Has Anyone Found Shunyata Cables Sounding Thin?

I'm not downplaying the benefits of having working ears. I am simply highlighting the primacy of the brain in experiencing music. A person can experience music whether the stimulus is aural, visual or conductive vibrations. The stimulus doesn't even have to be external; it could just be a mental image of some music. Some people can dance to the music in their head and some cannot.

Some suggested reading:

http://www.lifeprint.com/asl101/topics/music02.htm

https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080120003517AAsLIcg

http://gapersblock.com/transmission/2010/07/22/beyond_vibrations_the_deaf_musical_experience/

Zd542, you don't know whether it's true or not because you don't have the knowledge base to perform the act of reading a musical score. Others may simply know more than you on this subject. Though I do like your point about the steak.

Audiolabyrinth,

You're right. One size does not fit all. What works for one person may not work for another. We have to discover through trial and error what works and what does not work in our systems. Suggestions from others may produce little gold nuggets -- or little brown turds. Ultimately, your have to rely on your own experience and your own ears.

The talk about cables being tone controls, series or not, begs the question, why do cables have to be tone controls? If a cable has a tone, then it is adding distortion to the signal. A perfect cable would have no tone. Why not try to move toward that to get the maximum detail and fidelity from the source?

Isn't that why the industry moved away from tone controls in the first place, in order to get rid of distortion?

Gosh this is so cool, our brain interprets sound waves and you can tell what a system sounds like by seeing a list of components? Can we tell what a system sounds like looking at a picture? That would be cool. :-)

Charles1dad,

You stated "To appreciate music requires listening and in order to listen we need our ears." It's as simple as that.

Of course, the brain is involved. The brain is involved in everything. But worrying about mental models makes for an intellectual exercise -- not a listening session. Music begins and ends with the ears. Yes, I noticed that the ears are attached to the brain. And therefore there is presumably some processing going on up there -- I hope. But to make this into an intellectual thing about mental models distances this from the music and the listening experience. And the further away from the ears the discussion drifts the further away it moves from that experience.

We can get into all sorts of intellectual discussions about psycho-acoustics and where the music actually is -- in the room -- in the brain -- in the ears -- and how we perceive music. And how we may not be able to trust our ears, or to fully trust them, or how we cannot trust them in this or in that way. And we must therefore doubt what we are hearing. But this solves nothing. Because it all does come back to what we hear -- with no second guessing or intellectual intervention.

Otherwise, listening becomes either an intellectual exercise or a game that begins to sound like the old Abbott and Costello "Who's on first, what's on second" routine. Some people may prefer an intellectually-informed music experience. I prefer a music experience on the feeling and emotional level.

Regarding listing my system, no one will be able to do anything except speculate about my system if I go to the trouble of listing everything, which I will not do. I will say that I have Raidho C1.1 speakers, an Audio Horizons TP 2.3 preamp fully loaded, a PS Audio PerfectWave transport with PS Audio DS DAC on the way, an isolation transformer, a Monarchy power regenerator, a Shunyata Triton power conditioner, and an Atma-Sphere S-30 power amp.

I will not list all my cabling except to say that I use mostly Shunyata cables in series with my own DIY cables that feature some of the best Furutech wire and connectors. I have the prototypes for 2 new products in my system. This information is proprietary. There are also other things I do that I do not care to divulge.