Cable Costs Relative to System

The reason cables cause as much controversy as politics is because most companies that have a great sounding cable made it by accident and can't duplicate the performance in other models because they don't know how. I have heard expensive cables sound bad and expensive sound good. I have heard some cheap cables sound good too.

Add to the confusion the fact that a lot of respected audio equipment is not as good as believed and you have cables compensating for bad equipment like Firestone did for Ford.

The way to really hear huge differences in cable is to have electronics capable of bandwidth in the mega hertz ranges. There are 4 or 5 good cable engineers out there that understand electrons on a molecular level and those are the ones that make the best cables regardless of the price. Most of these companies of course are unheard of brands that magazines ignore and so the true artists go hungry as they always have.

Some of these people have had their designs stolen from well known names who can't design beyond their first fluke.

Allot $100 per interconnect, $200 for your speaker cable and $100 per filtered mains cable and get the whole lot custom made. Solidly enginered cables from any reasonably competent engineer will match anything out there at even a 100 times the price. The whole cable issue is vastly overrated IMHO. The concept of "bad wires" is fallacious - wires just have varying LCR that may make some SLIGHT difference to your system. Of far more importance is the earthing and connection arragements - the rest is voodoo. I have a $60k system and I spent less than $1k on all my filtered mains cables, interconnects and speaker cable. I tried nordost valhalla, kimber etc and they were all worse, or at best no better.

Duane, you make some excellent points. I have no way, nor a need to verify your claims, but you are right on the money with the comments that much of this is stumbled upon. I recently re-cabled my system with Kubala-Sosna cables saving a lot of money from my fully cabled with Nordost Valhalla. K-S cables were developed by starting with a sound scientific concept. They then built a cable to fit that concept, and. each iteration of the development was fully documented, and every iteration was listened to for sonic quality. As they discovered a point where the sonic quality was to their expectation they flagged it. Then they continued to push the performance from there. After an extensive time of trial and error, they eventual got to a place where they knew they had it. This proved out to be the best they could achieve, given the science behind the development, and they discovered they could improve no further. This is what they call their Emotion line. There were two other significant points in the development stage, these are the other two lines of the series.

I assume, but have no first hand knowledge that they will continue to review the science and performance. At some point I assume some new scientific concept (derived often times from the small guy) will provoke a new line to be developed.

My point is I found their approach to be extremely logical and as scientific as cable development gets. It also proved very successful in the performance these cables deliver.

What I have seen with most cable companies is a blind march down the same road they were on ten, fifteen years ago. Cardas, Kimber, XLO, NBS, MIT, Transparent... have done nothing to revolutionize their products; they simply keep trying different dielectric combinations. A few have put new science to there products, Shunyata Research and Nordost are two examples. This has allowed them to make new "better" lines to sell, but often times the performance of these cables has inherent problems, covered up by one aspect of betterment. The rest are simply knock offs with some different construction techniques. (Of course all this is simply my opinion, but that is the purpose of a site like this, so shoot at me if you will. I'm simply sharing...)

The cable business is not voodoo and it is not snake oil, it is fact. Cables make a difference. The cable business is however more often than not a scam. Few of the products in the marketplace are worth the price, and in many cases can deteriorate the sonic quality. These products have done more damage to this industry than anything else I can think of.

Brizonbiovizier, you are correct, there are some great values that exist. You may also be right that they had good engineering behind them. You could even be right about them bettering most products; it is here I do not have your personal experiences. I have tried many home brewed cables, hoping to find the Holy Grail, but form my personal experiences; $200 interconnects sound like $200 interconnects. I do not know if you have ever spent time making your own cables, twisting heavy gauge wires, wrapping Teflon around a run of wire, and then wrapping copper or silver foil, then wrapping... But it takes a lot of time. If a Guy can make a cable for $100, he either is homeless because he forgot to charge for his time, or he slapped together a wire inside a cotton liner. Building cables by hand takes a ton of time (if we expect them to be reproducible.) The bigger companies often become complacent and use machines to mass produce. This is fine, if they are going to charge a couple hundred dollars to pay for there investment, but as you have pointed out, the products are far to often poorer quality for inflated prices.

This does not however mean all cables are hype and over priced. If a cable can make the level of difference some cables have made on my system, then I will buy them if I can afford to. This does not mean I was scammed or anything, it means the cable I buy does the best for what I can afford. For me to doubt your experience would be wrong. I have no knowledge or experience with what you are using. For you to blanket claim you cables will beat brand Y is also wrong. Your experience is the cables you have tried were not that big of deal. That could be a number of issues including your system has some excellent components but there are also a few holes, the cables you have tried may have been more hype than science a, you may have stumbled upon the Holy Grail, or what ever.

I do somehow doubt you have tried most of the product out there, and therefore will take your experience as just that. Your experience. I do however want to point out why I doubt your being fully honest in your experience, your $60,000 system as claimed adds up to $49,965 with $16,500 into the analog front end. I’m just pointing out you may be exaggerating the truth regarding cables as you have tried with your system. I am not attacking you for I agree with much of what you have said; I am simply questioning your claim (mostly regarding your experience with Valhalla) because it simply does not fit your approach to your system. Other than the amps you have built a system very much independent of the hype in audio products. It would surprise me if you seriously spent any time with Valhalla, it simply does not seem to fit your approach to the hobby. That is actually a complement, you have clearly done a lot of research and made your decisions independent of the press, I like that.

Having said that, you have made claims I seriously doubt you can back up. It is blanket statements like yours that confuse so many people looking to get the very best from their equipment. I would feel very comfortable in stating “I do not believe you have heard the capabilities of your $16,500 analog front end.” My reason for this comments, and I think you are quite typical in this, that most people have invested very large dollars (large is a relative term) and more often than not have skimped on some area of the system. (this is the entire point of this thread, “what percent of your budget…”) This leaves many with the weakest link being the level they achieve. Often this is in cables, racks and/or isolation. Somehow we can spend $16,000 on a pair of speakers, but have no investment in isolation, or a couple hundred dollars in wire. To my mind, this thinking is so skewed and illogical.

Sadly these are the battle lines we have developed. “Wire is wire, these isolation products are snake oil, and there is no science…” Why so many have trouble grasping these issues as important is beyond me and why the defiance by many is even more puzzling. I made a promise to myself when I came back to this site that I would not enter discussions about wire, power and the like, because all that happens is anger. But here I am, right in the middle.

I guess I just feel the truth needs to represent too. So Please understand, nothing I have tried to say was written maliciously, for that would progress this discussion no where. If it comes off as attacking, I apologies, it’s a tough subject to not sound attacking. My only reason to share on this site is to help others learn from my experiences and find new friends who share a common interest. I have no interest in a war over something as meaningless as cable talk.

jd

Jade - if it is fact then please provide the scientific proof of those "facts". Lets see you tell the difference between these cables in a blind test for a start. The results I feel will be very instructive. As for doubting my honesty - you have no basis for doing so except in your imagination where you have concoted a rationale for my viewpoint being currect without actually having to address my arguements. The reason for this being that you have apparently bought heavily into the expensive cable philosophy and wish to defend your expenditure. People used to state with absolute certainty that the world was flat and doubted the honesty of sea farers that had circumnavigated the globe... The truth is a local high end shop lent me a load of cables to tempt me into a purchase after I bought the turntable from them - having bought the rest of the system from another source. This explains what you observed in about not fitting my system philosophy without having to invoke your explanation. Dont be so quick to judge! I actually also spent several months with blue heaven nordost as they were provided with the system. I would have said the amps were more independent of hype than any other component!

As for my system you havent actually heard it so again its pure supposition on your behalf. You assume that because I dont hear the huge difference then there is something wrong with my system so I do not hear the difference which is a circular argument whereby you start by assumming the outcome. Please consider the alternative whereby my system is so revealing that it reveals beyond any doubt that cable effect are exaggerated. In fact I have paid great attention and time to both isolation and cabling - including the provision of lab grade filters on the mains cables. No skimping was involved - in each case I aimed for the very best that could be achieved. It just so happens that this can be achieved with cables very cheaply, if $1k canbe said to be "cheap" (and the townshend rack is hardly cheap!) The next step for me is to upgrade to active, swap the pre and phono and use something like an active SEM bench for isolation. I also purchased a custom built wally tractor to optimise the alignment of the cartridge.

I can assure you I have heard the very best of which the
deck is capable and I also assure that I have taken great pains over every aspect of the system - I come from a technical engineering background and apply sound scientific principles in every instance to good effect. Wires are not complicated - I am used to working at rf where wire problems are very much more severe and still nothing like the cable manufacturers claim. I refer you to Selfs work on difference amplifiers in cable comparisons.

BTW the $60k system would be the UK price in £ converted to $ - doubtless Bryston amps would be much cheaper in the USA.

I appreciate you are not attacking and that you have firm belief nonetheless I feel I must stand up for plausible science in this debate. There is no scientific justification for cable claims and no study has ever substantiated the presence of subjective effects. I suggest that the gentleman here get a custom cable built and compare with nordost et al and decide for himself if it is worth paying $5000 instead of $50 ;). Power however is another matter and there is sound technical basis for some claims in this area.

Everyone, I would like to expand on what I said do to the post Brizonbiovizier made. I won’t repeat some things so just read my post to bring you up to speed on my opinions.

Cables make a huge difference IF the components in your system are well matched, IF the equipment is capable of outrages bandwidth, IF the room the system is in is not over damped or rings, AND IF multiple ingredients a performance are equally important to the listener such as:

Dynamics,
Height perception,
Width and depth of sound stage,
Relaxed detail (not forced)
Roundness of instruments.
Reflections of sound in space,
Texture,
Tonal stability
Leading edge speed
Natural decay
Recreation of distant ambient noise
Breathing of emotion of the artist.

I have done double blind tests several times in my career including tests done at Harmon International and at the Audio Institute in Canada. I picked the brand of electronics, speakers, and cables 96% of the time and when I have explained to people what to listen for while with them one on one, over half the people were able to get scores above 80%.

The audiophiles I know that don't hear differences in cables are the ones that can only concentrate on one or two things at a time.

These are the same people that can't drive with their knees on the steering wheel while they eat and talk on the phone at the same time.

Nothing wrong with that but you can't tell others there is no difference in cables any more than I can tell you there is a God. One day we all will know for sure.