cable elevators

All my spikes are gone.
Isolation sounds way better. Cable risers may be doing similar

 

Cable lifters definitely help a lot

The manufacturer and the dealer have a fantastic margin and will probably buy new cars.
So the car manufacturers are producing more, which helps the suppliers
The factory workers can buy more HiFi for their stash - even cable lifters
...

See, the whole economy depends on buying cable lifters. It’s a circle!

 

See what Paul at PS Audio has to say.....

 

My hardwood floors were pretty upset about spikes.

 

It's his money. How somebody wants to spend that money is up to them.

Personally, I wouldn't touch that level of audiowoo with a bargepole. Reminds me of the time a respected audio reviewer in the UK once talked of - and without irony - changing the light bulbs in his house to improve his stereo's performance. I'll try to dig it out if it's online.

 

And lets not forget that it is all works only in concert with Tice Audio Clock .

 

If he changed out CFL lamps to incandescent then he very well may have improved the sound of his system.

 

Well, if he was changing led lamps with integrated switching power supplies (AC to DC converters) it makes sense, as these create HF noise in your power circuit.

 

This was about a decade ago at least. LED lamps didn't become the in-thing for a few years hence.

 

And achieved a greater change by moving his speakers six inches either way IMO.

 

But not on the advent of the harvest moon and for ten days afterwards...!

 

I thought it was total BS and then one evening for kicks I lifted about 2 feet of speaker cable off the floor with my big toe and heard a positive difference. I lifted it up and down like 20 times with my toe just to confirm. I expected zero difference! I brought my daughter in and she too could hear the difference. So now on speaker cables (only) I lift them off the floor with some scrap piece of wood from an old wooden wine case (cut up the curved bottle cradles) and use them. The cost to do so was $0. This was scrap wood that I would have thrown out otherwise. The sound is more open to me. The effect to my ears is like using a higher cartridge loading setting for a turntable when you were using one previously that was a bit low and created an almost muffled element to the sound. Is it snake oil if the cost was zero? Paying $500 for cable lifters is snake oil because I'm convinced it makes no difference what material you use as long as it's essential inert (non-conductive).

 

Actually, I find it annoying, could be my brain shaking within the box or something in the sound I have not paid much attention to. I have definitely heard static noises when moving the cable of cheaper headphones.

 

yes, becsause the connection plugs are moving slightly as you move about.

 

Ye, it does.

As I have already recounted in this forum before, there was the time I went to a gathering of famous manufacturers, designers and famous writers at the house of someone who would go on to publish - for a brief, shining moment, a but supernova magazine in the San Francisco Bay Area. Rivaled TAS for a while, but then...well, why it ended is between the principals and not my place to say. Onward.

The system at the soon-to-be publisher's house, to which I was invited to attend, consisted of a Rockport Turntable (THE turntable back in 1994 eclipsing my poor Versa Dynamics 2.3 - alas, no longer "King of The Mountain"), a Van den Hul Grasshopper cartridge, Jadis JP-80 Preamplifier, Bel Mk 3 amps, Wilson Grand Slamms, Transparent Reference XL speaker cable. At the time, a $120, 000+ system.. By today's costs, $211,000.

We played several cuts, then an Elvis cut. The upper midrange was a bit too bright, so I asked if I could get the power cord off the speaker cables and I also got the cables off the floor by using CD jewel boxes.

The collective astonishment of the gathered luminaries when the cut was replayed was electric. What did he just do????? When asked what I had done, I stated I had just removed the power cord from on top the signal cable, and elevated the speaker cables (they could see it, but didn't know its purpose) off the floor. My colleague, one of The Absolute Sound's star reviewers, turned to me and accused me of being a showoff. I reminded him (and the Executive Editor of TAS) that this was not my idea: Enid Lumley, one of their own writers, and the Chief Eccentric of TAS, had championed it in the magazine in one of her famous articles on how to improve your stereo system for almost nothing. She used tennis balls cut in half with the cables on the rounded half ball. She talked about "skin effect". I have the issue (I have all the TAS issues until 2015, when I thought they'd lost their direction). I'm far from a technical person, but my methodical experimentation earned me the soubriquet "The Mad Scientist" for doing the same experiment so often, nobody got to hear an entire side of a record for at least the first hour.

Despite what the naysayers say (or maybe they have their cords snaking around on top of each other, something Enid also strongly discouraged), it should be obvious to anyone with half-decent ears. It was all TOO obvious to the Elite crowd gathered that evening, so what can I tell you? They had no idea that this discovery was going to happen that evening, but they heard it easily. It doesn't cost money to do it, either. Buy some tennis balls, cut them in half, and arrange them under your speaker cables so they don't sag (Enid said that was important!) or use CD jewel cases (open to 90 degree angles, so the cable barely touches the jewel box (the less contact the better), and let the cable sit for 20 minutes or so before playing (although that day, the effect was instantly observable, but they were using a State-of-The-Art system with state of the art cabling throughout, so maybe it'll be obvious to those who don't have their power cords lying on their snake-coiled speaker cable/interconnects or whatever. That does seem to diminish the effect a bit, in my extensive experience, but who knows? Maybe it's due to older cable not being shielded. I couldn't tell you. I can only speak to my dedication - like Einstein, who said,, “It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with the problems longer.” As do I. I only care about whether something can be demonstrated and duplicated, over and over and over, and the last time I did this was in 2020, in a local dealer's showroom. He had Nordost Odin cables just sitting on the floor all atop each other. It looked very messy, but then, apparently it's pretty common among "audiophiles." I just moved the Odin to the backs of chairs, anything to get them off the floor. The electronics were all the ne-plus-ultra Audio Research, I forget the CD player, but I remember it was $15, 000 and the speaker system was the Wilson Sasha. Of course, his room sabotaged any hope of excellent sound, but he wasn't into music: he was a salesman and his clients were rich, so...
Despite all that, I could hear the difference easily enough. Apparently, Nordost now believes it makes a difference (although the usual mouthy cynics will proclaim it was only done "for the money." Not that that's my experience, but I'm quite methodical, and I'm not getting any profits from its, so.... In any case, there are loads of articles on skin effect. But for cynics, no amount of evidence is ever enough. I don't waste time convincing them, but for those of you who believe in actually trying something and doing it carefully, you will hear the results. It will help if your equipment is on good (non-vibrating) stands, although when i first did it, I had a cheap stereo platform for my amp. I still heard it, although it is fair to say my system was close to state-of-the-art at that time. However, I've duplicated the results on several of my friends' systems, systems I know well, since I gave them many of the components (it beats having them lie around cluttering my house!), and they hear it. No reason you shouldn't, but please: DO keep your cables separated from each other. No power cords on signal cords (speaker cable/interconnects) or you'll lessen (but not abolish) how easily you hear the end result. And turn off your microwaves if you can. I don't care how many dedicated circuits you have (I've got 10 and I can still hear when the microwave is on: it is most evident in the lower highs frequencies (play a recording with a triangle being struck several times: you should hear the effect with the microwave on and with it off). I never quite understand the greek chorus of "it doesn't work" when it's been demonstrated for 25 years. Here's an article or two to help. The only time the microwave doesn't seem to affect the music is when I'm in the basement level of the house (the microwave is upstairs in the kitchen. Not explaining, just pointing out when I can hear/not hear the difference).

Understanding Skin Effect and Frequency

Hey, Man, Gimme some Skin Effect!

Some of you will be able to make better sense of this than me. I just did what Enid (Lumley) told me to do, and I heard the results. Simple action, simple results. She was considered eccentric - until her repeated experiments showed that capacitors had different "memories" and some held a charge longer and that affected sound. Then a whole industry jumped up around building better capacitors. She was so ahead of some of the smartest designers of that time. May she rest in peace.

 

If lifting cables off the ground brings any benefit then I rather suspend them using some anti-static material

Get a teepee frame with some string to attach to the cable.

 

My guess would be that it doesn't make much sense / won't make a noticeable difference IF one is using cables that are well shielded. Even when cables are on the floor and next to each other negative things like interference will only occur in case of bad cables.
When it comes to claimed differences, or better claimed improvements, these statements rarely stand blind tests.
But of course there is nothing against doing some experiments and I hate it when people are judged, ridiculed for trying.

 

Look at the video in post 54 and pay special attention to all the if's and but's, he is clear about it, for most people it is not going to make any difference. It is something I wish to try sometime but at the moment I am in no rush.

 

I've no cables on the floor , they're all in plastic cable conduit stuck to skirting boards. No "trip hazards."

 

I prefer my cables neatly organized


Do you think elevators will improve my soundstage?

 

Helium balloons for me

 

I elevate my speaker cables, not for any inherent sound improvement due to the elevated cable but to help make less of a mess of all the cables that are required to connect and power my components. My main concern was too many cables lying next to or crossing each other. With some cables elevated I can run others under or parallel to them without worry of interference. It is also fun to see people's expressions and listen to opinions when someone comes over and sees not only the speaker cables elevated, but the diameter of my power and speaker cables, which is another ball of wax that has been too debated at this point.

 

Wow!!! and I thought I had a rats nest behind my Home Theater rack. In this situation, which I have to a much lesser degree I just began to be more selective with cable length.

 

So separation from a source of interference may help, but it is not the "lifting" per se that matters? What is a good rule of thumb for separation from interconnects vs 12v supply vs 110v etc? Is 4 inches enough in all cases?