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  1. #26
    Forum Regular Monstrous Mike's Avatar
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    [QUOTE=happy ears

    As I have noted and stated that I have found some differences with interconnects, some better some worse and at other times no differences between similar products. As well, I attempt to explain testing procedures that where used.

    Have A Great Day and enjoy the music life is to short.

    Happy Ears[/QUOTE]

    Can't wait....

  2. #27
    Forum Regular Rockwell's Avatar
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    [QUOTE=bturk667]
    Quote Originally Posted by happy ears
    It would appear that there is two distant views about cables. Those that say there are differences and those that say there are no differences.
    I have heard the differences that cables made to my system, Period!
    For those who think it's audio bull****, myth, or hyperbole, who cares! For those who say that my hearing is biased, like your belief that cables don't make a diffenernce isn't biased, I could give a rat's ass! Those who say that my testing was flawed, big flippin' deal! I'm not here to make a beliver out of anybody, unlike you! I say let your ears, biased as they are to some, make the decision for you. Again, let your ears guide you to audio nirvana!!!
    Then what are you doing here, preaching?
    "You two are a regular ol' Three Musketeers."

  3. #28
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    Exactly!

    [QUOTE=happy ears]It would appear that there is two distant views about cables. Those that say there are differences and those that say there are no differences.
    I have heard the differences that cables made to my system, Period!
    For those who think it's audio bull****, myth, or hyperbole, who cares! For those who say that my hearing is biased, like your belief that cables don't make a diffenernce isn't biased, I could give a rat's ass! Those who say that my testing was flawed, big flippin' deal! I'm not here to make a beliver out of anybody, unlike you! I say let your ears, biased as they are to some, make the decision for you. Again, let your ears guide you to audio nirvana!!!

  4. #29
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    Quote Originally Posted by Rockwell
    Then what are you doing here, preaching?
    Actually, replying to a post, how about you?

  5. #30
    Forum Regular Rockwell's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by bturk667
    Actually, replying to a post, how about you?

    Oh, I've always been here. But, generally speaking, why are you here posting if you dont care what we think? Someone proselytizing isn't someone without an agenda.
    "You two are a regular ol' Three Musketeers."

  6. #31
    DIY Dude poneal's Avatar
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    If it makes ne one feel better, I use rat shack cables too.

  7. #32
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    Rat Shack eh

    Nothing wrong with Radio Shack. Years ago they sold a 65watt per channel integrated amplifier that I thought was a great deal for the money. Although people laughed at me, I would have bought it if I needed it. My first receiver was a rat shack but I was disappointed with it as it had a built in loudness control that could not be defeated. Oh well can’t win the all.

    Still given a choice and the right location I would operate one of their chains.

    Have A Great Day

  8. #33
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    Quote Originally Posted by spacedeckman
    As for the bagging on Jon Risch, he has a right to express what he finds that works for him. Most of his projects are pretty inexpensive, and if they make someone happier with their system, great. I also don't get the personal attacks against him. I see him as a great person to get other people experimenting. Experimentation leads to more interest which only benefits the audio industry and gets people to get their hands dirty and try other things. That not only benefits the industry, it benefits humanity as a whole. People should learn how to do some things for themselves, we as a society are forgetting that. How showing how he has done some things that worked for him and showing other people how to do them is bad is beyond me. I have posted in the past standing up for him and will continue to do so however infrequently I stop by.
    .
    I agree with you on many points..I believe all should be able to work with hands, making things, fixing things..Knowing how it all works..

    I agree that JR has the right to express his opinions as to what works for him.

    And, I have praised him here and elsewhere for his diy stuff (for the effort towards diy, without commenting on whether it works or not).

    I will not, however, sit idly by when he tells someone they do not know what they are talking about..the last time I saw that, just before Tony started the thread here, JR had just lambasted Tony for his "stupidity" (Note, my words there..JR carefully avoids such blatent outbursts) in his understanding of how wires actually work.

    Lets see...how did it go? something along these lines...the electrons don't just travel the wire..they curve this way and that..they respond to vibrations, subtle as they are..they are affected by micro-contact tunneling..there are millions upon millions of wire to wire contacts that make and break..the current dives from one wire to another constantly..there are thousands of grain boundary collisions that may be audible..Piezo generated electricity is mucking up the black background.. motor generator effects cause the electrons to sway..

    And, if you cannot hear a difference...it is because your system lacks the resolving power to be able to hear it..

    And, if you do not believe this..you are a naysayer..

    All of my attempts to discuss electron-lattice phonon interaction, /e/m based skin theory, B-dot error generation, order of magnitude based energy calculations (both piezo and "motor"), are dissed...obviously I lack the intelligence to understand what is really going on in the wires.

    Lack of understanding is not a crime..using one's position to forward one's agenda, while hiding under a censorship "blanket"..should be exposed for what it is..

    "switch to moderator mode"

    Space: perhaps when you learn what is really going on in the wires, when you decide to open your mind to the possibilities, then we will be able to have an intelligent conversation..For now, it is clear to me that you are a troll, you've learned nothing, and this is a warning to you that this kind of behaviour will not be tolerated. If you continue along these lines, you will be banned from this forum..

    Cheers, John

    PS..if you take any offense to what was stated after "switch to moderator mode", I willl have to smack you through the internet..I work for the government, we can do that...

    Seriously, that was but a small taste of what he does..

  9. #34
    Linear Guy
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    spacedeckman has is right

    Life is too short. thats my technical evaluation of cables. Before we were preoccupied with
    cables, we enjoyed music. The same folks that critize cables that cost more than 10 bucks are the same ones that swear by $5,000 CD players. Some of the best sounding systems I have ever owned sounded that way because I had decent gear and wasn't obsessive /compulsive. They also sounded better when I was out of money to upgrade them, figure that out Sigmund. People buy what they will and are thrilled with it. Expensive calbes are no more of a canard than practically anything else where the possibility of new thrills is the game and not the score.

    Quote Originally Posted by spacedeckman
    Everybody seems to get so defensive over this topic. In the big scheme of things, would someone please care to explain to me what the big deal is? If I go out and buy a $1k pair of interconnects, and am happy with my purchase, who's business is it anyway.....MINE!!! If I have the money to spend, I can spend it any way I like. If I think that it makes an improvement in my system through whatever comparison method I choose to use, flawed or not, if it makes me happy, it has done it's job. If I recommend that others TRY it and they like it through their flawed comparison methods and have the money to spend, that is also not an invalid choice. If they decide NOT to purchase that product, THAT is also a valid choice.

    As for the bagging on Jon Risch, he has a right to express what he finds that works for him. Most of his projects are pretty inexpensive, and if they make someone happier with their system, great. I also don't get the personal attacks against him. I see him as a great person to get other people experimenting. Experimentation leads to more interest which only benefits the audio industry and gets people to get their hands dirty and try other things. That not only benefits the industry, it benefits humanity as a whole. People should learn how to do some things for themselves, we as a society are forgetting that. How showing how he has done some things that worked for him and showing other people how to do them is bad is beyond me. I have posted in the past standing up for him and will continue to do so however infrequently I stop by.

    Yes, I have experimented with cables. I have rolled some of my own (my system is wired with homebrew CAT5E interconnect) some of which were dismal failures, the CAT5E stuff works very well. I have compared it to cheap and expensive cables and always seem to gravitate to the CAT5. My boss has a nice little system in his office and I'll bring something in every now and then and we will utilize the dual outputs on his CD player and A/B between them. I have heard stuff that was better in our probably very flawed but useful method, but it tends to be really expensive (we have a group of audiophile people/friends that tend to bring things around) and I'm really cheap. That said, I will admit to having bought some 2nd hand Kimber 4TC speaker wire a couple of months ago. Swapped it in, "deluded" myself into thinking it made my system better but wasn't worth the extra money, and eventually ended up with it anyway. I'm happy, whatzitooya?

    Now, do cable companies probably exaggerate the differences from buying their products? Don't even go there, that is the nature of advertising in any product category. Do they profit from the sale of cables...I sure hope so, companies have to profit to survive, the not too long past .com implosion was driven by companies that could never deliver a profit decades out, but investors wanted to hitch a ride on the next "big" thing. The result has been nearly 4 years of economic upheaval precipitated in large part from "the new economy" that didn't really exist, nor could it. Companies build things that people want to buy that they feel will add pleasure to their lives. Does anybody really need a Rolex? Does my wife need a $2500 diamond ring? Jewelry is at least a big of a waste as high end cables, but is it wrong to buy it? The same could be said for many things.

    I've already wasted too much time on this topic for my tastes. Suffice it to say: Try it, like it, do it; otherwise, don't.

  10. #35
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    Wow--it still goes on

    I haven't had a chance to visit AR for quite some time, but it seems the Cable Wars still endure. Mtry, Skeptic, MM, keep fighting the good fight! When I got into higher end audio about 10 years ago, it would have been easy to get sucked into the "your system will sound better" arguement; reading rational posts at AR probably saved me lots of $$$ (which I spent on music).

  11. #36
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    Yep!

    [QUOTE=kapsley
    reading rational posts at AR probably saved me lots of $$$ (which I spent on music).[/QUOTE]

    Nothing wrong with that. However, some folks prefer to listen and experiment rather than rely on written posts. Often, those people conclude that saving money on cables can mean losing some of the music in the process.

  12. #37
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    Wouldn't $500 in room treatments produce better results than $500 in cables?

  13. #38
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    Quote Originally Posted by Beckman
    Wouldn't $500 in room treatments produce better results than $500 in cables?
    Possibly, depending on the room problems. My listening room was my first upgrade several years ago. Speakers and room acoustics always come first. So at this point, further room treatments would do less than a cable upgrade, and may degrade performance by making the room too dead.

  14. #39
    Music Junkie E-Stat's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Beckman
    Wouldn't $500 in room treatments produce better results than $500 in cables?
    I found different benefits for each solution with my system. If one is forced to choose only one or the other, then I believe it boils down to preferences.

    Better cables produced a blacker background resulting in higher resolution in my system, especially low level passages found in my classical favorites. The bass traps, room lenses, and sound panels primarily address bass node issues and control the reflectivity of my bipolar stats. Not to mention placing the speakers seven feet out from the back wall. Madonna's bass is cleaner and more extended. Voices are more focused.

    Like musicoverall, I'm fortunate in that I utilize both. All of my treatments are DIY. I use 8 traps placed in the corners and the midpoints of the walls. Room lenses flank the speakers at the first reflection points and sound panels are found behind them. I'm still waiting for my mother -in-law's help for sewing the matching grey spandex for the traps.



    rw

  15. #40
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    Quote Originally Posted by E-Stat



    rw
    Holy #%$*, Nice setup

  16. #41
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    I second that!

    Gotta love those VTL's! How are the speakers working out for you?

    Your setup (not the gear itself) looks a lot like mine. And is that the Souther arm that goes some of the upper-level Clearaudio tables?

    Sheesh! It's pictures like this that serve as a painful reminder that I'm just a beginner!

  17. #42
    Music Junkie E-Stat's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by musicoverall
    Gotta love those VTL's! How are the speakers working out for you?
    After hearing one of her favorites, the Saint Saens Organ Symphony, my wife concluded "They're not there". And they're not. Truly the U-1s possess a purity I have not heard matched. I am hearing my musical collection all over again. After four years, I am still very fond of the VTL amps. Their midrange is to die for.

    As an aside, Harry Pearson was in town the weekend before last and spent Saturday listening to them. Naturally, he liked the sound especially since I first heard both the GamuT CDP and VTL amps on his system. As a power listener, he tells me I need bigger amps! (the MB 450s already put out around 400 watts at that load). While I would love to have a pair of Siegfrieds or Wotans, they are still able to play deceptively loud - without really sounding loud. I realize that sounds paradoxical, but they seem unusual in that regard. We also sampled three of Cooledge's Kimber Palladian power cords vs. my JPS Labs cords. While I'm not going to rush out and spend $3k on them, they did offer subtle improvements in the manner of harmonic integrity and focus to these ears.

    Quote Originally Posted by musicoverall
    Your setup (not the gear itself) looks a lot like mine. And is that the Souther arm that goes some of the upper-level Clearaudio tables?
    Yes. It is an original Souther I purchased back in '84 which I later updated to the TQ-1. The "basic" Clearaudio TQ-1 contains a number of subtle improvements over Lou's design.



    The ultimate expression of that arm design is the Master Reference, a truly gorgeous work. Pic available if you're interested.

    rw

  18. #43
    Music Junkie E-Stat's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Beckman
    Holy #%$*, Nice setup
    Thanks. Your point is well taken concerning room treatments. While I have not always used quite as many in the past, I was using wall treatments twenty some years ago. I cannot understate their value. Here are some *really* basic DIY panels prior to hanging circa '82:



    I acknowledge that there are a number of audiophiles who do not share that appreciation and tend to throw more hardware at the problem.

    rw

  19. #44
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    Quote Originally Posted by E-Stat
    After hearing one of her favorites, the Saint Saens Organ Symphony, my wife concluded "They're not there". And they're not.
    rw
    That's great! As long as I'm sitting within a particular (and unfortunately, smaller than I'd like) radius in my room, my Maggie's absolutely disappear as well. I don't think I really understood the term "soundstage" until I got them.

    I'm still using the ASL Hurricanes which mate well with the 20.1's, although slightly less well to my ears than with the 3.6's.

  20. #45
    Music Junkie E-Stat's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by musicoverall
    I'm still using the ASL Hurricanes which mate well with the 20.1's, although slightly less well to my ears than with the 3.6's.
    Very nice indeed. As I have probably mentioned before, the 20.1s were a close second choice for me. I've heard the Hurricanes and am sure they work fine. Harry is presently using four of them with his Nolas.

    Perhaps you may not be getting the last word in revealing the speaker's ultimate bass response - I heard them driven by a pair of Joule Electra Rite-of-Passage OTL amps. At the time, that was the best bass response I had ever heard from a planar (the U-1s have similar extension).

    rw

  21. #46
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    Quote Originally Posted by E-Stat
    Very nice indeed. As I have probably mentioned before, the 20.1s were a close second choice for me. I've heard the Hurricanes and am sure they work fine. Harry is presently using four of them with his Nolas.

    Perhaps you may not be getting the last word in revealing the speaker's ultimate bass response - I heard them driven by a pair of Joule Electra Rite-of-Passage OTL amps. At the time, that was the best bass response I had ever heard from a planar (the U-1s have similar extension).

    rw
    I heard them with the mighty Wotans but I'm not able to get into those.

  22. #47
    Forum Regular hermanv's Avatar
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    Room treatment vs cables

    Let me start by saying that I think both room treatment and cables are important pieces to get the most out of a system. Let me also state that those qualities normally refered to as etch, hardness, glare and grain are the ones that I strive hard to reduce and that at least for me seem to be quite cable dependent.

    So the question about cables (for those that believe) is; are the improvements additive or subtractive. What I mean is do poor cables add harsness to the music or do good cables filter it out? Maybe all cables add; some more and some less or conversely maybe all cables filter; some more and some less. (I am an ee by profession my proffesional knowledge and math tell me none of this can possibly be true, my ears tell me quite differently)

    The question about adding or subtracting is important because no amount of room treatment can remove added noise, although it can certainly minimze the apparent amount.

    Also a comment about using cables as tone controls. I don't see how one can help oneself from doing exactly this. You try an evaluating sample of cable in your system, you think it makes it better or maybe you think it makes it worse. You might be dulling an overbright up or downstream component or peaking an piece of equipment with poor impulse response. It seems to be asking quite a lot to ask someone to purchase a cable that makes an already too bright system brighter yet or visa versa.

    I buy cables that improve the sound of the system I have. I take the risk that the cable might not be the best choice for some future system but again I see no way around this problem. It would seem I am most unlikely to buy a cable that makes the current system sound less enjoyable.

    All non belivers please save your time and mine and move on, you can not unconvince me, I am caught up in the thrall.

  23. #48
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    Quote Originally Posted by hermanv

    So the question about cables (for those that believe) is; are the improvements additive or subtractive. What I mean is do poor cables add harsness to the music or do good cables filter it out?
    12 AWG zip cord does not audibly alter the signal passing through it so I think it would have to be the later. That is all cables could do (I am a naysayer, but not here to argue.) is filter and change the frequency response of the system.

  24. #49
    Music Junkie E-Stat's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by hermanv
    What I mean is do poor cables add harsness to the music or do good cables filter it out?
    Potentially both in my experience. Zip cord loses focus and natural ambience found with better recordings. Shielded cables can filter RF which adds a slight high frequency "tizz" to the sound.

    The best cables I've heard initially sound "dark" as though they are rolled off at the top. Yet, you can clearly hear the harmonics of a triangle, for example.

    rrw

  25. #50
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    Quote Originally Posted by hermanv
    So the question about cables (for those that believe) is; are the improvements additive or subtractive. What I mean is do poor cables add harsness to the music or do good cables filter it out? Maybe all cables add; some more and some less or conversely maybe all cables filter; some more and some less. (I am an ee by profession my proffesional knowledge and math tell me none of this can possibly be true, my ears tell me quite differently)
    .
    Congratulations on retaining an open mind on cables. It seems too many of your professional brethren talk themselves out of improving their system with higher definition cables because their training has convinced them it cannot happen.

    I'm not sure if the improvements in cabling are additive or subtractive but the benefits I've found are in more precise detail and better imaging/soundstaging with better cables. Zip cord sounds confused and stifled. It definitely loses some information retrieval. So perhaps it subtracts from a recordings and a systems natural detail.

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