Losing my mind over cable decision to match system (1 Viewer)

[Shane Martin]

No I haven't Robert. I will change it.

 

[JamesDB]

Shane,

To advocate cable "upgrades" as a way of achieving more accurate reproduction of the original sound, or to get "better" sound is simply bad advice. For instance you can purchase a decent RTA equalizer from Behringer or the like for a bit more than those $100 cables vastly improving flat base response or taming other standing waves making it worth the money.

Your insults towards Chu, although I only know him by the accurate, insightful posts he has made are unwarranted and demonstrate your false bias in this case. If you truly have ears that can hear the difference, (and by the way I have two coworkers who have perfect pitch, are accomplished musicians and cannot hear anything in terms of timbre, and eq changes when we swap cables) I would like to see you run yourself a double blind test where you do not know the price or make of the cables, (have a friend change the cables of similar gauge and shielding type) and see if you can see, hear or tell the difference. As in my other post I suspect that not only will you not be able to tell which cable was the most “accurate and musical” and perhaps the most expensive, but that you wouldn’t be able to actually tell if the cables had been changed or not.

I’m sorry to say this.. but you bring me to it with your unfounded responses… It’s all in your head and what you ate that morning

 

[Garrett Lundy]

And if your equipment is SO GOOD that you requires a slight variation in cable construction to add an extra fraction of a percentile of "better sound", are you asking for too much?

 

[ChrisWiggles]

Cables matter.

Period.

However, they are a **VERY** small part of the system. I don't know HOW many people I see spending 100$ on monster cables for their cheesy HTIB. THIS is a waste of money.

People with good systems can spend a few extra bucks on some decent rat shack, or AR, or belden/canare cabling and that is more than adequate.

IMO, the room is almost ALWAYS neglected over cabling. This is totally backwards, and cabling, especially speaker wire, should be damn near the bottom in terms of priorities.

 

[Shane Martin]

Agreed again but there is only so much you can do with the room especially if you have wife/so concerns.

 

[Chu Gai]

Oh Christ Shane, whatever makes you think I haven't tried DBT comparisons with wires and biwiring and power cables and interconnects and video cables? Hell, I've even posted how people can easily determine for themselves if biwiring works, figuring that once they got a handle on that, it might cause them to question more critically other stories they've been told. Do you want to hear about stories like the time a high end store raved about their AQ interconnect as my son & I were listening? Pointed out all the subtleties that were being revealed and then my son pulled the AQ's out and said we were listening to some Dayton IC's? Or the time an associate brought over his Nordost speaker cables and I feigned to install them while he marvelled over their sonic signature. When he later went to look at the back he saw a set of Sears jumper cables. Got to love Sears I tell you.
I point to people with far better credentials than I that've done comprehensive studies. Heck, I've never determined the circumference of the earth or measured the deflection of light past a star but I can point to where it's been done. We move on by studying what's been done and not constantly reinventing the wheel. There's some story about a reporter who questioned Henry Ford as to why he didn't know the answer to something. I think his reply was something because he could get an engineer in 5 minutes to answer it.

My agenda is to inform and educate. I do it by sharing accumulated knowledge and facts in the areas of electronics, human hearing, and marketing psychology. I make the assumption that once people are armed with facts they're better prepared to make an informed decision. By no means does that mean you should buy the cheapest. But it also means that if you bought the cheapest you'd know something pretty important. That important thing is that your system wasn't compromised one iota and there was no reason for that person to feel inferior in any way to someone who'd bought $500 speaker cables. That's my agenda and I'm proud of it. Someone call Oliver Stone now.

And yeah, it was a cheap shot by me, but it's Friday and I was feeling defensive after your remarks. On a side note, I'd have thought you'd have been surprised at a recent PM from me where I praised you on a particular post. Must have me on ignore again, huh?

On this particular post though, it really comes down to what wire do you like and the way it sounds has nothing to do with it because it doesn't sound any different from any other wire that's competently designed. Them's the facts. If you've read any of my other posts then you'd know if the poster had stated they had a system that needed 50 feet of wire and they had a speaker with a dropping impedenace curve in the upper frequencies, I'd have suggested a different approach. Further I'd have backed it up with some concrete electrical and FR reasons. Such beasts are few and far between.

 

[Chu Gai]

How about we look at this statement another way? Let's replace the words SO GOOD with POORLY DESIGNED. A robust design means that a normal variation in cable capacitance shouldn't matter with say speaker cables. Naim ring a bell anyone? How about a high end DAC that StereoPhile raves about because it finally shows that cables matter and let's interpret that as such a piss poor design of a DAC that it can't handle normal variations in signal rise time? Solid mid-fi and for that matter a lot of pro audio amps will wipe the floor of the pretty boy high end stuff. Now tubes, dem be 'nother thing now!

 

[JamesDB]

Hahahah Chu, you are making me laugh so much I have to agree with you... BTW, what kind of equipment do you have in your stash of goodies?

 

[Nathan Stohler]

I've only had a few physics and EE courses, but I would have to agree with Chu and the like. I can't understand why people claim they are better at hearing differences than much more capable equipment.

Bottom line: if you have extra cash to spend on "top of the line" cables, then you need to divert those funds to speakers, because those actually make a difference.

 

[ThomasL]

I've enjoyed reading a number of these cable debates over the years here and I've have to say that I've concluded this main fact based on my own experience - shielding is the biggest factor that can affect performance at least on the video side.

When I first set up my home theater setup, I began to get wavy lines on a few of my cable channels - they would show up when I turned on the dvd player. After what seemed like an afternoon of tests to isolate the problem, it turned out to be the digital coax cable was causing interference on the coax patch cable running to the tv. In addition, I recently upgraded all of the RG59 coax on my first floor and basement using Belden 1694A as well as all my wall plate to equipment patch cables with Canare L5CFB cable. While I did the 'make your own' route as more of a hobby project, when it was all said and done, my wife even commented that she thought the cable channels looked better, colors sharper, etc. It wasn't a huge difference but if my wife, who is indifferent at best , noticed then there must have been a little change for the better. I chalked this up as once again an improvement in the shielding of the signal (as well as lower losses) with the better Belden/Canare cable.

So, take those stories for what they're worth. My take on it at this point is that if you just decided to use good quality well shielded 75 ohm RG6 for all your A/V coax cable needs, you'd be doing about as well as you're going to do and price wise, you won't break the bank. Sites such as bluejeanscable.com do this and offer prices that are less than what Acoustic Research and Monster cables retail at Best Buy for.

cheers,


--tom

 

[Chu Gai]

Bottoms up...tonite's beer will be a selection from that nice Chicago brewery

 

[Brian OK]

Hey Chu,

Throw a 6 my way. Never had it but if I see another ffffff
Canadian Goose this winter I will "alarm" -357- him. NAFTA run amock. Damn shittin freeloaders ;*( Just kidding folks )as Chu probably sees more of these nasty birds his way than I. Long Island dumpway, agree Chu ?

Shane, I understand where you are coming from because I use (I guess) decent cable and would never buy 12AWG Home Depot or like wire.
RobertR and Chu, and I, have bandied the topic about cables over the past couple of years and it is close to a non-topic these days. I understand your position, I do, but it is a supposed position without boundaries-- from either side. No fruit at the end of the branch, either way.

Leave the 'idea fix', or guna, of wire and look at the pre-pro/the amp/the room and, of course, the source instead. Many more benefits to reap here.
You have good wire now, I assume. Now go after other areas to improve. For me it is the AC quality ( have a good handle on that ,it seems after much money and effort) ... but currently it is now the ROOM (again). It never ends-- i.e. getting the room sonically accurate based upon the given limitations. Hell, ChrisWiggles said it best before my paltry post. THE ROOM.

I left the wire argument because I KNOW I have a neutral speaker cable for my front end. The surrounds, well, they are just the surrounds -- typically ignored in most discs by directors/soundtrack engineers.
The room is the last frontier. Have some diffusors coming in the next day or so and this is the fun part.

Wire wars are stale and worthless. Why argue over such a small portion of your systems dynamics. IMO, of course.

BOK

 

[Chu Gai]

Tons of them and they get into the parks and they're bold as hell and then they get out of hand and then they've got townspeople picketing the mandatory population thinning. Doesn't bother me much as I put on some Ted Nugent.

 

[TimMc]

Damn, Chu - I think I just wet myself...

I flip to page two of this thread and there at the top of my screen I run smack dab into a "Bottoms up - here comes a Goose Island Honker!" invite (or was that a Honker Island Goosing?). Spewed coffee and all when I saw that one.

Now that I've changed, I would like to thank everyone who covered this go around oh-so-well before I could get even more lit up and say bad things about good wire. This has been a tough morning for some of us - cable upgrades and speaker burn-in are my two personal prejudices this season (and no, they are not getting rearranged any time soon ;-). I do understand that this is a hobby for most folks who wind up here, so if they want to spend their money on what makes them feel like they're enjoying their hobby more then that's their business. I do grate a bit at the hype and advertising and "advice" that you've gotta spend beaucoup bucks on your cables for no measurable difference (and when it is measurable then that's not often a good thing).

Room treatments - now that's the next frontier here. My much better half would likely be doin' the d.i.v.o.r.c.e. dance if she knew what a sucker I could be there. I don't think she'd approve of redecorating in "anechoic modern" and the foam is kind of a dust magnet, so I'll have to look at just sane approaches - like covering the back wall with Goose Island Honkers.

 

[AlanZ]

OKay, I received my Cobalt Ultimate Speaker cables today....I've spent the last few hours screwing around trying to make some sense of all this cable business. The bottom line is that I won't be sending them back. There was an improvement in 2-channel music. I haven't messed with HT yet, mainly because I didn't/don't expect as much of a noticeable difference. I've basically gone back and forth between the Cobalt stuff and my 16 gague Tara Clara (sp?) that I've been using since I got these speakers. I've gone through Norah, Diana Krall, Radiohead, The Lion King (Broadway Cast), Clay Aiken (don't laugh....), Rascal Flats, 50 Cent, Three Doors Down, Evanescence, and the BeeGees, to name a few. I played all of them with each set of cables using my OUtlaw 950 in stereo bypass mode. Okay, what was different....let me see if I can articulate this. I'm not as good with the technical descriptors as some people on here. First, there was a little more separation in the music. Voices were distinct from the music, and the various instruments seemed a little more separated from each other. There was less blending together of the sound, if that makes any sense. The better recordings (e.g. Krall, Lion King, Norah) tended to separate themselves from the rest of the pack more than they used to. Further, the discs that I was less impressed with before (e.g. Clay Aiken) were more listenable. Also, the soundstage seemed to open up more. I can't say imaging was any better, but the soundstage was clearly larger. Oddly enough, my dog even noticed a difference. (Yes, I feel as stupid writing this as you probably do reading it.) I've had the Radiohead Amnesiac disc on before with him in the room, but with the Cobalts he kept looking around the room and would react to certain parts of the cd that he never did before. Odd....Anyway, my fingers are all but worn out from all the back and forth with the cables, but it was worth it. I have plenty of time to further evaluate these cables, but at least compared to what I was running, there is a difference. I would not want to spend any more on speaker cables than the $120 or so I spent on the Cobalts, so I feel I got good bang for the buck. So, this is only one man's opinion, but I give a to BlueJeans component video cable, as well as Cobalt's Ultimate Speaker cable. Call me crazy, but from what I can tell, cables can make a difference.

 

[Rajeev_s]

Well done Chu, I have always enjoyed your insights and perspective. Being an engineer myself I have great regard for your scientific evaluation. I prefer to stand by it and psychological evaluation have little consideration from me.

 

[Chu Gai]

Heck, I'm not an engineer, but I did sleep in a Holiday Inn Express BTW, I think Cobalt's using regular 10 gauge zip. It's dressed up nice though, I'll give you that.

 

[AlanZ]

I guess Im just confused and stupid then

At least one source doesn't think I'm a complete moron.... http://www.audioholics.com/techtips/...bleFaceoff.htm

 

[Chu Gai]

Alan, you're not a moron. No one is disputing, and that includes myself, that there aren't technical differences between cables. However it helps to put a face on these differences in the context of what's audible. If we compare 10 foot lengths of the Sound King to the 10 gauge Cobalts, there's a net difference of 0.031 dB @ 20 kHz and a group delay of 0.7 nsec. None of this is audible. In the most sensitive area of human hearing, which occurs 1-4 kHz, give or take a hair, it takes about 0.2 dB for there to be a noticeable difference. That's with test tones.
Now what that link that you provided showed that it's entirely possible to design incompetent speaker cables (interconnects too), give them a fancy name and a price commensurate with it all.
Look, there's nothing wrong with wanting your cables to look good and IMO, the Cobalts look pretty good. If that is an important criteria it should be factored in and you should be prepared to pay accordingly. You'll find me squarely in your corner defending your right to whatever preference it is that you have. Generally though, you'll find me distancing myself from preferences and turning a blind eye to appearance ('cept for those Mapleshade interconnects that look like a condom...won't find me blowing those up...sheesh!) and focussing strictly on issues of audibility. Enjoy them. They look good, and you'd likely be pressed to make your own look as good.

 

[AlanZ]

Well, I guess all the people who notice sonic differences among various brands of cables are just plain psychotic. In the three or four hours I spent comparing the Cobalts to the Tara Clara last night, it was simply my wishful thinking that resulted in the superior performance of the Cobalts. I am both the perpetrator and the victim of a self-fulfilling prophecy. My subconscious mind has robbed me of $120 and will not free me of this ignorance. And even though whatever cables I decide to run are hidden and not visible in my current set-up, it is ultimately the look alone of the cable that seduces me. I also don't want to buy any death sticks and feel a sudden need to go and rethink my life. I need to make an appointment to see my shrink