Which cables go with what?????

Throw the theory and other things aside,
I totally agree with Ridgestreetaudio and Audioengr.

If the cable is well designed, it should perform well in all systems. A good cable should enhance what you already have. i.e. A better cable can bring you more detail and image without changing the tone. IMHO, that would be the ideal "neutral" cable - a cable that is capable of producing same volume at all frequencies passing from the source.

However, some cables do add more than just clean sound to the music. i.e. If a system is too bright ( I see a lot of comments here on audiogon ) then listeners would look for some "tone down" cable. If a system is not enough bass, the listener would look for a cable to add "punch and volume" in the bass. The cables they're looking for is not neutral but just to help the system match issue.

Being able to make DIY cable myself, I'm now have a better understanding of finding the right combination for a bright system, neutral system and dark system. The cable for neutral system will work any the well matched system.
If I walk into a hi-fi store, I'll definitely bring my own "neutral" cable as the reference point.

All these are my opinion based on my own experiment and experience. Your results will vary according to your listening conditions.

What i can't understand is how someone like Audioengr can say and believe what he did when he understands ( i think ) how cables and signal propagation works. I can understand how S23chang and Ridge Street Audio could make and / or agree with such a statement, given that ( i'm assuming here ) they don't have the technical background and / or test equipment that Audioengr does. I know that Steve aka Audioengr knows / understands / has experienced the effects of loading / signal reflection in his work. I don't understand how he could disregard the effects that this has on sonics / loading & transfer characteristics. I also don't know how he could overlook the variances that one can run into from component to component and system to system. As such, my comments were primarily aimed at Steve aka Audioengr, especially since he was the one that opened this can of worms.

According to S23chang: "If the cable is well designed, it should perform well in all systems. A good cable should enhance what you already have. i.e. A better cable can bring you more detail and image without changing the tone."

What is being said here is that a cable can be good even though it doesn't transfer all of the information that was fed into it. A better cable will lose even less signal / convey even more information without altering tonal balance. Well, guess what ? I think we all agree with that premise in basic theory. What i think that most of us here would like to know is how do we find these cables and know which ones they are ? If it is not something that we can measure and / or quantify by some type of physical or electrical characteristics, we are right back to trial and error and ludicrous claims based on marketing hype and / or personal preferences. Sean
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Nrchy wrote:
"We have had these disagreements before when I asked the question about what makes a bigger difference, new componants or very good interconnect or speaker cables? My experience shows that cables can make differences which are beyond belief. You poo pooed the whole ideal. Inspite of the fact that you could not measure the difference every one of the people I had come over and listen was amazed by the huge difference."

I never said that cables could not make a big difference. In fact, I believe that they can make a HUGE positive difference, if they are neutral cables. Non-neutral cables can change the sound, but not in a positive sense. What I actually said in the initial post was that I believe that trying to find SYNERGY between particular cables and particular components was a fruitless proposition.

Sean - Robert (of Ridge Street) and I have come to the same conclusions for a reason. It is experience. When you design a truly neutral cable, any system that it goes into benefits from it. The cable is really like no cable at all. There is really no "synergy" between components and well-designed cables. People sometimes ask me whether my cables will sound good with their components. I frankly don't know how to answer this. They expect me to have a magical file listing certain components that play well with certain cables of mine. All I can answer is that my cables are neutral and extremely revealing, so if they have a poor sounding component in their system, it will likely reveal this component. The trick is to replace the offending component rather than wasting money swapping cables until you convince yourself that it sounds better.

At least if you are starting with neutral, low-loss revealing cables, you can pretty-much rule-out the cables as the cause of any objectionable system performance, with perhaps the exception of noise issues, such as hum and RF pickup.

Sean wrote:
"What is being said here is that a cable can be good even though it doesn't transfer all of the information that was fed into it."

No, what I said was that certain cables do not mate synergistically with certain components, at least without degradation of some sort, such as dynamic compression or HF roll-off. In other words, cables that are said to be synergistic only with a particular component are usually "tone control" cables.

"A better cable will lose even less signal / convey even more information without altering tonal balance."

No argument here.

"Well, guess what ? I think we all agree with that premise in basic theory. What i think that most of us here would like to know is how do we find these cables and know which ones they are ?"

Unfortunately, you have to take the word of either: a reviewer, a trusted friend, or a manufacturer and ultimately try the cables for yourself. However, if you are not a super-sleuth, you may still have an offensive component in your system that you have not identified and thus end-up in the vicious circle of cable swapping etc.. I try to help as many customers in this sleuthing as I can but it is difficult to do this remotely. One thing that I am doing is offering a "reference source system" to try with a refundable deposit down. At least with this source, you KNOW that the source not the problem. Then the only things to consider are the preamp, the amp and the speakers.

"If it is not something that we can measure and / or quantify by some type of physical or electrical characteristics, we are right back to trial and error and ludicrous claims based on marketing hype and / or personal preferences."

I never said that a neutral cable did not have measurable quality metrics. They certainly do and I believe in these metrics, such as capacitance and dielectric absorption for an interconnect cable. Furthermore, I believe that I am nearing the point of diminishing returns for these metrics. Not all quality metrics for cables are easily measurable however. The quality of the silver wire for instance plays a big part in the neutrality and quality of an interconnect cable. I have my theories as to why this is and I know what to do to make the silver sing, but I have no effective way to measure this, at least which makes any sense at audio frequencies.