A question about the logic of interconnect cables

The internal wire inside components does matter, but it is prohibitively expensive to use pure gold or silver wire in most components. That being said, you can have the wire inside some components upgraded by professional modders. I know of one person who had an amplifier rewired with pure silver wire and said the improvement was stunning. In fact, the improvement led him to question whether paying for megabuck interconnects was even worth it.

As for what the point of using interconnects is, I think they provide an invaluable way to tune your system. Some people say the best interconnects allow the purest signal transmission, and that they aren't tone controls. I think this is bogus. Every wire in your system is a tone control. Anyone who says differently should consider the concept of relativity and the fact no one really *knows* what a component is supposed to sound like. The only way you can listen to any component is with cables, and they all color the sound in their own way. Changing interconnects allows you to color the sound the way you like it.

Tomer

Audiofeil; "Now, for every manufacturer to take the time and test their products with every cable/component permutation is impossible."

"Lastly, how would you expect any manufacturer to anticipate every listener's likes/dislikes/preferences?"

Gee, wouldn't it nice to know exactly WHAT cable they DID use to tout the claims/specs they're marketing?

Thanks all for your feedback.....one thing I have done is when I go to Hi End Shows like the CES in Las Vegas, I make note of major mfgs like ARC, Magnepan, Krell, Conrad Johnson etc. to note what power cords they use....after all, they are showcasing their products to the media , their immediate retail customers etc....they seem to use their supplied products...nothing else.

But when it came to interconnects, there was no definitive favorite other than ARC claimed they used their own.

Speaker cables, with biamped Maggie 20.1s were noted to use Valhalla one day and MIT the next....hmmmm.

Conrad Johnson supplies a "high end" power cord with their CT6. It isn't a name brand though. They said it did make a difference and is why they included it.

I'd hazard a guess that most manufacturers don't make aftermarket powercords because they know high-end PC's are a big con. As for "offending" other manufacturers... what have you been smoking?

To answer the original question; any wiring within a component is very short and well shielded from external interference by the component casing. It wouldn't be prohibitively expensive to use silver for such short lengths as someone suggested above; such wire is obviously deemed unnecessary over good copper.

However, if we choose to mix brands in our setup and have varying distances between components, it does make sense to buy high quality shielded cables to get the signal from point A to B as pristine as possible.

I posed a similar question a while back, asking if eliminating interconnects altogether by using fully integrated systems (like the Arcam CD/Pre/power) was an advantage.