All things occurring with the performance of audio systems are not guaranteed to make sense. If everything made sense, man would this be simpler.
This makes no sense, but yet....
I've got two pairs of Nordost Blue Heaven rca interconnects, both one-meter. One pair has the current sprung loaded jacks. The other has the older fixed jacks (no spring loading). I had the sprung cables between my CDP and amp and they were unbearibly bright - headache inducing. Switching cables around I put the non-sprung cables in and for some reason they sound a little smoother in the treble. Is it possible for two of the same cable to sound different? Is it possible that the plugs could make a dramatic difference? Or am I imagining things?
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- 17 posts total
That is silly. Directionality of a cable is determined from a few purposely defined characteristics. I hate to say this and sound rude...but the quality control must be lacking if you experience an obvious difference. There is absolutely NO reason why a well designed cable would do this. Now if the plugs are the only difference as you state, then possibly this would be more of a hint as to what may be causing the difference. Still, they would have to be composed of different materials in order to be that obvious. If you use a cable that has no indication of directionality, except for drain wire purposes, it should NOT sound different plugged in either way. I only know of two designers who know how to manipulate this phenomenon. One can be found in a 6moons review (just look for the only award in the cable category), and the other is who specifically designed the cables for my systems. |
You may already know this but just in case, the arrow on the Nordost cable points to the source, not the direction of flow like every other cable.Rhljazz, I believe at one point Nordost changed their mind..... Early cables arrow toward the source, then newer versions away from the source. http://db.audioasylum.com/cgi/m.mpl?forum=cables&n=20705&highlight=direction+arrow+on+the+Nordost+cable |
That is silly. Directionality of a cable is determined from a few purposely defined characteristics. I hate to say this and sound rude...but the quality control must be lacking if you experience an obvious difference. There is absolutely NO reason why a well designed cable would do this. Now if the plugs are the only difference as you state, then possibly this would be more of a hint as to what may be causing the difference. AQ quote from the 1990s "While cable directionality is not fully understood, it is clear that the molecular structure of drawn metal is unsymmetrical, which does provide a physical explanation for the existence of directionality." Bob Crump >http://db.audioasylum.com/cgi/m.mpl?forum=cables&n=12332&highlight=rcrump+wire+direction http://www.stereophile.com/features/368/index8.html Quote from article "The revelation that digital interconnects and their direction can introduce large differences in measured jitter was quite a shock. The differences heard between digital interconnects—and in their directionality—have now been substantiated by measurement.". |
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