Looking for RCA Interconnect Upgrade

It's not about adjusting the sound of a system to your taste, good wires make the whole system sound better, not brighter nor warmer just finding the potential of what is already there.

 

Answer this question: If it's just voicing as you say, why hasn't anyone figured out that they could make millions by "voicing" $99 cables that sound just like the ones people are paying $3,000 for?

 

Cables will always start heated debates.
The suggestion of the cable company is
Sound one! It's very hard to be specific
On this subject.
I use tubes. Shark cables sound very good to my ears with tubes.
They are available from Holland.
They may not suit transistors, and this is the thing, your ears may be different to mine.
I build cables sell the odd pair, price is not really an arbiter of quality.
Belden, Shark are but 2 , there are several major suppliers that the main manufacturers use. Not many make their own
cat 5 cable woven makes a good loudspeaker Cable! Sattellite cable makes a superb interconnect . Its true. Construction method has a bearing on sound quality.
So many variables. You can hear the effects of a poor cable immediately in the bass, boomy coarse and a dull treble.
I would be wary of spending large ammounts on a super cable.

 

Easy, because people who pay more believe they are getting more, which is one of the crazy things about this hobby. Besides, it a cable has a known property it should be stated by the vendor. Instead, consumers are forced to experiment. If there is a worse way to spend your money, I don't know what it is. For $3k you can get another DAC or turntable. I bet a $5 from Fry's could be voiced and do the job.

 

If it´s not voicing, then it´s about adding least distortion. Then it would be better selecting by measuring.

 

See, that's not true. I've had more expensive cables than what I'm using now that I didn't like.

Your second notion runs into the problem that cables have different presentations in different rigs just as other gear and speakers do.

 

So why don't you buy 100 Frys, apply your secret magic voicing formula to them, and turn a $500 investment into $300,000 overnight? It could be because you're just too rich, or too busy to bother. Or....[your answer here]

 

Exactly, speakers are STILL one of the worst parts of the audio reproduction chain, adding more coloration and changing most aspects of the audio signal chain than any other part of the chain.

Sadly until something better comes we are stuck with them. Don't loose sight of the fact that even the best speakers are still using the same basic technology that is about a century old.

 

There are already many companies doing EXACTLY as you suggest. Do you really think most of the cables sold are at a reasonable markup?

 

As always YMMV!

 

As usual with the cable cult, this thread is heavy on claims and light on facts.

 

I use Audio Sensibility RCA cables and find them to be well made. I won't comment on the sound of them other than to say I felt it was a worthwhile expense over the inexpensive ( free to $30) cables they replaced. I'm planning to get one of their phono cables next. They have a money back trial period. The exchange on the $ certainly works in your favour as well.

 

Well, we can say that about a lot of our audio designs. We're using tube amps with tech and circuits that are basically 75-100 years old, vinyl playback with tech and designs of a pretty similar vintage, even solid state designs are refinements of tech that's 60, 70 years old...the circuits are refined and tweaked and the materials may be improved, but until you get to digital, all the rest of hifi is basically mid-20th century tech or earlier, with modern refinements.

 

I generally roll my own interconnects, and there certainly are sonic differences in presentation I've heard between, say, a solid core coax with a double braided shield -- a kind of typical, good, inexpensive, well-made audio RCA -- and my preferred cables, which are twinax, teflon dielectric, foil and braided shield floating at one end. The differences are small, but not meaningless: one thing I've always chased as my system resolution has improved, is to hear more into the room, to have the soundspace appear more continuous. On record that's tricky with regard to that is Way Out West: three mics, in a tiny space, direct to the tape deck without even preamps, but the mics obviously have tight cardioid patterns and there's reverb on the horn channel and not on the rhythm section channel. So hearing into the room, hearing the center space which is kind of in the null of the the mics, hearing Rollins as he moves on and off mic and hearing that all sound like it's taking place in a space as small as that real recording room ways (vs. as wide apart as your speakers are), is a good test of low level resolution. And connecting from my phono pre to my line stage I certainly have cables that present that whole space better or less well. That's a kind of musical difference I usually associate with lower noise, but there's no audible noise with either set of cables, and there's no theoretical reason by the twinax with a shield floating at one end and and a foil and braid vs. double braid connected at both ends, should have lower noise, some would suggest that theoretically it should have higher noise.

I've also heard differences I flat out can't explain between damping the the RCA s around the plugs with some kind of CLD material and not -- with considerably sharper center image focus. I can't explain it. But I've heard it.

The differences in my experience are much smaller than differences of, say, moving speakers or a listening position even small distances, but anything and everything you stick into a signal chain or swap for something else in a signal chain does appear to make some difference.

Certainly buying cable based on specs is a perfectly sound and reasonable place to start -- for single-end audio RCAs, low capacitance; low cap and low resistance terminations, very low resistance shielding (to keep AC leakage current as low as possible): it'll do the job, it'll keep noise low, it'll sound fine. But there will be differences with other cables of different designs and/or different terminations, for whatever reason.

But if you spend some time making your own cables -- buying different cables that you know have different geometries, not just a bunch of very similar shielded coax -- you might find, like I did in doing that, that there appear to be differences. Tracking down what in the cable is the cause of the sonic difference, seems to be the challenging part.

 

I think there are significant investments in tooling, R&D, metallurgy, and labor costs in high end cables. The $30 cables have high markups too -- how much do you think Radio Shack is paying for that $30 cable they make in China? $1? $2? More to the point, what I don't think anyone is doing is taking a $5 cable and selling it for $3,000, which is what some people here seem to think is going on. Is it wise to spend $3,000 on a set of ICs? That's a different question. Maybe not for me or you, but what I definitely do not believe is the people who do spend that much are idiots, suckers, or self-delusional.

 

I agree ! I roll my own.
I buy occasionally if something takes my fancy.
Sometimes you see a pair of cables going at a steal, as you get to know the value of plugs, wire etc.
You do hear differences when you vary
Construction methods.
Controversial topic!

 

For some maybe I dunno. Cardas says they have their own copper rolled. Mostly though folks are just buying wire from the small handful of big producers of wire in the globe. They may not just be rejacketing a Belden cable -- some are or hard having Belden OEM something but at least some of those, like Blue Jeans, will tell you exactly that. But others might just be assembling cable from off the shelf sources. I'm not sure how much these small, boutique companies are actually spending on research or on metallurgy; they are spending a lot on marketing though. Whatever the value of these cables might be, I'm not sure the pricing on super expensive hifi cables is on a cost-plus basis. I think, and this is true not just of cable in high end audio and in other luxury products, the extreme pricing is almost part of the marketing.

 

Yeah, because it's really unclear what kinds of construction or materials or other aspects of this whole process is responsible for what difference in sound, and there are lots of assertions out there by companies that are selling high priced cables that sometimes seem cockamamie and pseudo scientific, so I think there are valid reasons for skepticism about the whole enterprise of high end cable. Also in my experience, a lot of times the scale of the differences is exaggerated. I mean, the differences I heard between cables is rarely of the enormous variety. But something IS going on with different cables of different constructions.

 

I decided to get another set of Audioquest King Cobras. I paid $111.00 for .75 meter, hopefully I will not need to get my head examined They allow the HAP unit (and my CD player) to sound awesome.

 

one thing I can assert
difference between IC's are VERY subtle. I literally get to turn a switch to hear either cable A or cable B.
the difference are not so obvious at all. there are however without any doubt slight differences.
comparing MIT2 to Audioquest Water is very subtle, but the difference can be heard once the charactheristic between the two IC's are well identified.

I know for a fact I couldnt distinguish in a blind test between AQ water and MIT2. Water is smoother and slightly more coherent. the biggest difference is that AQ water is less bright, more depht and little bit more laid back.
will now try all my other IC's and report back.

oh, and the test is done with schiit yggdrasil, ifi pro ican amp and focal utopia headphones. the fact that the difference is very subtle with a very revealing headphone setup should tell a lot

 

Can't quite follow -- where are the IC's you are comparing in your system? ie, what is being connected to what?

 

DAC is Schiit yggdrasil. it has two separate outputs so I get to connect two different IC's. My headphone amp is the Pro Ican which has 3 inputs, so I get to have two IC's connected to my headphone amp. by the turn of a switch, I can A-B test,

 

I now realize that much of this discussion is not distinguishing based on where the ICs are being compared. Between my amp and preamp, the difference between the Audioquest (Sequoia I think - $109) Kimber 1021 ($1,400), Kimber Silver Streak ($500), Kimber Hero ($275), generic copper ($30) and Van den Hul Marl III was dramatic - no one could mistake them. Between my source (Marantz 8004 SACD) and my CJ premap, the difference was much less pronounced. So perhaps that explains some of the differing perceptions people are expressing here.

 

I like AQ cables but Marohei ic shock me how good they are for money that they cost.
Check © MAROHEI CABLES
They will send world w and the can produce custom cables for your system.

 

Transparent Plus RCA