I rarely disagree with mastering engineer Steve Hoffman but we differed this week. It all boiled down to, in my opinion, two very different philosophies:
1. The "tone control" method which is use wire as tone controls to tweak the sound of the components helping them overcome their weaknesses. Steve seems to favor this.
2. A "neutrality" method which suggests if you find a really transparent cable then use it across the system (or at least interconnects and speaker cable) and take care of sound quality issues by buying very neutral components. This is my preferred path.
In principle, I agree with you and prefer the second method. The problem I have, though, is truly knowing whether a cable is neutral. Is it neutral in absolute terms, or only in the context of your system?
If you listen to lots of live, unamplified music as a reference and you subjectively feel that your system sounds fairly similar to this reference in terms of tonal balance, timbre, harmonics, dynamics, scale, etc, you could more or less conclude that your system is fairly transparent and has a pretty neutral tonal balance? However, what if you replace one of the cables and the system's tonal balance shifts, do you conclude that the new cable is not transparent or, is it so transparent that it is now allowing you to hear the flaws in the other components in the system and it's now telling you that the old cable which you thought was transparent is actually a bit colored? Without a good understanding of the components in the system and some history with them in various contexts, I find it difficult to make such a clear assessment of a particular cable. Aren't you really just assessing the new cable in the existing context of your system?
You would have to listen to that cable in the context of various systems to begin to understand how transparent it is. I think this would hold true for most components.
Peter, I have the advantage of recording classical ensembles in 24/176 so I can compare the playback to what we heard in the churches we more often record in. I can easily figure out things like if there is enough resolution, if it is too warm/cool, imaging quality, timbre of violins & piano, etc.
Also, isn't this not better than Steve's view where each component must be tweaked by cable selection? In other words, would you not face the same challenges of getting the component to sound good on some types of material but then chasing how you might like it to sound on other material? And moreover, if you have bright gear and opt for a warmer cable, would you not run the risk of losing resolution?
Peter, I have the advantage of recording classical ensembles in 24/176 so I can compare the playback to what we heard in the churches we more often record in. I can easily figure out things like if there is enough resolution, if it is too warm/cool, imaging quality, timbre of violins & piano, etc.
Also, isn't this not better than Steve's view where each component must be tweaked by cable selection? In other words, would you not face the same challenges of getting the component to sound good on some types of material but then chasing how you might like it to sound on other material? And moreover, if you have bright gear and opt for a warmer cable, would you not run the risk of losing resolution?
At least with searching for neutrality and detail in a set of cables then you are in a sense eliminating, or at least greatly minimizing the problem of the cables not letting the music through to any component.
So folks here, including myself, have surmised we may be hearing phase issues when inserting an "articulating" MIT cable into the system, or when switching between articulation modes (SD, HD, SHD) on the speaker cables, regardless of what interconnects are used upstream (including MIT).
The thought, then, is that, since the articulation technology appears to be based on phase corrections between current and voltage at various frequencies (optimal at -90 degrees, or Power Factor=0), then given two cables that might have mirroring phase characteristics at frequency A - where in fact they would probably correct each other - stand to have that synergy broken by replacing one of them with a phase-correcting MIT, by exposing the other cable's phase deficiency at that frequency; ditto elsewhere in the spectrum, for perhaps a more profound effect. Notice, current/voltage phase need not necessarily translate to phase relationships between frequencies.This could also happen by replacing all cables with MIT products that are not carefully selected.
My own experience has been that the HD setting in my HD90.1 speaker cables kinda sounded "phasey" when it was the only "articulating" cable in the chain, but wasn't sure; they no longer do, and I have recently settled on HD. But frankly, since then, I have gone all-MIT, with 50ic as the interconnects - a matched system. Those who hear "phase" issues when switching between modes on the speaker cables, might in fact be right, in that only one setting would be theoretically fully compatible with the interconnects in the system. This, then, leads to system matching down to the cable level (of any one brand), where otherwise random cable selections stand to offer unpredictable results - a conclusion that some (a lot?) of you have reached long ago. From my perspective, I wanted to somehow quantify it.
Perhaps mixing and matching some brands is OK, but it would appear MIT would not play well in a heterogeneous system. Then there is the entirely different question of whether their network technology works at all with the signal-amplifying equipment in the chain...
A potential consequence of this for Spectral owners is that, once you buy the speaker and interconnecting cables for the amp(s), you probably have to go all-MIT to get the most accurate sound. My own experience certainly confirms that, and the improvement in articulation, dynamic headroom and especially timbre is remarkable.
Interesting thread, thanks to all for contributing your thoughts, observations and experiences.
The switches....ahhh those switches. I've owned this stuff for a long time and honestly STILL can't put my finger on exactly what they do. Sometimes I prefer them set one way, sometimes another. I could vary from song to song or resolution. Fortunately, to my ears they all sound good. I tend to keep my speaker cables on HD, my ic on 1:00 and my digital cable at 1:00. MIT if you are reading this, this customer would prefer fewer to no switches! I have enough things to think about related to audio choices!
1rsw, I agree with many of your statements. Which MIT models do you use?
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