The ultimate cables can/can't - only $80,000

[gmgraves]

47 minutes ago, sdolezalek said:

When I saw this product (the Music Interface Technologies ACC 268 Articulation Control Console -- one gushing review here: http://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/music-interface-technologies-acc-268-articulation-control-console-and-ma-x-shd-interconnects/), I couldn't help but think it was the perfect product for a discussion here.  As OP,  I'd like to limit this discussion to points of view about why what MIT is doing might legitimately produce "positive" audio quality effects and how that might broaden our overall views on whether cables do or don't make a difference.  

 

So please no comments like: the ultimate snake oil, no device like this could ever make a difference, etc. (I'll ask Chris to remove those if they flood this thread).

 

But I would appreciate comments like: Yes, it can affect sound, but only in the same way as an equalizer because...., or "Yes, it can, but what it is really doing is ... or No, it can't and here is why...

 

In others words, no plain opinions, only views based upon some level of expertise that include an explantion of "why"

 

I'm suspicious of any cable with a "box" in its length somewhere, and especially suspicious If said box has controls of some kind. IOW, when is a cable no longer a cable? When it's full of variable controls, large capacitors, inductors and resistors, that's when! What such a box is doing is altering the frequency response of the signal passing through the cable. I spent an hour playing with one of these "speaker cables" from MIT at a stereo shop once a couple of years ago. It changes the sound, subtly. But no combination of settings yielded a sound that I thought was better than any other combination, and I remember thinking to myself that an active equalizer of some kind would be far more effective, and certainly far less expensive (and this particular set of MIT cables was "only" ten thousand dollars, IIRC!).

[gmgraves]

43 minutes ago, GUTB said:

It appears to be a very high-quality crossover network designed around some proprietary formulas. 

Since it only has one cable entering the box and the picture shows but one cable leaving it, it can hardly be termed a "crossover" since it crosses over nothing. At the very least, all it can be is a very limited "tone control" which can be more effectively (and cheaply) implemented by an active equalizer between the pre-amp and power amp!

[gmgraves]

2 hours ago, Ralf11 said:

what MIT MIGHT BE doing that might legitimately produce "positive" audio quality effects MIGHT be altering the complex impedance of the cable/box system

 

 

Yes, I suspect that's correct. But then the question becomes, "to what end?" You have an amp supplying an audio signal at a sufficient current/voltage to allow the speakers to make sound, and you have a pair of speakers that respond to the amplifier's signal by making sound, and you have a hank of wire that connects the speakers to the amp. A hank of wire doesn't have a complex impedance characteristic (not at audio frequencies, anyway). It has a certain DC resistance that increases with length (and which can change the sound of SOME - but not all, highly reactive speakers) and it has a certain (tiny amount) of inductive and capacitive reactance that also increases with length. But these latter two characteristics are so small that your speaker cable length would have to be more than 50 ft (with 14 gauge wire) in order for these characteristics to attenuate a 20 KHz sine wave by even ONE dB! So, any complex impedance in the cable/box system would have to be self induced by the box itself! IOW, without the box in the cable, there would be no complex impedance for the controls to alter!

[gmgraves]

2 hours ago, mav52 said:

What an expensive tone or DSP control

From the mfg website "

Discreet articulation control is now possible over

three sections of the bandwidth, allowing the listener

to adjust for challenging room conditions, equipment

changes

 

What, then, pray tell, does Bruce Brisson (of MIT) THINK that a line-level equalizer is for if not to allow the listener "to adjust for challenging room conditions (and/or) equipment changes"? Certainly there are enough equalizers on the market to do that very thing for a tiny fraction of the cost of this $80,000 "cable solution".

 

How about:

 

http://www.musictri.be/Categories/Behringer/Signal-Processors/Equalizers/DEQ2496/p/P0146

 

 for $300

 

or, perhaps:

 

http://www.musictri.be/Categories/Behringer/Signal-Processors/Equalizers/FBQ6200HD/p/P0B3T

 

for $200

 

There are more, from both Behringer and other manufacturers. Given what MIT says this obscenely expensive "speaker cable" actually does, I don't get it!!

 

 

[gmgraves]

7 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

 

 

the same end as Gordon Gecko...

 Exactly! It's greed coupled with a callous disregard for MIT's customer base. 

[gmgraves]

1 hour ago, mansr said:

It's funny how many audiophiles sneer at EQ, yet swoon over it if you call it a cable.

 

Well said!

[gmgraves]

1 hour ago, esldude said:

It is a ridiculous way to apply a little EQ.  It is disgusting they have sold more than 50 of these and have a backlog of orders.  You can go find where Bruce tells you how to make your own articulated cables.  Parallel capacitance and inductance.  The effect is to very slightly alter some speakers and how they interact with amps.  Same result could be done in DSP EQ and it would sound the same.  

 

It might even sound better. The MIT box(es) contain relatively large capacitors and inductors which would certainly "ring" more than the smaller values used in line-level equalizers, or the complete lack of ringing in properly designed DSP-based eq devices. Of course any device added to the audio signal chain will involve a certain loss of SQ, and a DSP-based solution would, of course, add the quality issues associated with A-to-D and D-to-A conversion. The bottom line here would be is the insertion loss is of a magnitude to actually have an actual audible effect on SQ.  

[gmgraves]

7 minutes ago, GUTB said:

 

Obviously it’s not "just" an equalizer.

 

No? Then what else could it be? Inquiring minds want to know!

[gmgraves]

7 hours ago, GUTB said:

Bruce Brisson is a long-time researcher of audio signal cable mechanics and has a bunch of patents like cable networks, phase shift filtering, noise reduction techniques etc. I suppose he could just be lying about all of that, threw up some technobabble patents in order to defraud his customers — or he’s telling the truth and designs a legitimate product that does in general what MIT says it does.

Nobody is saying that those MIT cables don't do anything. What is being said is that since the "box" in the cable is passive, it can't do much. Even MIT says that the box controls lows, miss, and highs, so it is basically an equalizer, but passive, high-level Equalizers use huge capacitances, big inductors, and they can only effect their center frequencies at 6 dB/octave. More poles mean more insertion loss, so the box's output would be severely attenuated from it's input, which I would think would be not too desireable. No matter how you cut it', an active equalizer would be superior, and certainly a lot cheaper!

[gmgraves]

4 hours ago, mansr said:

And more importantly, a boxful of components is not a cable.

Well, yeah!

[gmgraves]

53 minutes ago, mav52 said:

Or how about the little tone control from Schiit the $149 Loki. 

Not as much control as the Behringer 1/3 octave equalizer for $200, but certainly more than the $80,000 MIT "cable". (Gotta wonder how many of these MIT has sold; and I'd love to see a breakdown on manufacturing costs for those puppies. l'll bet it's less than $5000/pair!).

[gmgraves]

1 hour ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Providing a product that people want to buy is the opposite of "callous disregard" for one's customer base.

 

Again, I'd never buy this thing, but some people want it. If people didn't want it, MIT wouldn't build it.

Well, that's not exactly what I'm on about. Do people want to buy it? I suspect so. Like you said, if there were no market, MIT wouldn't build it. It's the obscene price, coupled with what must be an exhorbitant mark-up aimed at rich, but not very knowledgeable or sophisticated buyers, that bothers me. I think I know the kind of people who would buy something like this. The same kind who buy books by weight, and stereo systems by price. "Hello, is this Ed's A/V Contractors? I want a stereo system. No, I don't have any preferences except that it must cost in excess of half-a- million bucks. Can you do that? You can? Thanks." It's called taking advantage of people's ignorance, and I don't really care that the buyers can afford it and are entitled to spend their money as they wish.To me there is no difference between selling worthless but costly audio bling like this to rich but naive buyers and the local garage telling the lady customer, that her car has a bad thrumbulator, and a new one is going to cost her three grand. In both cases, as far as I'm concerned, it's dishonest.

[gmgraves]

31 minutes ago, mav52 said:

 

Yep it.  Most likely made for those wealthy audiophiles that have more money than sense. ps: Sorry if this offends any ultra wealthy audiophiles on this site that had thoughts on a purchase..

No matter who it's made for, or that the target audience for products like this are people to whom $80K is pocket change, that's no license to cheat them. One might argue that it's less hurtful to rip-off the rich than it is to rip off widows and orphans, but to me, both are dishonest and reprehensible.

[gmgraves]

1 hour ago, sdolezalek said:

 Thank you.  Useful input.  As someone with large Magnepan speakers that are notorious for having fairly complex impedance curves, I was wondering whether a network like this might present an amplifier with an easier load to drive.  Question is, what sonic benefits are derived from "easier to drive loads"?

 

What Maggies would these be, if you don't mind me asking? In my considerable experience with Magnepans (I've owned, probably 10 pairs over the years) I have always been impressed by how un-complex the impedance curve was (compared to other types of speakers). Every Maggie that I have owned have been, essentially, purely resistive, and usually somewhere between 4 and 6Ω. That's about as simple as one can get.

[gmgraves]

2 hours ago, Albrecht said:

A knowledgeable buyer who is someone who does investigative comparative analysis.

Electrical Engineering knowledge often hampers knowledge, - because the EE makes judgments outside of the scope of the device without conducting investigative tests. Commenting on anything based on price is just another form of speculation, - where little to no knowledge is gleaned. Your unqualified opinion and bias has little value to the potential purchaser of the device. The only way to know is to compare two similarly priced devices in a system that is appropriate and commensurate to the device being tested.

No one will EVER buy a $10K cable if they have $800 speakers.

If you haven't done any comparative testing, - you have no knowledge of the efficacy of the product: period.

 

The efficacy of the product is pretty irrelevant as far as I can see. What is relevant is that given the nature of passive filter circuitry, there is nothing that these "cables" can do that is (1) worth $80K or (2) can't be done much more efficiently and effectively by active components inserted before the power amplifier. At best, these cables are "bling" for rich audiophools and at worst, they are pure charlatanism. Again, I would love to see what's inside that box, and I would love to see the breakdown on the manufacturing costs. If those "cables" cost more than about $5K/pair to make (and 2K is probably more like it), I'll eat my hat - if somebody will supply me with a hat (a straw skimmer, if you please! )!

[gmgraves]

9 minutes ago, CuteStudio said:

 

That's very true, even diamond encrusted iPhones, Rembrandts etc.

 

However would you mind if I pointed out that none of those pretend to do something that requires a new, hitherto unknown (and still unexplained and unproven) branch of physics?

 

 

Most hifi accessories make that surfboard look great value

https://highend-electronics.com/products/shun-mook-lp-clamp

 

 

BTW if you want to play with speaker cables then adding a ferrite ring next to the amplifier (over both wires) can sometimes help with amps that were mistakenly designed with GNFB loops (never a good idea IMO).

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/10-Pcs-Toroid-Ring-Ferrite-Cores-22-14-10MM-U3P5/282653602811

 

It reduces the RF going back in and around the amp, chances are it'll make no difference but it won't do any harm and will save you about $79,998 which is nice. You can then use this money to buy a new car, RV, a world tour, 3 years earlier retirement, house extension, your own studio, hiring the Rolling Stones to play in your living room, a box at the opera, new foundations for sub-bass horns etc.

 

So my advice is to go for the $3 ferrites if you must and save the $80k for something real. You'll thank me later   

 

Absolutely. For that kind of money, one could buy a new Alfa Giulia Quadrifoglio (505 BHP 2.9 liter Ferrari engine; 0-62 Mph (0-100Kph) in 3.8 seconds, top speed - 191 MPH, Motor Trend's Car of the Year) and still have $7000 left over for gas! On the other hand, anyone who has the money to throw away on a pair of these cables, can probably afford a fleet of Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglios too. Oh well!

[gmgraves]

6 minutes ago, mansr said:

That's a direct consequence of their design. There's no coil to produce any inductance.

 

Yes, it is. That includes no voice coils either and relatively simple cross-overs as well.

[gmgraves]

16 minutes ago, Albrecht said:

Well clearly they are not for Foolish EEs who eschew reason and science and preach their naysaying. Of course, - you wouldn't know if something is charlatanism as you're refusing to conduct any tests, - or garner any knowledge whatsoever. The best that you can say: is "i don't know" , - yet instead you choose to speculate.

 

I don't refuse to run any tests, I just don't happen to have a spare $80K at the moment to spend on obtaining a pair of these things to test. Now, if you can send me a pair, I will happily test them and return them to you when the test is finished. And publish the results in TAV. I'm sure my editor would jump at the chance to have an MIT review; especially on such an expensive product.

 

And my comments are far from idle speculation. As I said in an earlier post on this thread, I have played with MIT's "Articulation Controls" before on cheaper MIT products (only $10,000) and, yes, the do subtly change the sound of the speakers to which they are connected. However, again, I reiterate, that passive filter circuitry is extremely limited in what it can do. That's just physics, and there is nothing that passive filters between the amp and the speaker can do, that an active 1/3 octave equalizer between the preamp and amp can't do better and cheaper and with less phase distortion. If you don't choose to believe that, well, that's up to you, isn't it? 

[gmgraves]

9 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

 

what a horrible waste of money just to get an imbalance form a V-6 !!!

 

You obviously have no experience with a high-end V-6. The Alfa Flat-Cranked 2.4 and 3.0 liter V-6s from the late 1970's through the early 2000s were universally hailed as one of the great engines of all time. Most motoring journalists rated the engine right up there with the classic Ferrari V-12 (and don't forget the V-6 in the Ferrari and Fiat DINO 246 cars from the early 70's. If you want to acquaint yourself with what a modern OHC V-6 can do, arrange to test drive a 2017 or 2018 Chevy Camaro equipped with the 3.6 liter, 335 BHP DOHC V-6. It doesn't have a flat-crank like the old Alfa V-6 or the new Alfa Ferrari-built V6, but it is formidable and really sounds good accelerating briskly through the gears as well. It is smooth, rev's freely, and has a really wide, and extremely flat torque curve; putting out full power from almost idle to it's 6800 RPM red-line. Having owned a 3-liter Alfa GTV-6 for many years, I'm a real fan of well designed V-6. 

[gmgraves]

3 hours ago, CuteStudio said:

 

 

One thing I couldn't work out when I used to visit the states and rent cars is all the V6's I drove sounded great but went nowhere (impossible to wheel-spin even in the wet or on dirt), but the V8 northstar Cadillac I rented went like a train and was most amusing.

 

Have the US V6 engines finally got into line with the european V6s (which always had power even back in the 1970s with the Ford 2.8efi etc)? Do you still have feeble V6s or have they been banished?

 

BTW I know a straight 6 is better balanced and in a way sounds sweeter but in my view anything above a 4 is sonically fine with me

 

The Chevy V-6 used in the Camaro has 335 BHP and will propel the car to it's chip-limited top speed of 155 MPH and will do 0-62 MPH in less than 5 seconds. Does that sound feeble to you? Ford also has a V-6 in the Mustang, but I don't know anything about it. 

[gmgraves]

2 hours ago, sdolezalek said:

Why hasn't this group ever taken on the value of the materials used in phono cartridges?  Say like the Koetsu Coralstone Platinum?  Maybe compared to $80k spending $15k on a little platinum seems downright reasonable...

 

Good question. I always associated the high-price of some phono cartridges with the fact that cartridges such as Koetsus are hand-made by famous elves, working alone in small shops in Japan. It's certainly fine work attaching tiny diamonds to thin, fragile cantilevers made of exotic materials such as boron, carbon fiber and titanium or ruby and even diamond itself! Winding spider-web-like coils and fitting expensive, rare-earth magnets such as neodymium is labor intensive and exacting. But now I realize that not all uber-expensive cartridges are made by elfin-like craftsmen working in legendary solitude on the flanks of Mount Fujiyama. Many very pricy cartridges are made by large manufacturing concerns using highly automated processes. They might still use expensive, even rare materials, and some of these cartridges are, like many, high-end audio components made in very small numbers where the economies of scale take over as a major price factor. Still, I know that some cartridges are selected to their rarefied product status, not built to it. Grado, for instance (who's cartridges I like the sound of very much) builds several series of cartridges all of which share the same wooden body and the same basic moving-iron (variable reluctance) design. They vary in such details as cantilever material, whether or not the diamond is glued to the cantilever, or actually driven through the cantilever, or the number of coil turns and perhaps the magnet material. This might result in several different cartridge series. Within each "series" of cartridges, the various models are selected by what they call in the semiconductor business, " selective binning". I.E. from the cheapest model in a series, to the most expensive, there is really no manufacturing difference. Each cartridge, as it comes off the assembly line, is put through a rigorous series of tests. Those that perform the best out of the lot get the fanciest model name and the highest price tag, so a $1500 Grado Reference V2 cartridge and a Grado Epic Lineage Series Flagship model at $12,000 might well be the exact same cartridge (not saying this is so in this case, I'm just using it as an example. I have no idea how Grado subdivides it's various series of cartridges), the only difference being that variations in manufacturing have made a few of that series perform substantially better than others, and they are graded, and thus priced, as such.

 

Of course, we all know that a lot of high-end pricing has little or nothing to do with the product's ultimate quality, either in terms of build or sonically. Many times high-end components are astronomically priced simply because they are made in extremely low numbers and each component in that product costs the manufacturer many times what it would cost were they buying those components in the thousands instead of ones-ies and twos-ies. Other products are astronomically priced because their customers expect (and want) them to be expensive (and thus exclusive), and still other are astronomically priced because the manufacturer thinks that they can get away with it. I'm sure that these practices extend to modern cartridges as well as to other products.   

 

Of course, the use of the  word "platinum" as associated with that Koetsu cartridge, is likely merely a model name and probably has more to do with the model's hierarchy than it does with the use of the material in the actual manufacture of the cartridge. You know, like Silver indicates lower quality model than Gold, and Gold is not as high a quality product as the Platinum model. Etc. 

[gmgraves]

Just now, gmgraves said:

Never mind! Why does this forum software not allow one to delete a post started in error? I started this one accidentally because I hit  "Quote" on my last post rather than "Edit" which is what I meant to hit. The lack of the ability to back-out of a post like this seems like a major boo-boo on the part of whoever wrote this software to me! And if there is, indeed a command to retract a post before submitting, I've never been able to find it.

 

[gmgraves]

9 minutes ago, sdolezalek said:

 Yes, it took me a while to realize that about 1/3rd of the price of the high-priced Koetsu cartridges is that "exotic material" the cantilever is attached to.  Some of them are visually quite attractive such as the Blue Lace Onyx, the Coralstone, the Rhodonite, or the ultimate, the Tiger Eye.  But maybe that puts these into the category of collectors watches -- no one pretends they tell better time -- and into simple art. That's no different than exotic woods or lacquers on speaker boxes.  At least there is no one suggesting the Tiger Eye frequency response is twice as linear as that of the Onyx... 

 

Well reasoned. Yes, in Koetsu's marketing, the various cartridges seem to be defined by from what the cartridge bodies are made. It is well known that the resonant characteristics of a cartridge's body goes a long way toward determining what the cartridge sounds like. This is the philosophy behind many of the so-called "nude" or "skeletal" cartridge designs.  

 

I still see no advantage to the software not allowing one to delete a post started in error. 

[gmgraves]

3 hours ago, mansr said:

Holding down backspace will do it. Or "select all" (ctrl-a or cmd-a) followed by backspace or delete. Another way is to reload the page, click in the reply box, then click "clear editor" in the bar at the bottom of the text box.

 

Deleting a post after posting it is indeed impossible, and that's a bit silly.

 

Holding down the backspace or select-all- delete, just gets rid of the text. It still shows an empty posting.

 

I don't remember anyone saying anything about deleting a post AFTER POSTING!

[gmgraves]

10 hours ago, mansr said:

I don't understand what you're having an issue with. Once the input box is empty, you can type something else or simply ignore it. If you're looking to collapse the box back to the placeholder shown initially, just reload the page. Not that I see why an empty input box bothers you so much.

 

It's not so much that it bothers me, it's that the lack of the ability to cancel an unsent post with a button labeled: "Cancel Post" or "Delete Unsent Post" is inelegant and I'm surprised that the authors of this interface software overlooked it. Just as I'm surprised that, unlike the old CA interface, this one does not remember what you had typed if, for some reason, you have to leave the page, or the app quits unexpectedly. The old interface software would, when you went to re-post a response again after having left the page, or left the forum for some reason, ask you if you wanted to bring up that text which you had already written. Now, you just have to start all over again, or just forget it and move on.