Found Music Cabling: A System-wide Upgrade

jazdoc

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This is not a review, i.e. I didn't compare a variety of cables with a variety of equipment. Instead it is a summary of my experience with Found Music cabling products In addition to upgraded tonearm cable for my Durand Talea tonearm, I auditioned the following in my system using multiple combinations (photos from website):

Power Cords:

GiFT ~ $500 for 1.5m


FiNess ~ $3,930 for 1.5m



Interconnects (Single-ended):

04 ~ $880/meter pair


2012 ~$3,029/meter pair



Speaker Cable:
E+ ~$1,629/1.5 meter pair


Found Music cables can be built to spec lengths and demo'd in your system before you committ to purchase. Each cable is hand made with premium materials, most notably the connectors. The cables are packaged in nice wooden boxes, lined in velvet and packed extremely well. Immediately after installing in my system I knew that they would not going back but it took approximately 300-400 hours for the performance to stablize for more critical listening. Subjectively, I believe the power cords took the longest to settle down.

Music used for audition included some of my usual suspects:
"88 Basie Street", Count Basie, Pablo, 1984
"Damnation", Opeth, Koch, 2003
"Scope", Buck Hill, Steeplechase, 1979
"Carried To Dust", Calexico, 2008
"Round About Midnight", Miles Davis, Columbia (6-eye, mono), 1955
"Queen of the Minor Key", Eilen Jewell, Signature Sound, 2011
"Direct From LA", Great Jazz Trio, East Wind/Nautlis, 1978

To my way of thinking, cables are a necessary evil. They act as a valve restricting flow of information and can become antennae, introducing noise into a system. The cables that work best allow more information to pass through and are better at rejecting extraneous noise. Found Music cabling excels at both. I live near the highest point in suburban Seattle, surrounded by cell and radio towers. So RF is a constant concern. The cables definitely lowered the noise floor in my system. More importantly, they allow more information to flow between components. This is manifest by increased frequency bandwidth and tone color. Low-level details, like brushes on cymbals and fingering on the guitar neck became much more articulate and nuanced. The soundstage enlarged and the layering of musicians was significantly more lifelike. Visceral impact was notably improved.

I tried multiple permutations, including using my previous reference cabling. I did this to evaluate synergy and with hope of discovering the magical bang for buck combination. Not surprisingly, the cabling was synergistic and my personal assessment, based listening in my system, was as follows:

E+ Speaker cable:
This was a flat out no brainer, especially for the price. It took all of five minutes to make the buying decision. Adding a pair to my system had by far, the single biggest bang/buck ratio.

Interconnects:
I use single ended cables between my phono preamp and line stage and between the line stage and amplifier. The less expensive '04' easily bested my older Transparent Reference. Not surprisingly, the 2012 cable was even better. In my experience, the less expensive combination of two pairs of ‘04’ (costing $1,760) rendered a similar level of improvement as a single pair of the more expensive '2012' (costing $3,029) in combination with my previous Transparent Reference. There seems to be some synergy working here. My advice: buy as much of the '2012' cable as you can afford and then use '04' for the rest. In my system, introducing the interconnects resulted in the biggest absolute improvement in performance.

Power Cables:
This is a little trickier. Initially, I didn't think there was much difference between the $500 GiFT and $3,930 FiNess but as the PC's broke in, the differences became more apparent. The FiNess is clearly better, but you get a heck of a lot of the more expensive cord's performance from the GiFT. In my system, upgrading the power cords was the least impactful upgrade. This is where you can stretch your budget.


Summary:
In my system, the Found Music cables have been a significant upgrade. In addition to a tonearm cable for my Talea (using a Miyajima Premium BE mono cartridge), I've purchased 2 pairs of '2012' interconnect, 1 pair of speaker cable and 2 pairs of the FiNess power cords for a cost of ~$15,000, less than the price of many components in systems seen on WBF. And that's the way I think of cable -- it's a component, equal in importance to your speakers or source.

More information can be 'found' here: http://found-music.com/
 

mep

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Apr 20, 2010
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Found Music cables can be built to spec lengths and demo'd in your system before you committ to purchase. Each cable is hand made with premium materials, most notably the connectors. The cables are packaged in nice wooden boxes, lined in velvet and packed extremely well.

Mark-You seem to have a soft spot in your heart for nice wooden boxes and now velvet. I have seen the Durand tonearm box and it is a thing of beauty and it must add at least $1K to the retail cost of the arm and possibly more. However, you don't get to connect those pretty wooden boxes up to your stereo system (nor the velvet) and have them play music. They are all for show, ego, price justification, and bragging rights to your friends when you pull the boxes out of the closet and say "Hey, look how fancy the box this audiophile component came in is. If this much care was taken in making the box, just imagine how great the component will sound."

My SME 312S tonearm came in an incredibly well designed/engineered foam package which protects the tonearm and all of the parts extremely well. That's all I want. I can't mount a fancy wooden box to my turntable and have it play music. All I can do is mount the tonearm and have it play music. The box is going to go in a closet (like all of my boxes) until I sell the component and the box it came in. The only time I brag about a component's box is when I go to sell a piece and say I have the original box and packing material which is a good selling point. Overpaying for a component because it comes in an over-the-top wooden box doesn't interest me. I would much rather have the cost of the fancy wooden box and the whorehouse red velvet go into the quality of the actual component I'm buying because that is what I'm going to listen to in my system.

Would you pay more for a Ferrari or Porsche if it arrived at your dealer in a crate made from some fancy wood with dovetail joints? And having said that, I get why the ultra-expensive and heavy speakers come in wooden crates. They need them to protect them during shipping. Do you need them for a tonearm or cables? Nope. As long as it strokes a part of your ego that needs to be stroked, I guess it's fine. I just find it all to be a bit pretentious and silly.

And Mark, I don't mean to direct these comments to you as much as audiophiles in general who are paying a premium for items that don't add any sound quality to their stereo systems. You want your new purchase(s) to arrive safe and sound to your home and have the ability to repack it and send it on to a new owner should you decide to sell it later, but unless you are displaying fancy wooden boxes in your stereo room (or house), who cares?
 
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jazdoc

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Guilty as charged!

I'll take your car analogy further....the Ferrari dealership has a different ambience than a VW dealership and guess what; that's imputed into the cost of the vehicle.

I'll admit that I don't know squat about the innards of my equipment. I will also 'fess up....to some extent I do care how the equipment looks. Otherwise I would have had my preamp on a bread board and skipped the beautiful machined metal case. In the case of packing, it says something about the attention to detail. Of course, it doesn't mean anything if the product in the nice box isn't engineered and assembled with the same degree of attention.

But I'm shallow ;-)
 

microstrip

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(...) To my way of thinking, cables are a necessary evil. They act as a valve restricting flow of information and can become antennae, introducing noise into a system. The cables that work best allow more information to pass through and are better at rejecting extraneous noise. Found Music cabling excels at both. I live near the highest point in suburban Seattle, surrounded by cell and radio towers. So RF is a constant concern. The cables definitely lowered the noise floor in my system. More importantly, they allow more information to flow between components. This is manifest by increased frequency bandwidth and tone color. Low-level details, like brushes on cymbals and fingering on the guitar neck became much more articulate and nuanced. The soundstage enlarged and the layering of musicians was significantly more lifelike. Visceral impact was notably improved.

Jazdoc,
Thanks for such a well written and though essay on cables. Although I like the simplicity of your valve and antennae model of cables I think that the complete reasons are much more complicated than just these two aspects.
 

microstrip

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My expensive cables came in Zip-loc bags!! ;)

Bruce,
The cable people know that for professionals they should disguise them ... Can I ask what are your expensive cables? I had the idea (perhaps wrong) that you used mainly Mogami in your studio.
 

mep

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Let's give a guy a break. There are a lot more expensive cables that come in cardboard and foam boxes. Happy listening Jazdoc !

And my point is that cardboard and foam boxes are all you really need in many cases. As long as the gear you are going to insert into your system arrives safely, that's all I really care about. And having said that, the absolute worst experience in terms of pride of ownership was buying an Atma-Sphere preamp. For cardboard shipping containers, I consider ARC boxes to be the standard of the industry. For years, ARC has used a "box within a box" concept where your preamp or power amp was placed inside of a heavy-duty plastic bag and then packed inside of a heavy duty cardboard box and that box was placed inside of another cardboard box that had Styrofoam on the bottom, sides, and top. The outer box was clearly marked with the ARC logo. Contrast that with Atma-Sphere packing. You have your preamp placed inside of a cheap, thin garbage bag. The preamp is then placed inside of a cheap brown cardboard box with no markings and that box is placed inside of another cheap plain cardboard box that has no markings to identify it. That bummed me out, but the hum of the preamp that Atma-Sphere couldn't make go away bummed me out even more.
 

Bruce B

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Bruce,
The cable people know that for professionals they should disguise them ... Can I ask what are your expensive cables? I had the idea (perhaps wrong) that you used mainly Mogami in your studio.

JPS Labs Aluminata

Bruce, is it fair to ask where you got them from?

Got them directly from Joe at JPS
 

microstrip

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mep

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Hey, even a TechDAS turntable is shipped in cardboard and foam....;)

And that again is my point! It's not about showing people your boxes that your gear came in, it's about letting them hear the gear that came packed in the boxes. If you live in Manhattan like Myles, chances are you threw your boxes out because you had no place to store them.
 

rockitman

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And that again is my point! It's not about showing people your boxes that your gear came in, it's about letting them hear the gear that came packed in the boxes. If you live in Manhattan like Myles, chances are you threw your boxes out because you had no place to store them.

No, I am still trying to figure out storage for all of my boxes. I won't toss them in the event of service being needed. Looks like I will have to rent storage space.
 

microstrip

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Everything. PC, speaker, IC and even 1000' of in-wall cable

Great - I also always dreamed of having all the cables (signal and power) of the same type and manufacturer. I am prepared to spend money on ICs and speaker cables, but usd 4000 power cords always discouraged me. :( Although many people say that the power cables are of greater importance than the signal ones.
 

rockitman

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Great - I also always dreamed of having all the cables (signal and power) of the same type and manufacturer. I am prepared to spend money on ICs and speaker cables, but usd 4000 power cords always discouraged me. :( Although many people say that the power cables are of greater importance than the signal ones.

Siltech Double crown behind the walls or go home....lol
 

MylesBAstor

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And that again is my point! It's not about showing people your boxes that your gear came in, it's about letting them hear the gear that came packed in the boxes. If you live in Manhattan like Myles, chances are you threw your boxes out because you had no place to store them.

LOL.....though do have a storage unit. But in general it's not worth renting a car just to bring boxes to the storage unit.

I do hate wasting these boxes (that often run a bit of money) so will send them back to the company. For instance sent the two wooden crates the Doshi came in back to the company :)
 

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