broad sense, the concept of difference only applies when one senses a change from what they are familiar with.

I feel like writing so here is a story, apologies in advance

I chose my Magneplanar’s almost 20 years ago based on what they sounded like with Coldplay and Rush. Going even further back than that -1988 ish? I recall my brother shopping for speakers in the $800 range (what is that, $1500 in today’s dollars?) And the particular mid-fi store I frequented to buy CD’s and records had these Mission’s we read about in a magazines. We listened to them standing up, as this "sound room" had no chairs, and they sounded just okay- when he played his favourite Queensryche Empire CD, Della Brown track, the bass wasn’t that good enough for him-it was not powerful enough.

This "sound room" had several pairs of floorstanders all side by side, on a ledge a few inches above the floor, to hide all the unsightly hundreds of feet of cheap cable attached to all the speakers. Above this ledge was another ledge with dozens of bookshelf speakers. What a great idea hey? speakers on one side of the 20’ square room, home theatre receivers on the other side, and the salesman just has to click a few buttons and demo this receiver paying that speaker, and go back and forth- nothing to move or lift, nothing to connect. Brilliant! There were 4 identical rooms like this on one end of the store, all with glass walls and a glass door on one side, so 4 different sales people could be demoing at the same time. This acoustically horrible room was probably designed by an interior designer, not an audiophile. I did say it was a "mid-fi" store.

But this was a knowledgeable salesman- he had enough knowledge to work at a high-end hi fi store downtown but told me he made more money at this store. He said "give me a minute": He dragged the speakers out of the room into the main area of the store, and went to a roll of bulk litz speaker cable and cut off about 20 feet, cut that in half, sheathed the ends, then hooked up the bare copper ends to the Missions, and the other ends to a Denon receiver he grabbed, and connected and threw our CD in a Denon CD player. Well, the bass pounded, our jaws dropped, and after 10 seconds my brother said "Ill take them!"

From your post I don’t know which point above this is, but to add to it I’ll say 3) The system and the room: I now know this as it was demonstrated way back then. Perhaps many people who can’t hear differences have their gear set up in rooms such as this, with little knowledge or thought on how this setup affects the acoustics, ie: sound. I don’t think the simple speaker cable change would have made that much of a difference in that room.

To emphasize my point- even back then, almost 40 years ago as a teenager, I found out what a difference can be had by playing speakers in a different space, with different cables, even with heavy metal music.

1. There is the same debate running on a local forum for more than 100 pages of posts. Fun fact: the main anti-cable guy, a mod, with more than 1 post every 10 fighting against cables, proved to have expensive cables in his system lol lol lol....

2. I ll make it even worse. 30 years ago, I was young editor in a sound magazine and started discovering the wonderful world of sound... I was just starting realizing how systems details do make a difference and I had also the chance a) to test really good equipment as part of the job b) to make friends with owners of really expensive gear. I met this guy that had invested ridiculous amount of money, starting with the 100k turntable, the big Kronzilla amps... etc... I was invited to listen and I was truly amazed and this setup was of jaw-dropping performance. I was persuaded at the time that cables do matter but I believed that other "goodies" were more or less snake oil. 

I noticed that he had the cables on special stands with spikes and I new that these were expensive, I had seen them on the vendor and I believed this was crap. So I told him, everything ok etc but these stands, come on now... you threw your money out of the window... He replies, why don't we do a blind test then... You imagine what happened... I was shocked... When removed it seems like the concrete stage was collapsing upto a point... I tested again and again because I wouldn't believe it. I asked him if i can borrow to test in my system, a modest 10k system back then compared to his... NO difference in mine... none...

3. In my tests, cables do matter and I have different results in different systems. My audio-gd DAC likes a lot my Odin cable, doesnt like much my furutech cables. My custom design DAC does not like that much Odin (very weird)... It prefers custom Neotech cable with Rhodium connectors. My final stage prefers SPM reference to odin... And yes, more expensive doesn't mean it will work. I had many times got the dissapointment getting something that is so good in papers and I disliked to my guts.

Cheers

@mclinnguy

thank you for an intelligent, considerate, response. I am sure that you are correct and that you can hear cable changes, even with pop music. I can hear them too, with all kinds of music, but well-recorded classical and jazz have more “aliveness” to them, so you can hear extremely low level noises, such as people shifting in their seats (if it’s a classical recording), scores dropping, the air conditioning in the hall, and other sounds, even trucks outside the recording the recording venue on some recordings!

I know that it’s possible to hear these things with other types of recordings, My point is that so many people can’t even identify one acoustic instrument, that sometimes when they make a comment, it’s less out of actual knowledge and more out of supposition.
As well, it’s not the people with the better systems who are complaining about the $25,000 speaker systems or the $10,000 amps. It’s the people who don’t have a lot of experience with these components, or even know what they can do, or don’t play the kind of music that displays the brilliance of a new speaker system correctly. And then they blame it on the speaker system (“I could get the same results on my $1200 speaker system“ when actually, they cannot.) instead of the recordings they use or their lack of insight/knowledge around music. They could help themselves by simply being careful listeners, not just “reactive” listeners.

You, by contrast, seem to have insight/knowledge and experience. From the time I have spent on boards (as well as what I hear from my colleagues at many of the major print magazines as well), people make statements that are absolutely ridiculous, but since many people have any knowledge of certain types of music, ignorance, frequently prevails on these forums. And I guarantee you, some of the people I know are brilliant, they design components, they’ve been in the high-end since it began 50 years ago, and they despair just as much as I do, because people use all the wrong criteria for evaluating a piece of equipment. And those of us who are older KNOW that our younger brothers and sisters were never exposed to music in high school, and don’t demonstrate any interest in acoustic instruments, Which I always find funny, because do you think the designers are designing based on ovation or Martian guitars? It’s more likely they evaluate the end results based on recordings with Bosendorfer pianos, Yamaha flutes, and other acoustic instruments.. And a friend who is 30 and in a band complains that none of his friends know what even one acoustic instrument sounds like. When he told me that the look on his face was just so disheartened.I completely understand that people can evaluate using pop, but I don’t understand people smart off at people who are more knowledgeable than they are. Actually, I do understand it, but it’s pretty screwed up that people use supposition instead of knowledge.

I trust what you’re saying implicitly and I think it’s great that you’re happy with what you’re getting out of your records on your own equipment.

@alexopth1512

Great post:

I noticed that he had the cables on special stands with spikes and I new that these were expensive, I had seen them on the vendor and I believed this was crap. So I told him, everything ok etc but these stands, come on now... you threw your money out of the window... He replies, why don’t we do a blind test then... You imagine what happened... I was shocked... When removed it seems like the concrete stage was collapsing upto a point... I tested again and again because I wouldn’t believe it. I asked him if i can borrow to test in my system, a modest 10k system back then compared to his... NO difference in mine... none...

And while I definitely hear the differences in all cables in my system; power, IC’s, and digital, and filters, and LIve Vibe stands, I have yet to hear the difference in cable lifters. I have some, just because it was easy and free, and I have read things like that, but I have yet to actually experience it. Maybe one day I will go back and forth, or buy some manufacturer’s offerings and give it a go. Thanks for sharing this.

 ...but I believed that other "goodies" were more or less snake oil. 

And that is exactly what it is with people: they believe they know, and will argue their opinion to the death based on their belief system, until the facts are proven to them. Unfortunately some never have the opportunity and will never know the truth.