MIT Love 'em or Hate 'em

...even if we disagree about what "neutral" means.

I've got some pretty expensive and hi res products going in my rig, and I've tried some of the top macigbox reference cables for loudspeakers and interconnects - gave a long chance - but they just did something to the sound that I didn't like. It got all extra detailed on top and bottom but the midrange disappeared - like someone eq'd my system with a 'disco curve' bump the highs and lows and suck out the middle. It didn't sound like natural music to my ears (I listen to a lot of acoustic guitar/vocal stuff).

Regardless - it just doesn't make sense to this old hack that some "network" (fancy name for filter) on a cable can make a megabuck high resolution system perform better than its designers intended it to perform. Passive "networks" work by taking something out of the signal. "Power Factor Correction" is essentially parallel capacitance - fine for induction motor systems and power supplies - but mixed with the essential series L of the circuit that it is hooked into you get a second order low pass filter.

You say you like it. Great. I'll never argue with you about what you like. All I've been saying is call it for what it is and don't pretend its something magical and unknowable - I realize that many folks need to imagine that it's too complicated to grasp in order to justify spending big money on sexy boxes, and for them ... well, I never quarrel with religeous people because there's way too much 'faith' in the argument and I like proof.

And proof is really where alot of this bug me. You can buy a kazillion dollar amplifier, speaker, preamp, cd player, whatever ... whip out your screwdriver and have a look inside and see what they are doing and where your money has gone. With these magicbox cables, everything is a big secret and sealed up inside so you can't see what you spent your money on. You have to take it all on faith if you're going to opt in.

Unklecrusty: While one can "usually" see what is inside of an active audio component, one can almost always measure the results. Thinking along those same lines, I would be curious to actually do that with some of these "networked" cables under lab conditions. If they produced ANY type of an abberation with an ideal load ( nominal impedance with minimal reactance ), you can sure as hell bet that "crazy" things would take place on a reactive load that a loudspeaker would present to an amplifier. On the other hand, they might measure "perfect" on a dummy load and still run into problems with specific reactive loads. Once again, the only way to find out would be to test them and see.

Sheesh, with all of these different "projects" & "testing" that i want to do, maybe i should spend less time on the puter and more time actually doing them : ) Sean
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Unclekrusty, while we're on the subject of cables that take a more "active" approach, is it safe to assume you are also skeptical about "active shielding" a la Synergistic?

I've never been sure whether to believe the physics claimed for that approach. . . but I also haven't experimented with their really high-end stuff. I didn't hear a benefit at the more moderately priced end of the spectrum.

Well, my experience with MIT goes back over 10 years ago and
it was only with one interconnect. I'm sure MIT makes some fine products. I got a pair of interconnects thru Audio Advisor, and they sent the MIT's, even though I had ordered another brand which I can't remember now. Anyway, I initially liked them ok. After a while though, the one side would cut out. It took quite a while to figure out it was the interconnect. By then I had been making some interconnects and had some other brands for comparison. I undid the RCA end's and I was shocked at the crappy construction. No wonder it would short out, it looked like they had been assembled and soldered by a 5 year old. I re-terminated them, and they were initially ok I thought, but in short time they gave me ear fatigue. So, that one experience has steered me clear from their products.

I don't know much about what they are doing by direct experience - but I will tell you this much: back in the day a guy named Demian Martin came up with and patented something called a "cable charger" and it seemed pretty interesting - keeping a bias voltage charged on the shield. It seems to me that Synergistic has either licensed or otherwise "appropriated" Demian Martin's cable charger - don't know which, but if you do some research into the cable charger you will probably get some good info.