Cable elevators - conventional wisdom wrong?

I use some Myrtle blocks , Cardas and Ayre makes them. They are actually fairly cheap.
To get more height, I cut a little block out of some Maple wood and then place the myrtle blocks on the wood.
Heck, I think I have seen the Myrtle blocks cut with a V in the center to hold the cable.
You can stain or paint them any color.

Anyway, I own all Synergistic Tesla Cables and they recomended for some reason not to use the porcelin elavators I had.

I actually think they do sound better with the wood.

Read the section of this article that deals with wire and resonances: (http://www.soundstage.com/maxdb/maxdb011999.htm) To the lithocephalic: Don't bother!

Having visited a fellow audiophile with a highly evolved and revealing system, I was intrigued by his insistence on the benefit of elevating his cables. It was done with stiff construction paper cut and formed into 5" vertical cylinders with tape, and then baggies filled with kitty litter for mass (to remove resonance) that filled 90% of the cylinder. I thought of it as an extreme tweek that I would never accept for esthetic reasons, but gave it a try in my system to see. The improvement was major, and I never looked back! Varying their height also allows separation of IC's and PC's. A suspended cable can be affected by room sound, and can transfer the vibration to the equipment, so use as many as necessary to prevent this. The cost is next to nothing. The benefits major. Try it for yourself. Listen!

Mike VansEvers once demonstrated that a rather generic IEC connector on one end of a powercord could be made to sound different by tightening or loosing a short machine bolt that had been substituted to go through and through the connector at the ground wire location. A few observers could recognize "a difference" however the difference was so minute that no one could indicate which way was better. Virtually everything seems to make a difference but these 55 year old ears have trouble telling one from another.

Ozzy,
The porcelain cable risers (nice looking- whitish base and brown top) are actually high voltage line insulators and as such they are brilliant. As a cable riser they are out of place due to the brown top- this is actually an iron ferrite glaze which in its intended role, acts as a conductive surface so that high voltage uninsulated wires do not spark when they come in contact with the insulator (in the old days when insulators were made out of either bear porcelain or glass they did spark). However when a speaker cable comes in contact with the iron ferrite glaze it creates an electromagnetic "bump in the road" that manifests itself as a thickening of the mid-range, loss of low frequency control, and a loss of air and slight compression of the sound stage when compared to either wood or Plexiglas cable risers.

Ideally you should look for a speaker cable riser that does not conduct electricity. If you live in an area that has a lot of static electricity, take a very thin wire and some electrical tape, give your speaker cables a few wraps with the thin copper wire (bare 28 gauge and not more then one or two wraps), and secure with electrical tape. Now place the bare wire in contact with ground- this will give your speaker cables a electrostatic drain without the detrimental effect of draping your cables over a conductive medium.

A good zero cost way for people to experiment with cable risers is to take 8 CD jewel cases (empty- CD's contain a metallic disk- usually aluminium) laying your CD cases in a "V" pattern on the floor 4 per 8ft speaker cable run. Now lay your speaker cables atop your CD case risers being careful to position the risers below each speaker cable in such a say as to allow the speaker cable to lay the way it wants to- not forcing it into a position if possible- this too will improve sound. Many people are surprised at the clarity and control this imparts to their speaker cables and best of all, its a free experiment.

Yours in music,
Ted Denney Lead Designer Synergistic Research Inc.