Interconnect Cables- Eating my Words

As a figure of speech, I think it describes my experience nicely. I auditioned 5 brands of cables in my home and was astounded to find what I found. Comparing the cables I had with the ones I replaced them with was not 'night and day' but like 'night and day'. And the new cables were much, much more expensive to what I had, so I would hope so.

 

where can you buy terminated speaker and ICs from Van Damme? I've looked before but seems very tough to find.

 

To me, "better" is, well, BETTER, however it is achieved. Also, it is not necessarily the case that Avanti has a harsh sounding CD player and that the old cables accurately transferred those qualities and the new cables acted as a "less accurate" filter attenuating those qualities. It might be the case that the old cables are the ones doing the attenuation or alteration of the signal--e.g., rolling off some bass so that the frequency balance is brighter, or altering the phase relationship of different parts of the frequency spectrum.

 

i dont hear it as a frequency response modification though, i hear it as less distortion and a clearer stronger more dynamic signal

 

I wouldn't. On principle. Any company that lets out a "fact" they voiced their equipment to needed their thousand dollar cables is suspect, IMO.

 

If you hear "less distortion" with a different cable, the first one was broken...

 

EMI/RFI shielding? You have to go to Hati and get hooked up with a vodun priest to get it because it’s not based on science.

 

ok its subtle and certain recordings exacerbated the issue but it was there and is no longer.

 

Those are my words (and assumptions), not theirs.

 

Here you go. Two dealers on the east coast of the USA. From the Van Damme site here: http://www.van-damme.com/distribution.html

 

Resistors and caps are passive too.

 

I'm a nut too. I love my Morrow interconnects and speaker cables.

 

One could say the same about amps, speakers, etc., but of course that wouldn't be true either.

Every piece of gear in your rig is a tone control, including the cables.

 

FWIW, I was hoping this thread was more of a "skeptics recant" confessional than the usual banal cable debate.

While I haven't yet heard a difference that sells me on the really high end cables, I have heard a difference. After two months of more or less daily listening, I put the monoprice interconnects back on. It sounded worse. Can I be completely certain it wasn't expectation bias? No. But I think the $100 I spent on the PBJs was worth it.

 

With all due respect. Have you heard a shindo system with and without shindo cables? I have. The shindo cable make everything sound just right. As do Auditorium a23 cables. Both types of cables were made to work best with shindo gear.

Ken shindo build everything from the stylus to the speakers with the intent of being synergistic. His hand made products were all crafted to work together. The includes cables. It even included the supplied Power cable (that looks like a lamp cord). When you swap in a new power cord the system often does not sound right.

Shindo offers one type of IC cable. Not an entry level version and then higher ones. Just one type of IC. If they made multiple versions I would find that suspect. But they don't. They build what works best and that is all.

There is nothing suspect to building a system that is voiced to work well all together. His IC cables are pure silver which is part of the reason for the cost.

When you have the opportunity to try a shindo system with different cables get back to me about your suspicions.

 

I will also mention that in my opinion there are probably many systems out there that do not benifit from cable upgrades. I suspect there are also many systems in which you cannot hear differences.

In my system there is a very large difference.

 

As an update, my experiment the other evening was not an hallucination, mirage or mind over matter perception (all of which sometimes happens The CD player and tuner still sound better with the upgraded interconnect cable and I did not believe it possible before the experiment. Recant confirmed.

 

The best demo I've heard to date was at the 2014 RMAF in the Nordost room-the system was a highly revealing one (Magico speakers, Rowland electronics) and they began with using cheap Radio Shack interconnects as a baseline. Using 3 different tacks, they moved up the Nordost line. The biggest leap, of course, was from the el cheapo to the Nordost entry level, but the improvement was clearly audible (albeit more subtle) as you moved up the line.

 

Back in the 90s, I went through a LOT of interconnects! Now, I didn't have too much money to play around with, but, believe it or not, the Audioquest Topaz I tried were among the worst! They made the music sound very compressed. I was also unimpressed with the Monster cables I bought. In fact, they rolled off the highs. The best I have are Terminator 2, and the ones I still use today. Straightwire red and PBJs are also in use. I also used Esoteric Audio cables that were pretty nice.

I still intend to try some Grovers if he's still making them.

 

Man, am I glad I don't have golden ears or equipment where anything other than basic, well-made interconnects and wire would make a hill of beans of difference. I like spending the time I waste on cable auditions simply listening to the music.

 

For someone who thinks anything more expensive than lower end consumer electronics are a waste, reproduction of lowest bass frequencies an undesirable "trait" and any cable/wire discussion a total sham/snake oil, you sure do spend a lot of time in the hardware section.

 

My own experience with interconnects has been quite interesting. I've found the effects of different interconnects to be similar to the effects achieved using different power filtration products, different DACS with their inherently different jitter noise floors and even the variances in noise floors caused by using different dithering and noise shaping algorithms when creating my 16 bit masters. In all of these cases, the sound changes one way or another and despite the measured effects usually being extremely subtle and at incredibly low levels - far beyond my or anyone else's ability to hear them on their own - they all markedly effect the musical content that I do hear.

As examples, a couple of years ago I upgraded my interconnects in my loungeroom system from the relatively cheap Audioquest Sydney to the much more expensive Yosemite model. The sonic effect was almost identical to the effect I heard when using a decent power filtration board such as a PS Audio Dectet (versus nothing). Or conversely, going from an expensive interconnect to a cheap one was like going from a 24 bit master to a 16 bit file using a not-so-great noise shaping algorithm.

One thing I always like to do when trying a new interconnect is to patch it into my audio workstation between the analogue out and in of both the soundcards and then make a recording using it. I then double blind test the recording versus that of another interconnect to make sure I am not imagining the difference, then I go from there with further listening tests. Perhaps the biggest difference I have ever heard between two decent quality interconnects is the aforementioned Yosemite versus the Wireworld Eclipse 6 that I normally use as an analogue input into my workstation. If anyone is still dubious as to whether cables sound different, these two are the best place to start because they do sound so different to each other.

One thing I can say without any exception is that the more expensive interconnects - regardless of brand or design - reduced harshness - always. One thing I have never had the money to try though is a pure silver based interconnect. One day I'd like to try something like a Wireworld Gold Eclipse.

 

In fairness though, it's not like they are accusing everyone else of imagining things. There are unfortunately a few people here and there in the audio industry who cannot hear differences between any metal conductors of an audio signal yet for whatever reason have decided that their own listening skills and experience serve as a paradigm and thus an aspirational benchmark for the entire human race.

 

Maybe just a bad/dirty surface to surface contact. Regardless, with a resolving enough system, cables do make a difference, if you're brain/auditory system is discriminating enough.