Those who own Audioquest cable...what do you think?

[gmgraves]

AudioQuest HDMI Cables | Real HD-Audio

 

Seems dishonest to me.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhII95b6N84

 

Listen to the video. The processing is so blatant they should be ashamed for incompetence if nothing else.

 

If you didn't go read the article, Mark Waldrep analyzed sound from the video. He found the loudness and EQ of the AQ cables were very different than the generic. The difference growing larger as you go up to the more expensive cable from AQ. And the differences are pretty large as you can easily hear. The loudness changes alone are too large to be explained by cable differences. Loudness grows and bandwidth of the audio expand in favor of the AQ versus generic cables of course.

 

 

I have AudioQuest cables from several different generations. They seem well-enough made to me. The only current model I have is the "Big Sur" 3.5mm mini-stereo phone plug to a pair of RCA phono males. My only complaint is that the cable, while well made, seems awfully stiff and somewhat unwieldy to me. The question then becomes, how much does one have to pay to insure getting good quality, well made and reliable cables? I also have several other 1 meter mini-phone to RCA cables from MyCableMart.com that seem just as well made, use real RG59 cable and instead of costing US$125 each, are US$4.44 each! These are more flexible and certainly more wieldy than the AudioQuest. I'm glad that I didn't spend over $100 the AudioQuest cable (it was a marketing "sample") as I don't see the value for money spent. I can buy an awful lot of music for the difference between the price of the two cables in question.

 

Now as to the You-tube demo: I say this is bogus. They are doing something else other than just passing the signal through different price points of AudioQuest cables. Either they are using some kind of signal processing outside of the cables themselves, or the cables are acting as filters withX_L and X_C values chosen to accentuate certain portions of the audio spectrum by suppressing other regions (cables can't boost anything, they can only attenuate as they have no gain). I doubt the latter explanation because as elsdude and Mark Waldrop point out, cables alone can't do what this video shows them doing. Also, I think most of us can agree that even if we are fervent believers in the concept of "cable sound", that all cable differences tend to be very subtle; almost subliminal in many cases. The difference in the sound of these cables is greater than difference between, say, a cheap DAC like a DragonFly and one like a dCS or an MSB Diamond 4 with all the bells and whistles! AudioQuest oversold the snake-oil in this case, for sure.

[gmgraves]

The video appears to have been produced by D-Tronics and yet there is no mention of this in Waldrep's post. Instead he suggests Audioquest is the villain here. Yes an Audioquest representatives appears in the video, but he doesn't even speak as the music plays or reference this part of the video. He may not have even had any hand in the production of this video. As the music is playing Audioquest's logo isn't even displayed. Instead we see "Home Entertainment by D-Tronics". The video even starts and ends with advertising for D-Tronics and yet Audioquest is at fault?

 

My guess is that someone on D-Tronic's video production team got carried away here. Shame on them.

 

That Waldrep fails to even mention D-Tronics in his post speaks volumes about what kind of guy he is. Obviously he has an axe to grind as evidenced by his last paragraph.

 

 

Well, AudioQuest is the client here, so they must have OK'd the results. That makes them just as culpable as D-Tronics in my estimation.

[gmgraves]

Wouldn't eliminating the fraudulent claims and the erroneous claims make it easier to see and pursue the legitimate improvements?

 

In this case, all the Audioquest cable malarky makes me suspicious about the Dragonfly, which appears to be a well-made inexpensive USB DAC.

 

As someone who uses a DragonFly DAC in my computer office system every day (right now, in fact!), I can attest that it is a fine product that does what it advertises to do as well, if not better, than other similar products.

[gmgraves]

I think you have a bias with this issue. It seems like you are willing to believe the test so long as its negative. If the same people did the same exact test and got positive results, I think you would hold them to a much higher standard.

 

 

The problem here is that there is no way that there could be a "positive result" with this type of test. 1) Cable differences are never this blatant. 2) Even if they were, given the audio quality of You Tube post audio, I doubt seriously if any real differences would show up in a You-Tube comparison. Bias or no, both Waldrep's and esldude's skepticism is well founded.

[gmgraves]

Really, that's all the burden of proof you need?

 

Audioquest is the supplier not the client. D-Tronics actually has to buy product from AQ. Sheesh.

 

That AQ paid D-Tronics to produce a video for D-Tronics is quite a stretch. AQ produces some pretty high quality marketing materials on their own. I can't see them funding such a poor video. And if they did this for D-Tronics they'd have to do it for all their sellers.

 

Seems that some won't allow logic and fairness get in the way of their chance to smear.

 

Don't so naive, my friend. If you don't know that AQ saw that You-tube ad and put their seal of approval on it, then you must not understand how business is done. If AQ didn't OK that ad, crease and desist orders would be flying around like WWII warbirds at the Reno air races, and lawyers would be buzzing about like flies on fresh excrement!

[gmgraves]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]23726[/ATTACH]

 

 

Yes, and your point is...? Are you reinforcing my comment or do you have a problem with it?

[gmgraves]

I really really want to believe in company like AQ. But I find it hard to believe. I do have several of their cables, and honestly? I don't hear much difference between them. If, unfortunately, I didn't also have Nordost cables, I would commend the whole cable sound thing to the devil and be done with it.

 

Instead, I have doubt whether I can even hear what other people in those cables, and thus have to reserve judgement.

 

In the meantime, I have enough Nordost and Kimber cables around, i don't need to buy any more cable. Hopefully everything will go wireless soon and eliminate cables for good.

 

-Paul

 

 

At which point, everybody can then argue about the "sound" of various wireless schemes and protocols as in which Blu-Tooth equipment sounds best. This is just my opinion, you understand, but I believe that physics will back my opinion up: Wireless will never be as good as a straight piece of wire!

 

As to AudioQuest, I think that they are a decent company, and like Ray Kimber, I suspect that Bill Lowe honestly believes that his cables can make a difference. At any rate, one cannot blame him for going where the money is. I guess it doesn't matter what *I*, as an individual, think about the possibility of "cable sound" being real, enough people obviously do to make selling "boutique" cables a viable and legitimate business (yes, I've stepped back from my former stance that boutique cable makers are crooks. I still think their tactics for selling these cables are questionable, and that the whole business smacks of voodoo and snake oil, but then so did Geritol and Carter's Little Liver Pills. But both products were sold for generations and many people felt better for taking them, so what harm do they do?) AudioQuest's cables are very well made, I certainly can't argue with that, and the DragonFly is a very good bit of kit as, apparently, are the NightHawk headphones (I haven't heard them, but the reviews are certainly very good).

[gmgraves]

Oh, I don't know. Cell phone conversations today are clearer and easier to understand that most wired telephone connections in the 20th century. Even better than some of fibre based connections for landlines.

 

Wireless communications are getting to be very reliable, and very fast...

 

-Paul

 

That's kind of apples and oranges, don't you think? I mean telephones sounded horrible for decades due to a myriad of characteristics having little or nothing to do with "wires". First of all, was the carbon button microphone. This 19th century device produced as much distortion as signal, the mechanical phone switching apparatus was incredibly lossy and the need for amplification of the signal along the route made the phones noisy. I remember as a kid in the 1950's when on long-distance calls, the background noise was almost as loud as the signal! The biggest changes in wired phone technology came in the '60's and '70's when digital switching replaced mechanical switching and electret microphones replaced the carbon button mikes in the subscriber units. Today, cheap cell phones still sound lousy because they use three-bit voice quantization which is so bad that people using such a phone don't even sound like themselves!

 

The bottom line is that the more active electronics that an audio signal has to pass through, the worse it sounds. This has been known for decades. IOW, the simpler the audio path the better the sound. I don't see how wireless technology, irrespective of how good it might get could possibly be better than a length of cable.

[gmgraves]

I always knew that Marconi dude was a shyster.

 

 

Nah! Marconi was OK, it was De Forest who was (mostly) the charlatan.

[gmgraves]

Am I the only one who thinks the sound from the Audioquest cables in the ad is terrible? It sounds to me like some sort of high pitched ringing has been added to "sharpen" the sound.

 

It's a compliment to Blue Coast Records that they chose Looking for a Home for their demo, but I don't think they did Blue Coast any favours with that effort.

 

 

Believe me, it's not just you!

[gmgraves]

The maximum Youtube and VEVO bit rate of 187kilobits/sec .aac audio (1280 Video selected) is virtually useless for comparing tiny differences between cables or anything else.

 

My point, exactly!

[gmgraves]

irony.

 

as a non-subscriber, that’s what you see sometimes (because the ad banners rotate). and, what you see is (indirect) ad revenue for CA, paid for by Audioquest and Wireworld. placement may be beyond admin control, but…

 

…the cable marketing/branding machine rolls on in the www.

 

1) the banners ads are not cheap. somewhere, somehow, enough people must be buying enough Audioquest and Wireworld cables to ‘finance’ the ads. why?

 

2) these banner ads appear in CA, which shall we say, is (mostly) kind of ‘cable-skeptical’. so, to whom are they trying to sell stuff?

 

1) Of course, enough people are buying their products. AudioQuest is one of the major brands selling cables to the audiophile market. Also, very important is the fact that boutique cables have a tremendous built-n profit margin at all sales levels: manufacturing, distribution, and retail. Selling cables is very lucrative. What is more amazing, at least to me, is the fact that there are enough buyers in this niche market called audio, to support as many cable manufacturers and sellers as there are! This alone is moot testimony to the large amount of profit built into this market segment.

 

2) I don't see that the majority of CA subscribers are all that "cable skeptical". Looks to me like a clear majority of CA denizens believe absolutely that cable sound not only exists, but is actually important enough to justify them spending some big bucks on. Just as important, at least as far as AudiQuest is concerned, is that the company sells other, more generic products as well as cables. They sell the DragonFly DAC, the Beetle DAC, the Jitterbug Digital Filter, the NightHawk stereo headphones and the Niagara Mains Filters, etc.

[gmgraves]

Analog electronics, yes. Digital electronics? Maybe not. Seriously, as long as the connection meets very liberal speed and latency concerns, distance and routing mean little to digital connections like cell phone calls. As you point out, the quality of the phone makes a lot of difference.

 

To tie that back to audio cables, to me speaker cables make the most difference. They roughly equate to old telephone lines to me, nasty noisy things that they were.

 

I agree that of all the cable "claims", the claims for speaker cables actually have "some" science behind them. Even so, not all speakers react to different cables, although some clearly do.

 

Beyond that, USB cables make a significant difference to me - even though they should not. I personally consider that to be a function of the quality of the equipment, and perhaps a little bit of the quality of the USB cable.

 

OK. I for one have never experienced USB cable sound (or Ethernet cable 'sound' for that matter) and remain skeptical, but some listeners obviously do. Beyond that, I'll make no further comment.

 

And it loosely equates a little bit, to cheap cell phones that screw up a pristine digital connection.

 

The analogy is loose as ashes, but is illustrative without forcing one tomdraw conclusions.

 

Ok. I'll stick with the proven adage that in audio at least, the best, cleanest, and most accurate route between two points is a piece of wire.

[gmgraves]

I dearly wish I didn't hear any differences in USB cables either - it is slightly embarrassing to me and utterly impossible to explain with an rigor.

 

One could always just decide to not care that USB cables sound slightly different from one another(if you are the type who finds that they do).

 

That's fair, though I think no wires at all between components would be better.

 

That might have some validity if it were true that RF electronics were 100% transparent. but no active circuits have ever been as transparent as a passive circuit.

[gmgraves]

George, I recently quoted in a conversation, something I thought you had said several years ago, to the effect that even the most expensive speaker cables were no better than the wire running to a lamp. Did I misunderstand you or do I have the wrong George or have you gone over to the dark side?

 

 

It's not that simple. I'm afraid. Under most circumstances, my comments about expensive cables vs 14 GA lamp cord holds true as far as I can see. But there are some combinations of components, due to their impedance curves, the loads they place on some amplifiers and the speakers' reactive natures that seem to be very cable sensitive. For instance, when I had a pair of Apogee Duettas in the late 1980s, I couldn't get them to sound "right" with any of the speaker cable I had on hand, and this included Monster M1 and AudioQuest "Tan". Finally, Jason Bloom, the then President of Apogee told me that it was the cable I was trying to use. I was really skeptical so he sent me a pair of Symo cables from Sweden and then the Apogees just sang. I figured is was some kind of anomaly and possibly expectational bias at work here, because I was never able to repeat the experience with any other speakers or cables I used. This was true of my experiences until about 6 months ago, when a friend of mine bought a pair of Martin Logan Summit X speakers and couldn't get them to sound as good in his room as they had in the store. We moved the speakers everywhere in the room and nowhere did they sound right to him. As a last resort, I suggested that we swap-out the Kimber Kable 12TC speaker cables he had on hand for a pair of Sewell "Silverback" cables I had at home. I ran home and got them and we installed them in place of the Kimber, and I could instantly tell the difference. Suddenly the speakers sounded great! The soundstage widened and deepened, and the sound became more open, especially at the top. I had to acknowledge that the cable made a pretty big difference. Now whether it was the combination of those three particular components, the VTL amp, the Kimber Cable with the Martin Logans (obviously the amp, cable and his previous speakers, a pair of late model Tannoys weren't fussy, because that combo sounded fine) or something else at work here, I can't say. But that's twice I've noticed speaker cables changing the entire sound of the system. And there was no doubt about the reality of what we heard. Swapping the Kimber back caused the M-Ls to close back down with a veiled sound and a lackluster sound stage. He asked me if he could borrow the Sewells, until he could order his own, and I told him that he could if he loaned me the Kimber. I went home and installed the Kimber cable in place of the Sewells (which were, of course, at my friend's house) in the Magneplanar MG-.7s/Perla Signature 50 amp that I was listening to at that moment. I fired the system up expecting to hear a similar magnitude of difference that I heard at my friend's house. Near as I could tell, listening for several hours, there was absolutely NO audible difference between the very inexpensive Sewell Silverbacks ($40 for two 10 ft lengths terminated with banana plugs) and the much more expensive Kimber 12TC cables ($150 for 2 10 ft lengths terminated with banana plugs). Now, obviously, one thing that came out of this experiment is that there seems to be little or no correlation between speaker cable price and sound quality. Either a certain setup is speaker cable sensitive or it's not. If it is, good luck stumbling upon the ideal cable for the application as there are so many different manufactures, combinations and price points to check. And unlike DACs or amplifiers, or record decks, price apparently has no bearing on whether or not a cable is right for any particular cable-sensitive application. Yes, the Sewell made my friend's M-L Summit Xs sound much better than did the Kimber, but perhaps something else would make them sound even better? I don't know, and neither does my Summit X-owning friend. If he decides to embark on that quest, he's on his own. I certainly have no interest in going down that road with him. There are no criteria, price means nothing, there is absolutely no way to tell except through listening to each cable installed in his system. I shudder to think about it! Luckily, most of us don't have to (whether we want to, of course, is another matter, but on that I have no comment).

[gmgraves]

No, Transparent Audio, Music Links. My unofficial opinion is that they produced a better soundstage and a little richer high frequencies. Experts on this forum have told me that it is all in my head. 'Dunno, maybe they are right, maybe not. Anyway, I have quit worrying about the cost of those cables but I have become a much more critical listener. I also rely on other's opinions.

 

Well, it might be all in your head, but that's really not the point, now, is it? If that $750 makes you enjoy your system enough more to justify that not insignificant cost, then imaginary or not, it was probably worth it. After all, in medicine, placebos have made many a patient feel better due to the power of positive thinking (and when I was a teen, I was able to convince the girl across the street that a Tylenol capsule was a birth control pill, and that made me feel much better - and I got away with it). So, there is worth in that, I guess.

[gmgraves]

If you bothered you likely could measure and track down the reason for the difference.

 

I know older VTL amps I had with my electrostats had a just above 20 khz low Q resonance. The peak of it was a few decibel apparently caused by an interaction with the cable, speaker being an ESL and the output transformer. The peak was wide enough it reached down into the upper octave and half that was audible and slightly changed the sound. That effect was moderately sensitive to cable length and parameters. Still no mystery, no need for silver vs copper. Just needed to get the right LCR values for everything involved. It was also one piece of the reason tubes didn't sound like SS on that speaker.

 

 

I agree. I'm not suggesting that voodoo was involved here, just that speaker/cable/amp interactions are on a case-by-case basis, and when I had a pair of VTL 150 mono blocks they loved my then Magneplanar MG-3Cs and all the cone speakers that I was reviewing in those days. They weren't so happy with my later M-L Vantages. I solved the problem there by changing amps to a Krell KAV-300il integrated.

[gmgraves]

So what, if any, are the measurable parameters relating to cable performance that might help to explain this phenomenon?

 

Of course, things like X_C and X_Lare measurable parameters that all cables have, but I have rarely, if ever, seen them mentioned on a speaker cable's packaging or on their website for that matter. Even if you did know those numbers, they wouldn't help you at all. The interface between the wire, the speaker characteristics and the amp characteristics is a complex one, and to measure it would require the kinds of test equipment (not to mention the complex maths) that simply aren't available to most of us. No, the best most of us can do is listen. We don't have access to the data, or any way to actually utilize it even if we did.

[gmgraves]

(and when I was a teen, I was able to convince the girl across the street that a Tylenol capsule was a birth control pill, and that made me feel much better - and I got away with it). So, there is worth in that, I guess.

 

ROFLMAO.. George you are a funny man...

 

i could actually care less if in fact this was disingenuous on the part of AQ or not. Nor do i much care if i ever hear the difference in cables (or interconnects or wtf the proper nomenclature is) What i do care about is reading the posts from the learned and witty posters on this site. So help me i gain more from being entertained (and many times educated) than i do from whether or not i improve my listening experience....That is why i visit this site almost every day. Chris looks more and more like a genius everyday....

 

I'm glad you appreciated my attempt at levity. That is a true story, BTW. The irony is that while REAL birth control pills were being developed at that time, there were none actually on the market yet, but the sweet young thing across the street didn't know that!

 

I understand where you are coming from. I too get a lot of entertainment value from reading and posting to this forum, and I have learned a lot over the years as well. And yes, Chris is very knowledgeable and does a great job here!

[gmgraves]

Hi All,

 

I have been following this thread for a while and finally got the urge to type something, which is:

 

When I bought my Benchmark HDR DAC about 5 years ago (still sounds great) I sent Benchmark a series of questions to ensure I was optimising its use as it was expensive ($US2K in Australia), one of which was:

 

Do you recommend a particular type of USB cable to connect the DAC to my computer. Their reply was we something along the lines "we don't believe there is any benefit changing the cable we have included with the device." That is not an exact quote but that was the inference.

 

These guys are leaders in their field, they are highly qualified electrical engineers with many years experience supplying pro audio recording and playback gear. I am comfortable relying on their expertise, particularly when they are in a neutral corner. Hence I have not got on the cable band wagon, although I'm a great believer in "if it makes you happy.... "

 

The upside of this thread is that while we are going around and around talking about what cables are best we aren't going around and around talking about what format is best, etc, etc

 

Beautiful hot day here in Sydney ... I'm going down to Bondi Beach for a swim and coffee ... anyone want to come?

 

Ajax

 

This is a slippery-slope. Most electronics engineers will scoff loudly and long at the notion that one USB cable is any different from another as long as it meets all the USB specs as put forth by the IEEE. I am of this opinion also. However, I must, in all honesty, say that while I can't see what could possibly affect a USB signal enough to change the sound, as long as the cable met specifications, I also cannot simply discount the empirical evidence of people here, who I trust are not either lying or imagining things when they say that they consistently hear a difference between one USB cable and another. I do however, reject the attempts I've read so far to explain what might be the reasons for the differences heard. They simply do not hold any water as far as I can see.

 

My point is that if you are relying on the opinions of EEs (even those from Benchmark), keep in mind that all of that textbook training in electrical theory has narrowed, considerably, their capacity for out-of-the-box thinking especially when that thinking flies in the face of all the digital quantization theory and conductor behavioral theory that they were taught in engineering school. My advice to you is that if you are interested in pursuing the matter, try different USB cable solutions for yourself and see if you hear a difference, and - and I can't stress this one too strongly - if you do hear a difference, is it a difference that you care about.

[gmgraves]

Hey Jud,

 

I haven't heard that term for years. In politically correct Australia we are not allowed to say things like that as the word "poofter" is seen to be disparaging to gays. However, when we were kids we always called each other poofters if we chickened out on something - we used it in the same way as you intended i.e. "you weak bastard".

 

For the record swimming in the sea is not as much fun as it use to be and has become quite dangerous due to an unusual spate of shark attacks recently .... some very nasty mailings on the East Coast by bull sharks and great whites resulting in several deaths.

 

I'm a keen surfer and with all the attacks going on I have become more and more nervous. I was out at my local beach by myself last month, about 4 hours south of Sydney, when the water broke about 5' from my board. I shat myself until I realised it was the flipper of a seal. That night I went for a late evening swim and when I came back to the house I noticed a large pile of white dung on the balcony. I went over to clean it up and a bloody big python (about 10' long) reared up at me from only a few feet away. For the second time that day I shat myself.

 

So you are most probably right - I am a big poofter!

 

Disclaimer - I have a lot of gay mates so please don't misinterpret this thread for anymore than what it is - bit of fun.

 

All the best, Ajax

 

Freedom of speech is like being pregnant. One either is pregnant or one isn't. There is no such thing as being "a little pregnant". Likewise, a country either has freedom of speech or it doesn't. People should refrain from making hurtful or disparaging remarks against others because that was the way they were raised, not because it is against the law, or "politically incorrect" (which, in essence, amounts to the same thing). Unfortunately, many a former democracy is going down that road. Some countries, like Canada have actually passed laws abridging free speech (by classifying certain statements as "hate crimes") and therefore, no longer have free speech (please, don't try to use the old yelling-"fire!-in-a-theater ruse to defend the abridgment of freedom of speech, it is irrelevant to the point). Freedom son speech is an absolute.

 

There are many forces at work in the world trying to take our freedoms away. We must be diligent and resist this trend. There is no excuse, no cause so great that it has become any more than merely expedient to use current events and situations as an excuse to bring on 1984. It might be a little late, but if we don't watch it, it can still overtake us all.

 

Don't mean to wander off-topic. This is a subject upon which I am sensitive, and I wanted to get my two cents in. Let's go back to talking about AudioQuest cables, now!

[gmgraves]

Too simplistic, I'm afraid. I've heard more expensive and better looking cables sound better, but also have experienced the reverse. The cable I'm now using immediately sounded much better than the cable it replaced, to a very surprising degree. The new cable cost half what the old one did, and looks it. So how, if this is the emperor's new clothes (the power of expectations and suggestion) does the experience run so counter to one's expectations, in the absence of any suggestions (I was the first person I'm aware of to try the cable)?

 

I'm not claiming to have golden ears, the best system, or to be immune to placebo effects. I'm just not sure attributing everything to such effects succeeds as a satisfactory explanation.

 

This is one of the reasons why I refuse to play "the cable game". Assuming that there is a difference in cable sound (and I repeat here, just to be clear: I've never heard these differences in a DBT, and I've never investigated the phenomenon any further than the several DBTs to which I have been privy), from all I have read here and elsewhere, there seems to be no correlation between price, brand or design and sound quality. How can one make an intelligent choice when every choice can be a crapshoot? What a wonderful thing it would be to replace a $10 pair of interconnects with a pair costing several hundred dollars only to find that the new cable doesn't sound as good as the old one? I think this is a trap that is best avoided by me, especially since even the best and most expensive cables seem to provide provide only small, seemingly ephemeral "improvements" at best.

[gmgraves]

If that is what you have concluded, George, based on your own experience, that is the route you should follow. OTOH, my own experience and that of others is that better cables can provide an appreciable improvement in SQ that is anything but ephemeral. More expensive may or may not result in "better" but, IMO, the cheapest rarely if ever are comparable.

 

That's all I'm saying. I'm not going to go down (what is, to me) a neurotic path like that. Nobody can prove to me (or anybody else, for that matter) that cable sound is real, rather than imagined, and that being the case, I'd just as soon leave the whole thing be. OTOH, if you want to follow that particular muse, be my guest. I'm certainly not going to say that you don't hear what you think you hear, I respect you and your judgement.

[gmgraves]

they have saying in angling/fly-fishing:

some lures/flies catch fish, others catch anglers

 

still have (too many) ‘pretty’ lures and flies. some have delivered tangible/measureable results = one landed fish(es) or someone nearby caught something.

 

but, one is never really sure. if it is the lure/fly… or perhaps the presentation, water temp, moon phase, fish behaviour. or, just luck.

 

perhaps, cables are to audiophiles like alluring lures/flies are to anglers/fly-fishermen. some days, seemingly irresistible (to a user), looking desirable, beckoning with the promise of an extra edge in a small ‘convenient package’.

 

ime, some cables do deliver differences. but, one is never really sure*.

however, there are no thousand dollar lures/flies (that one knows of). relatively, rods, reels and lines cost significantly more, and one needs to learn how to elicit a bite, fight and land a fish, safely. and, to release the fish (as circumstantially conscionable) to live another day/month/year.

 

* which is kind of okay, if audio is a hobby (and maybe some of us are ‘gear-heads’) and not a life-death proposition or bread-butter livelihood.

 

 

Nice analogy, I especially like the old saying about lures and anglers. I'm sure something like it applies here at least some of time.

[gmgraves]

Agreed.

Cables are easy to change and can easily go undetected by wives...

 

As for cables that "do deliver differences", my guess is that most of those will be working like filters and not as conductors; they're intentionally made to change sound.

And their purchase is much more fulfilling (that's what shopping does to your brain) than fiddling with tone controls or graphic equalizers.

 

R

 

 

I have often voiced that suspicion myself. I'm especially wary of cables that have "boxes" made of wood, plastic or metal along their length somewhere. The reason is because capacitors and inductors large enough in value to affect some part of the audio passband cannot be fashioned from just the cable material or it's design alone. These would have to be physically large external components. Components that would conveniently fit in a box of some kind, external to the cable sheathing itself.