Question about cable strategy!

[MylesBAstor]

Wow then I must be tripping.

 

[MylesBAstor]

2. I thought that [some] studioes like Gateway Mastering (bob ludwig), Skywalker, and Bernie Grundman use Transparent Ref or Cardas in their studios?

Absolutely! And Music Matters with Kevin Gray are using AudioQuest in the studio. And there are many more examples.

Bruce/Puget Sound has kept out of it. What do you use Bruce?

 

[NorthStar]

Wow then I must be tripping.

---- .

 

[DACMan]

But the INTENT of that glass is to be as transparent to visible light as possible. I was looking to get some photographic prints framed recently, and one option was something called "museum glass". It has the same anti-reflection coatings on it that they put on good camera filters, and it is almost impossible to see. You had to really try to find an angle where you could get any sort of reflection, even in bright harsh lights, or even with a flashlight. You really, literally, cannot see it under normal circumstances. They had a sort of "demo" in a little frame, and, under normal room lighting, I certainly couldn't pick out which half had the glass and which half had none... it was THAT good. (The only downside was that it would have been several hundred dollars just for the glass for a two foot square frame.)

I suspect you're right, and that some studios do indeed use various "audiophile cables".... just as some studios prefer certain brands of microphones, and some still use analog tape machines and offer their clients a choice of vintage microphones. (I suspect that, just maybe, they also sometimes get the cable free as part of an endorsement deal.) It's also quite possible that some pros actually believe they can hear a difference (maybe they really can). It's also true that using fancy cables serves a serious *marketing function* - as long as anyone believes that it makes a difference and you tell them you used it, they will perceive a difference. My point is that most studios don't bother, and the odds are against your music having only seen audiophile cables throughout its life...... Likewise, if your music was mixed on a typical multi-track console, it's probably been through more cheap op-amps than you can shake a class-A all-discrete stick at.

Folks like Audioquest and Cardas are excellent at marketing, but they notably avoid serious testing. Whenever they do "public demonstrations" they are clearly done in ways that encourage expectation bias. ("Hi folks... now we're going to replace that cheap cable with a good one. Who can hear a difference? Raise your hands.... now how about you.... that's it...." ) Oddly, as far as I know, whenever anybody has ever run a real double blind test on cables, nobody can ever tell the difference. Some smartass even actually compared expensive speaker cables to real coat hangers - soldered together end to end - and, guess what? Nobody could even tell the difference THEN.

The study I would like to see is the one where a studio TOLD some of their pros and the customers they were using expensive Cardas cables, and others that they were using cheap zip cord, but they really "mislabeled" the connectors. I would love to see if, when they asked people which sounded better, their results followed the actual cables - or the LABELS.... my money's on the labels.

And, yeah, unfair as it is, since they're the ones asking for our money, it IS up to them to prove that the difference exists, and not the other way around.

1. In terms of glass in front of artwork, most of it actually has loads of filters in it...UV, radiation, anti-glare, etc. In an audiophile way, one could argue it does make a difference (and it does)...as you dont get as much a sense of the tacticle nature of the paint as when you are standing right in front of the oil paint itself...it is different, but often the anti-glare coatings, etc make it easier to see given the fluorescent lighting, etc of certain museums. That is a tone control of sorts that is 'improving' the visual aspects.

2. I thought that [some] studioes like Gateway Mastering (bob ludwig), Skywalker, and Bernie Grundman use Transparent Ref or Cardas in their studios?

 

[microstrip]

(...)

As for whether this is a positive change.... let's take a visual analogy.

Let's pick a brand of glass to put in front of our favorite paintings....
Personally, I prefer the clearest glass possible, so I can see the paintings as they are.
Choosing an interconnect that makes some change is like choosing blue-tinted glass....
even though it may make a certain painting look better (to you), I don't think it's the job of the glass to modify the painting.
If you like blue paintings, then BUY blue paintings!
Don't buy pink paintings and "balance them out" with blue glass.
For that matter, don't paint your walls red, then put blue glass over the paintings to try and cancel out the reflections from the walls.
Gray walls, clear glass, and paintings you actually LIKE is your best combination.

Likewise, buy components you like rather than relying on a cable to (hopefully) fix what's wrong with them.

Visual analogies with glasses are always misleading when debating sound reproduction. In this case even the transmission of light through glass can not be compared with the transmission of an electrical signal, and the perception of images has very different properties of the perception of sound.

And you are ignoring two aspects - that some effects caused by cables can not be emulated by electronics and that effects of cables and electronics or speakers are cumulative. The proper cables will enhance the performance of the whole system.

 

[bblue]

Visual analogies with glasses are always misleading when debating sound reproduction. In this case even the transmission of light through glass can not be compared with the transmission of an electrical signal, and the perception of images has very different properties of the perception of sound.

I've never heard any good analogies. They all show a lack of comprehension of subtle differences by the person making the analogy.

And you are ignoring two aspects - that some effects caused by cables can not be emulated by electronics and that effects of cables and electronics or speakers are cumulative. The proper cables will enhance the performance of the whole system.

Exactly. Cable can do nothing but degrade the signal in different ways. They for the most part are not neutral. When you have a highly revealing system, these differences are quite obvious and repeatable. They may be affected differently by different source, however. Some source actually 'sounds' better passing through lossy cables, which tend to smooth out the sound. But they're not at all accurate.

A neutral cable really stands out, opening up the entire spectrum, lows to highs, detail, soundstage size, and all those other superlatives. This assumes that components along the way are also neutral (it only takes one to ruin the whole experience). I suppose a visual analogy might be looking through a panel of crystal clear glass (or no glass) and a panel that has a thin slight layer of fine haze on it. Everything is still in proportion, but with less detail, less transparency -- just not quite as 'there'. Listening for the sustain of tones, how clearly harmonics in notes are distinct, hearing individual piano strings (many make up one note), thing like that.

Those who can't realize these kinds of differences either have limitations in their playback chain (could be anywhere or everywhere), or simply have never heard and therefore don't recognize that clarity of sound.

--Bill

 

[DACMan]

Actually, I disagree entirely.

From the description, it sounds like this thread is about "strategies for making good sounding cables".

Assuming that this is indeed the case, then we must ALL accept the fact that not everybody DOES agree that there are major audible differences. To be equally blunt: IF it turns out that the differences between cables are all illusory, then the "intelligent strategy" to designing the optimum cable might turn out to be to go down to your local hardware store and buy a $5 roll of cheap speaker cable. If the differences are real, then the sensible course is to pursue them, but the first stop along the trail is to figure out if there is anything to be pursued and, if so, then what. [If you want to discuss "strategies for fishing in the lake" - then the first - and VERY important - topic of discussion is whether there are any fish in the lake to be caught.]

In engineering terms, there are several parameters that can be varied when making a cable. The important ones are generally accepted to be capacitance, inductance, resistance, but other factors like consistent impedance can also affect signal transfer. How can you possibly devise effective strategies for achieving something without first determining that there is indeed something to be achieved, and then determining with some degree of certainty exactly what that goal is?

Yes, we can argue endlessly between "it's all in your head" and "you guys are just too deaf to hear it"..... but, from a scientific point of view, it is rather important to answer that question before we proceed. It would seem to me that, unless the goal is simply to have a lively debate, we should ALL agree that we want to know the actual facts of the matter.

Incidentally, my personal opinion on the matter is that there are what I would call "limits" on the situation. I believe that, if a cable has certain BAD characteristics (too high capacitance, inductance, or resistance, poor shielding, etc), then it can almost certainly adversely affect the sound but, once we have eliminated those problems to a satisfactory degree, the limit of useful improvement has been reached and nothing will help beyond that point. I liken this to a wine glass. Drinking wine from a wooden mug, or an aluminum cup, or a copper flagon could indeed make it taste odd. However, once you progress to a glass wine glass, which will impart no taste whatsoever to the wine, then there is nothing at all to be gained by using glasses of different shapes, or perhaps colors, because the problem has already been entirely eliminated.

Isn't that up to the moderator to keep the thread on track? This should be a discussion of cable principles among those who know there are significant differences in most cables and have high resolution equipment which can easily reveal it. Not to mention, ears to discern it. Dissenters need not reply since it's not that debate.

Not trying to be condescending, just blunt.

--Bill

 

[DACMan]

I agree with what you're saying, but I think it could be stated more concisely.....

A cable can do nothing but degrade the performance of a system. The neutral cable does NOT "open up the sound stage" or any such thing - what it does is to FAIL to degrade them from what they were to begin with. Of course, there is also the possibility that one form of degradation of the signal might indeed serve to mask another fault, and so give the APPEARANCE of making an improvement. (If your other components have an unpleasant harsh high end, a cable that rolls off the high end might mask the original flaw with a less objectionable one. The point being that it hasn't actually really "improved anything; in fact it has rendered your perception less able to see the truth that remains there.)

There seems to be what I find to be a disquieting tendency these days to actively seek components with flaws that cancel out - rather than to seek components that actually have fewer or less objectionable flaws. I see endless talks about "matching a bright preamp to a dull sounding amp" or "matching smooth cables to a harsh preamp"....... To me this seems to be quite counter-productive

I've never heard any good analogies. They all show a lack of comprehension of subtle differences by the person making the analogy.

Exactly. Cable can do nothing but degrade the signal in different ways. They for the most part are not neutral. When you have a highly revealing system, these differences are quite obvious and repeatable. They may be affected differently by different source, however. Some source actually 'sounds' better passing through lossy cables, which tend to smooth out the sound. But they're not at all accurate.

A neutral cable really stands out, opening up the entire spectrum, lows to highs, detail, soundstage size, and all those other superlatives. This assumes that components along the way are also neutral (it only takes one to ruin the whole experience). I suppose a visual analogy might be looking through a panel of crystal clear glass (or no glass) and a panel that has a thin slight layer of fine haze on it. Everything is still in proportion, but with less detail, less transparency -- just not quite as 'there'. Listening for the sustain of tones, how clearly harmonics in notes are distinct, hearing individual piano strings (many make up one note), thing like that.

Those who can't realize these kinds of differences either have limitations in their playback chain (could be anywhere or everywhere), or simply have never heard and therefore don't recognize that clarity of sound.

--Bill

 

[opus111]

Yes, we can argue endlessly between "it's all in your head" and "you guys are just too deaf to hear it"..... but, from a scientific point of view, it is rather important to answer that question before we proceed. It would seem to me that, unless the goal is simply to have a lively debate, we should ALL agree that we want to know the actual facts of the matter.

Science deals in the first instance with observation. People hear differences, that's what a scientist would begin with. Then it seeks to model how these observed differences might arise - could it be physical differences or is it all placebo, or a mixture of the two? Hypotheses would be dreamed up which could be tested by experiment. Personal opinions play no part whatsoever.