I am sick of cables

Al

This kind of thing has been demonstrated many times. One of the most lauded systems on Audiogon suffered a similar fate. Sighted the "special" cable sounded best without doubt but unsighted it was not possible to tell when the "special" cable was in the loop.

I've never understood the objective argument amongst audiophiles, empirical evidence, even if subjective and anecdotal, is much more valuable to me. If someone prefers cable A to cable B, who am I to say he doesn't hear cable A as preferable. Cable A may be more or less expensive, either way, it doesn't involve me, why should I care.

You'd better think twice about that choice and start care'in a whole bunch, cause those who don't believe will burn in audiophile hell for all eternity, while being forced to listen to Yanni on an optional 8-track from a '74 Gremlin in an eternal loop through damaged speakers.

Almarg - I read article. The problem is that people often try to find sanity in the laws of physics. According to them only inductance and capacitance play part while most of people can hear difference between silver and copper cables. I don't know how power cable affect the sound but I don't question that they do.

I had once very thick stranded cheap speaker cables. I had at this time amp with tone controls. I had to set treble to more than +3dB to get balanced sound. I replaced cable with Audioquest Indigo and balance dramatically changed - too much of "treble" and not enough of midrange. It was very pronounced and I could easily tell the difference. Take two inexpensive Audioquest interconnects Ruby and King Cobra. First has absolutely no bass control while the second gives more bass extension and very good control. Can you explain it according to laws of physics?
Please don't even bring laws of physics into audio forum - as far as I know we cannot be even sure how electric current flows (and I'm in electronics for over 30 years).
Do you believe that there is no difference, as article suggest, between lamp cord and best cables? Do you have lamp cord in your systems?

As for "disappearance" of the cable - it might be intuitive and difficult to describe term but it seems to me that cable that has no particular sonic characteristic will sound the same being 0.5m or 5m (with some loss of clarity). Maybe I'm thinking of "average" sound or "clarity/transparency" - I don't know.

Directionality of the cable, so laughed at in the article, is described by Audioquest as an effect of how cable is drawn (crystal formation) but I think it has more to do with the fact that unbalanced IC has shield grounded on one side only. This side in my opinion (and Audioquest's) should be receiving end. Talking about Audioquest - a lot of people laughed at their high voltage dielectric polarization (battery attached to cable) calling this complete nonsense while people who review them could exactly tell and describe difference when battery was connected and disconnected. I tend to trust manufacturers, not suspecting them of evil conspiracy, but at the end I trust my ears.

Kijanki -- You raise some good points, and also some that I see somewhat differently. I too, by the way, have been an audiophile and in electronics (not related to audio) for around 30 years.

This is how I see it:

-- You have a good point about cable "disappearance" correlating with a short cable sounding the same as a longer cable of the same type. But I would expect that very few people assess cable differences that way.

-- I believe there are many more factors involved, both known and unknown, than inductance and capacitance. Just to cite one example, which I mentioned in another recent thread, what is called "spectral contamination" caused by intermodulation effects resulting from ultrasonic and rf interference coupling. See http://wiring.svconline.com/ar/avinstall_designer_cables_critical/index.htm

-- Certainly a cable that has a shield grounded at only one end can be expected to be directional. I made the very same point in the current thread about fuse polarity. I assume, btw, that you are referring to single-ended interconnect cables that have both an inner shield and an outer shield, with the outer shield being the one grounded at only one end. If there were only one shield, as might be the case in an inexpensive cable, there would be no (direct) signal return path if one end was not connected.

-- I believe that system synergy is important at all price levels, as Mapman stated well.

-- Partially as a consequence of that, I believe that while some degree of correlation obviously exists between cable price and cable performance, it is far from a perfect correlation (i.e., the correlation would be well below 1.0 if it could be expressed mathematically).

-- I tend to take manufacturer claims and literature with several large grains of salt. Partly because it stands to reason that it will be self-serving. But also due to the fact that as a person with a technical background I feel that much (though certainly not all) of the contents of technical "white papers" and other manufacturer literature, and the technical explanations that are offered to account for the claimed differences, often approach (or actually reach the point of) being utter nonsense. Examples that fall into this category, in my opinion, are articulation poles, golden ratios, and time alignment. I certainly don't mean to imply that the makers of those cables don't provide excellent products, that will provide good performance and value to many users, just that the explanations are speculative at best, and utter nonsense at worst. And as a potential customer, I find that sort of thing to be a turn-off.

-- I think it is pretty well established that even in the case of the most sincere, open-minded, and perceptive listener there will be a correlation between what is heard and what the listener is expecting to hear. One reason for that may be increased concentration being brought into play when the cable that is expected to be better is being listened to.

-- Another factor that probably misleads many listeners as they assess cables or other components over time is failure to recognize and control extraneous variables.

-- While I don't believe in "evil conspiracies," I do believe that manufacturers take advantage of our natural expectation that more expensive = better, in combination with the fact that cable differences are elusive, system dependent, and to a large degree unexplainable by conventional science, to hype unnecessarily expensive product with bad science.

Regards,
-- Al

Al - I do agree that correlation is far from being 1 but still exist. Article on the other hand claims that people can very seldom tell the difference between any cables.

I know that this is not true and I won't applaud articles like that one.

Manufacturers are not lying to us, I'd like to believe, but just either exaggerate (called marketing) or pursue particular construction that will give them advantage over competition.

At certain quality of cables I won't be able to tell the difference but people with better systems and better hearing might. What right do I have to tell other people that they cannot possibly hear any difference because I don't. That is pretty much spirit of many posts here - "I bought Home Depot wire and it sounded to me as good as my Stealth Indra". Fine, but don't judge other people's choices. All is subjective. Even if at certain point it is only a placebo effect, as article claims, - why to spoil it to other people.

If there is any correlation between spects and sound, in case of the SS amplifiers, it's inverse one. There are some technical reasons why amp with 0.0001% THD won't sound as good as one with 0.1% THD but I would not even read most of specifications. Brand name is important to me and I don't see a reason to mistrust Jeff Rowland or Audioquest.

There is no honest or dishonest price and the hype of unnecessarily expensive product (with bad or good science) is called advertising and is part of the system we live in.