2. cables
  3. 1060176203

Cables - When Did it All Start?

OK, here we go...

This is not another "I just installed cable X and the soundstage and microdynamics just shot through the roof..." or "What cables do you guys recommend for..." but a simple question. When did people start noticing that different cables in audio gear apparently sound different? Or another related question, who was the first cable company to offer different "audiophile" cables?

I do not have golden ears and with two children constantly chirping in the foreground/background I can barely hear the music most times anyway, thus I really have no practical experience if cables make a difference.

Regards,
david_berry
stringreen's avatar
stringreen
5,112 posts
 
You're correct about the Polk cables..They were + and - braided with a very thin layer of painted on insulation that wore through or chipped off very easily which touched the plus and minus wires frying the amps.
leica_man
153 posts
 
Albert,
Were those Peterson Engineering cables the ones I remember covered with a white Teflon tape? I'm with you on shielding and to this day I do not care for un-shielded or woven cable designs. That said the Randall Research speaker cables (I did not have their IC's) were nice sounding considering the vintage.

Did you ever have the pleasure of meeting Fulton and listening to him go on about “electron bunching?” That was a hoot : )

Oh to stroll down memory lane.

Cheers,
LM
albertporter's avatar
Ag insider logo xs@2x
albertporter
4,927 posts
 
Leica_man, good to see your reply posted :^).......I knew it would show up.
fatparrot
1,314 posts
 
Sean, thanks for the correction. I never had any amp react badly to those cables. My friend, at the time, was selling some exotic equipment out of his house, but I distinctly remember buying them in Miami in 1975 or 1976.

The only problem that I had was that I kept breaking off portions of the thin terminus wire that were plugged into the spring block speaker connectors on receivers back then.
tbg
5,263 posts
 
You guys are omitting some of the other West Coast cables, such as Bill Low's Big Reds, which I still have in my storage room. I still have the Cobra and several of the Petersons around also. Also while I was living in New York I got several versions of the Distech cables and still have a power cable made of four shotgun runs of the Distech speaker cables. I also still have several handmade ics and speaker cables from Len Hupp who ran AudioHorizons magazine out of St. Louis. They were the first woven cables I heard. I used the speaker cables on my subwoofers just a few years ago.
More to discover