hermanv - regarding: "Speaker cable blind listening tests"

[hermanv]

And I am also curious as to why it seems so important that I should agree with you. Your posts suggest that you seem pleased with your "wire revelations", so why is it important that I should agree with you?.

I don't ask you to agree that wires have a sound, I ask you repeatedly to allow people to listen and then decide for themselves.

You post that you are an EE, i.e. an Electrical Engineer. In what company, capacity and/or industry?

The innuendo is that I'm lying because I disagree with you? Out of school I worked for Gianinni Controls, my division designed TV studio monitors and monitors for NASA. Next Teledyne; Cameras for NASA and the AEC, In the early 70's I switched to telephony, designing mostly voice interfaces for telephones. I designed the analog voice circuits for all the FAA regional Air Traffic Control centers, currently retired, my last employer was Nokia. I do not now and never have worked for any "high end" audio industry.

Skeptic’s intentions were at least honest.

Wow, you are some piece of work.

[Mash]

So I like to know whom I am dealing with. Nothing wrong with that. You are the one who engages in innuendo.

Re your "I don't ask you to agree that wires have a sound, I ask you repeatedly to allow people to listen and then decide for themselves."

If you are entitled to push wire theology, dude, then I am equally entitled to point out that wire theology is a waste of time.

Since I am neither in any position to prohibit any people from fiddling with their wires nor in the least motivated to do so if I could, your comment " I ask you repeatedly to allow people to listen and then decide for themselves." really makes no sense at all.

I retired from GE. I made it out the door with full benefits.

I had key parts of the GE90, which is still around.

I had aircooled generators for Power Gen. I sent the very first "generator kit" to a customer's site, with the full cooperation of GE Field Service people who would assemble it, because the bridges the generator had to traverse had load limits equal to slightly more than 1/2 the generator's assembled weight, never mind what the generator was carried on.

Putting generators into a country where the power grid frequency continually floats up and down is exciting.

I changed the oil vapor elimination system for an aircooled generator line because the oil vapor elimination system vendor was supplying butyl rubber sleeves when the spec clearly designated nitrile rubber sleeves, and then the vendor failed to respond to my phone calls when I had 200 customers with their generators down as a result of collapsed butyl rubber sleeves. So I had that vendor "designed out" and the cost of EACH oil vapor elimination system was thereby reduced $6000. We were selling 40 of those generators a year so we had a real cash savings of $240,000 a year. By now, those savings add up to $2,640,000.

I had numerous key responsibilities for the 9H & 7H steam cooled turbines, you know, the ones with steam cooled first and second stage turbine blades. The H units are way cool, and those turbines only weighed about 900,000 pounds. The operational units are running very well.

I also had a neat little simple-cycle 108MW unit that offered 50% efficiency. This jewel was designed as a powerplant intended to be built in 4 months instead of the standard two years. It turned out the first plant was actually built in three months.

Then there was that tunable propeller retention, and there were some other fun things, like the project where, in the process of redesigning the inside of a war machine I got to learn about kinetic energy guns and chobham armour. Fun stuff. There is lots more if I thought about it.

This debate is, I am afraid, much less important to me than completing the finishing touches on our new dock. I decided it was time for a dock upgrade when I was told that my new boatlift could be locked, which would prevent thieves from lowering the lift and stealing our bigblock speedboat. Maybe next I will spring for an even faster boat- who knows. It's "enjoy life now or never" time.

Have fun, herm, and stop being so uptight. Life is short enough. Unlax, dude.

[Mash]

You've had enough of this nonsense? OK.

I am sure your impressive last effort gave you great pleasure in your time well spent. A lot of time, I would guess. You state that we all have opinions, it is just that you seem unwilling to abide my opinions and the reasons I have arrived at them. But I should abide yours. Fair enough.

Unfortunately, opinions and/or results without the reasons and stories that built them are rather flat and uninteresting.

Well, do enjoy your hobby. Maybe it is best that we all agree with you in every detail, so that your life will be happier. [But I will still feel that I am entitled to disagree. Even if you feel that I am not entitled to disagree.]

So.... maybe this is best:

I agree with hermanv and StevenSurprenant in every way.

OK?

[StevenSurprenant]

You've had enough of this nonsense? OK.

I am sure your impressive last effort gave you great pleasure in your time well spent. A lot of time, I would guess. You state that we all have opinions, it is just that you seem unwilling to abide my opinions and the reasons I have arrived at them. But I should abide yours. Fair enough.

Unfortunately, opinions and/or results without the reasons and stories that built them are rather flat and uninteresting.

Well, do enjoy your hobby. Maybe it is best that we all agree with you in every detail, so that your life will be happier. [But I will still feel that I am entitled to disagree. Even if you feel that I am not entitled to disagree.]

So.... maybe this is best:

I agree with hermanv and StevenSurprenant in every way.

OK?

LOL!

I posted this before your last reply to Herman.

I'm glad it's over.

I love disagreement as long as it's constructive. That thread was not.

I think that at this point we should do the, "You da man" -- No, "You da man" thingy.

Actually I gave your posts some thought as to whether people would have a longer lasting audio memory of a live sound versus listening to an audio setup. It was intriguing.

In the end, I concluded that there was no difference as long as the interest level was at the same level during each event. Still made me think! So something good came from this.

No need to be condescending, I think we got over that.

Enjoy your retirement!

[Mash]

Solder clamped multi-strand Cu wires with soft electronic solder before you clamp them? Absolutely! This is always better than clamping bare wires. A rather hostile poster attacked me for making the above point here in 1996 or 1997. [That exchange may be in the archives although these forums had a different appearance then.] Then a poster who had never posted before told us he had an electronics company and that this question was important to them, so he had one of his techs make two wired connections, one joint simply clamped bare multi-strand Cu wire and one clamped multi-strand Cu wires tinned with soft electronic solder . Then they tested the two joints, and the joint formed by clamping multi-strand Cu wires tinned with soft electronic solder was clearly superior. He scored the argument Mash - 1, XXXX - 0.

W/r/t electronics, one would hope the electronics are properly assembled and that no further soldering is needed. If remedial soldering makes any difference then something was originally amiss.

W/r/t the audibility of wires, this is a religeous discussion with ony two permissible results: If you should conduct a listening test and you hear a difference you are then one of the annointed; and if you conduct a listening test and you can not discern any differences, well, YOU simply have a problem. Spend mony on wires as you wish.... I suspect that many here will one day wish they still had the money they have spent on wires.....

[Mash]

First, I would note that solder is a combination of lead and tin, and a higher percentage of lead produces a 'softer' solder. Ever since the first Henry had Forded Dearborn, auto batteries have featured lead binding posts to which heavy wires are attached using lead clamps tightened with a steel nut & bolt. This combination has worked splendidly for about a century now, except for some individuals who from time to time feel that if making the clamping bolt snug was ‘good’, tightening the bejabbers out of the clamping bolt was even better. But all that happened was that the lead clamp would relax (creep) into uselessness before their very eyes. The solution then was to simply replace the lead clamp.

Likewise, the cast iron brake rotors on your car can be ruined if the wheel lug nuts are over tightened with an impact wrench by hasty “tire jockeys”, instead of the wheel lug nuts being properly tightened with a torque wrench set to the proper torque. The combination of excessive clamping tension on the rotor from the wheel lug nut studs combined with the heat generated during braking causes the cast iron rotor to creep and distort. The result is a poorly functioning brake, which can only be repaired by replacing the distorted brake rotor.

My point is that if you apply enough pressure or tension combined with enough temperature you can make any metal creep, and creep is non-conservative, i.e. it is irreversible.

This leads me to think that your techs were over-tightening those tinned wire compression joints. There could be other or additional root causes but excessive tightening is where I would start.

I believe your key question would be: Could the use of non-tinned Cu wire allow the formation of oxides on the Cu wire which then could then render those wire connections unreliable? This could be an even bigger problem, I would think, than the need to retighten some connections.

[Gab]

cables is my last priority because its too subtle , changing xo components makes more difference,

Personaly i think the best improvement, ( i would like to get feed back from people who tried this) is to solder properly all the cables, many connections vibrate with the current and the sound in the room making inducing waves in the sound: solder evrything and sound treatment to room and vibration isolation of components has a small impact on sound. Try solder ( do not blame me, i am not responsible for destroying your expensive furutech ) if you have cheap enough components only to not degrate , and listen to the high pitch sounds, there was a very nice difference when i tried it, but it can be only my imagination

[Gerard]

Mash, wrt to electronics, I dunno about the hi-end hand built type, but the mass produced automated production line stuff usually go through the reflow oven / liquid solder bath on a conveyor. There is no way of telling if each and every single component is well soldered on to the pcb here. Following which, the finished pcb goes to an automated tester, that powers up the unit under test (uut) which sits on a jig. Pins on this jig feedbacks voltage / data and if all is within manufacturer's tolerance, the pcb is encased ready for sale. You buy it and take it home, but will it give of it's best ? Usually not. Some components may not be well soldered, but electrons will still flow, and you won't know what you missed unless you compare it with an identical model, which had remedial solder job done for every single component. Point is, automation is never 100% perfect. You gotta live with it. Unless, if you are into DIY, but that's out of topic here.
Regards,
Gerard

[O'Shag]

I'm as guilty as most for being suckered in to expensive cables. Cables can and do sound different. The question is, how much of a difference? The answer is; not much. Audiophiles, or middle-aged men with nothing better to do, are a perfect target as the sucker brigade. I have spent probably $6k on cables for my system, and quite frankly, I now have realized or admitted to myself that it was an utterly stupid waste of money. This level of crackpottery puts us, as a consumer group, way out on the lunatic fringe. As always, the sensible and right approach is to pick the middle ground. You can by a pair of interconnects for $150-$250 that will sound as good as any $7,500 interconnect. If there are any differences they will be small and you will have to listen hard for them. The sucker will spend the $7,500. The smart one will buy the $150-$250 interconnects. If you want to spend lots on audio, then at least spend it on components and speakers where there is a modecum of cost to value ratio.

I have a pair of speakers that I have yet to hear bested (in fact they've bested most everything I've heard, and I've heard many of the best). They are wired throughout with professional studio-grade ultra pure oxygen free copper - not silver (although siver is reputed to be the best conductor) or some other weird hyper-expensive alloy. In any concert you've attended, ever, they use sensible tour-grade UPOFC for their cabling. Have you ever heard JBL Hartsfields or 4350 studio monitors?. These are detail machines. As compared to the ultra pure copper cables of today, they use what could be considered lamp cord. In other words, all this hyper-expensive esoteric stuff (and nonsense) is un-neccessary to acheive high performance and if you think otherwise, then you must know something the best sound engineers in the world don't. Unless you want to burn money, don't throw it away on hyper-expensive cables.

[E-Stat]

You can by a pair of interconnects for $150 that will sound as good as any $7,500 interconnect. If there are any differences they will be small and you will have to listen hard for them

I'll vote for the second statement's correction to the first. Diminishing returns is found with all sorts of goods. The carbon fiber brake option for the Ferrari Modena runs slightly over $20k. Don't the standard Brembos stop well enough? Not for some.

In any concert you've attended, ever, they use sensible tour-grade UPOFC for their cabling. All this hyper expensive stuff is un-neccessary and if you think otherwise, then you must know something the best sound engineers in the world don't.

Two comments. Actually, as for the concerts I go to most frequently, they don't use any cabling. For that matter, they don't use microphones, mixers, compressors, limiters, reverbs, fuzz boxes, exciters, maximizers, equalizers, crossovers, faders, sliders, amplifiers or speakers either. I hear the musicians playing their instruments. As for those involving sound reinforcement, I have yet to hear any one, including big budget gigs like Madonna's, that don't sound simply dreadful.

rw

[hermanv]

I'm as guilty as most for being suckered in to expensive cables. Cables can and do sound different. The question is, how much of a difference? The answer is; not much. Audiophiles, or middle-aged men with nothing better to do, are a perfect target as the sucker brigade. I have spent probably $6k on cables for my system, and quite frankly, I now have realized or admitted to myself that it was an utterly stupid waste of money. This level of crackpottery puts us, as a consumer group, way out on the lunatic fringe. As always, the sensible and right approach is to pick the middle ground. You can by a pair of interconnects for $150-$250 that will sound as good as any $7,500 interconnect. If there are any differences they will be small and you will have to listen hard for them. The sucker will spend the $7,500. The smart one will buy the $150-$250 interconnects. If you want to spend lots on audio, then at least spend it on components and speakers where there is a modecum of cost to value ratio..

The diminishing returns equation is hard at work here. I personally would add that money to the electronics (if I had that kind of money). Still if one is fabulously wealthy, who's to say where your money should go. Still I agree, $7,000 is straining credulity.

I have a pair of speakers that I have yet to hear bested (in fact they've bested most everything I've heard, and I've heard many of the best). They are wired throughout with professional studio-grade ultra pure oxygen free copper - not silver (although siver is reputed to be the best conductor) or some other weird hyper-expensive alloy. In any concert you've attended, ever, they use sensible tour-grade UPOFC for their cabling. Have you ever heard JBL Hartsfields or 4350 studio monitors?. These are detail machines. As compared to the ultra pure copper cables of today, they use what could be considered lamp cord. In other words, all this hyper-expensive esoteric stuff (and nonsense) is un-neccessary to acheive high performance and if you think otherwise, then you must know something the best sound engineers in the world don't. Unless you want to burn money, don't throw it away on hyper-expensive cables.

Professional audio speakers aren't that good, most are made to cover a small frequency range that is optimized for a given instrument (guitar or bass amp speakers for example). Others are designed mainly to play very loud. I have met people who though they must be good speakers, but most are peaky (not flat vs frequency). You said it, some are detail machines others are bass pumps, not even a pretense at accurate. They can usually play loud with little compression, but probably will have quite poor dynamic range. Normally professional speakers are used in banks of many, often different speakers with many cables, nothing like a right/left pair for home stereo. Now about professional cables, they tend to be very long and designed to be handled by gorillas (otherwise known as stage hands). Expensive wire makes little sense in that application.

There are recording studios do in fact use exotic wires, both speaker and interconnect.

[E-Stat]

Still I agree, $7,000 is straining credulity.

Absolutely, yet I have an audio reviewer friend who is currently listening to the Nordost Odin cables which fall into that ridiculous price range. He claims there is a difference, but it is hard to imagine how they are better than the already excellent Valhallas. The perfect match for your $400k system!

rw

[Feanor]

I'm as guilty as most for being suckered in to expensive cables. Cables can and do sound different. The question is, how much of a difference? The answer is; not much. Audiophiles, or middle-aged men with nothing better to do, are a perfect target as the sucker brigade. I have spent probably $6k on cables for my system, and quite frankly, I now have realized or admitted to myself that it was an utterly stupid waste of money. This level of crackpottery puts us, as a consumer group, way out on the lunatic fringe. As always, the sensible and right approach is to pick the middle ground. You can by a pair of interconnects for $150-$250 that will sound as good as any $7,500 interconnect. If there are any differences they will be small and you will have to listen hard for them. The sucker will spend the $7,500. The smart one will buy the $150-$250 interconnects. If you want to spend lots on audio, then at least spend it on components and speakers where there is a modecum of cost to value ratio.

I have a pair of speakers that I have yet to hear bested (in fact they've bested most everything I've heard, and I've heard many of the best). They are wired throughout with professional studio-grade ultra pure oxygen free copper - not silver (although siver is reputed to be the best conductor) or some other weird hyper-expensive alloy. In any concert you've attended, ever, they use sensible tour-grade UPOFC for their cabling. Have you ever heard JBL Hartsfields or 4350 studio monitors?. These are detail machines. As compared to the ultra pure copper cables of today, they use what could be considered lamp cord. In other words, all this hyper-expensive esoteric stuff (and nonsense) is un-neccessary to acheive high performance and if you think otherwise, then you must know something the best sound engineers in the world don't. Unless you want to burn money, don't throw it away on hyper-expensive cables.

I definitely agree that cable and (especially) interconnect differences are small. Granted, for a poor person like me, $150-$250 interconnects are on the high end my scale. (My mid-range is Blue Jeans and my low-end are Parts Express house brand.)

On the other hand $7500 is mid-range for some people. One can spend upwards of $35,000 for, say, Transparent Opus speaker cables. You've got to be crazy-rich to justify that.