Has Anyone Found Shunyata Cables Sounding Thin?

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.

10-11-14: Charles1dad
Hi Onhwh61,
Come on now, if given a choice which would you choose? You seem to be going out of the way to downplay the necessity of ours ears. Anyway I was just trying to make what I believe is an obvious point. I don't mean to turn this into some drawn out philosophical argument. We'll just respectfully disagree regarding the "ears" issue.
Thanks,
Charles,

Don't waste your breath, nothing is obvious to Onhwh61.

"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."

Have you no sense of humor? Yes, your point is valid. I think what some of us are suggesting, is that how we perceive music is the result of multiple factors. I say use your head. This allows you to use your ears because they're attached to your head, but also allows for the use of your brain, as well.

It totally defies logic (to us streight line guys) that adding cables in series would add anything but distortion and signal loss. Mathematically and physically, its an impossibility that the cables in series would not compromise the transfer of signal through that nonsensical configuration. This is one I need not listen to. My brain can easilly figure out what it does. If you are so adamant that it sounds "better", its only because you have problems somewhere else, where this capacitance nightmare is actually either high pass filtering or low pass filtering something. I know I have not heard your system but if you tell me you put water in your engine instead of gas, I would not need to hear your car to know what you have.

Sabai, thank you for giving some info about your audio equipment. I find it interesting that you use an Atma-sphere amp in that its designer has frequently stated that properly designed balanced I/O should eliminate the differences in how cables sound in a system. Obviously, that's not the case for you.