Master Built-What are Owners Hearing That They Didn't Hear With Other Cables
- Thread starter Steve Williams
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Jack,
You making a fence?Double posting takes longer but can lead to a beautiful and strong fence.
Barbed wire or mesh? Is it to keep the audiophile our or in?
Beau
LOL! Electric to keep the inmates in
Bob, I realize that stirring a little sh*t from time to time keeps you interested.
in your own friendly way, of course. but when someone here, especially someone such as Steve, hears something.........I believe that we should try to understand it, not question whether it's true. subjective perceptions are true......from a particular perspective in a particular context. we have to investigate the information we have and then decide for ourselves what that context is and then what that might mean to us in usable information.
I celebrate all listening perceptions. and reserve the right to ask questions about the exact circumstances about it so I can learn and hopefully have some fun in the back and forth.
and sometimes as a result of interrogations of the listener they will go back and with a more objective perspective attain higher understanding of what they heard. feedback can be helpful. or it can push a listener away from sharing. we all need to try and encourage sharing by thinking before hitting send.
Just a thought. The good thing about cables is that they are fairly easy to transport. Another way to hear Ultra would be to the following. I would be happy (after getting to know each other on the phone) to invite members of WBF who are interested to bring their favorite cables with them and hear my system with their favorite music first with the Ultra and then replace with their cables and hear the difference if any in my system. I love meeting fellow audio travelers and particularly getting introduced to new thoughts and new music. This idea may also apply to visiting the VSA showroom in Riverside CA bringing your own cables with you. I have visited VSA and auditioned my VR 55s before purchase there and the staff is most hospitable and knowledgeable with no hard sell. I am located in North Carolina about 30 minutes from a jet port -would even pick you up
Ditto that Joe. I am in Southern California but you have to hit me up early as I have no idea how long I will have these
Bob, I realize that stirring a little sh*t from time to time keeps you interested.
in your own friendly way, of course. but when someone here, especially someone such as Steve, hears something.........I believe that we should try to understand it, not question whether it's true. subjective perceptions are true......from a particular perspective in a particular context. we have to investigate the information we have and then decide for ourselves what that context is and then what that might mean to us in usable information.
I celebrate all listening perceptions. and reserve the right to ask questions about the exact circumstances about it so I can learn and hopefully have some fun in the back and forth.
and sometimes as a result of interrogations of the listener they will go back and with a more objective perspective attain higher understanding of what they heard. feedback can be helpful. or it can push a listener away from sharing. we all need to try and encourage sharing by thinking before hitting send.
I cannot disagree with that Mike. That's a smart way to operate. I take risks in life, that's who I am, calculated risks. Discussions are good, ideas and beliefs are free to share (we, many of us excel on those skills). Shooting stars fill the sky every day, even when it is sunny and blue.
* I don't follow every member's audio journey @ WBF. I don't think Steve was using 15-year old cables, but more recent Shunyata cables, prior to testing MB.
I fully believe his new discovery, and I truly appreciate he started this thread because some good is going to come out of it.
Already we have some more comments by owners of MasterBuilt cables. And the machine is rolling as more members are already encouraged by Steve's comments in the best outcome possible; where they can ask Mr. Leif Swanson and make arrangements of some cables loan and have a period when they can experiment for themselves, without committing the cost yet but their own time expenses.
I did not hear much about the burn-in time period, so that might be an advantage.
I agree with you Mike; it requires due diligence in evaluating sound from cables. I trust Steve's integrity in sharing his happy experience (not shaving for three days) from listening to music from a higher plane with more details. He asked the right question; for other owners to come forward and share their own experience.
This is great; we can all start from there...an excellent set of evaluations...people's own personal set of ears in their own room...the subjective listening part...no small peanuts in my own audio bible book. Cable's resistance can be heard.
The other part, the objective one, with a set of measurements; is a good complement that I also value, in particular when accurately interpreted in conjunction with the listening testing sessions.
So it is with great interest to me, and others too, that we can all learn and discover together from an elite group of high fidelity audiophiles and readers abroad who are going to share some too, including audio engineers, professional musicians, audio hobbyists, speaker's designers, music lovers, audio purists, scientifically inclined acousticians, professional audio reviewers/writers, ...us comprising various audio segments of this beautiful passion that animates us all...music @ higher spiritual/emotional involvement with the musicians and singers we love listening to from the records of our music collection...be it from LPs, tapes, CDs, SACDs, hi-res music downloads (DSD, 24/96, 24/192, 32/352), Tidal music streaming CD PCM 16/44 RedBook. The goal is higher emotional level with the music from more details, better bass, cleaner highs, more resolved mids, more direct impact/engagement with the music performances and performers. Brief, liquid transparency of air around the instruments...fluidity, limpidity, super conductivity of audio transmission signals.
It also requires a balanced perspective; say that most people won't be using a set of $20,000 speaker cables in a $5,000/10,000 overall/total stereo sound system.
It is more for systems in the $50,000 to $500,000 range. But it would be real swell to see what they do in lesser expensive systems that cost less than the cables themselves. ...Just for educational fun.
I agree with you Mike that all parameters have to be disclosed, well analysed, properly interpreted, understood.
It's funny to me that you mentioned "sharing by thinking before hitting send"; because I've heard that before. ;-)
? http://dimfshifi.com/index.php/master-built/
p.s. I've been searching for exact pricing, but time wasn't on my side. And time is usually my best commodity.
p.p.s. I'll take full objection to "stirring a little sh!t from time to time to keep me interested". That perception you have is incorrect. Don't get influenced by the appearances.
Many men, women too, love to give advice. They are often the ones who don't follow their own, but wish they'd do, so instead they, to reaffirm their own beliefs of the things they themselves don't put in practice, feel good sharing advice to others. It's human nature. I stir no sh!t, I explore to discover, with the people who share similar passions as I. Here, better sound from better cables.
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Ditto for me - I'm in Northern California and my system is currently offline as we've just moved into a new place and I'm having work done to what will be my listening room. I should be back online by end of October and am happy to accommodate any folks who want to compare cables and/or get a taste of a VSA based system.
In my previous post, I forgot to mention I have one MB Standard PC used on my phono stage - I bought this used on AG - one of the few MB cables I've ever seen for sale on the used market. It replaced a Kubala Sosna Emotion PC and I will say it was an improvement though not as dramatic as the Ultra ICs and SCs.
Cheers,
An excellent start, Al. This is where I would start experimenting - so, how much are the easily accessible connections causing a problem at the moment, I would ask myself. An easy way to start would be a uniform system connection refresh test - first of all, make sure all the standard connections between the components are easily accessible, then run up the system to full stability levels - what you know from experience is the optimum time to listen, of the day and period after switch on. Then, refresh every connection, I repeat, every connection in the system in as quick a time as possible, and try to do this without turning anything off - the aim is to maintain the operating conditions in the gear, the only variable is remaking good connections; immediately listen on a testing track - is there a significant improvement? If so, then there are connector issues ... note, after some time the sound may now settle down to its normal quality - this is even more a sign that the connections are a bottleneck!!
I generally agree that reactance should be more consequential in a cable than resistance but there are a couple of things I would point out regarding that:
a) perhaps there are other attributes of the conductor related to achieving ultra-low resistance such as the crystalline matrix of the metal that may lead to improved sonics. Another possible example is PIM (passive intermodulation) where the resistance or alloy itself might contribute to lower distortion. There is mention of intermodulation distortion on the MB website and maybe this is one mechanism contributing to it?
b) as an engineer who's designed analog audio & video circuits as well as RF circuits, in the early days of my audiophile experience, I would discount the impact of cables altogether given the relatively small reactive components associated with them. Working at RF frequencies of 2-6GHz where things are significantly more susceptible to parasitic capacitance and inductance compared to audio band frequencies, I thought of audio as basically DC (as do many other RF engineers that I know). To believe that the parasitics we have to deal with in GHz frequency range were significant in the KHz range simply didn't make sense to me at the time.
And yet the evidence as presented to my own ears after listening to a cable demo at an audio show forced me to re-think this. I could no longer completely trust my scientific intuition in the realm of audio and so I began to study psychoacoustics (casually, not formally) and audio measurement techniques to try and understand why our perception of audio is so sensitive to factors we would otherwise not consider significant from an engineering perspective (I have some thoughts on this but that's for another thread!).
What I'm getting at is that I wouldn't discount that ultra-low resistance in cables has no effect on perceived audio quality - as I learned over the years and I think most folks would agree, we simply don't know what to measure when it comes to predicting how good something will sound to the human brain. Otherwise, if we did, there would be much less difference in sonic quality between equipment than what we see today and we could rely exclusively on measurements to define the goodness of any component.
As we all know, relying solely on measurements will not guarantee good sound. In some cases, even the converse is not true - i.e. something that measures poorly will sound bad (e.g. some SET amps).
In the end, I think we all come to the same place - sound engineering principles are important (as are measurements) but that alone is not sufficient - i.e. listening is always the final measure of the impact of a given design or technology. I have no doubt in MB's ability to apply sound engineering and scientific principles in their design approach given their pedigree - that is what I take away from their association with CERN and the aerospace industry. I've worked on similar programs and there's no faking your way through these things.
The question then remains, how does it sound? - and for that, you will have to listen with your ears. No amount of speculation on the design attributes or veracity of the manufacturer's claims will alter what you hear at the end of the day.
So I prefer to read what I can, ask questions to determine the soundness of the design approach and then I listen. And not just A/B (or A/B/X on the rare occasions when that is available) as I find that limited (and do not trust my own ability to discriminate very subtle differences) - rather I need to live with a component for some time before I can fully understand its sonic characteristics and develop a good mental model of what that component is doing in my system.
And finally, I agree that the noise reduction and shielding techniques they've developed are quite interesting and perhaps as fundamental to the sound quality as the conductor itself.
Cheers,
This is where my thinking is so different from most here - to me, the only good component or system is that which has zero sonic characteristics; the latter are in the recording, and only the recording - anywhere else they're a no-no. When a system, any system makes a recording sound exactly like I know that recording to be like then it's doing its job properly ... every competent system should "sound" exactly the same ...
I agree in principle, but the problem is how do you determine what the recording should sound like? Unless you have a known, completely transparent playback system as a reference, no one can know what the recording should sound like except perhaps the folks who were there at the time of the recording. And even then, that knowledge is subject to the transient nature of sonic memory...
Great post Mike.
I have no interest in these cables, and I would never question Steve's take on how they perform in his system.
He doesn't have to impress anyone other than himself.
It builds from repeated experiencing of the recording, from different systems, in different states of tune - the common character emerges, and when maximum detail is heard, with zero disturbing anomalies then one is very close.
One experience was a CD of classical violin and piano - I had played this endless times, "knew it by heart"; a friend had the LP of it, and we tried it early in the listening session on his highly tweaked setup. Oh, dear, way off the mark! ... the tonality of the instruments was quite dirty, poor sweetness and air. Okay, what's wrong here? - we did a major round of fiddling with the TT setup, playing with damping, angles, the usual suspects ... with constant improvement on various recordings. Finally, back to the original classical - ah-hah!! There it was, the signature sound of that recording, very nicely presented - my old friend was back!
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Thanks Peter for trying to explain the unexplainable here. But really, are we compare Mike/Blizzard to Steve? I hope we don't go there
As I mentioned I learned about Steve's opinion of cables from forming this joint venture. The topic came up to rationalize our differing views of audio with Steve mentioning that he sees no value in audiophile cables as a common ground for both of us. During the ensuing years, I spent a lot of time communicating with Steve, far more than anyone else here would in casual audiophile encounters. This was a constant in his view as evidenced by the thread I post where he actually took the position of *objectivists* when it came to cables. Steve had gone through decades of being an audiophile and then having an aha moment that got him to ditch all of those views.
That is the Steve I knew and the conclusion of his nearly lifelong endeavour. During that time I am sure he had heard many other people's systems, none of which had changed his views.
Having someone go from believing in cables making a difference, then believing that they absolutely don't, and now insisting on revolutionary changes to sound in some specific brand, is not at all explained by what you say Peter. Steve has created this thread pleading with us that his observations are true. He is seeking approval from the community and support from fellow users. In that context, I shared my personal views of his journey that unfortunately his judgement of cable fidelity is unreliable and not durable. You can't possibly flip flop so many times in such large magnitude as to go to the objectivist camp and then say, "you have to believe me; this is the most important change I have heard in my system."
Now, opinions can advance and we can reserve the right to become smarter.
So no, the situation is not as simple as you say Peter.
Have you read either of these books, Amir?
Assuming not, essentially they deal with asymmetrical relationships which are one of the defining features of complex systems. Finance is a complex system, marine ecosystems are, our bodies are. Some quick examples:
Investing in the stock market (an extremely complex system of interdependencies) comes with the reality that on any given day - in fact at any given minute - you’re exposed to unlimited upside and unlimited downside. Because it’s inherently asymmetrical, each dollar you invest can either make you a disproportionate amount, or lose you a disproportionate amount, and far greater than the value of your initial investment. If you’re astute, and many think they are but are not, you look for trades in which the asymmetry is heavily weighted in upside and limited in downside, like say, buying credit default swaps against subprime mortgage securities in 2008.
Our bodies, an extraordinarily complex bio-physiological organism, are also subject to asymmetrical relationships. The blood-brain barrier is a highly selective semi-permeable shield separating the blood from the brain’s extracellular fluid, permitting the entry of nutrients it considers essential while preventing harmful toxins and bacteria from doing so. One of the ways it does this is by preventing molecules heavier than 400 gm/mole to enter (though it also has more sophisticated systems for tagging which molecules can and can’t enter). Water, for instance, has a molecular weight of 18 gm/mole, and easily crosses the blood-brain barrier. Heroin has a molecular weight of 369 gm/mole, also making it capable of crossing the blood-brain barrier. However, though both water and heroin are capable of doing so, the effects on the bio-physiological state of an individual are inversely proportionate. Your body’s relationship to long-term consumption of (uncontaminated) water is only ever positive (or at the very least benign), and in the case that your body has too much of it, it has a rather simple way of getting rid of it. Long term exposure to heroin however is only ever extremely negative, and while the body does rid itself of heroin, the symptoms of it leaving the body are vastly more pronounced.
I’m sure you know all this.
My framing of Steve’s comments apropos the installation of Master Built Cables is one of looking at an audio system as a complex system in which small changes can have an asymmetrical payoff in either a positive and negative direction in differing degrees of magnitude. I’m aware that up until know your preference has been take a reductionist view of what an audio system is and its purpose, though I personally do not share such a view. (My view as previously stated on this forum is that given that the human brain contains music-specific neural pathways that respond exclusively to music but not to other sounds, an audio system playing an art form socio-culturally understood to be “music” can therefore be analysed not by the way an electrical signal is modulated through a series of components but only ever by the way the brain responds to that same signal. Did that component pass that electrical waveform without measurable deviation? Yes. Is that same waveform music or something else? Only our brains will ever know.)
So to you, Steve’s comments come off a over-the-top hyperbole which is intolerable to your worldview. My own experience leads me to believe that small changes can often have disproportionate effects. The problem with those effects is that they are often difficult to describe, especially so in a complex system that undergoes constant changes of state. I could take a sip of water and a toke of a spliff and not be able to reliably tell you any difference in effect, though the molecular composition of each is radically different. Longer term exposure would allow better discernment of the influence of one over the other, allowing scientific analysis to better measure the effects on my bio-physiological state. However, if we were to give the same substances to a baby, a toke of a spliff would have much greater impact because the baby’s bio-physiological state is much more susceptible to stimulus (positive and/or negative). The fact remains that some of our systems are more susceptible to discerning changes than others, either because they are more revealing of small changes, because they are interdependently more complex (a stylus, magnet, cartridge, arm, bearing, platter, motor, plinth is an extremely complex relationship), or both.
Steve’s comments come off to me as simply someone’s reaction to a complex system of interdependencies in which a small change resulted in a significant difference that was disproportionate to expectations. That’s the nature of asymmetry in complex systems. No less, no more.
Yes, it is easy to accept sonic differences due to the nature of the alloy, but not _solely_ on its _pure_ resistive characteristics (which is what their language alluded to). We all know a resistor is never a pure resistor (ditto for capacitors and inductors), so if they are achieving *purer* resistance that would be great and a welcome improvement.
I've convinced myself that it does everywhere and especially in phono applications.
Yes, nothing is really simple.
Again, I would agree if we end up getting purer resistance, not necessarily just lower resistance.
What further information do you have on their noise reduction?
-ack
Good morning Dan
I started this thread just for you
did you wake upon the wrong side of the bed again today Dan or are your Grape Nuts tasting soggy
Out of the country for 3 days and not sure what I missed more; the Brangelina news, or this thread....
I'm surprised that nobody posted the following, all of which is in the pubic domain.
It appears Furukawa electric is the source of the superconducting cables used at CERN. One might assume (perhaps incorrectly) that they are the OEM wire source used in MB cables, but that is unimportant. I found the following sites from CERN and Furukawa informative and pass them along.
http://lhc-machine-outreach.web.cern.ch/lhc-machine-outreach/components/cable.htm
http://www.furukawa.co.jp/en/product/development/energy/sc.html
http://www.furukawa.co.jp/en/rd/superconduct/
I'm surprised that nobody posted the following, all of which is in the pubic domain.
It appears Furukawa electric is the source of the superconducting cables used at CERN. One might assume (perhaps incorrectly) that they are the OEM wire source used in MB cables, but that is unimportant. I found the following sites from CERN and Furukawa informative and pass them along.
http://lhc-machine-outreach.web.cern.ch/lhc-machine-outreach/components/cable.htm
http://www.furukawa.co.jp/en/product/development/energy/sc.html
http://www.furukawa.co.jp/en/rd/superconduct/
Hi Mike
Not sure how to take this but the question you raise is that an older cable came out and a much newer one went in but based in that the comparison is unreliable because I didn't replace a current cable
Personal I find this argument a bit thin Mike
I would venture to say that when you replaced your 10 year old Playback Designs with a Lampizator and Trinity did you not have the same knee jerk reaction as I did. I fail to see that in one instance it is not OK to compare an old cable with a new one but OK to make comments about a 10 year old dac being replaced by a Lampizator and Trinity. Help me understand the difference while I am given my moments to gather my thoughts
I believe your argument to be faulty
FWIW I also removed power cords from my amps and replaced them with Ultra PC's. I also removed a very current one year old top of the line interconnect and replaced it with a Signature
FWIW to you and Dan I am not trying to convince myself and frankly I don't give a rat's ass if people feel the way they do.IMO this is for my ears the best cable I've heard and to brush off the fact that the comparison was made with an older cable and therefore invalid IMO is just plain wrong
I think anyone who owns this cable and is reading my post here will understand what I mean. My thoughts about this cable have been ripped up and down and that's ok because for me I am smiling from dawn to dusk in my room as it has never sounded as good. I think people's comments coming from a distance adds nothing to my observations and again for the record Mike it was more than a pair of speaker cables at play
Don't be too quick to dismiss my findings Mike as I find your analogy no different than swapping your 10 year old DAC for a newer one. Help me to understand the difference
Marty,
We have gone though these links - the main question is that they address the use of special cables as superconductors at cryogenic temperatures and MB uses their cables at another regime, fortunately at room temperature. The use of the words "CERN" and "superconductor" in their marketing created a lot of understandable stir, but all seems clear now.
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