Schnerzinger cables - any experience?

HJB

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I understand what the deficits are but can you help me understand how you evaluate them




I would like to refer on my personal practice.

At the beginning of a Setup, the customer and I hear the customer's original audio system.

In the last 10 years I attended between 300 and 400 customers with various audio systems.
Based on this experience I can assess to what extent the potential of the electronics and speakers is exhausted.

Up to 400 visits also means, that I can evaluate the better-known products of the market (cables, line conditioners, power strips and accessories) with regard to their sound properties, because I have heard these components several times in different environments. So I have a reasonable idea of how a particular audio system should sound and which components are the causes for a poor sound quality.

Often, things are even more complicated, because compensation effects may exist between components. For example the bright sound of a cable may be compensated through the dark sound of anyother cable. Compensation is generally a factor, that limits the potential sound quality of an audio system. For this reason in the example both cables are weak points and have to be substituted, to get outstanding results.

To sum up and to answer your question: experience is the most important factor, to identify weak points; experience is supplemented by testing.

Please keep in mind. The identification of weak points is primarily helpful for the question where to start with a SCHNERZINGER setup and whether preconditions for this setup must be realized. The installation of a complete SCHNERZINGER setup however is not a question of measures, to eliminate some weak points. It is a completely new experience of musical reproduction.
 

MylesBAstor

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Apr 20, 2010
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I think some level of decorum should apply on WBF. Maybe something our mother's taught us (or hopefully did) might be appropriate here: If you don't have anything good to say, don't say it. Whether you agree or disagree, manufacturers, who are already hesitant to post on the Net, are not going to come to WBF. Tell me. Would you rather see the manufacturer comment or a bunch of audiophiles speculating about a product?

[EDIT - treitz3] Some posts have been removed for being inappropriate. This post remains.
 
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FrantzM

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Apr 20, 2010
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So the idea is to just accept any statement without questioning it? That is what a product has to face in the real world IMHO: Questioning. Those who are satisfied with the explanations/answers and can pay for the products will, no matter the level of negative thrown.. We need a forum to educate us and help in our choice and healthy skepticism is necessary for such. An echo chamber we don't need to become.

I for one remain more than skeptical about the answers provided as they sound like marketing rather than any help into understanding their products.
 
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DaveyF

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Jul 31, 2010
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I would like to refer on my personal practice.

At the beginning of a Setup, the customer and I hear the customer's original audio system.

In the last 10 years I attended between 300 and 400 customers with various audio systems.
Based on this experience I can assess to what extent the potential of the electronics and speakers is exhausted.

Up to 400 visits also means, that I can evaluate the better-known products of the market (cables, line conditioners, power strips and accessories) with regard to their sound properties, because I have heard these components several times in different environments. So I have a reasonable idea of how a particular audio system should sound and which components are the causes for a poor sound quality.

Often, things are even more complicated, because compensation effects may exist between components. For example the bright sound of a cable may be compensated through the dark sound of anyother cable. Compensation is generally a factor, that limits the potential sound quality of an audio system. For this reason in the example both cables are weak points and have to be substituted, to get outstanding results.

To sum up and to answer your question: experience is the most important factor, to identify weak points; experience is supplemented by testing.

Please keep in mind. The identification of weak points is primarily helpful for the question where to start with a SCHNERZINGER setup and whether preconditions for this setup must be realized. The installation of a complete SCHNERZINGER setup however is not a question of measures, to eliminate some weak points. It is a completely new experience of musical reproduction.


Ummm, is it not possible that two identical systems can/could sound completely different in two different rooms. Your methodology seems completely flawed to me based on this fact.
Myles, are you really suggesting that dissent isn't a good idea when a suspicious claim is made? IMO, If a manufacturer can logically defend a product, they should have no problem doing so here or anywhere else on the web.
If not, then perhaps they shouldn't be here in the first place...No??
 

treitz3

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Dec 25, 2011
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Good evening, gentlemen. Please allow me to echo what Myles has stated below...

I think some level of decorum should apply on WBF. Maybe something our mother's taught us (or hopefully did) might be appropriate here: If you don't have anything good to say, don't say it. Whether you agree or disagree, manufacturers, who are already hesitant to post on the Net, are not going to come to WBF.

Tell me. Would you rather see the manufacturer comment or a bunch of audiophiles speculating about a product?

Sometimes the best way to communicate is to listen. Please respond as if you were talking to your college professor in an intellectually progressive discussion.

Tom
 

marty

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Apr 20, 2010
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Oh my, this thread has managed to push all my buttons. Look, I like hearing about new stuff. I like hearing about stuff that may or may not have special merit. I like decorum. But I also have to say I smell a rat here. Simply put, there is no way on God's green earth that anyone can evaluate the sound of cables properly after a 3 hour listening session. Everybody knows that there is a period , commonly called "burn-in" which needs to occur in order to hear cables at their best. I am unaware of a single reputable cable manufacturer that thinks this occurs in 3 hours. Personally, I was never fond of the word "burn-in" because I'm just not sure what it means. However, I do think a relevant term that is appropriate here is that different metals must anneal to each other in order to reduce the noise floor that can be heard sonically. Annealing generally occurs with heat to improve the ductility of metals to reduce internal stress. The relief of internal stresses is a thermodynamically spontaneous process; however, at room temperatures, it is a very slow process. I think this is why some cables and gear may not sound their best for days or even weeks. The sonic changes that occur with the installation of new cables are largely known. For example, the tautness and extension of the bass is usually the last thing to "come in". I am extremely skeptical that cable annealing can occur maximally after 3 hours of play, hence I must raise the "BS" flag when reading about HJB's unique and magical "Schnerzinger" cables. Other than mentioning the improvement on any and every published descriptor used to describe the of sound in a home system, do we have any truly unbiased observations out there? Are we sure this nothing more than the "not better, but different" school of audiophilia that seems to be observed everyday by audiophiles who are often fooled into believing they are really hearing something better (myself included)? Again, after 3 hours? Gimme a break. PT Barnum was right.
 

AudioExplorations

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Apr 5, 2012
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Obviously we should not blindly accept any statement but if you are in disagreement be constructive about it - specify the statement, your personal opinion/reasoning and ideally what (technical) background this is based on to add credibility to your opinion.

Re the 3 hour break in, this is your opinion. There are plenty of people who think that the true break in happens only once and is not lost when the cables are disconnected and transported around. There may be some settling time but from my personal experiences after the cables are broken in their sound pretty much stabilises with perhaps only minor changes when cables are removed and repositioned in the system. I would argue that this is easily reached in 3 hours, probably much less than this.

Give HJ a break here guys, he is trying to advance the state of the art in cabling and is being very open with us about his beliefs. As if anyone can truly say with certainty what's important and what is not. If you call bullshit back it up or at least be constructive about it.
 

Robert

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Nov 10, 2010
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I am not sure why people are so upset. Here we have a knowledgable manufacturer with a unique product willing to come to someone's home to properly demo their product. How often do we get that type of service. The consumer is free to like or dislike what they hear. It seems that many people are quite overwhelmed at an immediate improvement.

I have heard from a number of sources that Scherzinger cables are remarkable. I am not a cable skeptic. While I do think there are many manufacturers who are selling overmarketed cables that are overpriced, some people are really pushing the envelope with impressive results.

There are also certain people out there who have an ear for critiquing a system and identifying weaknesses. We think we are good at listening, but some have knowledge and experience at a whole other level.

I think it would be nice to have the cables for several weeks, but it sounds like that is not feasible. I do think you can sometimes identify something special right away. When I first listened to my NVS Sound cables, I could tell right away that these were different from all other cables. They did settle a little over a few weeks, but I pretty much knew right away. When you put alot of attention to the quality of power, you also really understand the concept of system weaknesess and band-aids.
 

FrantzM

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Apr 20, 2010
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Obviously we should not blindly accept any statement but if you are in disagreement be constructive about it - specify the statement, your personal opinion/reasoning and ideally what (technical) background this is based on to add credibility to your opinion.

Re the 3 hour break in, this is your opinion. There are plenty of people who think that the true break in happens only once and is not lost when the cables are disconnected and transported around. There may be some settling time but from my personal experiences after the cables are broken in their sound pretty much stabilises with perhaps only minor changes when cables are removed and repositioned in the system. I would argue that this is easily reached in 3 hours, probably much less than this.

Give HJ a break here guys, he is trying to advance the state of the art in cabling and is being very open with us about his beliefs. As if anyone can truly say with certainty what's important and what is not. If you call bullshit back it up or at least be constructive about it.

I , for one am, don't believe much in the break-in for cables ... That's only one aspect of the claims made by this cable company. Nowhere in his website or the posting here do I see anything remotely resembling an explanation. Things are uttered and no elaborations whatsoever, no further description. I will cite from the website the following. If the moderators judge it inappropriate, by all means remove these.

Molecular Procesing:
The SCHNERZINGER® ATOMIC BONDING is a true breakthrough in the development of high end audio cables. The planning target was not - as usual in this line of business – merely a limited “optimization” of long or mono structures from OCC copper or silver (by means of special castings, alloying, cryogenically treatments, etc.), but a complete reformatting of the crystal structure.
This radical development approach was essential, because it takes the aim of an enclosed and most notably permanent stable structure, to have the ability to realize an almost absolutely pure pulse sequence und thus a practically lossless electrical information transmission.
The resulting SCHNERZINGER® MOLECULAR CONDUCTOR has a dramatically increased information density and thus a groundbreaking ability to completely preserve and passionately and vividly communicate the emotion and atmosphere of the recorded event to the listener. (for details see the Audition Report: LISTENING WITH MOLECULAR PROCESSING)

I know we have gotten very puritan here, I will not use any untoward epithet but some meters will be pegged by this


If someone does believe that this is trying to advance the SOTA by all means disburse and purchase but it is utterly difficult to take this and not think about physiological removal processes ... since some acronyms are no longer allowed.

Are we getting to the point where we have to be so nice on the WBF that anything goes, any claims, any amount of dubious claims. I am not sure the WBF community will profit by becoming an outlet for outlandish marketing declarations. To me criticisms and questioning are part of what make us an interesting destination ... Not an overly polite and bland repeater for some manufacturers or people claims...

P.S> Just saw Robert post. We are not upset. A least I am not. The claims need to be debated and challenged and so far the "explanations" do not satisfy.
 

AudioExplorations

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Apr 5, 2012
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Molecular Procesing:
The SCHNERZINGER® ATOMIC BONDING is a true breakthrough in the development of high end audio cables. The planning target was not - as usual in this line of business – merely a limited “optimization” of long or mono structures from OCC copper or silver (by means of special castings, alloying, cryogenically treatments, etc.), but a complete reformatting of the crystal structure.
This radical development approach was essential, because it takes the aim of an enclosed and most notably permanent stable structure, to have the ability to realize an almost absolutely pure pulse sequence und thus a practically lossless electrical information transmission.
The resulting SCHNERZINGER® MOLECULAR CONDUCTOR has a dramatically increased information density and thus a groundbreaking ability to completely preserve and passionately and vividly communicate the emotion and atmosphere of the recorded event to the listener. (for details see the Audition Report: LISTENING WITH MOLECULAR PROCESSING)
I know we have gotten very puritan here, I will not use any untoward epithet but some meters will be pegged by this

If someone does believe that this is trying to advance the SOTA by all means disburse and purchase but it is utterly difficult to take this and not think about physiological removal processes ... since some acronyms are no longer allowed.

This is EXACTLY what Siltech are doing in their top of the top Double Crown Empress, Emperor cables (they call it mono-crystal technology). Could both these companies (with their expertise) be onto something or do we just assume it smells like BS and therefore it is BS? What background/expertise do you have that you base your opinion on?
 

Tubedoctor

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Dec 12, 2012
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I know the process of breaking in very well, because i tested in the last 20 years many many different cables. Some of them change their performance quite dramatic after a while. And i know the most of the times short lasting positive effect when the sound of a new component is just different. When i said the Schnerzinger sound is Magic i said this because it differs from any other cable i used before. They differ not because they have their own sound character; no they make the music reproduction come alive in a way that you cannot imagine or describe without having heard. For example they not only recreate the ambience of the recording room and reverberation time of each individual instrument in a new dimension. You also can hear details which you never had heard before. I can really say this because I m a musician and I have several own recordings which were made from the orchestra I am playing with. For example, one time a door was opened while a recording was made. With the Schnerzinger cables for the first time you can hear this. The same result when a friend and I compared the Schnerzinger speaker cable at his home in his audio system (Wilson Audio Alexandria 2 playing in an extra professional builds room). Or another example, for testing components I recorded one stroke of my piano with a professional set up and my wife and me counted the time for how long the tone was heard. Every time when I change a component (after checking the volume!) I take the time for how long the tone can be heard while playback the original. Before I change to Schnerzinger I never came so close to the original.
But when playing music with the Schnerzinger cables you right away know that their way of performance is magic. The improvements are huge and have nothing to do with breaking in effects. As I wrote before one special of the Schnerzinger cables is that they are the first who seem not to react this way. They right away tell you what they do and they do not change. As far as I know this is the reason why Schnerzinger do not use annealing or cryogenic treatments.
I do not know what they do but the result I can hear for sure... and for me this is a kind of magic.
 

FrantzM

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A.Exploration.

Could you educate me on what is mono-crystal technology? I will be grateful. I also would like to know what are the benefits of such interesting manufacturing process.

Now I must believe that in 3 hours the person would identified my system weaknesses, then compensate or correct them with cables??
 

Tubedoctor

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Dec 12, 2012
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No schnerzinger cables in my experiences do not compensate but you must remove strongly limiting components out of your system otherwise the Schnerzinger potential is diminished. By the way this is what Mr. Bremmer told me before the the first in home demo, and i think that is what he ment here when saying that he has to check for weak points. For myself i had to remove some things which i now know compensated and limeted the performance.
 
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FrantzM

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No schnerzinger cables in my experiences do not compensate but you must remove strongly limiting components out of your system otherwise the Schnerzinger potential is diminished. By the way this is what Mr. Bremmer told me before the the first in home demo, and i think that is what he ment here when saying that he has to check for weak points. For myself i had to remove some things which i now know compensated and limeted the performance.

Who determine what are the "strongly limiting components"? What does constitute the "weak points"? Where there some measurements conducted/ And of what nature were they? it seems you are convinced. Enjoy these cables.
 

AudioExplorations

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A.Exploration.

Could you educate me on what is mono-crystal technology? I will be grateful. I also would like to know what are the benefits of such interesting manufacturing process.

Now I must believe that in 3 hours the person would identified my system weaknesses, then compensate or correct them with cables??

Right so you haven't visited the site yet, that might be a good start.

(You realise you called BS on something you know nothing about? just saying)

www.schnerzinger.com, click english / molecular processing / technology. Read this page, particularly methods A-D. This exact process is also done by Siltech. Their G3-G7 mettalurgies are silver gold alloys (C on the schnerzinger page) and their top G8 is the mono crystal silver (D on the schnerzinger page).

These mettalurgical processes are not unique to these companies and this application, I remember reading about them in textbooks a few years ago during my MechEng degree.
 

FrantzM

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I did . Do you think their explanations are correct? I even quoted them.
 

AudioExplorations

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Sorry yes your right you quoted from this page earlier.

It makes perfect sense to me. And much more so than some of the things other companies are doing (silver coated coppers, MIT/transparent boxes with active circuits, flat array of very thin conductors, complex weaving patterns, active 'light' shielding, etc, all using off the shelf high purity copper/silver wire).

MY BS alarm goes off with the above, not with advanced mettalurgies. But I am hardly any kind of expert in this area myself so doesn't really mean much...
 

Mike Lavigne

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A.Exploration.

Could you educate me on what is mono-crystal technology? I will be grateful. I also would like to know what are the benefits of such interesting manufacturing process.

Now I must believe that in 3 hours the person would identified my system weaknesses, then compensate or correct them with cables??

Frantz, the idea of mono crystal cables is not new. Harmonic Technology has had that for a few years. here is their stab at explaining the benefit.

http://www.harmonictech.com/support/technical_overview.html

i have no experience with Harmonic Technology myself.....and have no opinion about this myself other than i share the considerable skeptcism about the marketing approach of these cables.

but as always, ultimately unless one listens (for an extended time) to the products you never know.
 

Tubedoctor

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Dec 12, 2012
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frantz, you asked “Where there some measurements conducted/ And of what nature were they?”
When you would hear the Schnerzinger cables I think you do not have to measure anymore to make yourself sure that the improvements are not a matter of taste. Beside comparisons with my own recordings I have done my piano check and the result was the best i ever had.

But, before I changed to the Schnerzinger power Innovator and their power cords I had a "power generating station" from another company which had separate regenerated zones and 1500 watts of regenerated power. Each component was feed with the top gear cable of this brand. I measured the THD of the power coming out of the wall. With this "power generating station“ the distortion was reduced more than 50%. I also tried another whole top gear system of a different company from which Tim Aucerman of Sound Stage said that this has redefined the State of the art of audio power and signal delivery. The THD was reduced by nearly the same like it was reduced with the"power generating station” (although the sonic results were not the same).
With the Schnerzinger Innovator the THD was reduced to another 50% and came to nearly zero.(the sonic benefits seems to be even higher)

To my experiences with mono crystal wires I can say. Before I have changed to the Schnerzinger signal cables I tried a bunch of different mono crystal silver cables. Therefore I informed myself of the mono process. Normally the small diameter of a wire is reached by many mechanical treatments of a thicker diameter . During this process the inside structure of the material breaks. In the mono crystal cables the mechanical treatments are dramatically reduced by a precise temperature controlled casting process (see: OCC-Ohno casting) so that the structure does not break so much.
This should be a big advantage for the Signal transport.

But as far as I know the Schnerzinger Atomic Bonding process must be different from that OCC- Ohno casting process because all mono crystal cables reacted very fragile in my comparisons. They lost their sonic qualities after a while especially when bending them too much or when moving them to another place they need time to get back to their performance. The Schnerzinger cables do not do this.

As I said here, I am very satisfied with the Schnerzinger product but this should only be a hint for another person to take Schnerzinger into account when buying new cables. He may find for himself another product which is even far superior.
For me a forum is a platform to get new ideas. When somebody praise a new product and is convinced I will keep in mind and may check it out if it is worth buying it for me or not by my own comparison.

Hifi systems are made to transport music and glad is the person who can enjoy it without thinking of improvements. Sometimes I also have to remember this!
 
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