When I played around with interconnect cables a while back, there was an obvious difference between, say the Anti-cables and the Audio Art IC3. The IC3 was more open and detailed.
Do expensive cables/wires REALLY make a difference
Im fairly new to the hifi world and just recently purchased a couple of high end peices.my question is this:ive been reading alot about cables and speaker wire,do the expensive ones really make that big of a difference???Is it really worth spending a small fortune on cables?? And is Monster Cable really overrated like ive been reading? Any help would be useful,thank you.
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01-10-13: Schipo Wow, that sounds like a win/win or lose/lose proposition depending on your POV. If you get it wrong, congrats, cables don't matter, if you get it right, cables still don't matter, you just got lucky. WTF??? |
Seconding a point that was made earlier in the thread by Nick_sr, the degree to which cables will make a difference depends not only on the intrinsic characteristics and quality of the cable, and on the quality and musical resolution of the system, but perhaps just as significantly or even more so on interactions between the technical characteristics of the cable and those of what it is connecting. Impedances, for instance, among many other dependencies that could be cited which have no direct relation to the sonic quality of the system. See my post dated 12-15-12 here for a summary of many of those interactions and dependencies. That post also describes a couple of examples of how a given cable can sometimes even have exactly opposite sonic effects depending on what it is connecting. It should therefore be kept in mind that the ability of a system to resolve musical detail, and its ability to resolve differences between cables, are two different things. And sometimes there may even be an inverse relationship between the two. Finally, it should be kept in mind that the sonic effects of line-level analog interconnects and speaker cables will be proportional to their length. A reduction in length will bring the performance of those cables closer to neutrality (i.e., closer to having no sonic effects), everything else being equal. That is not necessarily the case, though, with digital cables, phono cables, and power cords, due to the complexity and/or unpredictability of the interactions that are involved. Regards, -- Al |
Cwby. I'm convinced that a person with a "Golden Ear" does not exist. If you have the resources and inclination, you can easily win money from the people who so vociferously defend buying expensive cable by setting up blind tests. Even people who design speaker cable can't consistently pick the "better" cable. Those who say they can (Chrissain from above) are either lying or some version of the Bionic Man. I've heard tests of cheap wire vs. expensive (same gauge and length, both properly insulated) many times with the same result. No discernible improvement. The difference between decent/cheaper interconnects, speaker wire, AC chords and those costing hundreds or thousands of dollars should overwhelm you when tested. I promise you, it won't. |
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