What's a skeptic to do?
rwortman -- Thu, 01/28/2010 - 19:53
Some day we will be able to have a real discussion about the effects or lack thereof for the various cables we use to hook our system up. Unfortunately all the attempts I have seen so far have consisted of both sides digging trenches and lobbing grenades at each other. I am 52 and have been a serious music lover for over 40 years. My equipment choices have progressed from whatever Mom and Dad had to what is now a mix of entry and mid level high end'ish equipment. Most of it well reviewed and some just passed over by the audio press.
Dynaco (Panor) Pas4 tubed preamp, VPI Scout/Dynavector DV20XH, Marantz DV6001, Cambridge Audio DacMagic, Logitech Squeezebox Duet, Tascam CDRW900 (for sharing my LP's with friends), Yamaha T-7 tuner, NAD C275BEE amp, PSB Stratus Gold I. I bought those PSB's 12 years ago and I still love 'em.
I have custom length interconnects made by me from decent inexpensive coax and RCA jacks so each pair just reaches the component and it looks nice and neat behind my Salamander Designs Synergy rack. I used the stock power cords but shortened them to just reach one of the two power strips mounted to the back of the rack . I used $5 Home Depot plugs to facilitate shortening them. One strip is plugged right into the wall and runs the amp, my plasma TV and few other video things. The other strip is plugged into a OneAC isolation transformer/power conditioner purchased used off Ebay for about $60. This is not "audiophile approved" but OneAC has been purifying power for various military and industrial applications for a very long time. It's too small to run the power amp but all the low level stuff is plugged into that. Speaker wires are some 12g Monster Cable stuff I bought with the speakers. Braided copper with a plastic rod "flux tube" running up the middle.
I think my system sounds fantastic. I have heard better in the high end salons but mine sounds pretty damn good. I sometimes wonder if I am missing out on something by not subscribing to the "cabling as a component" view. I work as an engineer. I like explanations that make sense although I know they are not always available. I am not prepared to spend large sums of money researching something that seems to make little sense. Here is the problem. Many audiophiles claim great benefits from speaker wires, interconnects and power cords. Others claim they make no difference at all. No one has yet found measurable non-linear distortions in interconnects or speaker wires. No one has found any measurable effect from a power cord other than a bit of filtering and shielding. Certainly one can use a shielded power cord and construct a traditional line filter for a lot less money than what one spends on a "high fidelity" power cord. As far as I know everyone has been attempting to measure the wire and not an audio system in which the wire has been installed. I think this would be an interesting exercise but it seems that as far as cabling is concerned no one really wants to know the truth bad enough to spend the time and money to look for it. The cable companies sure don't because you can charge a lot more money for mystery than you can for real nuts and bolts. Here are the possibilities as I see them:
1. The emperors new clothes. Cables can make no difference and all the people that think they do are hearing things that have been suggested to them by others. There is a lot of pressure on audiophiles to try to hear things that others report lest they be thought to have tin ears or lousy equipment. Unfortunately this view gains some support when I read cable companies "white papers" many of which seem to be extremely fanciful descriptions of the emperor's new outfit. However, I know that this is not true. Some interconnect designs have been shown to have frequency response variations that should be audible but I'll be damned if I know why anyone one would want to pay money for them and speaker wires can interact with the amp and speaker in audible ways. I sold an amp to someone that tried using a popular homemade speaker cable using Cat5 wire. The amp's clipping indicators lit up as soon as he turned it on. I am sure that superimposing a rail to rail ultrasonic oscillation on the music signal had audible consequences. Changing the cable out for something with more reasonable capacitance restored normalcy.
2. Cables can and do make a difference and the differences can be explained in terms of frequency and phase response variations, electrical noise, or distortions caused by the cable's interaction with poorly designed or otherwise unruly output stages. One cable outfit likes to use braided conductors with no shield for unbalanced interconnects. This might pick up audible stuff from the electromagnetically busy environment it is hanging in but that is hardly a feature worth paying money for. Far from solid engineering, this is just plain stupid. I suspect that many other interconnect designs have various levels of audible high frequency rolloff but this isn't something I should be paying $500 for either. At least as far as interconnects go, it would seem that a piece of coax and a connector ought to do the job and anything that sounds different is likely to be causing distortions , not eliminating them. Speaker wires are probably amp/speaker dependent and there may plenty of combinations in which a beefy hunk of zip cord is all that is needed. In this case "revealing" the difference between various speaker wires doesn't mean the system is higher fidelity it just means that it is fussier about its wires. I certainly would strive to design an amplifier that would drive anything rather than a finicky beast that would change its response to every miniscule change in load it saw
3. Cables do make a difference and they do this by removing mysterious types of distortion that are unknown to us by methods that are equally unknown. This is the hard nut to crack. I would have to be an idiot or extremely arrogant to think that I or anyone else possesses all the knowledge that will ever be known about audio reproduction so I surely can't claim that this is impossible. Here again most of the cable companies are no help. The ones that use real engineering principles to explain their designs fail to show how they would do anything but flatten out a tiny HF rolloff that should already be inaudible and certainly wouldn't account for all the dramatic descriptions we read about the effects of the cables. Most of the stuff written varies from the fanciful to the patently ridiculous. "Golden ratio stranding" anyone? Would RH pay $20k of his own money for machined aluminum boxes full of mysterious "articulation poles". Transmission line theory applied to a system where the source impedance and the load impedance differ by 10 to 1000x? We have engineers using inapplicable engineering principles, engineers using real engineering principles that don't explain the phenomena, engineers allegedly manipulating and graphing new electrical parameters that no one else knows about or can measure, and non-engineer audio enthusiasts with all kinds of cockamamie ideas and cable geometries who have all discovered and/or lucked into the means for removing these unknown and unmeasurable distortions. They then command princely sums of money for this new technology that seems fantastically out of proportion to the cost of making the thing. This requires a leap of faith that I might not be capable of.
To complicate this even more, I think we might have a mixture of all three. It has been clearly demonstrated that even experienced "professional" audiophiles can be lead astray and most of them eschew any attempt to remove the visual bias from the listening tests so I am sure that some people hear differences some of the time that are not there. Quite a few people were hearing effects from the "Golden Sound Intelligence Chip" and who is talking about that boondoggle anymore? I am also sure that many cable designs sound different because they are acting as the expensive tone controls us skeptics have always suspected them to be. There is also the undeniable possibility that somewhere out there in this morass are cables that truly are better in some mysterious way than the old reliables that we have been using. How the hell do I know which ones these are and how do I assign a reasonable value to whatever these mysterious cables do?
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It is indeed hard. Did you ever comment on why 'trying before buying' doesn't work for you? Sorry if I missed that.
On a related note, we've thought about having a cable collection that GEC members can 'check out'. Would that be helpful, or is this just the same problem as above?
CEO and Editorial Director, Nextscreen LLC
I don't know. I checked out that Cable Company and they require a non refundable deposit plus shipping both ways so while that is cheaper than buying cables to try them it can still get a bit pricey to do several iterations. I looked into GEC when you first announced it and I guess I must be a cheapskate because I didn't see that I was getting my money's worth just to read a few articles in advance. If you had a lending library of cables it might pique my interest as long as you had some affordable ones. Since I posted that first post I have switched out my speaker cable to Liberty 12g UltraCap terminated and dressed by me. This is a pretty low inductance and quite low capacitance wire that is cheap and seems to work fine. If you think the wires are just RC and L then what I have isn't going to be significantly improved by anyone's high priced alternatives. At worst I am looking at a 0.3db rolloff at 20khz when my 52 year old ears probably have a 20db one. If I accept for the sake of discussion that certain cables have certain properties that will improve my system, I don't think that the cheap ones are much different than what I already have. I have about $7300 in my system(including my Tascam CD recorder) assembled over 12+ years. Some of it used. Assembled from all new gear today it would be above $10,000. I don't think there is any real improvement to be made in my components by spending $1500 more on something. Perhaps I am at the place where that money would be best spent on wiring. The trouble is, I am satisfied with the sound I have, I have more than one hobby and should I come up with $1500 of discretionary funds, they would provide significant improvements to my motorcycle's ride and handling that I would not have to concentrate very hard to discern. Or pay for a nice two week tour. Or 20 concert tickets. So I unless a bucket full of wires shows up at my house to try, I am just going to remain a bemused skeptic for now.
You know when I put that speaker wire in I thought I heard some distortion on vocal sibilants that wasn't there before. After a couple of days, I switched the wires back. No difference. I put them back in and the "problem" seemed to fade away. If I wasn't pretty firmly convinced that it's nonsense, I would have sworn I heard the wires "breaking in". I wonder if we become hypersensitive to things whenever we change something in our systems and go from listener into reviewer mode.
It is just a guess, but I would think if you are happy with your current sound that spending money on cables would be unwise. If you just had to make an improvement, I would guess that your biggest gains would come in D/A (depends on your DAC, but clearly a place where Moore's law can have an impact over time) and room treatment and correction. Looking at your actual components, I would try another preamp, just for fun. But, just as productive: why worry? Be happy!
As for break-in, it is hard to know because you, by definition, can't do any kind of A/B testing without the huge intervention of time. Besides the good points you make ("reviewer vs. listener" mode), there is also reason to think that we "learn" a new sound and familiarity, instead of breeding contempt, may simply make us think the new sound is more accurate over time. As above, none of this means that components don't actually change, too.
CEO and Editorial Director, Nextscreen LLC
I have wondered about a different preamp but not too much because it really is quite a nice unit. I don't know if you are familiar with the rather brief life of the Pan Orient corporations rebirth of the Dynaco brand in the 90's. They made some pretty nice stuff. Tube output stage CD players, this preamp and I think they did a tubed and a solid state power amp before they pretty much went under. I guess audiophiles didn't like them buying the brand and using it on new gear. This preamp has all audiophile approved passive components inside. It has 4 line level inputs, a very good sounding mm phono stage (worlds better than the Adcom tuner/preamp it replaced) 2 tape monitor loops, tape to tape dubbing, an external processor loop and a mono switch for listening to my small but growing collection of 50's jazz records. My PSB's are pretty power hungry and low impedance so I like the idea of pairing a tube preamp with a SS power amp. I am using all the inputs and both tape loops (one for my CD recorder and the other for an old Nak cassette deck that gets used very rarely) Most inexpensive tube preamps have no phono stage and fewer inputs. I suspect I would have to spend 2k plus to get another full function tube preamp that sounds any better. That gold on the front panel top is just a flash reflection. I can't compare the sound but it looks more impressive inside than a 10K Mark Levinson full of op amps.
Too bad the FCC probably made them ship it with a metal rather than plexiglass cover!
AVGuide webmaster and general drudge
Something I've never quite understood is why individuals get so worked up over what something is priced at? This is a free market society and if someone wants to pay " X " dollars for something because to THEM it's worth it, let them pay it! Maybe it's the claimed engineering, maybe it's the look of it (prestige of ownership?), maybe, to them, it SOUNDS better, whatever? The reasons people make purchase choices are their business, and if it's important enough to them to spend their $, let 'em do it! BTW, I am FIRMLY in camp of interconnects sounding different between source components (Audioquest Colorado (copper) for SS gear, White Zombie (silver) for tube).I don't know why they sound so dramatically different (capacitance, impedence differences?), I just know they DO. Nobody needs golden ears to hear the difference!!
I have enjoyed this continuing thread since it deals with some of the significant problems in evaluating and then purchasing cables. I would love to see a reviewer take on an entire line of cables, eg, Nordost, Audioquest, MIT, XLO, Cardas, Kimber, etc, from top to bottom and identify to the best of their subjective ability accomplish the following:
(1) How do the cables vary in sound as one moves up the product line?
(2) Identify a "sweet spot", if it exists in a product line where the investment in cables begins to plateau. How much does it cost to achieve the majority of the benefits of the top of the line?
(3) Evaluate cable compatibility with a wide range of components, also varying in cost.
I realize that this is a tall order and could take the better part of a year. However, for the audio enthusiast audience, this would be a great service and provide a model for others.
This approach is occasionally taken with automobiles from a single manufacturer. Given that some components cost as much or more than a new car, this might not be such a far fetched comparison.
Good thoughts.
CEO and Editorial Director, Nextscreen LLC
I enjoyed reading through the discussion. I hope this comment isn't too tangential to the discussion. Though I don't tend to read too many audio publications any more or focus on cable reviews when I do, I have been somewhat surprised over the years that there is little to no "blind" testing/reviewing/comparisons of audio products (whether double blind (you don't know what is included in the test) or single blind (you know what is there but not which is which)). The reviewers know what they are listening to from the first minute and form their view of the equipment knowing fully what it is and how much it costs. My primary hobby/passion is wine where blind tasting, comparisons and evaluations are a given to be able to compare quality without bias - in fact many critics engage in blind tasting when providing evaluations and reviews. Why this isn't commonly done in the audio arena - quite frankly to which it is far better suited than wine since area of origin, age and varietal composition could/should impact ones views on wines and for audio there is only one factor which is what you hear. When I bought my latest pair of speakers a handful of years ago, I probably listened to 15-20 sets in numerous stores is price ranges from 1x-4x - ultimately I brought 4 pairs in home and did blind and non-blind listening tests not only for myself but also for a few friends (a couple of whom are professional classical/jazz musicians). The blind testing was very important - took price, style, brand preference out of the equation and focused purely on what could be heard. Then, once I decided on the speakers I did the same thing with speaker cables - borrowed 12-15 over time from various places to audition and again often did blind listening tests comparing cables from $1/ft to $300/ft. While the differences between speakers could easily be heard, the differences between cables was much more difficult to hear - but ultimately I and my friends "perceived" some differences (perhaps could call it stylistic) between the cables - our preferences in the blind listening tests ultimately had very little correlation to price but instead to slight (sometimes very slight) changes in coloration of the sound or the perceived detail of certain aspects of the sound and then I had to decide what I liked/didn't like about those differences. The blind testing certainly made sure that I was focusing on what I heard (or thought I heard) rather than any other bias or aspects, price or otherwise and therefore I know that I made a better decision as a result of it.
So, why isn't blind listening tests of products a given in the audio world?
For one view on this, you might read this blog post:
http://www.avguide.com/blog/guest-blog-its-time-admit-we-dont-know-every...
I would add that there are some practical issues with blind testing. It is expensive (when you do this professionally, you have to pay a second person to run the test). It is somewhat unlike what we do when listening to music, which makes it harder to write up (or the write up is like what we do anyway, in which case we haven't gained ground). For some components (not cables) it can't be done without additional gear that impacts the sound. This is not to say that blind testing has no place; actually, just like instrumented testing, it would add something to the mix.
And, there are other issues we have to deal with that frankly are at least as big as the asserted problem of bias due to lack of blind testing. For example, we are doing our listening tests in a specific system. That system has a big effect on what we can and can't hear. Also, we are writing up our data in terms understandable by consumers, but the translation is inevitably imperfect. Those are issues we can address more easily than the issues with blind testing.
CEO and Editorial Director, Nextscreen LLC
Blind testing is not done because it would reveal to the reader that the emperor has no clothes. When it can be shown that all amps sound alike when level matched, why would you need to read reviews? The differences between components are often influenced by the listener knowing the reputation of the manufacturer, the appearance of the device and/or the price. Take those out of the equation by using blind testing, and the differences between components is often so small as to be insignificant. Blind testing would put all the reviewers out of a job, so you will not see it in any magazines.
Dave: you are welcome to post data on blind testing here:
http://www.avguide.com/forums/what-blind-testing-shows-data-cache#commen...
Thanks.
CEO and Editorial Director, Nextscreen LLC
A part of me would also like to see a cable company admit that they don't know why their product works. I seriously doubt any one of them would though.
I just read in a recent issue of Stereophile a review for an amplifier by a very well regarded company. The review was not negative but not really positive either. Of course measurements were excellent but ultimately the reviewer simply wasn't moved by the performance of the amp.
I bring this up because I think a cable, despite being made of likely only 2 or 3 components (conductor, dielectric, shield, etc.) can suffer in much the same way. It measures within an acceptable range and works for some people but not for others. And just like the cable manufacturer would be silent about why, the amp manufacturer might also be silent as to why the reviewer did not care for the amp despite it measuring well.
I still think there's something missing in what we are measuring when it comes to cables. And perhaps it is fair that cables can be summed up as tone controls although I think that's an oversimplification. It's easy to say it's a simple passive componant but that would ignore the fact that there are variable output and input impedances on each end. There are plenty of people out there connecting electronics from various manufacturers. Many of these electronics can also have varying sensitivies to noise pick-up.
Granted if one cannot hear distinctive differences there's no reason why they should bother with anything but the cheapest cables.
I just think we don't know everything there is to know about this subject. And because it is a lucrative business with proprietary designs it could be a long time before any standard can be devised.
Briefly, let's get specific. There are very clear differences I heard when I upgraded my speaker wire. The previous wire was made by the speaker manufacturer. I listen to a lot of vocal recordings and after some listening there were many shall we say improvements, but one which I think would be uncontested in a double blind test. Namely I heard gentle soft backup singers harmonizing with the main performer, which previously went unnoticed, especially when the 2 voices are similar. Another more subjective observation was that the during the usual musical interludes between vocals in a song I found the music making more expressive and could hear how the musicians were attempting to support the emotion of the vocalist during the interlude.
In other words there was less tendency for the mind to drift away a bit till the vocalist returns because the music was now heard as on a par as expressive as the vocalist.
*Bought the new speaker wire used.
Wow; an audio skeptic? now theres a rare beast!
The long and short of it if you will excuse the pun is that the answer is that cable effets become less significant the shorter they are.
At line level, the trend towards low impedance sources has negated a lot of the issues associated with cable interconnects, however the trend towards high current amplifiers and low load impedance speakers has increased the possibility of problems at high power levels and long cable lengths. Triboelectric, and microphonic effects are real, and easily measurable, however what is their relevance if the effect is 20dB lower than the signal to noise floor of the system.
If you live in an environment which is high in radio frequency energy, poor screening can introduce parasitic signals into the equipment which ends up demodulated into an audible signal. Properly designed equipment would have been able to reject any introduced noise, but only a fool would assume that equipment which gets a 5***** rating by some magazine guru is has actually been tested beyond the safe parameters of a reviewers cozy listening room.
Hi-fi has evolved into something resembling the custom motorcycle market, where people build complete motorcycles by picking a random assortment of chrome bits and bolting them together. Audio is an engineering discipline, and without an understanding of the principles involved, it's just like being a blind darts player. Eventually you get a bullseye, but the better your eyesight, the quicker you'll get there.
The Art of audio is just about the guessing till you get it right. With a well equiped lab and a solid understanding of the underlying principles you get there a lot faster. Contrary to popular opinion, EVERYTHING in audio is measurable. It all comes down to how many measurements you are prepared to take to quantify what you are hearing. Quite often, the measurements are far outside of those defined by the IEC DIN, AES etc standards, and the resolving power of the instruments you are using.
I feel like the atheist preaching to the choir.......use your brain as well as your ears! A bit of critical thinking goes a long way in saving $$$....
Cheers
H
An excellent post which closely follows my own thoughts, until you said that everything can be measured. Alas, it can't be, not at home or a reviewer's listening room, anyway, and even if it could, we lack sufficient data to completely characterize the sonic character of some components on the basis of their measurements. What measurement, for example, tells you whether and to what degree a speaker reproduces depth? Even if we can point to some of the design considerations that have been found in practice to contribute to depth reproduction, e.g., lateral symmetry and smooth polar response, we lack data on audibility thresholds.
Anyway, while it's now practical for the audiophile to measure much more than it was a few years back, and while measurement is I think an important part of the setup of a system, realistically I think we have to assume that most audiophiles aren't going to have the time, equipment, or inclination to do more than take some room response measurements. Which is why I wish reviewers paid more attention to whether equipment was robust and compatible, and eschewed the business of using cables and components as fancy -- and very expensive -- tone controls. As long as speakers are of different efficiency, listening rooms of different sizes, and so forth there's always going to be some need to mix and match components, but that's work enough and I don't think we should make things more complicated and expensive than they need to be.
Cables of course make a big difference and there quality become more noticable the better your system gets. I have owned all kinds of relatively expensive interconnects such as the top models from Cardas, Acoustic Zen, Kimber,Harmonic Technology, Monster, Analysis Plus, Straight Wire. What I have more recently discovered is that you don't have to spend that kind of money for great results. Interconnects built from Mogami (quad) or Van Damme studiograde microphone cable sounds as good or better than any cables I have owned. We are talking about cables costing $1.29/ft being compared to $1000.00 pairs. keep in mind Mogami and Van Damme is specialized cable products developed for studio use. I am also using Van Damme 9 gauge studio grade speaker wire that cost $5.00/foot and it also is as good as anything I have tried. I have sold all my expensive stuff to put money toward better cartridges etc.
By and large, audio cables make very little difference to the sound of your system. I do know that I can tell the difference between speakers, power amplifiers and with some effort some high quality DACs. I also know that I can clearly tell the difference between the sound of my system and a live performance. When I go from listening to piano music on my system (Dunlavy SC IV, Theta Digital, Bryston 4BST) to listening to my daughter play a real piano, the difference is VAST. When I switch interconnect cables, I hear little or no difference, except for a really expensive digital interconnect that just stopped working.
I remember being in Best Buy a few years ago. A girl had just purchased a new flat screen TV. The salesman then proceeded to load her cart with expensive interconnect cables and a power bar. I remember thinking that she probably spent 50% more for the interconnects that what she paid for the TV. She obviously did not have a lot of money and would see little if any benefit from the interconnects. So supporting this fantasy of magic cables can really do harm.
I think the power cables are the most obvious scam. Think about it. An electrician pulls a 14/2 solid copper cable from your panel to the outlet behind your system. He may even make a couple of junctions through other outlet boxes along the way, all with guillotine type connectors. And yet somehow, a $500 cable from the outlet to the back of your amplifier is going to make a difference? If the 14/2 is good enough for the first 50’, why not just go the last 3’ with 14/2. What’s that? About a $1.00. Or perhaps, if your system needs a lot of power, pull a dedicated 12/2 20A circuit like the gentleman above did.
So the point I am making is that even if some people can hear a difference that I cannot, I know that I can easily hear a difference between what I have and what I want to achieve – the sound of live music. No amount of putzing with cables is going to get me that. Keep your cables as short as you can, use heavy 12 or 10 Ga wire for your speakers and use interconnects with the right impedance and snug connectors.
These are very good comments and an all too frequent retail anecdote. What must be considered for power line components is the degree of line noise in one's neighborhood. I decided to put a considerable investment into dedicated 20A lines and power line conditioners because my electric company does not maintain clean constant voltage all the time. If one's electric service is rock solid (which few are by the way), these interventions may be unnecessary. A number of respondents have down played both power cords and other accessories such power line conditioners. Again, the best of these devices will audibly lower the noise floor so that details in music that have been obscured by noise in the system are revealed. One of the most obvious effects that I have noted when I went the way of PLCs and dedicated cords is the natural overhang of musical notes and chords. This is what live music provides and when it is truncated or obscured by noise, the distance between the live experience and the recorded source is increased.
I know that many audio enthusiasts would rather put money into source components than in cords and cables. I certainly agree that putting an uber-expensive cord on a bargain component creates the lipstick on a pig scenario. However, top of the line high-resolution components will reveal differences between cables and cords that lesser equipment just won't do. This is as it should be since there should be a sane relationship between how much of the audio budget goes to source components and how much to cables and cords.
My general rule of thumb for buying cables and cords is that I try out the middle of the product range from the manufacturers that I am considering. If I like what I hear (or don't hear in the case of noise) then I go down one level. If I hear differences or degradations then I go up to the level above the midrange. Granted sampling cables and cords is time consuming. But if you consider cords and cables as components then this is not an unreasonable expenditure of time since you are probably going to live with your purchases for quite some time. Unfortunately when it comes to reviews of cables, cords and interconnects, it is very difficult to extrapolate their assessments to one's own system in which the components, listening environment, and sources may be extremely different.
I have been following these ideas of cabling making a noticeable difference for several decades, and from my own listening agree that there is some merit to it. I do have have to question the viability of the power cord argument however. Of course a power cord can be engineered to have an effect on the system's performance, but how does that relate to signal accuracy; more to the point, how can it increase the AC's "purity"? After all, just what is it that is installed between the building's power distribution panel and the outlet into which the audio system is connected? How many audiophiles have installed a dedicated power distribution system (separate line from the power company's pole to the house, separate power meter, dedicated distribution panel, custom max quality and etc. wire from the panel to the audio system) for the express and exclusive use of the audio system? There is power company cable running to the house, a distribution panel, circuit breakers, and house wiring from an electrical supply house, plain old grounded outlet, and then our carefully assembled audio system attached via a friction connector (the plug and outlet). I am not saying that there can be no audible difference attributable to different power cables, but it seems irrational to expect the last meter or two length of the AC power system to be critical to delivering pure and accurate AC waveforms of sufficient current. It seems more likely that we are using the power cable as a circuit tuning element, modifying those facets of the available AC power in ways we find more pleasing, and perhaps correcting for all of the distortions that the audio system components see from the AC outlet(s). In a nutshell (I probably should have just done the nutshell first), we have many meters of plain old wire and cable,consisting of several individual pieces connected with bolts and wire nuts and with a circuit breaker or two inserted inline, and with a fantastically pure and wonderful final few feet of wire (our $800 power cable), and we say that those final few feet are where all of the distortions and inadequacies in the power are coming from. If the wonder-cords are in fact anything but perfect signal conductors, and therefore are interacting with the power circuit, then OK, but otherwise why not just add an additional piece of the same romax used to wire the house? Any thoughts?
A few thoughts. First, as a reviewer I haven't heard a great explanation of why power cords matter. Second, I can imagine some reasons (like they could filter out noise), but I can't exactly explain why those features wouldn't be incorporated by the electronics maker in the power supply. Third, some folks with good ears can hear a difference in some power cords. This wouldn't be the first time that phenomena can be heard before they can be explained (or perhaps the cord makes know what the deal is but won't explain it for competitive or marketing reasons). Fourth, just to be clear, we are definitely not saying that all the distortions and inadequacies in power come via cords. The biggest issue in some systems is lack of current. Power cords do nothing to address that. They also do nothing with low voltage, high voltage, or voltage spikes. Finally, as we discussed above, skeptics (and I am one) could simply try different power cords. If nothing improves, why bother?
CEO and Editorial Director, Nextscreen LLC
River and Tom,
To really understand the AC power "problem", you have to understand a bit about the general architecture of the AC system. There are a number of good articles on the web site of Equitech, a supplier of power conditioners to the pro and consumer markets. The main articles link:
http://www.equitech.com/articles/articles.html
A good, not-too-technical article which describes the core issues:
http://www.equitech.com/articles/origin.html
Some interesting takeaways from this and other articles:
1. The AC power issue is not just of theoretical interest - in pro audio environments, proper power conditioning can reduce the audio noise floor by as much as 20 DB, and significantly reduce jitter in digital audio systems as well.
2. One of the primary sources - the primary source, in fact - of power line related noise is the other components in your audio system. Specifically, the power supplies of your audio components generate noise which is injected into the audio circuitry of adjacent components via the AC system ground. This is why power conditioning is de rigeur in the pro audio world, where you have many more components in a system.
3. The problem cannot be fixed by "proper power supply design". The problem is actually noise in the AC ground itself - the thing that is supposed to be your "noiseless reference". It is possible to reduce the noise in the ground through techniques generally referred to as "galvanic isolation", but this is rarely done due to issues with size, weight, expense, and regulatory compliance.
Although the above discussion is an argument for power conditioning, not special power cabling, it should be obvious that power cabling could indeed play a role in reducing AC power line noise. Assume, for a minute, that the role of a specialty power cable is not just to act as a "perfect conductor", but also as a filter whose capacitance, inductance, and hysteresis reduce transmitted noise. It then makes perfect sense for a power cable to be the "last few feet" to damp external noise on the power line, and more importantly, the "first few feet" to damp the power supply noise being generated by the component itself. It also makes sense, somewhat counter-intuitively, for the cable not to be too short, for its intrinsic noise reducing properties will increase with length.
Note: the theoretical goodness of specialty power cabling relates directly to known physical issues, and therefore ought to be measurable. And, as with every other component in an audio system, the effects will depend very much on interactions with the other components (including the AC power system).
Thanks, Scott. As you say, it is fairly easy to understand why power conditioning matters. Less so with power cords, unless (as you say) the power cord is part of the AC conditioning. If we assume a user without power conditioning, then cords could make sense. It is less obvious with conditioning, unless the physical architecture matters (proximity to the equipment). Is your thinking that the inter-component noise cannot be filter by a power conditioner?
CEO and Editorial Director, Nextscreen LLC
I have always found these conversations entertaining, and sometimes informative. Put me in the mostly, but not completely, skeptics camp. I am educated (and I use that term loosely!) in physics, but have spent most of my career designing and manufacturing custom precision electronics. I concede that this does not indicate I know "squat" about audio. However, I do believe some of my experiences may be applicable. I am not attempting to address any one issue in detail, but wish to provide a few random musings (some obvious, some possibly wrong).
Power cords:
They should be adequate to handle the current (must are). They should have quality connectors (most do). If the power cables are going to run anywhere close to other wiring or equipment, twisted shielded pairs are preferable, perhaps necessary. Keep them as short as possible. Some of the claims I see for power cords are beyond my level of understanding. For instance, how can a power cord help deliver a huge demand for instantaneous current when the AC signal is crossing zero??
Power conditioners:
I want some type of line surge protection for all my electronic equipment, including phones, computers, etc. Surge protection and high frequency filtering is a good thing, and possibly regenerating AC power if one suffers significant voltage distortion and/or variations. (My personal preference might be to use paramagnetic transformers, but they are expensive, heavy, and not particularly pretty.)
When told about all the evil phenomena that can creep into my system without perfectly clean power, megajoules on demand, etc., I wonder what the hell is the power supply in the equipment supposed to do?
Cables:
Interconnect cables should be shielded. Balanced pairs should be twisted and shielded. Keeping the runs as short as possible is as important, if not more so, than any other thing. ( I'd probably choose a 1/10" paper clip connection over a 10' $10K masterpiece.) Terminations of wires to connectors should use gas-tight crimps for reliablilty. Good quality, gold plated connector pins are recommended (I don't know enough about silver plating to comment). Do not make too sharp a bend in cables. This can disrupt the shielding and even separate the insulation from the wire, which is disastrous in impedance controlled coaxial cable. I have auditioned cables, and must confess, I cannot tell much, if any difference among many samples. Maybe I just don't have that Golden Ear, (or vivid imagination?). I don't buy junk, but don't see the need for extremely expensive cables, either. (P.S. It's probably a good idea to clean connectors occasionally, but with good, tight fitting contacts, this should be rare). I wonder if cable auditioners take great pains to keep all other parameters fixed (cale lengths, cable routing, etc.)??
Speaker cables, especially if running near any other wiring, should probably be shielded. Maybe not so much for what they might pick up (this part of the system is low Z) but what they may radiate. They should have a low enough impedance to handle large currents demands. I'm not sure how you can match any cable perfectly to a speaker, since it's Z wanders all over the place.
The entire outside of any electrical chassis should be grounded. I would hope that manufacturers take great pains to make this so, but with so many panels anodized, painted, etc., I wonder if this is true. Unfortunately, this is difficult to check unless you scratch through the coatings or open the chassis and check from the inside! (Screwheads don't count!)
If cables cross close to one another, try to keep them at right angles to one another.
System grounding is a big deal, but often very little can be done about it. This is because each piece of equipment is designed independently from the rest of the system, and must meet agency approvals, etc. This is a subject unto itself, as I have found ground loops a very misunderstood topic.
If possible, make sure your safety ground at the wall outlet really has a very low impedance path to earth ground. I have seen people run a separate earth ground from their equipment straight to a buried copper rod in the earth. While this may seem extreme, I would never say you're wasting your time doing it.
In summary, I would suggest that proper shielding, grounding, and cable routing play a more significant role in clean sound than does most of the latest, greatest, double mojo, hexihelical wound, superconducting, triple-knotted wonder cables.
What with all the players, dacs, amps, speakers and speaker placements and room acoustics out there to try, I haven't got time to test the lesser differences cabling will make. I have as a side tried a number of cables over the years and realised I had much more important pieces of equipment to compare. Just 5 sources, 5 amps and 5 speakers gives you 125 choices and hours of fine tuning the setup. If you added 5 cables that would be 625 choices. I've had allot of audio equipment over the years and nothing compares to sitting with a setup for a good half a year and plowing through lots of great music. Quick comparisons have never been a good indicator for me past revealing and exciting (or not). 6 months of 625 choices is over 300 years. I don't think the question should be whether cables make a difference, (I think they do make some) but when comparing equipment and when paying for equipment what should your priorities be? As I've said sources, amps, speakers, placements and room acoustics are more than enough test parameters. In my experience cabling hasn't come close to transforming your system as actually transforming your system. I'm not interested in keeping an emotionally attached hi fi and feeding it high cost cables like I am treating my prized pet with a new toy. Then sitting there wishing that it will reward me by making me love it even more. I'm interesting in experiencing different hi fi.
(By the way its late and my maths could be completely wrong)
As a follow-up to my earlier post:
Whenever I made a change in interconnects or speaker cables, I used one particular track, "The Strife is O'er," from the CD For God and Country: Forty Great Hymns of Joy and Celebration. The CD is one of organ (Anthony Newman), brass (Chestnut Brass Company) and percussion. I used this track and followed the line of the organ's bass pedals, especially in the second half of the hymn where it's more prominent. Each interconnect (Tara Quantum 4, Kimber Hero, AQ King Cobra) treated it differently. The sound of the bass was fullest and strongest with the Taras; the Hero was very lean, almost weak, with the AQ in the middle. I'm not inclined to take any of the cables apart to check them, but the Tara has the thickest jacket, the Hero has the thinnest.
Hi-
I'm in the camp that does believe cables can make a difference, but I'm skeptical that there is a direct relationship between price and performance.
I think that in a lot of audio equipment, once you get to an "audiophile" level, there isn't neceassarily much of a difference between different items - they're all good, and it comes down to a matter of taste. I think I've heard $17,000 speakers that sound as good as $50,000 ones - which one is better sounding or more desirable is a matter of taste.
I think the same goes for cables. I tried several different interconnects in my system, and I did hear differences. At first the differences were clearly related to higher price=better sound. But at a certain point I didn't feel the more expensive cables added anything. That may be because my system is good but not reference quality, but I think the principle I've noted applies.
However, the skeptic in me has to ask this: As far as I know, recording studios don't use "audiophile" interconnects or speaker cable, just well made standard stuff. On the other hand they do spend multiple thousands of dollars on ADCs and DACs, mixers, etc. If a studio is willing to spend, say, $7,500 or more on a single ADC or DAC, wouldn't they be willing to spend $300 each on a few interconnects if they thought it made a difference to the sound? The fact that they don't makes me think that perhaps we are all fooling ourselves sometimes in this area.
Having started my audio career in professional audio (I have a degree in recording engineering)I can address your perception that recording studios are oriented toward maximum sound quality, specifically that they will pay "multiple thousands of dollars on ADCs and DACs." The vast majority of recording studios are extremely cost-conscious. Here's an interesting story. The company UltraAnalog that made state-of-the-art ADC and DAC modules (they cost about 10x conventional modules) based their business on the idea that recording studios would pay a large premium for demonstrably superior performance. They expected to sell ADCs and DACs in roughly equal quantity. Several years after starting the business, the company founder told me that they were selling virtually no ADCs because the professional world wouldn't pay for the performance, but that audiophiles would pay for better sound. They shortly found themselves selling perhaps 500 DACs for every ADC they sold (my estimate from knowing the founder and touring their factory).
I've been in many recording studios with exceptionally nasty sounding equipment.
The perception that recording studios know best goes back to the evolutionary period best displayed in the beginning of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. If a jawbone will best the competion as well as an AKG 47, then by all means, use a jawbone. Those sitting on the sidelines will watch the competition in the gladiators vs all-comers fashion. What happens in a home system is entirely different. This is where the ultimate blood-in-the-sand contest for audiophile money begins and ends. The contest for this goal is mediated through marketing, live shows, conventions, and the wares on the shelves of the rapidly diminishing numbers of bricks and mortar dealer showrooms. As there is no way a consumer can compare the extremely vast variety of products that are available, this becomes an Aristotlean exercise in choosing the best of the best where perhaps the shadows are the reality rather than the converse. Having been among the limited number of audiophiles to hear the "best of the best," I would encourage those considering large expenditures to support local vendors or those that will allow in-home demonstrations. The analogy of kicking the tires still hold sway.
Hi-
Robert-
I have no reason to argue with your experience, but I see expensive DACs and master clocks, as well as equipment for turning tape into 192/24 digital files marketed to recording studios; and I know from what some producers and engineers describe as their recording process, that some of this gear is getting into at least some studios.
So my question remains: if these same studios that are buying expensive gear don't by expensive cables, doesn't that tell us something?
I have no problem being told I'm wrong, so if I am, enlighten me.
A long time ago a humorist, Twain I believe, wrote a short story about a small town that outlawed games of chance. A group of people in the town liked to play whist and didn't wish to stop. They peitioned the town fathers to exempt whist because, they claimed, it was a game of skill not chance. Much debate ensued and the community divided into two camps, chance vs. skill. Debate couldn't resolve the issue so it was decided the two groups would square off in a game of whist. The outcome would decide the issue.
In modern recording we have a spectrum of beliefs ranging from everything matters including barometric pressure and the phase of the moon to the "industrial" types who believe nothing matters unless the deaf and dead can readily distinguish the difference. I have heard and read of some of the latter types contending that microphones don't matter. They prefer things such as Altec bins and Traynor columns for monitoring because they can give 120dB with little power. Thay also disparage anyone who maintains little things, like monitors, mics, amplifiers etc. can have an effect. I listened to the same group in the late 70's swearing that CDs and more importantly digital recording was perfect and the quest was over. Around the same time many small specialty labels sprung up who would detail every physical device in the recording chain including the grade of tape and what kinds of tubes were retrofitted to their custom made cutter heads. Interestingly these small labels made awsome sounding recordings and when they started making CDs these sounded great too. In the mainstream, CDs and almost all digital recordings sucked and they continued to suck regardless the protests and explainations of the industrial types who insisted the specs demanded they be perfect. Curiously, mainstream digital continued to suck right up to the day the industrials admitted it, at which point they began a miraculous improvement.
I have been listening to music for a very long time, I am old and my ears, never great, are nowhere near what they once were. I have followed this debate for decades and can remember when Ivor Tiefenbrun was considered a nut for contending a turntable could affect sound in ways other than speed accuracy and rumble. I have seen the snake-oil and the smoke and mirrors. I have also seen products that once discovered a person wouldn't live without. At my age I can no longer hear much difference between various high quality cables but still hear the improvement versus the cheap stuff. Sometimes I read about differences I wish I could hear other times I think people are describing what they would hear if a difference really existed.
I know I've digressed and you are wondering what my point is. Simply this, those who claimed whist is a game of skill won the contest and those who claim all the littlle things matter make better recordings. Perhaps some differences are exagerated, others imaginary but enough are real enough and significant enough to affect what gets recorded so it behooves us as listeners to seperate the wheat from the chaff and grab anything that improves our listening experience as well. Finally don't let the fact that someone might spend $500K on a studio DAC and then connect it with lamp cord convnice you that all theories on wire and other tweaks are wishful thinking. Happy listening, all the matters in the end is music the rest is just a hobby.
JV, clearly, is not a sceptic. For a $15,000 recommended system, in the Dec 2009 issue of tas, he recommends spending about a quarter of the budget on interconnect and speaker cable, $3790 for the Tara Labs option, which coincidentally or otherwise comes to exactly twice the cost of the recommended speakers, the $1895 Magneplanar 1.6QR. Now, I haven't actually heard this system, but I would submit that proportioning the outlay in this way is nuts.
-- Daniel
Allen wright of vacuum state electronics has a cable cookbook available. After reading it rwortman i suggest that you contact him (by phone,he's in switzerland). He's a straight talker & won't try & push anything on you.
I am on the skeptical side for a short while. Articles in The Audio Critic were a revalation. Some years ago I was not and I bought Siltech interconnects and speakercable. I recently sold my speakers and I now only use a Stax earspeakersystem. I recently changed two pairs of the Siltech interconnects for the interconnects that you usually get supplied with a cd-player or amplifier etc. To tell you the truth, there was NO difference to be heard. None at all.
I am sure that no one will be able to hear any difference between interconnects in a blind test.
My car always seems to run better after I wash it. Maybe I should give my cables a good cleaning too. Seriously, my Kimber Kable did make a lasting improvement even though they are very dusty right now.
Cable debates in hifi circles always become quasi religious arguments. On one side you have the beolievers, whatever faith (read brand) that they follow, and on the other you have the atheist and agnostic placard waving brigades.
Cables are both incredibly simple and incredibly complex components to define. What is important is to understand the nature of the system that is being connected and making the right choices.
As an engineer that hs dipped his toes in many different areas, i've accumulated a huge amount of information on cables and their behaviour, and yet that only represents a small amount of the knowledge required to specify let alone design cables.
Electrical parameters such as RLC are easy to measure, and define, but it's all the other parameters that are left out of the spec sheet that are more difficult to define. How the cable behaves microphonically, and how it copes with high RF, magnetic, and electrostatic environments is much more difficult to understand from the manufacturer's specifications. Often the only way to find out is to get a sample and test it.
However if i have to summarise this knowledge in a few salient points, its the following:
Keep the cables as short as possible, and keep the different signals as far apart from wash other.
Understand what is required of the cable, and understand the environment that the cable is being used.
Understand the relevance of the compromises that need to be made, and accept that compromises will always need to be made, since the best cable is no cable. There's no point investing in cable that promises to fix an audio problem that is 30dB below the threshold of hearing, because no matter who you are, you will NOT hear it.
The converse however is that if you have a cable system which is ingesting "chaff" from various sources in your system and neigborhood, you might not hear anything specific, but the system no longer sounds "right"
There's been a lot of emotional claptrap written on this forum, so for those who think they are onto something special, which is audible, yet impossible to measure there's always the chance of winning James L. Randi's million dollar prize....
I admire PT Barnum, but never had the balls to be like him.
I made the mistake of trying to discuss engineering with a manufacturer of high end cables once. This guy thought an ohm was a Hari Krishna chant.
I'm not saying that all cable makers are like that, of course. But there's more bunkum in that field than any other. I'll be damned if there's anything you can do to improve a cable that merits a price above oh, say, $50 or $100. A speaker manufacturer can spend a small fortune building a solid, non-resonant cabinet, with audible results. An amplifier manufacturer can add lots of capacitance to his power supply, again with audible results. But cable makers? We're talking a bit of wire here, and some plastic, and some plated connectors.
It really doesn't matter whether you can hear the difference between cables or not, in that if someone is charging a lot for them, it's a rip.
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