Adventures in Audiogon: IC cable-rolling fun with Voodoo, Ridge Street and more! - Page 2

radrd, dd3mon,
Thanks for the suggestion. I haven't heard any of the cardas cables or the Neutral Reference, but I am aware of it. here are my thoughts/impressions on Cardas which may have no bearing in reality, but you have to narrow the field somehow, and these are my reasons right or wrong:

Big cable makers seem to me to be a safe bet in that many people agree that the designer has some sense of what he is doing, rewarding him with a large-ish business that requires marketing, distribution, employees, office space and on and on. OTOH, Value per dollar spent goes down because you have to pay for all that overhead when you buy the cable of an established brand that can charge full price. I think there are *probably* better values out there if you are willing to gamble on the large field of upstarts. I don't know, it's all good fun to me.

Also, when a cable maker has the cajones to declare a cable a "neutral reference", my *suspicion* (based on nothing) is that he feels he has succeeded in designing a cable in which there is absolutely no life whatsoever, nothing that could risk "offending" even the most "sensitive" audiophile who will be sitting there scrutinizing and looking for any signs of life to discredit this so-called "neutral reference" cable.

I think there are two ways to define "neutral". There's doing what I described above which is to create a cable that acts as a filter-- albeit a very nice, pleasant, carefully voiced filter that stands in the signal path as a sort of "traffic cop" on the electrical signal keeping it in an artificially harmonious stream instead of the chaotic, random, impulsive thing that music is. I guess this could be summed up as "immediacy". I listen to rock/pop so that matters to me.

In short, I don't want my *cables* determining the sound of my system. I want my CDP to sound like my CDP, my amp to sound like my amp, and my headphones to sound like my headphones, I spent a long time finding them.

I like the other idea of "neutral" which is the sense that there is no filter whatsoever on the music, *virtually* unrestrained momentum. I say "virtually" because I think the Voodoo crosses the line in this area with a certain frequency range, deviating from "neutral" in that regard.

I have no idea what the Neutral Reference sounds like, but my gut tells me its bland. Besides--look at the jacket and sleeve color scheme they chose for the Neutral Reference-- it's alerting you that "I am a deliberately designed bland cable, I make plain vanilla sound".

So yes, it's a frustrating, fascinating and fun quest. But I have faith, I know that what I'm looking for is out there somewhere, it's just a matter of trial and error.

DA,
Thanks I will look into the AZ Silver Refernce. But I'm worried about bass response with silver cables. How is bass vs. the awesome VD stuff?

Vert,
Thanks for the info. Hmmmmm... me no likey "lean and bright". I can tolerate "brightness" so long as its not accompanies by "leanness". The Voodoo cable is good example, very "bright" but not lean.


AAAAARRRRRRGGGGHHHH!!!! Cable shopping is so hard. So many possibilities, so many different systems with different interactions, making it so hard to know how it will sound in your rig....

Mark

Yesterday, a local friend brought over a pair of upscale MIT cables, I forget the model, but he said they were in the $500-$600 area, and not of recent vintage, but he likes them. These did not do it for me in my rig either, they were good and even and very mellow and relaxed. Not bad for what it was, but again, not the sound I am looking for. BTW: he really liked the Voodoo Cable as well when I swapped them back in after removing the MITs. He said they were "bright" though, but he liked the effect.

Anyway after giving this a lot of thought and after after my recent cable rolling experiences documented here, I have decided that it's silly to expect other cables to sound like Virtual Dynamics cables. If the VD stuff just sounds "right" to me, why fight it and waste more time auditioning this and that cable. It's a lot of fuss with burn-in, critical listening, A/B swapping and back and forth. My musical enjoyment has gone down in the process because I'm not really listening to the music, but the cables and *evaluating*.

I was on the verge of purchasing one of those amazingly sexy Acoustic Zen cables that DA reco'ed last night and then thought about having to break it in and evaluate yet another cable, I decided to call a halt to this quest, and just do what I was going to do originally and get the frickin' VD Nite cables and be done with it.

I was hoping to find a cheaper and better alternative, and I have no doubt that ultimately I could, but how much time/money am I really willing to invest to find it? I was gonna try 1 or maybe 2 other cables and write up the results here, but I was able to negotiate a *sweet* deal on a used pair of Nites from a friend. So, long story short, I think I'm gonna call a halt to it early, sorry. I do want to thank everyone for their suggestions.

Hope what I had so far was of interest. I would say the Voodoo cables are well worth further investigation, a great cable *for the money*. Look for my pair up for sale in the classifieds here in a few weeks.

When the Nite's come I'll post an update to this thread if anyone still wants to read yet ANOTHER post on how amazing the Nites are.... yawn...

Mark