RCA Interconnect Cable Comparison

100% YES. Thank you

 

I understand and acknowledge the basis for your disbelief. My experience with equipment reviews may be a little different. I believe the mags choose items to review based on initial impressions of the item's quality and bang for the buck. Yes, they often choose these items to review from those carried by their paying advertisers, but not always. And the review article will often initially extol the item's virtues. But often reviews will quietly note shortcomings of the item, either in comparisons with other equipment or otherwise, often buried toward the end of the review. For example, an item may sound "lean" in the midrange compared to other similar equipment. Or shy in the bass. Whatever. This is balanced and believable info that can be quite useful.

 

I have learned to read between the lines when I read reviews from Stereophile or TAS, quite often the reviewer's honest opinion about a product is hidden there.

 

To my mind, that reinforces russk's issues with the reporting - reading between the lines shouldn't be necessary outside of Orwellian dystopia.

"While other cables in this glass are triple-plus good, this cable is double-plus good."

 

Happiness is finding the right, correct, interconnects & speaker cables for your system (synergy) and, for me anyway, the sooner the better.

Then it's a 'done deal' and you can just forget about the darn cables. Everything sounds fine!

 

I recently attended a local opera .
small orchestra, tenor, soprano,
decent acoustics
Its a lot warmer, with possibly less detail than one would like.
then you realise " hey, this is the real thing."
So suppose when you hear the real thing you prefer the recording,
possibly because its brighter more hi/fi ish etc.
do you see where i am coming from ?
when you audition a cable what do you listen for?
a certain type of sound?
the same sound as a colleague?
cables will
make a difference, i build them . silver/ copper , various insulation materials all contribute.
by trying the various makes you will find one that you prefer.
its always going to be the case

 

... so did you suggest that they upgrade their cables?

 

well , i
would probably have been piledriven into a bass drum by an angry musician!
interesting though as i had forgotten how different real music is, to a recording played on a domestic hi fi system .
you coild argue that a live rock concert
is really a band of players amplified through mediocre/ or outstanding pa system.
The right cable for me is the one that i like, in preference to others in MY system!

 

Here's the thing .. . Cables are passive. They can only attenuate, reduce, roll off. They cannot boost or increase anything.

So, changing cables reduced the 'harshness' .. that could happen. Say your CD Player is 'harsh' .. or has a brittle high end. Cheapie cables accurately transferred that. Hi end or 'tweaked' cables are rolling off some of that hi-end .. hence the 'smoothness'. The new cable is actually less 'accurate' .. but it sounds better.

 

The question is: what do they do to the sound and WHY???

Is anyone else besides russk and myself on this bus?

If you pay someone enough advertising money, I am betting that they will say nice things about your product. And I am expected to view this as objective? Nope!

How about a peer reviewed paper by, MIT engineer's? I haven't noticed many of those?
Maybe some engineer's from a university in Japan? Strange, I haven't seen any for over there either.

In a way, they can appear to. Just like with an EQ box, if we roll of enough of the signal, the rest would appear to be brighter.

Right you are!

In most any experiment I am aware of where there are scientific comparisons, there is always a "control" subject, which is defined, in scientific terms.

Before we broach the subject of exotic wire, I would like to address the subject of just plain old oxygen free copper wire, stranded, of a given gauge. This conductor should be surrounded by a standardized insulator, common to the industry, of a given thickness. This should be of a specific given length, say 1-meter, and should be surrounded by a standard braid and covered by a final rubberized jacket of a given thickness.

This would be terminated at both ends by an industry standard RCA connectors. I'm assuming that somewhere out there, there is some sort of a standard specification defining what an RCA plug is?

Say we purchased this "control" product, with the identical specifications from, say Blue Jeans Cable, Monoprice, or whoever. I would venture a guess, that somewhere in time, the government has purchased such a cable for it's own uses and have very specific specifications defining what a standardized government sanctioned interconnect is.

Now, before we go on the comparing more exotic cables, could someone please explain to me what is "wrong" or "incorrect" about this plain Jane, well built, ordinary copper wire cable?

Everyone is always speaking about this or that "special" cable. First, I would like a scientific consensus (Simple Definition of consensus. : a general agreement about something : an idea or opinion that is shared by all the people in a group). Explaining to me, what is wrong with this ordinary copper interconnect cable in the first place?

And, as has been pointed out above, if I have the "perfect" amplifier and the "perfect" speakers, why would I want to connect the two of them with anything that alters the sound in any way? If you have two pieces of "transparent" equipment, why would anyone want to connect them with anything that deliberately makes changes to the original sonic signature?

This is what I ask?

S&G

 

The problem is that there can never be a consensus, as we´re talking about things that will always be in the subjective domain.

 

So your saying, that with all of our collective intelligence and experience, we can't agree what define's an ordinary common wire about 3' in length?

 

Yes.

 

Well, passive or active doesn't matter. A passive component can generate a signal -- a phono cartridge is a passive generator -- or boost a signal -- a step-up transformer is a passive component. So, passive components can do a lot more than just attenuate. Yes, though, a cable is not like either of those passive components.

 

The $35 Evergreens? I agree, they do sound pretty good.

Knowing the level of the playing field you're on, I can't imagine you using entry-level cables anywhere!

 

I´m not saying we couldn´t try, but a consensus on anything regarding cables seems very unlikely. Cables are where one defines ones audiophilia, it´s audio´s resort where we can be ourselves. Cables are where we are entitled to all opinions there possibly are.

But we could start with EMI rejection and dielectric absorbtion, to see where it will lead us.

 

I agree, but after years of listening and testing cables I've found that in more cases than not the more expensive cables turn out to allow more information through than not. That being said, I have also heard some pricy cables that didn't work well in my systems.

Currently I'm evaluating A Shunyata Anaconda Zitron XLR interconnect being used between my CD player and Integrated amp, It's up against tough competition replacing my long time tried and true Madrigal XLR.

 

Interesting approach. I have never encountered the term "passive generator" before. (It seems like one for those George Carlin phrases, like, "jumbo shrimp" ). What I am saying is that it us generally understood that electronics do something to the signal, which is their purpose, in the first place.

I don't think that we can refer to something as truly passive, if that device generates a signal. I would differentiate, generation of a signal from the modification of a signal. Since a phone cartridge, be it a crystal, MM or MC, it generates (creates) and electrical signal from mechanical activation. Therefore, I could not view it as being a passive device. I would classify it as an active device, in this respect.

Electronic components only do something, if you do supply power to them. By that definition, a vacuum tube is just as much of a passive component, as a step-up transformer, because neither of them will do anything without having power supplied to them. And neither of them create power on their own. They only modify the power that is introduced into them.

Take a step-up transformer. Run an audio signal through it and it will step-up the voltage, but it will reduce the current. Run an audio signal through a step-down transformer, it will step down the voltage but the current will increase.

In either case, the signal that comes out of that transformer, is not quite the same as the signal which went in to it. In other words, it is not quite as perfect as the signal which went in to it.

So we invented engineers. They design the best circuit that they can and then it is built out of the best available components. When we do this, we have a perfect signal coming out of the amplifier (well, sort of...).

Which is precisely my point and question. If we have the "perfect" signal coming out of the amplifier AND the "perfect" sonic transducer (speaker), to reproduce that "perfect" signal, why, as audiophiles, would we want to screw with that signal in any way?

Since it doesn't make any logical sense to me, to introduce any component between the amplifier and the speaker, that by design, deliberately, alters the signal, I don't choose to do so. Whether it boosts or attenuates the signal, is not really the issue with me at all. Which is why I choose to use genuine good quality, oxygen free copper wire (I will leave it at that).

So the question I ask is simply; What is wrong with ordinary, good quality copper wire, in the first place?

Before we have a need to improve on a product, I would just like to know, what is wrong with it in the first place and why it needs improving?

AND... If I am buying aftermarket "gourmet" wire (which I might consider, if...), I think the manufacture of such product should be able to state how it addresses the deficiencies in the ordinary wire, that I am currently using and specifically (since this is the hardware part of the forum), explain to us, in scientific terms, that will stand up to peer review, exactly what their product is doing to improve on my ordinary copper wire.

For all the rhetoric out there, I don't seem to be able to get, what I perceive, what I regard as a simple answer to a simple question. I also don't seem to be able to get an intelligent answer to the justification for me purchasing their specific product. If I am purchasing a specific product, I believe that I am entitled to a rational answer.

 

Works for me. At the very least, we will have a place to start.

So how will EMI rejection and dielectric absorption help it to sound better? Any scientific opinions, will be welcome.

Can someone show us how to make a better sounding wire? Curious minds want to know!

Any other ideas?

 

Nothing wrong, IMO. They will as transparent as they can be. But as I said earlier, we´re are in the subjective domain.

 

What I meant was that these are the types of parameters we must define if we sort of are defining a 'common cable'.
Together with: capacitance, inductance, dissipation factors, resistance....
I´m not going into if these parameters are audible or not, but these parameters still are the ones we must change; to have another type of cable to compare with.

 

As I said, anything that is a start in the right direction, meaning a rational quest for answers, works for me.

The more variables we discuss and the more answers we get, the closer we might get to actually ration understanding of both the problem issues and their solutions.

Maybe someone who is more educated than me on the subject, could assist us with regard to:

capacitance, inductance, dissipation factors, resistance....

as it would apply to our "common" reference cable.

As you say "I´m not going into if these parameters are audible or not, but these parameters still are the ones we must change; to have another type of cable to compare with."

We can worry about if they are audible or not AFTER we have figured out what the factors are that we are working with in the first place.

 

Yeah, I think you have to discuss dielectric but that really can't happen in a public forum based on what I've read and seen.

 

We will need access to an accredited measuring lab to do this.