Cable elevators - conventional wisdom wrong?

One good reason to raise cables off of synthetic carpets: better sound. In another listening room, my cables lay on oak flooring and I didn't lift the cables. In my new listening room, the floor is covered with synthetic wall-to-wall carpeting. In this new room, lifting the cables off the synthetic carpeting makes a big difference in clarity/resolution through the midrange. My cable lifters of choice: corrugated cardboard towers cut from cardboard boxes left over from the move, about 6" tall. Cost: $0.

In keeping with the theory that certain materials store energy (e.g., synthetic carpeting) and then dissipate that energy randomly in time back into the cables, it makes sense to me to use materials for lifting the cables that don't store any energy - for me, this means "no plastics." Use wood, paper, unglazed pottery/porcelein.

We can debate the theory, but the ultimate answer is in the listening. When listening, just be cautious with making quick A/B comparisons. My listening tells me that the process of simply MOVING the cable impacts the sound for several minutes to an hour after the cable is disturbed.

Also, be open to getting different results in different systems with different cables. A good friend whose hearing I highly respect has the opposite experience from mine in his room. In his room, and in his system, he says his cables sound better left on the floor, on synthetic carpeting, than lifted. I have no reason to doubt what he's experienced. The point is: he made the listening experiment and chose based on what he heard. My listening experiments in my room, in my system, tell me the sound of my system is better with the cables lifted of the carpet by my cardboard towers. And that's the key to getting better and better sound in this crazy hobby of ours: be prepared to listen and experiment, and trust your own ears.
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I doubt there was any "conventional wisdom" to begin with. As Shadorne said, there is simply no reason to bother suspending speaker cables off the floor.
They're not susceptible to low-level vibration the way your turntable or CDP would be, and static (from man-made carpet fibers) is unlikely to be an issue; if it was, high-end speaker cables would be shielded.

Unfortunatley our passion has an equal mix of genuine products and snake-oil sellers. If you're really keen, try to find some old glass or ceramic mains power insulators. They look ok and cost much less than branded ones.

Point taken, I should have put "conventional wisdom" in inverted commas.

The thing is, since I had my Lego stuff to experiment with anyway I thought give it a try, it can't harm. Now Shunyata's telling us it will harm.

I own the Shunyata Dark Field Elevators. They did improve the sound of my system; however the improvement was let's say 3%. In other words I could hear a difference but it wasn't night and day.

So if we are to assume Shunyata's theory is correct, and given the minimal improvement I noticed, I would probably guess you would barely hear the difference between your Lego's and my Shunyata's.

Karelfd, you could order the Shunyata's from Music
Direct, compare them, and then return them. I believe they have a 30 day return policy. It would be an interesting experiment and I would love to hear the results.

Justin

I fully agree with Rushton. Like him, my dedicated listening room has synthetic carpet, and also like him I have used pieces of cardboard (and have for years) to keep speaker cables elevated with the same significant results he has obtained. However, raising interconnect cables off the floor has never registered any improvement in sound for me, but as they say, YMMV.