[aeriyn]

Seriously.

I mean, I can totally understand the difference between my decently made 25 dollar 0.5m IC and one of those cheap ass molded plastic RCA plug sets that comes with virtually everything electronic.

But, what I want to know is, how do these expensive cables differ in sound quality from other cables, even if both cables transmit all of the signal and not lose any parts of it?

According to my knowledge... copper conducts electricity pretty good, and having a lot of it doesn't make it conduct more electricity. I know that silver wire is preferable to copper but mainly because it oxidizes slower and still conducts electrcity well even if it does oxidize, but this seems to be a matter of practicality and not sound quality (i.e. the length of time you have before you need to replace your ICs is longer with silver ICs than with copper ones).

Can anyone here tell me how a piece of wire can color the sound coming out of my CDP and into the back of my amp? (Or even if it can at all, and all of us are really just fooling ourselves into thinking one piece of wire is better than another?)

 

[JohnFerrier]

Don't know if you saw the comparison of THD for "inexpensive" and "expensive" interconnect cables here: http://www6.head-fi.org/forums/showt...de#post1089312 Summary: absolutely no distortion in either flavor.

My current theory is that whatever a person does that forces a person to listen to his/her system more intently will cause it to sound better.

My recent experience is that I've wrote email to someone in the recording industry. Because of this, I've really been listening much more carefully to a lot of different CDs. It dawned on me that my system now sounds better. (I had thought I was hearing "veil", but am starting to appreciate the HD650 as much as JaZZ does.) I changed nothing with my setup. Part of it was that I had broken preconceived ideas I had of recordings that I really hadn't listened to for awhile.

There is a story (don't know if it's true or not) that an efficiency expert was studying how to improve yield of an assembly line. In short, they found that whatever variable that was changed brought about an improvement in productivity. The conclusion was that when people understood that they were being measured (and that their results mattered) everything improved yield. I don't know how good of an analogy this is, but I think there is something to it.

Another example, there are the 3D stereo images (link below). A person can learn to see an image through the visual noise; however, it requires focused attention.
http://www.eyetricks.com/3dstereo.htm

So, I believe that what people hear as improvements (in cables) are really learning to listen better/more intently. If expensive interconnects, expensive or cheap cables, burn-in, putting pictures of yourself in the freezer helps a person hear improvements, do it.


JF
(confident that my stock cables are fine and enjoying the music)

 

[NotoriousBIG_PJ]

I haven't found the price of a cable to correlate with its performance. I do find significant differences in cables.

One of my cable stories:

My brother listened to my system with the grover mkII ic's in it, and he said the sound was too inside his head and hurt his ears a bit. He hated it.

2 months later I had him listen to my system again (not telling him what was different), this time with aural thrills active gold (tri-alloy wire) interconnects, and this time he said the sound was outside of his head and it didn't hurt his ears. He loved it. His thoughts on the new sound of my system were inline with my thoughts. Also I didn't change anything else in my system in between...

Another one of my cable stories:

My diy cable was having a connection problem so I took it out of my system and put in the interconnects that came with my cd player. I re-soldered to cables connection and left it to dry, forgetting about it. A few days later, I am listening to my system, and wondering why the heck its sounding so grainy. It really was not enjoyable. I thought to myself, what is wrong with my system, it used to sound much better. As I looked for a lose connection or something, I noticed I had the stock cable still plugged in! So I put in my diy cable, and bingo the grainyness was gone, replaced by a smoother sound.

I always suffer from ear fatigue when I first get a new cable, but not when I burrow a used cable.

I won't even get into the differences I hear between cables hehe.

Biggie.

 

[aeriyn]

Quote:

Originally Posted by NotoriousBIG_PJ I haven't found the price of a cable to correlate with its performance.

I would have to agree with you on that... I have made several DIY interconnects using various components (mostly Neutrik and Canare plugs and LC-OFC wire, one of my ICs was made with silver wire, but that was to sell to someone) and while I was not able to tell the difference in sound between the copper and the silver IC, the difference between the diy copper IC and some crappy stock ICs that came with my 563a were readily apparent.

The most sound advice to me in the area of cables/wires has come in the form of "weakest link," just like when it comes to matching computer video cards, RAM and CPU for gaming. Your system is only as good as the weakest link in it, and with my gear, while I indeed enjoy listening to it above nearly everything else (I can't even bear to listen to the horrible little boom box at work now!) it is most definitely not the best and would probably not benefit much from a $300 silver IC, while it would likely benefit heaps more from a new source or amp around the same price, such as a NAD C541i or a PPA. =P

 

[NotoriousBIG_PJ]

Indeed I found listening for differences in cables on my old shanling s100 harder then with my better quality modded teac. I could not tell any difference between cables when I was using a portable discman.

Biggie.

 

[PhilS]

Quote:

Originally Posted by NotoriousBIG_PJ Another one of my cable stories: My diy cable was having a connection problem so I took it out of my system and put in the interconnects that came with my cd player. I re-soldered to cables connection and left it to dry, forgetting about it. A few days later, I am listening to my system, and wondering why the heck its sounding so grainy. It really was not enjoyable. I thought to myself, what is wrong with my system, it used to sound much better. As I looked for a lose connection or something, I noticed I had the stock cable still plugged in! So I put in my diy cable, and bingo the grainyness was gone, replaced by a smoother sound.

I had a similar experience. I had spent a fair amount of time when first putting my headphone system together to find a CD and DAC combination that would avoid any trace of harshness or edge, especially at the high end. After a lot of experimenation, I felt I had achieved most of what I wanted, and then decided I would try some different interconnects, since the one I was using on a temporary basis needed to go back to my home theater. At one point, I hadn't listened to my system for several days due to my workload, and I put on a few of my favorite CD's that I am very familiar with and was surprised that I was hearing the digital harshness that I thought I had gotten rid of. I was pretty perturbed, thinking I was back where I started, and not understanding what had happened since I had not changed anything. After listening to several more tracks and confirming that the sound was indeed unpleasant to me, I started thinking about my intital experiments and wondering whether the harshness was there all along and that maybe I didn't hear it when I was switching back and forth between various CD sand DAC combinations. Then it occurred to me that I had changed something in the interim -- I had replaced the interconnect I borrowed from my home theater with a silver interconnect that I had just received before I got distracted by work. I just forgot about it due to being occupied with other things. When I switched back to the other interconnect, the harshness was gone and my system sounded great again. I compared very carefully specific passages on some of my favorite recordings, and the difference was very noticeable. Needless to say, I sent the silver interconnect back (although I think it could be a great interconnect in another system).

 

[thrawn86]

you bring up the point of weakest link....

Why pay a premium for super super silver interconnects when 90% of your amp is *not* silver. board traces are copper, jack lugs are nickel, etc, and I'm not even sure what the legs on resistors and caps are made out of.

How could the interconnect be the weakest link?

 

[NotoriousBIG_PJ]

Quote:

Originally Posted by thrawn86 you bring up the point of weakest link.... Why pay a premium for super super silver interconnects when 90% of your amp is *not* silver. board traces are copper, jack lugs are nickel, etc, and I'm not even sure what the legs on resistors and caps are made out of. How could the interconnect be the weakest link?

It kind of boggles the mind, just like how a power cord makes a difference even though you are hooking it up to metre's of cheap house wiring. All I can say is listen and make your own decisions, the key point is LISTENING.

Biggie.

 

[Jon L]

We just have to face the fact that we as human beings in year 2004 still do not know a lot about signal transmission.

There are the obvious explanations. Capacitance, resistance, inductance, etc are easily measured via meters and do somewhat correlate with perceived sound quality. Then there are mathematically determined cable geometries that will minimize capacitance, inductance. The cross sectional area may determine resistance.

The only problem is that some wires with higher capacitance and/or higher resistance sound BETTER than ones that measure well. Some of the Magnan wires have notoriously high resistance, noticeably decreasing decibel levels over other wires, yet they sound very nice.

Then there's dielectric. It's generally accepted that low dielectric constant is desirable, so that signal energy is not stored and released back into conductors belatedly. However, many report that teflon, one of the best dielectrics, "sound" bad.

Quality of plugs, solder, crimp all can effect the sound. Note the increasing popularity of minimalist plugs like Eichman bulletplugs or WBT Nextgens.

In my experience, the jacket material and its resonance characteristics also alter sound.

In addition, the use (or non-use) of shielding and proximity to signal wire changes the sound character. RFI/EMI rejection also plays a big part.

Even if one got everything right, one has to face the fact that certain metals just sound different even if used in same AWG, design, geometry. I have done comparisons with same designs, and yes silver, copper, alloys, golds all have different basic sound character.

Add to these factors possibly many other factors that we probably don't even realize exist yet, and you now have the mirky pool that is cable industry.