Why tune your system with exotic cables rather than DSP room correction and equalization?

[STC]

7 minutes ago, Jud said:

 

It was a very old friend of mine at the dealership where he was working at the time, and yes, I told him; I actually knew already that he shared my opinion.  Later, in his home, with different cables (substantially less expensive AQ rather than Transparent), I heard the speakers (Wilson) sounding more musical than I ever had anywhere else, and told him so, though of course he knew already.  (Although there was excellent Ayre amplification at the dealership, he was using a Pass amp at his home, which I think contributed to how much I enjoyed the music.  And his home DAC was an Ayre QB-9, rather than the Audio Research DAC 8 at the dealership.)

 

 

"Later, in his home, with different cables (substantially less expensive AQ rather than Transparent), I heard the speakers (Wilson) sounding more musical than I ever had anywhere else, and told him so, though of course he knew already." (Emphasis mine)

 

You didn't compare the different cables at the dealership? Different place different sound. Not necessarily got anything to do with the cables.  

[Jud]

2 minutes ago, STC said:

 

 

"Later, in his home, with different cables (substantially less expensive AQ rather than Transparent), I heard the speakers (Wilson) sounding more musical than I ever had anywhere else, and told him so, though of course he knew already." (Emphasis mine)

 

You didn't compare the different cables at the dealership? Different place different sound. Not necessarily got anything to do with the cables.  

 

Absolutely true.  I simply said I'd heard very expensive cables in a correspondingly expensive system that sounded bad.  You asked me whether I told my host that, and I said yes.

 

I will say that having heard Wilson speakers many, many times over many years, there've been few venues in which I've liked them, and never has that occurred when they were paired with the top of the line Transparent or MIT cables.  The sound I disliked may well have resulted from any number of things besides the cables, of course.

[miguelito]

2 hours ago, STC said:

 

 

I was thinking about both compared in the same ideal listening environment. Having said that, a good pair of speakers make huge difference and they are not cheap. I am not talking about exotics speakers.

So in the same environment and with the same setup care, one of the most important flaws of any system is the non-uniformity of the 300 Hz and below freq response. Anything below 100 Hz is very hard to address with room treatments. In this case DSP can be a huge add to improve the lower to deep bass - I don't think there's really any other way to address it. The midrange and treble on the other hand I think DSP has very little hope of improving compared to a truly world class amp/speaker system.

[audiventory]

10 hours ago, mansr said:

Everything in our systems is different, so I suppose it's hard to reach any solid conclusions.

 

Exactly. I suspect, that each instance of amplifier (one brand+model) may have difference bigger than cables change.

[Fyper]

20 hours ago, Jud said:

Here we are 30+ years into the digital era, and can anyone describe to me what the effects of jitter sound like?

I use a master clock to synchronise the PC sound card and the DAC.

That master clock takes close to a minute to lock with both devices.

I suppose we can agree that if there is a change between before and after the master clock is locked, it is due to a change in jitter level.

So one day, I accidentally started to listen to music before the locking of the MC, I noticed that it all sounded less aggressive, somehow more orderly, somewhat quieter, after the locking of the MC.

I didn't hear anything wrong before... certainly not jitter.

That happened again many times since that day, with the same results.

 

I found that, in audio, when there is no immediately noticeable distortion, it is difficult to actually find and describe what makes it not perfect to your ears.

When what your hear is good, it is even harder to conceive that it could be better... until you hear better.

 

Back to the subject of the thread, I agree with OP.

There easy ways to put in place some kind of room correction (even minimal) that will change spectacularly the way a system sounds (in a good way).

Maybe then, and only if the need is still there, it'll be time to play empirically with cables.

[miguelito]

11 hours ago, audiventory said:

Exactly. I suspect, that each instance of amplifier (one brand+model) may have difference bigger than cables change.

Yes, definitely.

[Ralf11]

4 hours ago, Fyper said:

 

 

There easy ways to put in place some kind of room correction (even minimal) that will change spectacularly the way a system sounds (in a good way).

 

 

That depends on the room.  I have big picture windows in a corner and have about given up on room treatments.  OTOH, I have dipole speakers so the nodes will be different from a cone speaker.

 

True for most rooms tho.  Thx for your comments on jitter.

[Fitzcaraldo215]

16 hours ago, miguelito said:

So in the same environment and with the same setup care, one of the most important flaws of any system is the non-uniformity of the 300 Hz and below freq response. Anything below 100 Hz is very hard to address with room treatments. In this case DSP can be a huge add to improve the lower to deep bass - I don't think there's really any other way to address it. The midrange and treble on the other hand I think DSP has very little hope of improving compared to a truly world class amp/speaker system.

Well, the funny thing is that some friends and I have systems in the $40-$100k  MSRP range.  We all prefer to use DSP full range, and we would not be without it.  

 

But, whether one wants to use it full range or not, I agree it is essential in the bass below the transition or Schroeder frequency.

 

I spent maybe $600 for Dirac Live full Mch PC version plus another $100 for a mike several years ago.  There is nothing in my decades of audio experience  that comes even close to delivering as much obvious, slam dunk bang for the buck in terms of improved sound quality.  Cables, especially digital cables?  You are joking, right?

 

[jabbr]

20 hours ago, esldude said:

 

 

I have heard a few artificially jittered samples.  At the level I know it is jitter for sure we are talking not far from what it sounds like to sing in front of a metal bladed window fan.  A near stutter or auto-tune effect.  I am sure with some training one could do better than such a gross mistiming effect. 

 

The history of jitter in audio has been people worried about it as soon as someone said it could be a problem and were willing to sell you a solution.  After that anytime digital didn't sound good to someone they were prone to guess it was jitter. 

 

There are different effects of so-called "jitter" but the effects might surprise you.

 

Most everyone has seen an FFT plot of a tone. A pure tone should be a single vertical line but the line is typically widened and looks somewhat like a Gaussian -- that's "jitter" -- the more, the wider the peaks are -- and then closely spaced tones interfere with each other (nonlinear effects) -- that's jitter -- and then there's the 1/f amplifier noise that interacts with the 1/f phase noise ...

 

So when you blur your frequencies what does that sound like ? ... and when you particularly blur your bass (1/f) what does that sound like? That's jitter...

[miguelito]

2 hours ago, Fitzcaraldo215 said:

There is nothing in my decades of audio experience  that comes even close to delivering as much obvious, slam dunk bang for the buck in terms of improved sound quality.  Cables, especially digital cables?  You are joking, right?

I didn't start this thread... I do agree DSP can make a huge improvement. In my limited experience I prefer to leave the midrange and above untouched (and I do have a nice system). As for cables or not, my point was that there's more to good sound that just a flat response. I'd even say many flat response systems don't sound like music. I don't know why. Jim Smith would agree with me.

[Allan F]

On 3/30/2017 at 9:24 AM, crenca said:

 

As near as I can tell Teresa, most high end cable aficionados use cables to "tune" the sound.  They don't appear to believe that cables are about "accuracy" as such, but rather are firmly in the subjectivist camp where everything has an unmeasured euphonic quality that gets you to certain audio SQ places that only those in the know know.  IMO, this philosophy is only a shade to the right of sound pebbles and the like...

I don't know where you got these ideas because virtually all the audiophiles I know, whose experience has told them that cables do make a difference, would disagree. Rather than using cables as tone controls, the source of the problem needing correction should be directly addressed, whether it be hardware or room effects. Better cables do provide greater resolution and are more "accurate" to the source. As has been stated many times, the effect of cables is to "degrade" the sound as compared to the source to some extent. The objective is to find cables that do this to the least extent.

[esldude]

9 minutes ago, miguelito said:

I didn't start this thread... I do agree DSP can make a huge improvement. In my limited experience I prefer to leave the midrange and above untouched (and I do have a nice system). As for cables or not, my point was that there's more to good sound that just a flat response. I'd even say many flat response systems don't sound like music. I don't know why. Jim Smith would agree with me.

Very few room correction users or makers shoot for flat response in room.  It is too bright.  Almost everyone has a downward sloping target curve for in room response.

[Fitzcaraldo215]

5 minutes ago, miguelito said:

I didn't start this thread... I do agree DSP can make a huge improvement. In my limited experience I prefer to leave the midrange and above untouched (and I do have a nice system). As for cables or not, my point was that there's more to good sound that just a flat response. I'd even say many flat response systems don't sound like music. I don't know why. Jim Smith would agree with me.

"Flat" in its literal sense, meaning +- 0 dB, is not what we want in room measurement and correction.  Smooth and downward sloping with increasing frequency is what is widely recommended.  That is also the characteristic of the default target curves of many auto EQ tools.  Sean Olive also confirmed that preference in blind user listening studies some time ago with multiple EQ tools.  The exception is near field listening, where room reflections are at a minimum, and there, true +- 0 dB flat may be preferred.

 

Yes, you do have a nice system, as do I and my closest friends who use EQ full range quite happily with the smooth, gently downward sloping response characteristic.

 

I had once subscribed to Jim Smith's publications.  I am not impressed.

[Ralf11]

Jim Smith is a hack and does not honor his 'so-called" guarantees either.

[Albrecht]

20 hours ago, Jud said:

 

Absolutely true.  I simply said I'd heard very expensive cables in a correspondingly expensive system that sounded bad.  You asked me whether I told my host that, and I said yes.

 

I will say that having heard Wilson speakers many, many times over many years, there've been few venues in which I've liked them, and never has that occurred when they were paired with the top of the line Transparent or MIT cables.  The sound I disliked may well have resulted from any number of things besides the cables, of course.

 

Hi,

I have heard several different Wilson iterations with different amps, different cables, sources, & in different rooms: sometimes well damped rooms, sometimes overdamped even. For me, I'm with you, very few situations where I've liked them. One of the few, was a set up that went counter to Wilson's process/philosophy. Listening to them in a very "live" room, with no carpets, no bass traps or wall absorption, - with the speakers much closer together than Wilson intends. In short, the SYSTEM sounded amazing & it changed my opinion for the good for Wilson speakers.

 

I think that all of these (to be polite) "cable value critics" have arguments that don't hold their veracity when faced with tons of experiences, and comparisons, and SPECIFIC iterations of many different types of systems. (ie Totem Hawks sound very different than Kharma Ceramiques. And I would hazard that no one will use the same speaker cables for either). No one will use $15K speaker cables on Totem Hawks, and no one will use Speltz anti-cables on the Kharma.

[Albrecht]

33 minutes ago, Allan F said:

I don't know where you got these ideas because virtually all the audiophiles I know, whose experience has told them that cables do make a difference, would disagree. Rather than using cables as tone controls, the source of the problem needing correction should be directly addressed, whether it be hardware or room effects. Better cables do provide greater resolution and are more "accurate" to the source. As has been stated many times, the effect of cables is to "degrade" the sound as compared to the source to some extent. The objective is to find cables that do this to the least extent.

Very nicely said. In my case, - I had tried more than 10 different cable brands in an effort to avoid the manufacturer's recommended cable. (It is said that my speakers are very good at resolving low level detail). None of these cables sounded as good as the recommended cable. Even with my manufacturer's recommended cable, I tried a pair that was too long and it lowered the resonant frequency and made the system sound boomy. Once I ordered the correct length of cable, - the system sounded fantastic.

[crenca]

54 minutes ago, Allan F said:

I don't know where you got these ideas...

 

It is of course trivial to point to the myriad of sources for my observations.  Let's use this readily accessible one:

 

http://www.stereophile.com/content/recommended-components-2017-edition-cables

 

The very first example is described as having "produced sharper but not unnaturally defined transients, shorter sustain and decay, and an overall well-detailed and more speedy sound.", the second example on the list is described as "...more graceful, almost cautious, romantic, but somehow still precise and well-detailed...", etc. etc.

 

 

[Ralf11]

the above makes me wonder if Putin hired a thousand guys to post about how their interconnects sound

[mansr]

3 hours ago, esldude said:

Very few room correction users or makers shoot for flat response in room.  It is too bright.  Almost everyone has a downward sloping target curve for in room response.

 

This is strange, IMO. It would make more sense to have a flat response from the reproduction system and master the recordings with whatever curve sounds best.

[STC]

I used to target for flat response but then somehow preferred the tilted ones sounded better. 

[cjf]

IMO, I would only attempt to use room correction or eq if it took place entirely in the digital domain before the DAC Input. There are several devices on the market that include DSP in a DAC/Pre hardware combo but none of them IMO use hardware that is transparent enough or of high enough quality to match their separates competition as of yet.

 

ROON's latest attempt is promising but still has bugs to work out before its ready for primetime I feel.

 

For these reasons I would prefer to continue to use cables as a tuning option over DSP.

[esldude]

2 hours ago, mansr said:

 

This is strange, IMO. It would make more sense to have a flat response from the reproduction system and master the recordings with whatever curve sounds best.

Well I agree in principle.  We just have to get the recording industry to go along.  Considering the loudness wars good luck with getting FR changed. 

 

Here is the stock target curve from Dirac.  It is very similar to what others use.   Peter Walker many years ago said in room response should be sloping 3 db per decade.  That isn't far from the curve most use though I have no idea how Mr. Walker came to that conclusion.  He was a pretty rational guy who didn't go for the audiophool path.  Which is why it is odd to see some worry about cables when Quads have more than 12 miles of copper in each channel.

 

[Allan F]

6 hours ago, crenca said:

 

It is of course trivial to point to the myriad of sources for my observations.  Let's use this readily accessible one:

http://www.stereophile.com/content/recommended-components-2017-edition-cables

 

The very first example is described as having "produced sharper but not unnaturally defined transients, shorter sustain and decay, and an overall well-detailed and more speedy sound.", the second example on the list is described as "...more graceful, almost cautious, romantic, but somehow still precise and well-detailed...", etc. etc.

 

 

Trivialities aside, the only problem with your first example is that none of the characteristics described have anything to do with tonality, while the second example is too nebulous to determine whether or not it does either.

[Jud]

15 hours ago, mansr said:

 

This is strange, IMO. It would make more sense to have a flat response from the reproduction system and master the recordings with whatever curve sounds best.

 

But then (1) speaker manufacturers would have a greater problem trying to achieve greater response at higher frequencies, and balance this with midrange response; and (2) people with less than usually responsive rooms at higher frequencies would have more work to do.

 

I suppose I favor allowing individuals to tailor response to suit them, and in general trying not to impose decisions before that point.

[mansr]

41 minutes ago, Jud said:

But then (1) speaker manufacturers would have a greater problem trying to achieve greater response at higher frequencies, and balance this with midrange response; and (2) people with less than usually responsive rooms at higher frequencies would have more work to do.

 

I suppose I favor allowing individuals to tailor response to suit them, and in general trying not to impose decisions before that point.

That would make sense if speakers were designed towards a standard target response other than flat. In actuality, manufacturers seem to be aiming for wildly varying "house" sounds. I don't see how having a standard baseline would prevent people doing whatever want.