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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
tbg
5,263 posts
 
Rdoc, what do you make of these differences of opinion? Is it possible that you are both right? This happens so often, that I think everyone should have reservations about others' opinions on components.
rdoc
88 posts
 
Tbg,
I live in a very dry environment with very high levels of static electricity. Perhaps getting the SC's off the carpet makes the difference. I do not know if those who thought the DFE's hurt the sound had them under more than the SC's. Any of the aforementioned reasons could account for the difference of opinion. I do know that I was biased against them, and the dealer had not even seen them before. I also mentioned to him that some of the posters on this thread thought the DFE's harmed the sound, so he may also have been biased against them. It was just so plainly evident that the DFE's made a very positive difference on my system. So, it could be system differences. I having been an audiophile for over 40 years have seen many things which were unexplainable. Just trust your own ears.
Bob
mrtennis
3,295 posts
 
hi tbg:

i applaud your ecumenical attitude. one's own experiences are more significant when making a purchasing something.

there are so many variables involved in subjective judgments, that they are usually unreliable.

conflicting opinions , especially where contradictions are present are almost impossible to resolve by a third party.
splaskin
170 posts
 
The DFE are not the best choice with Synergistic Research Apex speaker cables, but can be very effective with other brands. I finally found that the Waipuna Sound solid risers were the best sounding elevators for my Apex cables.
aggielaw
267 posts
 
FWIW, I constructed a set of cable risers that are cheap versions of the RSAD risers Robert mentions above. I had some frustrating moments but they work great and look nice.

I noted that my system sounded "cleaner" across the audio spectrum with a little better imaging to boot.

The acrylic risers look sexy, but I've noticed acrylic seems to conduct static electricity, so I'd be concerned about using them on carpet. I'm not sure why I've had so many static issues with acrylic considering it's a plastic, but I have.
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