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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
luna
235 posts
 
I have also been trying out these techniques with my Cardas speaker cables.
To the contrary, the effects were mixed! It worked at first. The mids and highs were cleaner, the image rose higher. But after a few days, the system sounded as if some bass had been cut off, the mids were also coloured. At the end, I took off all the treatments and it just sounded more natural!
tgrisham
1,291 posts
 
Musicnoise, Thank you! Very entertaining, and very much to the point.
eweedhome
227 posts
 
When we talk about elevating speaker cable off the floor, we never talk about the embarrassment factor. What do you say to your mother-in-law? I finally concluded that, if there is a difference, I don't want to know. I'm glad to hear that there are some technical reasons why I need not lose much sleep over this one.
karelfd OP
476 posts
 
Thank you all. There is a wealth of information here. If I may draw a conclusion at this point: differences, if any, are small enough not to have to worry over my system's performance if I'm not using the Dark Field elevators. On the other hand, I do like to experiment and so will gladly take up some of the suggestions (Justin, sorry, can't engage MusicDirect in this since I'm based in Europe but I'll look out to find someone with a comparable sales policy over here). To me that's one big fun factor in this hobby, always something to discover (even if once in a while the discovery is there's nothing new under the sun after all ;^))

I'll A/B in my second system where I have easiest access, but I can't do it straight away since I've only just made a change that had a considerable sonic impact. I'll report to you guys in a couple of weeks.

Also, sincere thanks for a very matter-of-factual discussion on a topic such as this.
twentypaws
3 posts
 
When I was a kid I used to collect glass and ceramic insulators. The kind you see on old telephone poles along railroad tracks. There are still hundreds of thousands if not millions of these still in use in rural areas. Just look up at the poles when driving along some old tracks. Most no longer even have wires on them anymore but what are they going to do with all that old glass, so they just leave them up there. What I'm getting at is they are ideal for use as cable elevators, if you think you need them. Go to any flea market even antique stores and get all you want for a buck a piece. All shapes, sizes and colors. Some are worth a lot of money to collectors but most are worthless, except for cable elevators and door stops.
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