A Plea For High-End Audio Manufacturer Honesty and Transparency
- Thread starter Ron Resnick
- Start date
He did- the strands of the wire were very fine and he said there was a 'best length' that got the best sound- 28 feet. I don't and didn't find the latter bit credible. I had a set of his 28 foot cables and found that if I ran long balanced interconnects instead and then cut the speaker cables down to a much shorter length (about 5 feet) that I got more bass impact and greater intelligibility of vocals plus a more palpable sound stage.
I annoyed me no end that I could hear the improvement his RCA interconnects made. That was one of the reasons I started developing a balanced line preamp for home use.
Great post mtemur… standards are rarely set at ultimate anything but often more industry agreed engineering baselines. Perhaps good practice rather than best practice. Standards can lead to a range of product performance results based in usage and context of the application in ways from not the best, not great to at times extraordinary.
Standards can be pitched at a target for a harvest of the acceptably low hanging fruit… sometimes as much for a standard of usage universality, usability, reliability or safety compliance, but not requiring a level in ultimate performance as industry baseline which would be unrealistic expectation in so many products and applications.
For those at the more academically fixed perspective, more analytically, more concretely bound the notion of standard as being all that is needed rather than exemplary could also generate a academic expectation bias just more framed in a simple checklist of fragmented analytical audio objectives and perceptions. A checklist pass/fail tick box framework and in that thinking sufficient can be fine and why need better and look no further than a limited fragmentary analysis.
Instead including an overarching whole listening assessment such as live acoustic instrument recordings can further assess performance more a level of perceived realism delivered from what could actually be absolutely superior and help separate out what can be pass fail ok or more sensational experiences but hyped beyond realism but all still compliant to whatever appropriate standard.
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But a spec of driving a 600 ohm load is pretty far from the wild west of a preamp with tens of k-ohms of output impedance.
The 600 ohm ones are almost certainly fine in comparison.
And in so doing are obfuscating. Generally speaking about anything often means that specific examples will fly in the face of the generalities.
In the case of balanced lines we know the standards work because of the immense set of recordings that are the direct result of such practice, none of which used exotic interconnect cables for microphones or the connection between the tape recording and the LP mastering electronics. I'm talking about recordings made in the 1950s and 60s. It was well into the 1970s before Robert Fulton produced the first 'high end audio' interconnect cables and started the cable race. But even he used regular microphone cables running into his Crown tape machine when he made recordings for his record label.
Back in the early 80’s, I worked part time at a large performing arts venue on a college campus doing sound reinforcement for live shows, and recording many ensembles large and small. We had mic jacks all over the stage area which were connected to a large patch bay in the recording booth. (As an aside, we had a closet full of Neumann U and M series and AKG mics for recording and the ubiquitous Shure SM57s and 58s, etc for live sound). The cables running from the mics to the floor jacks to the console would have been well in excess of 100 ft. We also ran omnis hung from the catwalks. Those lines had to have been 200 ft to the console. No problem. Of course, at some point, greater length would have resulted in too much signal loss, but the balanced standards you refer to made it such that we didn’t have significant rolloff even at such extreme lengths. No appreciable noise either though we always made sure to cross mic cables perpendicular to A/C runs, never parallel.
Interestingly, but not surprisingly, a few iterations ago in my home system, I found balanced interconnects to have more of a sonic impact than speaker cables or power cables and so i went upstream in quality there. With my current systems, they have essentially no impact.
Ralph my post was all about the broad challenges facing standards and some potential constraints in them generally… pointing out one specific standard that you concretely believe in doesn’t negate that what you believe doesn’t always play out for me in what I experience. I’m comfortable with that, that’s what bring truth to understanding a range of perspectives is best served by. I’m completely comfortable with you believing you are right. We use different parameters to come to our own position. You can stay in your beliefs forever without me feeling stressed.
I think some of us are misunderstanding Ralph posts.
IMO the question is not that standards create an "automatically neutral, free of any sonic character, and incapable of imposing its own signature" system. The real question is that Ralph found that, in his opinion and experience, a generic balanced cable used in the conditions matching a standard in particular conditions are neutral.
Surely any one with enough expertise can design cables that can impose sonic signatures or sonic character.
Surely people can mix standards with philosophy and write long posts, but it is not the aim of standards.
That becomes clear when sampling different "levels" of cables from the same manufacturer and hearing a consistent characteristic across the cables. That is their voicing. To my mind, as long as timbre, tone and timing aren't adversely affected, the overall effect is harmless and can enhance our enjoyment of what is only a simulation of the real thing anyway. Even with a neutral cable, playback will not sound the same as a live event.
Agreed. We all imagine what the original sounded like, but only the recording engineer actually knows that. Or if someone attended a live recording and was able to get that particular recording.
Or someone who has heard various performances at a certain venue may develop a good memory of the sound of the hall. That wouldn't be the case for studio recordings.
What does this have to do with high-end audio honesty and transparency? No idea. How did we get here?
No worries. However, I'm not talking about what I 'believe in'. I am talking about what is known. There's quite a lot of audio history that would have to be ignored to be a 'belief'.
Please keep in mind that I have pointed out that if the standards are ignored you hear cable differences quite easily. I also pointed out this is where there is debate about whether balanced sounds better than single-ended or not.
The trick is to avoid belief and go with what is known. Belief and knowledge are two very different things.
Two pages back discussion began about cables. I pointed out that in the case of balanced line cables, if set up properly according to the system for which they are designed, audible cable differences go away (which pretty well does away with any 'voicing'). IOW the system forces the cable to work as I mentioned earlier.
In terms of the thread title, the relevance is obvious.
Elliot G.
Dealer - Bending Wave
All of this well said and IMO just another chapter in the Audio History called searching for mysteries without any clues. When there are a million acceptable opinions and results then everything is good and bad at the same time. If there is not a destination then how do you know where to head?
In audio there are those who make stuff work and those who want to make it sound a certain way ( for argument sake they want it to sound like music).
Talk among yourselves
I was joking about the relevance since I don't think there is one thread on any audiophile site that doesn't go completely off track and sometimes rather quickly. I'm not throwing stones since I take part in it too. It is part of the fun and the learning process.
Your point about cables and standards for balanced connections is interesting. It makes me wonder about why my own gear, which is designed by very competent people, does not act as you have outlined. I'm assuming they know the standards.
I think you are saying that if I easily hear a difference in cables then it must be the implementation of the balanced connections. Grimm Audio started business in the pro end of audio, therefore I assume they are well aware of best practices. Mola Mola recommends using balanced cables. Their DAC only has a balanced connection, for example. I don't doubt what you have said. Just wondering why the standard might not have been followed by experienced designers or what other factors might result in what I hear.
It is just a matter of curiosity and learning. Our setup works very well for the two music lovers in our home.
IMO cost and expertise. In general single ended electronics are less complex , need less components and are much easier to design.
If we are pleased with SE , why moving to a more complicated zone?
And then we enter the subjective zone - many people prefer the coloration allowed by SE.
But several high-end manufacturers always favored balanced - my first balanced units were from Jeff Rowland.
The same here.
maybe 2/3? Anyone with an engineering degree will not necessarily gravitate towards the arcane world of hi end audio. It's a calling of sorts it seems. I am glad you are a patron of companies with some form of technical pedigree.
100%. The NAD integrated I bought as a 12 yr old (circa 1980) lasted 40 years without a hiccup. That was the byproduct of engineering (which takes discipline) and not DIY alchemy and mysticism.
In the context of this discussion, it's hardly ambiguous. You alluded to being an engineer. What is your opinion on engineering and QC? Does it matter? What do you look for in equipment in that vein? You tend to huff and puff in a somewhat patronizing tone at times (like an engineer), so educate us.
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