High Fidelity Cables CT-1designed by Rick Schultz

@tbg@ddraudt. Yup. You have to wonder when a person rants and they never one time mention if they like the sound or they even talk about sound. Well that's telling. Anyway. I am listening straight from my dac to a luminance amplifier. I got some brass points under my speakers. It helped ground them better. I also got my speakers positioned properly. The headroom on my sound is really good. I put in an album called Two Shade by piano player Gerald Clayton. He comes from a family of successful musicians. He has some great musical arrangements. There is a lot of speed up and slowing down of drums, cymbals and piano. The piano has a rich deep earthy tone using the amplifier. The high fidelity cables are also starting to sound better the longer they are in. This album showcases the speed of the cable. The drum and pianos are playing at frenzy all at the same time at different speeds and these cables play it perfectly. It's bursting fast when it needs to be but also melodically slow when the musicians pace slows down. There is also a three dimensionality when I'm sitting in the sweet spot listening. Cymbals are telling on this album. They are rapid fire fast with proper decay. They give you a metal shimmer without being glassy. When there is a lot lot going on in a song this cable and amplifier catch it all. I been listening for the last 2 hours. Happy listening!!! Do you guys have any music suggestions that were recorded well I will listen to anything. It's about the music to me.

@audiolabyrinth. We are not high fidelity fans we are lovers of sound. Lol. When you HEAR the truth you repeat it for all to hear lol. I'm not in it to say I have this cable and that gear. I love the music. From the time I heard "Me and Mrs Jones" by Billy Paul when I was four till now. It's all about the music of course "In High Fidelity" Lol.

Good-day Madman,

Speaking as a member of a small research, development and manufacturer that participates in the audio industry, I find your theories and claims on third-party testing to be ‘ridiculous rubbish’. I personally was extremely hesitant to post to this thread, but since you appear to be on a quest to do damage here, I feel the need to voice an opinion, as well as provide the public some additional information from industry experience.

Neutral laboratory testing is the only way to make available unbiased evidence that the technical approach and science dedicated to the product is functional, hence meeting the goals of the engineers, designers, investors, et all involved with the product and/or technology.

In High-End Audio, the cost of third-party testing is extremely expensive. First and foremost, a company must go to lengths to locate and hire the optimum engineer who has the responsibility of establishing the testing methodology and performance validation criterion. Fortunately, in our case, we have a Doctorate in Engineering as a member of our company whose primary focus is developing and/or instituting the necessary design and direction of testing, which is generally targeted to increase the knowledge and understanding of the technology being applied.

Therefore, anyone who spends the financial capital required for third-party testing for the sole purpose of marketing propaganda, in hopes of providing the public a small measure of supporting evidence that their science is of technical merit, is just plain ‘nuts’! That company could easily take those investment dollars and develop a strategic sales and marketing campaign, toss up a few charts and graphs on their website to reinforce their claims, and sell more products, versus a limited posting of third-party testing results to their website.

Add to that, the cost and time involved with selecting and hiring the specialized laboratory. Then there’s researching and qualifying the information about the facility, reviewing history of the lab, identifying test equipment, confirming calibration dates for the test equipment and, in some categories of audio, the lab personnel must provide extensive documentation on the acoustic environment used to support the test; and the list goes on and on.

Our corporate goal involving third-party testing is to make sure the technology is on track in order to expand the science of which we are committed to and believe in.

Laboratories, like all business, have their own reputation of which to build and grow on. I personally have never heard of a lab cheating the test results just to appease their clients. Obviously, you sir, may have never attempted to acquire, been involved with, or have ever paid out of pocket for third-party research.

Badman, did you ever review a detailed lab report on a breakthrough discovery based on a new-found technology? It would take a good engineer at least a week on the first pass through; chemistry reports on all the materials, corporate and engineering reviews, compiling of all the data that again, must be re-analyzed to assist in verifying and proving the results, which, of course, always leads to more variables and more unanswered questions.

My guess is this test was performed to prove Rick Schultz and his company were onto something new, heading in the right direction, and to verify the evolution and functionality of Magnetic Conduction Technology leading to their Patents and “Not to sell products”.

Whether you agree or disagree on the actual testing methods employed, your argument is based on your knowledge and/or opinion. Since obvious hostilities still exist, and before time is invested proving whether you may or may not be aware of newer testing methods or procedures, I have a couple of questions for you.

Are you, or do you, work for a business competitor? Do you have the educational and/or professional background, and if so, what type and in which career? Since you are calling out a brother, claiming fraud (the highest of all crimes in audio), and nobody knows exactly who you are, why not provide us with more information about you?

It is no secret that Mr. Schultz is a long time friend. We have shared technical information, partnered in a few innovations and occasionally discuss general business within the Audio Industry. In my opinion, he chose to use a well known University to conduct the testing and posted a very small portion of the overall test results to their web site.

I am confident that there is a great deal of information that has not been disclosed for public consumption, which would indicate that you do not have all the details required to fully understand the methodology leading to the end result.

In closing I might add that Rick Schultz is also one heck of an educated sales person who does not need to resort to any illegitimate practices or bogus marketing techniques in order to earn a living. If you really desire to see the testing parameters with a full disclosure, I would first pick up the phone and simply speak to Rick, or a representative of his company, and NOT disparage his name and/or attempt to discredit the Company on a well read public forum.

If you have a grievance or objection with me for expressing my opinion here, you are more than welcome to pick up the telephone and call me, as meaningful conversations are always welcome.

Very truly yours,

Robert Maicks
Star Sound Technologies, LLC

Mapman wrote,

"It's a safe bet that there is a concrete relationship between magnetism and electricity. Any electromagnet is proof that the relationship exists. How to apply it in reverse exactly in teh interest of "better sound quality" is beyond me, but its a topic that I am willing to learn more about."

Current in a wire produces a magnetic field. You remember the right hand rule. Does a magnetic field interfere with or influence an audio signal? Does an audio signal have mass? If the audio signal could be influenced by magnets it should have mass, right?

Pretender? Based upon what exactly? I call BS on a BS claim.

You can't reduce 14% of a loaf of bread by removing the diamonds from it- there weren't any there in the first place.

There's certainly a relationship between magnetism and electrical fields, this is obvious and has been applied to cables for a very long time, generally as low-pass filters, that's what the ferrite add-ons do, reducing RFI through added inductance. Most PC monitor cables have them, as do many power cords and other things.

However, unless these are serious low-pass filters on the cables and are creating severe high frequency rolloff, they wouldn't reduce THD, and even if they DID reduce THD at some frequency due to the rolloff, a proper test would account for the rolloff and adjust the generated harmonics accordingly- IOW, a proper methodology wouldn't show an advantage from high inductance due to magnetism.

IMD could potentially be reduced by the same mechanism, but that's only if these are REALLY insanely nonlinear cables, acting as exceedingly high-value inductors, we're talking fractions of a henry, not millihenries, if line level. At speaker level millihenries would be sufficient to cause that level of rolloff, but it would be exceedingly extreme to believe that he's introduced that much inductance, and the extreme rolloff at the high end would be noticed as a severe negative by the vast majority of listeners (and 100% of educated listeners). We're talking several dB at a minimum, a severe and highly noticeable change over a broad frequency range.

Even IF this were the case and they were so dramatically nonlinear (a problem vastly larger than THD and IMD whose audibility is variable and frequently a non-issue), a proper test methodology would have indicated this severe problem. The lack of any language about the testing other than the absurd claims should be a red flag.

Using magnets around audio is not a new idea, it's been tried every which way. The primary way it would apply to cables, is to make them worse, not better, if having an influence in the audio band. One exception is the utilization of a transformer- many reputable transformer manufacturers publish measurements too. Transformers can reduce system noise and achieve some other benefits but do introduce their own distortion and other issues.

So, take your pick- either his cables are badly broken and nonlinear, and the "testing" misleadingly ignores this to give him his claims, or the numbers are made up. There is simply no way for the claims to be true under legitimate testing.