[TheGhostWhoWalks]

The Situation
I've been an addicted audiophile for about the last six years. Since then I've amassed a small fortune in gear, and ever since getting into the "hobby" I've been aware of the immense debate surrounding the efficacy of high-end cables. It seems that nobody doubts that high-end headphones, players, and amps can sound better than lower-end models, but there are still a ton of skeptics out there with regards to the idea that cables can make any difference. I vividly remember my first "real" experience with "high end cables", which was when I upgraded a stock interconnect cable between my Rega Jupiter and SinglePower Supra with a Virtual Dynamics Nite II. It seemed to me that there was a noticeable leap in quality; blacker backgrounds, fuller sound, better soundstage and imaging, better dynamics, more authoritative control, etc.
 
Since then I've been a loyal fan of Virtual Dynamics, comparing my experiences with their line to other comparative cables from Nordost, Shunyata, and Audioquest and always walking away preferring VD. I sold the Nite II to get the Revelation, and I eventually bought the Genesis before I could even sell the Revelation (which I have for sale now), and recently I was thinking of getting The Exodus and selling the Genesis. But I've been out of the audiophile loop for a while and was shocked to come back and find all of the negative feedback against Mikhail at SinglePower and that Virtual Dynamics was out of business. Could this really be true? To top it all off, I found that infamous thread on the VD Power 3 that "exposed" the fact it was nothing but ridiculously cheap material being passed off as something much better.
 
Being a skeptic at heart, this certainly piqued my interest. I'm not a rich man by any means, and how much I have to work (playing online poker) is directly proportionate to how much I spend. So if I can find a way to save money on my favorite and most expensive hobby, I would certainly jump at the chance. Now, I do have a slight problem in the fact that my SDS-XLR is currently not functioning (probably a fuse, but I'm going to send it in to have it checked out anyway). But this DID give me an idea...
 
The Setup + Random Musings:
 
I DO have another system for watching movies. It's extremely basic and consists of:
 
-Oppo BDP83 (Stock/All original)
-Onkyo HT-S6100 7.1 Surround Sound All-in-One system
-Sennheiser HD280
 
That's pretty much it: Oppo connects to Onkyo via HDMI, Onkyo connects to TV/speakers/headphones. So I wondered: Would it make any difference if I connected my Virtual Dynamics Genesis to my Oppo?
 
My plan was simple: I would pick one track I know very well, and put my Oppo in a position where I could quickly switch between power cords and I would play the song over and over, listening very intently for changes. Now, I often hear about "double blind tests" and "Placebo effects" and I've often had some reservations about both concepts. One problem with double blind tests is that they tend to put people in a situation with setups that are likely quite different than what they're used to, and in switching between them they hope to determine if, indeed, certain elements make a difference. The problem with this is that our familiarity with all things, including audio, changes over time. This is simply an innate aspect of our psychology. That's why when reviewing components it's become traditional to precede under the header of "first impressions". Our brains can only process so much new information, and it tends to pick out the most obvious elements, and sometimes it's often hard to distinguish anything beyond the fact that something is "different" when it comes to something like audio. It's usually only with time that we get to know a system intimately in terms of what it can and can't do, it's signature elements, and how it responds with certain music, tracks, etc.
 
Now, placebos I can buy into a bit more, and I'm sure that there certainly is a psychological impact when it comes to people paying a lot of money for gear. You pay so much, it BETTER sound good and better, and since we already have an idea of what that "better" is, it's very easy to simply hear it when we "upgrade" a system. But can our brains really distort reality so much? If someone was told that a random mass-market player from Best Buy was a $25k EMM Labs XDS1 and that that XDS1 was a mass-market player would that REALLY make a difference? Would they need to BUY it before the placebo effect would kick in? When you combine this with what I said above about it taking time to really appreciate what something sounds like, then I think there is a problem with the concept of double blind tests and placebos; not that I think there's a better way that solves these problems, but that's just what I think.
 
The Test:
 
For the test I chose AC/DC's Runaway Train from their new album Black Ice; to be specific, I would listen to the track up until right after the guitar solo when the drums kick in. This is a good selection I feel for a number of reasons:
 
1. I know it very well, especially since it's been played so much recently and I've listened to the album a lot.
2. It's a very "uncluttered" song, making it easy to concentrate on individual elements (drums, guitars, bass, vocals, etc.)
3. On my audiophile system it has a tremendous palpability  to it; you can really FEEL the impact of the drum hits and harmonic quality of the guitar tones and the grit of Brian's vocals. Everywhere else I've heard it seems to reduce it down to sounding really flat and digital.
 
For the first listen through I used the stock cable and it was precisely what I expected: flat, digital sounding, no body to the music, not involving. I switched to the Genesis and, to be honest, at first I couldn't discern much of a difference. AT BEST I thought perhaps it seemed a little fuller. The soundstage seemed a little more spacious. Drums seemed to hit a little harder. But these differences, if they were even real and not some placebo, were extremely minor. Then I switched back to the stock power cable. Now it seemed like the difference was a bit more noticeable; it definitely sounded more flat and digital. The soundstage seemed collapsed. There wasn't much separation or clearly defines "lines/air" between instruments. Still not a major difference, but it did seem a bit more real this time. Back to The Genesis and now it's starting to be even more apparent: there's definitely more body, more harmonic content to the guitars, definitely a more "authoritative" feeling. Wait? What's this? I'm tapping my toes to the drum hits. That's the first time I've done that during the test, and it was totally unconscious... interesting.
 
For the third test I switched back. Now I'm REALLY noticing a difference. All of that involvment vanished. The music just sounds so lifeless. How is it possible to make AC/DC sound dull and boring? Well, time for a change: I crank up the attenuator to make it LOUDER. AC/DC is always best played LOUD. Well, things are a bit better in that I feel a bit more involved, but audio-wise it's a miss. Everything seems to gel into a whole. There's no separation, there's no definition, there's no resolution. I switch back to the Genesis. At louder volumes the difference is a bit more noticeable. Now I can hear air between instruments. The louder volume seems to make the tonal qualities more noticeably richer, the drum hits more palpably real. The music it still still sounds extremely digital, but it's closer to a high-end keyboard opposed to some crappy midi file.
 
Post Test Thoughts
 
If it sounds like I'm offering some kind of glowing praise for the VD cables and I'm firmly residing on the side of "Yes, cables matter", I'm really not. In all honesty, the test was a bit sobering. Yes, there's a difference, but there is absolutely no way $3475 worth of difference. I wouldn't even say there's $100 worth of difference. This goes beyond the law of diminishing returns and reaches a point where I would definitely declare anyone who had my system insane to spend that kind of money on a Genesis Power Cable for the Oppo opposed to their stock cable. This isn't even close. This isn't a case of "well, it's your money, spend it as you will". This is more like a case of anyone who would spend that much money on the argument that it's about audio quality should be committed; plain and simple.
 
But does it end there? Certainly not. I've often thought that audio is a bit like photography in this regard: When you make a photographic print, the size of that print determines how much quality can be perceived in everything that went into taking the picture. If all you're doing is making 4x6 prints (like most people), then even a 2 megapixel digital camera would be more than perfect. Would you tell a difference if you stepped up to a $30,000 Mamiya DM56(Megapixel) camera? Perhaps, but it would be EXTREMELY minor. Now, what if you're printing at 60x40? What about 120x80? NOW all of a sudden the differences wouldn't be minor, they'd be extreme. A 2 Megapixel camera would look like pure crap while a medium format camera would look pristine.
 
The analogy is this: Like print size, the quality of your components determines the MAXIMUM POSSIBLE QUALITY of the audio. Now, I say "POSSIBLE" quality because there are many things that can hinder that potential, and I feel that cables are one of them. If you have what is the equivalent of a "120x80" system, like my Reimyo+SDS-XLR, then the difference is cables, like camera megapixels, is going to be more noticeable. The last time I switched cables to the Genesis I vividly remember thinking that this was in no way a "minor" upgrade, this was a kick-me-in-the-face and knock-me-out upgrade that rejuvenated my love for music and audio.
 
Now, with that said, ATM I simply don't have the ability to test out cables on an audiophile level system, but this test certainly has me curious to do so. If the difference between a $5 cable I can buy at Walmart and a $3500 cable is as minor as what I noticed in this test, then I may be able to free myself from expensive cables all together. But I definitely encourage EVERYONE to do this very test with their own systems and be brutally honest with themselves. The simple fact is that if I WAS in a blind test with someone else switching the cables I'm not in any way sure I could tell the difference, and I certainly wouldn't put it beyond some "placebo" effect to account for what I heard above. But I kinda am anxious to test myself on this point at the next possible opportunity.

 

[ford2]

 
 
 
Sell your expensive cables before the rest wake up.

 

[TheGhostWhoWalks]

^ Well, I'm still interested to do this comparison on $35k worth of gear before I close the book on the "do cables make a difference" question.
 
EDIT: I also wanted to talk about one difference that, IMO, is impossible to miss. On some large classical choral pieces, if you crank up the volume on my audiophile system you can hear CLEAR distortion where where music just disintegrates into noise and reverberation. When I got the Genesis, one of those recordings was THE FIRST thing I listened to, and that distortion, at the same listening levels, was immensely decreased and almost completely absent. This is something that no placebo can produce, since my mind can not simply *produce* distortion with the prior cable and *eliminate it* with the second one.
 
I even remember myself thinking that that was the most objective evidence I had for the value of audiophile cables, the fact that they seem to make listening to large scale pieces at high volumes possible, while such pieces just fall apart with lesser cables. Anyone else experienced this?

 

[DaveBSC]

 
Quote:

The analogy is this: Like print size, the quality of your components determines the MAXIMUM POSSIBLE QUALITY of the audio. Now, I say "POSSIBLE" quality because there are many things that can hinder that potential, and I feel that cables are one of them. If you have what is the equivalent of a "120x80" system, like my Reimyo+SDS-XLR, then the difference is cables, like camera megapixels, is going to be more noticeable. The last time I switched cables to the Genesis I vividly remember thinking that this was in no way a "minor" upgrade, this was a kick-me-in-the-face and knock-me-out upgrade that rejuvenated my love for music and audio.
 
Now, with that said, ATM I simply don't have the ability to test out cables on an audiophile level system, but this test certainly has me curious to do so. If the difference between a $5 cable I can buy at Walmart and a $3500 cable is as minor as what I noticed in this test, then I may be able to free myself from expensive cables all together. But I definitely encourage EVERYONE to do this very test with their own systems and be brutally honest with themselves. The simple fact is that if I WAS in a blind test with someone else switching the cables I'm not in any way sure I could tell the difference, and I certainly wouldn't put it beyond some "placebo" effect to account for what I heard above. But I kinda am anxious to test myself on this point at the next possible opportunity.

Great post. I feel much the same way, and the camera analogy is a good one. I tend to use cars and tires. With a Ferrari Enzo, the difference between a Pep Boys discount tire and a Michelin Pilot Sport Cup is going to be night and day. The Ferrari has the ability to get the most out of the very best rubber. Tires like that on a Ford Escort on the other hand would be a total waste. The Ferrari would still be drivable on cheap tires just like the very best electronics still work when used with Home Depot speaker wire, but it wouldn't be able to reach its maximum potential.
 
If you consider a Rockport Arrakis to be the speaker equivalent of an Enzo, it needs top shelf cables just as the Enzo needs top shelf tires. I've never been much of a Virtual Dynamics fan, but if I owned the flagship Rockports I would spend plenty of time testing them with the best speaker cables from Siltech, Purist Audio Design, Kubala Sosna, etc, just as if I owned an Enzo I might try six different tires to see which ones felt the best through the steering wheel.
 
As for the "placebo effect", people who argue that usually have no confidence in their listening skills, or simply don't know how to critically listen properly. No one who claims all expensive cables are just shiny ego strokers has ever been able to explain to me how I could drop $1000 or $2000 on a new cable and then conclude that its either no improvement over what I already have, or its actually worse. That's happened to me several times. I've bought a very expensive cable and then not liked it. Sometimes my opinion changes after break-in, sometimes it doesn't.
 
The placebo argument is that all cables sound the same, and in order for it to work, the more expensive, thicker cable with the shinier connectors must always trick the brain into concluding it sounds better as a protection mechanism. "You spent a lot of money on this, you aren't stupid, so it sounds better. You didn't waste your money." Unfortunately if you actually bother to critically listen to cables, rather than just blindly dismiss them, you'll find that often isn't the case.
 
Because there are so many equipment choices out there and so many ears with different tastes, there's a lot of room for cable companies to try different things. Siltech, Purist, and Kubala Sosna have very different ideas about what makes a state of the art cable. It's up to the listener to decide what works best with their equipment.
 
 
 

 

[Uncle Erik]

Quote:

 

Great post. I feel much the same way, and the camera analogy is a good one. I tend to use cars and tires. With a Ferrari Enzo, the difference between a Pep Boys discount tire and a Michelin Pilot Sport Cup is going to be night and day. The Ferrari has the ability to get the most out of the very best rubber. Tires like that on a Ford Escort on the other hand would be a total waste. The Ferrari would still be drivable on cheap tires just like the very best electronics still work when used with Home Depot speaker wire, but it wouldn't be able to reach its maximum potential.
 
If you consider a Rockport Arrakis to be the speaker equivalent of an Enzo, it needs top shelf cables just as the Enzo needs top shelf tires. I've never been much of a Virtual Dynamics fan, but if I owned the flagship Rockports I would spend plenty of time testing them with the best speaker cables from Siltech, Purist Audio Design, Kubala Sosna, etc, just as if I owned an Enzo I might try six different tires to see which ones felt the best through the steering wheel.
 
As for the "placebo effect", people who argue that usually have no confidence in their listening skills, or simply don't know how to critically listen properly. No one who claims all expensive cables are just shiny ego strokers has ever been able to explain to me how I could drop $1000 or $2000 on a new cable and then conclude that its either no improvement over what I already have, or its actually worse. That's happened to me several times. I've bought a very expensive cable and then not liked it. Sometimes my opinion changes after break-in, sometimes it doesn't.
 
The placebo argument is that all cables sound the same, and in order for it to work, the more expensive, thicker cable with the shinier connectors must always trick the brain into concluding it sounds better as a protection mechanism. "You spent a lot of money on this, you aren't stupid, so it sounds better. You didn't waste your money." Unfortunately if you actually bother to critically listen to cables, rather than just blindly dismiss them, you'll find that often isn't the case.
 
Because there are so many equipment choices out there and so many ears with different tastes, there's a lot of room for cable companies to try different things. Siltech, Purist, and Kubala Sosna have very different ideas about what makes a state of the art cable. It's up to the listener to decide what works best with their equipment.
 
 
 

The placebo argument works both ways.  Both your positive and negative experiences are a result of your expectations and desires.
 
This has been implicit in every argument because the placebo effect is the same reason you think that Radio Shack wire sounds bad while more expensive cables sound good.
 
Cables don't "break in," either.  There's nothing to support that other than folklore, superstition and wishful thinking.
 
Car tires are a terrible analogy.  You can actually develop and engineer car tires, measure differences, use the scientific method to develop them, demonstrate differences on a track, and much else.
 
On the other hand, cables are paranormal.  UFOs, Chupacabras, orb lights, ghosts, alchemy, quack medicine, pyramid power, and all the rest are kissing cousins to cables.  Any blind listening test invalidates decades of research and study because the results don't match the wishes and dreams of believers.  Any test gear, no matter how precise and how many decades of research has been put into its design, is suddenly completely ineffective and useless because it doesn't match the dreams and wishes of believers.  The laws of physics, even with hundreds of years of research, doesn't apply to cables because the results of calculations do not match the wishes and dreams of believers.
 
Did you ever stop to think that the different ideas about making a "state of the art cable" are contradictory?  What if one of them is right and the others are wrong?  What if all of them are wrong?
 
And, finally, you cannot listen critically to a cable unless you don't know what it is you're listening to.  If you can see it, your preconceptions, biases and expectations come into play.  After all, if you can hear the difference, then why do you need to see it?  You don't necessarily have to do A/B tests.  I think it would be sufficient for someone to listen to an unknown cable and write a review of the sound.  I'd like to conduct some tests like this.  In addition to the "good" cables, I'll also have people listen to strings of paper clips soldered together and other "bad" cables.  There would be plenty of humiliation to go around when people give a better review to a coathanger than some cryo'ed silver, or whatever.
 

 

[ROBSCIX]

..so that means you are tying your system together with coat hangers, or are you using some reasonably price quality cable?

 

[DaveBSC]

 
Quote:

Cables don't "break in," either.  There's nothing to support that other than folklore, superstition and wishful thinking.  
Car tires are a terrible analogy.  You can actually develop and engineer car tires, measure differences, use the scientific method to develop them, demonstrate differences on a track, and much else.

Did you ever stop to think that the different ideas about making a "state of the art cable" are contradictory?  What if one of them is right and the others are wrong?  What if all of them are wrong?

I'm just going by my own experience. Some cables that I've heard have changed fairly significantly after a few hundred hours. I trust my ears. I'm not going to change that just because, oh Uncle Erik says there is no break-in effect, so therefore there must not be.
 
You develop and engineer cables as well. Do you seriously think that cable designers, many of whom have advanced science and engineering backgrounds, are just blindly shoving copper wire into PVC tubes? "Gee, we want to charge twice as much for this model, shove another conductor in there, Chuck". Do you really think that's all there is to it?
 
You just missed the entire point of high-end audio with that last one. This is not video. There is no "correct" D6500K standard, and to deviate from that is to be incorrect. Ask Alon Wolf at Magico what he thinks would be the best way to build a state of the art speaker. Then ask Andy Payor at Rockport. You'll get two different answers. But how can that be!? Surely one of them must be wrong! You can't have a "correct" perfect loudspeaker, and then another one made differently that sounds different! One of them has to be wrong! Dave Wilson would likely give you a third answer, and it's a pretty sure bet that if you talked to Soundlab and Magnepan, they would say that the box building guys are way off, and then they might get into an argument with each other over the merits of planar vs. electrostat.
 
I don't buy the argument that only blind listening tests are valid. When I do an evaluation, I say, ok let's see how x does, and then everything after that is PURELY based on its sonic performance. I'm not sitting there thinking, oh it costs this, or it looks like that, or I don't like this about that brand. I'm not thinking anything. Critical listening for me at least focuses pretty much 100% of my brain on the sound.
 
The differences between a good cable and a great one can come down to the way the shimmer of a cymbal floats in the air, or the way the body of an acoustic guitar resonates. I'm I'm not purely focused on critical listening, I'm likely to gloss over those differences. 

 

[beeman458]

The wonder of Johnny Cash's voice won't be experienced on a cheap azzzzz system.
 
Listening to Johnny Cash on a decent system, makes you miss him when the piece is over.  The point, a decent system doesn't fatigue you and leaves you "craving" more.  Decent cables, enhances the overall musical experience that much more.  Personally, I feel sorry for those who don't hear differences.  Their loss, our gain and sadly, they seem to continually base their lives on destroying the happiness of others.  Makes one wonder.
 
???
 

 
In Johnny's last recorded studio album, you can hear his age while experiencing the internal emotional pain and in doing so, makes you want to reach out and say, it's going be okay, even though you both know....it won't.
 
Currently listening to: Johnny Cash: "American VI: Ain't No Grave."
 

 

[TheGhostWhoWalks]

Quote:

And, finally, you cannot listen critically to a cable unless you don't know what it is you're listening to.  If you can see it, your preconceptions, biases and expectations come into play.
 

I think this would apply more to people who DO look at audio as some kind of prestige thing, but does everyone really do that? When I first started out in audio I stepped into it blind. I heard a good system and was blown away by how much better it made the music; how much more "life like" it was. So I set out to put my own together based on very limited knowledge and with a lot of help from people online, especially HeadFi. When I first experienced my system, I was a bit disappointed: what I had "imagined" wasn't quite what I got. But I kept listening, and one day when I went back to my old system, all of sudden the difference between them finally "clicked". My first audiophile system wasn't what I imagined at all, but it was MILES better than what my old system could do, and it's amazing that I hadn't noticed that difference until I went back to the old one, and THEN came back to the new one.
 
Cables were different. I first went into cable listening VERY skeptical. I simply wanted to try them out, to see if they made ANY difference. I was even more skeptical then. Because VD had a 30-day return policy, I took the opportunity to try out the cables. Keep in mind I had NO expectations, and I didn't even know what to listen for. Hell, I even thought those Nite II cables were kinda ugly; plane, gray THINGS that didn't really offer much in the way of looks. But when I hooked them up there was a VERY clear difference in the increased silence, musicality, weight, and spaciousness of the music. How could I hear things I never expected on recordings I knew so well? Back then I also had much less money than I had now, so these things were major investments, and if I could have gotten away with buying cheaper this-or-that and having it sound just as good, I would have been thrilled. The difference that those cables made actually depressed me because I felt I'd realized that quality sound goes beyond just the player, amp, and headphones. Why would I hear a difference when I didn't want to?
 
What about what I talk about above with that distortion effect on large choral pieces? Has nobody else experienced this? The funny thing is I never experienced that distortion on crappy audio systems, and I think the reason is that because high-end audio gear DOES dig out so much more information from 0s and 1s and are trying to translate that into physical music moving through the air of your speakers/headphones, it seems to require more power to deliver it. But when it hits those mass peaks with tons of voices/instruments playing it can turn into pure distortion/reverberation that's damn unpleasant to the point I'm forced to lower the volume. But when I inserted the Genesis and went back to that piece (it was one from the Callas recording of Barber of Seville, btw), there was almost zero distortion even at higher levels than what I was listening to before.
 
While I believe a placebo effect could account for hearing more weight/body, or hearing more bass or slightly better soundstaging, I DO NOT believe that it could account for not hearing that level of reverberation and distortion. It's just not possible. To me, that was always the best proof I had that audio cables made a difference, and I plan on going back to that whenever I get my SDS-XLR back.

 

[tim3320070]

Quote:

The placebo argument works both ways.  Both your positive and negative experiences are a result of your expectations and desires.
 
This has been implicit in every argument because the placebo effect is the same reason you think that Radio Shack wire sounds bad while more expensive cables sound good.
 
Cables don't "break in," either.  There's nothing to support that other than folklore, superstition and wishful thinking.
 
Car tires are a terrible analogy.  You can actually develop and engineer car tires, measure differences, use the scientific method to develop them, demonstrate differences on a track, and much else.
 
On the other hand, cables are paranormal.  UFOs, Chupacabras, orb lights, ghosts, alchemy, quack medicine, pyramid power, and all the rest are kissing cousins to cables.  Any blind listening test invalidates decades of research and study because the results don't match the wishes and dreams of believers.  Any test gear, no matter how precise and how many decades of research has been put into its design, is suddenly completely ineffective and useless because it doesn't match the dreams and wishes of believers.  The laws of physics, even with hundreds of years of research, doesn't apply to cables because the results of calculations do not match the wishes and dreams of believers.
 
Did you ever stop to think that the different ideas about making a "state of the art cable" are contradictory?  What if one of them is right and the others are wrong?  What if all of them are wrong?
 
And, finally, you cannot listen critically to a cable unless you don't know what it is you're listening to.  If you can see it, your preconceptions, biases and expectations come into play.  After all, if you can hear the difference, then why do you need to see it?  You don't necessarily have to do A/B tests.  I think it would be sufficient for someone to listen to an unknown cable and write a review of the sound.  I'd like to conduct some tests like this.  In addition to the "good" cables, I'll also have people listen to strings of paper clips soldered together and other "bad" cables.  There would be plenty of humiliation to go around when people give a better review to a coathanger than some cryo'ed silver, or whatever.
 

I really admire your dedication to sound/logical/obvious thinking on this subject, over and over again here. I just don't have the energy anymore to try to convince the unconvincible. Electrical engineers laugh at this stuff.