Cable auditions - Hard Work?

Yes, it's hard, tedious work. The good news is once you're done, find what you like, you don't have to go through it again for years as suggested above. As I built my system I used perfectly acceptable $200-$300 ICs for my 'major' components. Now that the system is 'done', I just wanted to dial-in the last bit of resolution and (yes) freq balance to my liking. But going through about 20 $300-$1000 ICs takes a LOT of time, esp as I was generally intentionally auditioning cables that had similar characteristics.

The Cable Company is both a blessing and a curse. My 'salesman' was incredibly knowledgeable and patient, helping me narrow things down considerably. They have every cable made, a reasonable (?) lease cost, all cables fully burned-in, painfree return shipping labels, but before you know it you've spent $400 just to audition. At least the price can be fully credited to buying a new or used cable from them at a fair, if not audiogon, price.

I can do up to 90min at a time, at the expense of getting on with my life. I have about a dozen CDs and a dozen LPs I use and know what to listen for. I tend to cover as much ground as I can in an intense listening session, rather than just listening to a particular cable for days more casually. Some of this may be the 2wk time limit of The Cable Co, a lot of it is I just want to get it over with. So it's usually one track I'll listen to once or twice before switching to a different cable. I can only compare one cable to another at a time, so I have to carefully choose the order in which I stage the cables, and can quickly narrow down to the favorites A/Bing against each other. I take copious notes (what a surprise) so I don't have to repeat a comparison unnecessarily.

The good news is I have found the 'perfect' ICs I was looking for to fit my system/ears/preferences (if not budget!) which takes the whole system an appreciable step beyond what the previous (decent) cables did. And learned a lot about many of the popular current cables available today. The bad news is I could have accomplished a lot more useful stuff (and saved a lot of money) in the hours and months it took to get to where I am now -- but we can all make that claim in this hobby. I don't know that I could have short-cutted the process and have the same level of confidence that I didn't hear cable XYZ that has such great press against my final choices.

The only thing 'worse' I can think of is auditioning power cords, which I did only enough of to replace all my generic IEC cords with $50-$200 cords -- relatively cheap -- with an absolute minimum of critical auditioning. YMMV of course.

In response to Bojack, the cable business is not all a scam. This is an irresponsible comment that sends the wrong message to newcomers of this hobby who seek to improve their system beyond their source, electronics and speakers. Sure, many cable prices are downright ridiculous but there are some cables that are not inexpensive and yet they bring on a level of improvement to a system as significant as other links in the chain for the same cost. Of course that system has to have the ability to benefit from such cables.

As for what audiophiles need to learn here, I suggest we keep an open mind and not be influenced by blanket statements. The thing to do is to try many different products in our own system and determine the value added for any system change at that time.

In another A'gon thread this week I covered the details of changing all the cables in my system to the Kubala-Sosna Emotion series ..... and, with the honor of Joe Kubala himself taking much of a full-day to help me with this task. The time spent swapping out each cable to a K-S, was ultimately exhausting but it proved a lot to even this long-time skeptic of power-cord differences. When you have the potential for a high-resolution system but you have been using cables that have masked some or much of these strengths for so long, it is quite incredible to hear the transformation. And the NBS and MIT cables that I have been using for so long are very good in their own right. But the K-S cables in my system brought on a new level of musicality that was simply breathtaking. Of course this comes at a cost.

I was able to hear a far greater capability of the Aesthetix preamp and CAT amps....and even the Manley DAC had a bass rhythm that has been lacking all along. It will be awhile before I can afford to purchase each and every one of these cables, but what this experience did for me was make me aware of what is there to achieve without the desire or need to change the other components in my system.

John

John, I think you offer a thoughtful perspective. But, what I think you are referring to more than the issue of cables is the issue of SYNERGY. A system that is assembled to work toegether can sound outstanding regardless of price.

A knowledgable dealer, even one that will only discount 10% of of retail, who listens to the customer, is knowledgable, and assembes a system where all the componenets (cables included) work together, can construct a system that genuinely sounds engaging.

Pardales - I agree with your comment on synergy. During the Kubala visit, by the time we got to swapping out the IC from the line stage to the amp, from MIT 350 Evo to K-S Emotion, there was a huge peak in the midrange. Anyone would immediately point blame to the K-S cable. In fact Joe Kubala made a bold statement and said it had to be the Concident TRS speaker cables in my system. His theory was that I had managed to obtain a "synergy" between the MIT and Coincident cables to achieve a balanced midrange. But with this also came a slight roll-off of the frequency extremes. This was new "territory" for me to take on such a theory so seriously and yet you know what...when we put in the K-S Emotion speaker cables, Joe was right on! What my synergy before was nothing more than a bandaid that happened to work with these two different cables. The musicality was there but now with the K-S pair, I had so much more resolution and frequency extreme extension. Two identically voiced cables paired together were far more accurate than two different cables. That's not synergy, that's neutrality and accuracy. I learned far more than I ever would have expected from the Kubala visit.

Synergy is important to compensate for faults in other links in the chain. As we upgrade our system, one component at a time, we base the performance of that new component on how it "mates" with the rest of our system. We need to put in component ABC with its Fault22 because component XYZ is complimentary to this with its Fault47 and so on.

So many people here claim that when one picks a cable, it should be the same model throughout the system. So far I have only ever heard one cable model where this can be done to excellent success - the Kubala Sosna Emotion. Even the Purist Dominus B which I have listened to for 2 days now, and absolutely love, would most likely be too much of a good thing for me if used throughout. It errors just enough from neutrality to make me feel summing up this error in many links would not be ideal. Here, "synergy" would be critical.

In time, I am starting to dislike this whole synergy thing more and more.

John

Hmm...

I used to be a skeptic about cables too. however I do hear differences in various cables - especially ICs.
So:
Bojack - Not sure i agree with your statement that cables are a scam. I agree there must be a price point where the returns diminish so greatly, that it no longer is a worthy pursuit. But, there are differences, though subtle, in the cables I'm currently auditioning.

I think my stress is due to the fact that I don't want to be missing anything in the sonic picture, not the actual act of auditioning. Although - I will admit - I hate getting up and down to switch the cables. :-)

Synergy - I think I've just been lucky so far with regard to synergy. ALL of the pieces of equipment that I've inserted into the chain have performed well. My preferences dictate which i like better, but, none of them have been a disaster the likes of which I've read about on these threads. I suppose, this is why I always come back to cables.