@ejr1953 - Shocker! Too bad they didn't have switches, Ethernet cables, and other tweaks to compare. OTOH, maybe a strike against "blind" testing
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:
- Speaker cables can make a small but noticeable difference
- The improved imaging came at a cost of treble energy
- 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.
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@jji666 makes a good point. If this were 1900, a majority of audiophiles would talk to their automobiles, pet them on the radiator, and cover them with a blanket at night so they don’t get cold.
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WRT the conductor material, I tend to agree. Ambient noise in just about any room is going to overwhelm a 1-2 percent difference in the conductivity of OFC (about 101% IACS) vs. OCC copper (about 102/3% IACS), or even a 5 percent difference between copper and silver (about 105% IACS). I also truly doubt the human ear can reliably discern the difference between standard annealled copper and OCC or other exotically drawn coppers that reportedly have fewer grain boundaries, especially considering the ICs and speaker cables containing those metals are nowhere near the only metals that a music signal passes thorough on its way to being a sonic waveform that we can hear. However, that doesn’t mean that I don’t have OCC copper cables in my system, because I do. Note that the respected Galen Gareis of Belden uses ETP copper (100% IACS) in one form of his signature Iconoclast cables. I do seem to reliably hear subtle differences between different cables, which I doubt is due to the metal material but may be due to the conductor form, i.e., solid core vs. stranded, conductor diameter, cable geometry, dielectric materials, and/or other factors, or maybe just a figment of my imagination based on my bias. |
@snilf, I can so relate to your post! I love Part’s "Te Deum" on ECM; and I’m always stunned by people that listen to (and adore) various sub-genres of heavy metal on their pricey audio gear. I find the music heavily compressed, quite edgy, and hard to listen to for very long. Yes, it’s all about subjectivity. Re speaker cables, I never focused much on it until recently. I had an inexpensive pair of Audioquest something-or-others here in the office desktop system for over 10 yrs. Finally got the urge to experiment, and based on user comments, picked up a used (elderly) pair of Nirvana speaker cables. As soon as I installed them on the vintage KEF 103.2 speakers, driven by Wyred 4 Sound ST-500 class D amp, I heard positive differences: audible improvements in the depth, focus and lcarity of the entire bass range; slightly less "glassiness" in the upper mids; and noticeably better soundstage dimension (not something desktop placement facilitates). Those speaker cables aren’t going anywhere. I know a good thing when I hear it..
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@devinplombier +1. Very much agree with your observation. My favorite quote describing meetings "never have so many argued over so little for so long" . It may be human nature. Tree vs Forest thing? |
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