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Cable elevators - conventional wisdom wrong?

Reluctant to put any considerable money in them, the reasons for using cable elevators seemed intuitively correct to me: decouple cables mechanically from vibration and insulate them from the carpet's static. I have therefore built cheap elevators myself using Lego building blocks. (Plastic with a more or less complex internal structure; moreover, there is enormous shaping flexibility, for instance you can also build gates with suspended strings on which to rest the cables)
In their advertisement/report on the Dark Field elevators, Shunyata now claim that conventional elevators are actually (very?) detrimental in that they enable a strong static field to build up between cable and floor causing signal degradation.
Can anyone with more technical knowledge than I have assess how serious the described effect is likely to be? Would there, theoretically, be less distortion with cables lying on the floor? Has anyone actually experienced this?
karelfd
carl109
134 posts
 
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.
karelfd OP
476 posts
 
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.
nrostov
199 posts
 
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
opus88
530 posts
 
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.
theaudiotweak
2,797 posts
 
I use cables that have mass loaded non ferrous dielectric insulator to absorb and deflect vibration and emf. Can it get better....always. Tom
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