Cable auditions - Hard Work?

Hi Paul,

I have spent way too many hours agonizing over this same thing. I finally figured it out, spend a few nights listening to your system with one cable, then with the other. If you found one was less enjoyable than the other, get rid of the one you didn't enjoy. In your price range it should not require such intense listening and stress. It should be apparent without a lot of thought after a couple nights, as to which was more musical and enjoyable.

I guess what I'm trying to say is if you're listening to your system and not your music, than you're missing the whole point of this hobby. ENJOY THE MUSIC! That is the goal.

JD

If you are spending hours comparing cables, something is not right w/the rest of your system. Folks, the cables biz is a scam, and the sooner audiophiles learn this, the more money we'll have for what we value most: music.

Yes, it's hard, tedious work. The good news is once you're done, find what you like, you don't have to go through it again for years as suggested above. As I built my system I used perfectly acceptable $200-$300 ICs for my 'major' components. Now that the system is 'done', I just wanted to dial-in the last bit of resolution and (yes) freq balance to my liking. But going through about 20 $300-$1000 ICs takes a LOT of time, esp as I was generally intentionally auditioning cables that had similar characteristics.

The Cable Company is both a blessing and a curse. My 'salesman' was incredibly knowledgeable and patient, helping me narrow things down considerably. They have every cable made, a reasonable (?) lease cost, all cables fully burned-in, painfree return shipping labels, but before you know it you've spent $400 just to audition. At least the price can be fully credited to buying a new or used cable from them at a fair, if not audiogon, price.

I can do up to 90min at a time, at the expense of getting on with my life. I have about a dozen CDs and a dozen LPs I use and know what to listen for. I tend to cover as much ground as I can in an intense listening session, rather than just listening to a particular cable for days more casually. Some of this may be the 2wk time limit of The Cable Co, a lot of it is I just want to get it over with. So it's usually one track I'll listen to once or twice before switching to a different cable. I can only compare one cable to another at a time, so I have to carefully choose the order in which I stage the cables, and can quickly narrow down to the favorites A/Bing against each other. I take copious notes (what a surprise) so I don't have to repeat a comparison unnecessarily.

The good news is I have found the 'perfect' ICs I was looking for to fit my system/ears/preferences (if not budget!) which takes the whole system an appreciable step beyond what the previous (decent) cables did. And learned a lot about many of the popular current cables available today. The bad news is I could have accomplished a lot more useful stuff (and saved a lot of money) in the hours and months it took to get to where I am now -- but we can all make that claim in this hobby. I don't know that I could have short-cutted the process and have the same level of confidence that I didn't hear cable XYZ that has such great press against my final choices.

The only thing 'worse' I can think of is auditioning power cords, which I did only enough of to replace all my generic IEC cords with $50-$200 cords -- relatively cheap -- with an absolute minimum of critical auditioning. YMMV of course.

In response to Bojack, the cable business is not all a scam. This is an irresponsible comment that sends the wrong message to newcomers of this hobby who seek to improve their system beyond their source, electronics and speakers. Sure, many cable prices are downright ridiculous but there are some cables that are not inexpensive and yet they bring on a level of improvement to a system as significant as other links in the chain for the same cost. Of course that system has to have the ability to benefit from such cables.

As for what audiophiles need to learn here, I suggest we keep an open mind and not be influenced by blanket statements. The thing to do is to try many different products in our own system and determine the value added for any system change at that time.

In another A'gon thread this week I covered the details of changing all the cables in my system to the Kubala-Sosna Emotion series ..... and, with the honor of Joe Kubala himself taking much of a full-day to help me with this task. The time spent swapping out each cable to a K-S, was ultimately exhausting but it proved a lot to even this long-time skeptic of power-cord differences. When you have the potential for a high-resolution system but you have been using cables that have masked some or much of these strengths for so long, it is quite incredible to hear the transformation. And the NBS and MIT cables that I have been using for so long are very good in their own right. But the K-S cables in my system brought on a new level of musicality that was simply breathtaking. Of course this comes at a cost.

I was able to hear a far greater capability of the Aesthetix preamp and CAT amps....and even the Manley DAC had a bass rhythm that has been lacking all along. It will be awhile before I can afford to purchase each and every one of these cables, but what this experience did for me was make me aware of what is there to achieve without the desire or need to change the other components in my system.

John

John, I think you offer a thoughtful perspective. But, what I think you are referring to more than the issue of cables is the issue of SYNERGY. A system that is assembled to work toegether can sound outstanding regardless of price.

A knowledgable dealer, even one that will only discount 10% of of retail, who listens to the customer, is knowledgable, and assembes a system where all the componenets (cables included) work together, can construct a system that genuinely sounds engaging.