here is a very good page on expensive cables. check it out.

disneyjoe7

Then you have short changed your self with Walmart Wire.

killerb

no, i just dont buy wire that i could have purchased a walmart with.

TroyD

Fine, we know where everyone stands.....let's beat another dead horse.

BDT

killerb

your right, im out.

MSALLA

TroyD wrote:

Fine, we know where everyone stands.....let's beat another dead horse.

BDT

Do you think better wire would leave deeper cuts in the horse?:D

So I'm not just posting a wise **** comment, I do buy decent IC's (I have no preference to any brand) but I like to make my own speaker wire. I think they sound good and I have fun building them. I do use good 12ga shielded wire and banana clips.

unc2701

F1nut wrote:

Well there unc, allow me......... First, it's lose, not loose. Second, I never "lose" my ****.

Ahhh, the typo police. The last refuge of the message board warrior. You're absolutly right, I mean to say "lose his ****"... but did you stop to consider that "loose his ****" could refer to the explosive spew of written diarrhea we can expect everytime cables come up?

F1nut wrote:

Anyway, I find a lot of the ignorant and misinformed posts entertaining, to say the least. Those that I don't find entertaining, I find to be somewhat sad. I may choose to voice my opinon on some of these matters simply because I enjoy being the voice of the counterpoint view. It's fun and a form of mental exercise, if you will.

Seriously, if you're gonna throw down the gauntlet of proof asking for photos of a guy's wife with $500 cables, you can't play it off like this whole cable thing is just a "mental exercise" to you.

I dunno, maybe you could convince me otherwise by finding a cable debate thread with more than about 10 posts where you don't participate. Or maybe one where you have something more to offer than "cables matter, anyone who thinks otherwise is wrong." If that's your idea of a mental exercise, you need to work out more.

There are a lot of reasons why cable do matter and a lot of entry points for newbies to hear this for themselves. Please, pick up your game, put those 36 years of audio experience to good use.

RuSsMaN

Damn.

Strong Bad

Come on Jesse...post it man....post it. You know what I mean.

unc2701

And here comes the STFU picture... Thanks. :rolleyes:

MSALLA

F1nut did leave this link http://www.mitcables.com/publications.asp on another post that I asked about. It's very informative. I don't buy when people just say anything is better just because. This link did have some real information on it.

F1nut

unc2701 wrote:

Ahhh, the typo police. The last refuge of the message board warrior. You're absolutly right, I mean to say "lose his ****"... but did you stop to consider that "loose his ****" could refer to the explosive spew of written diarrhea we can expect everytime cables come up?

Actually, I kinda thought you had the corner on written diarrhea.

unc2701 wrote:

Seriously, if you're gonna throw down the gauntlet of proof asking for photos of a guy's wife with $500 cables, you can't play it off like this whole cable thing is just a "mental exercise" to you.

You missed that one entirely. However, DisneyJoe got it.

unc2701 wrote:

I dunno, maybe you could convince me otherwise by finding a cable debate thread with more than about 10 posts where you don't participate. Or maybe one where you have something more to offer than "cables matter, anyone who thinks otherwise is wrong." If that's your idea of a mental exercise, you need to work out more.

I'm not here to convince YOU of anything, why should I be? :rolleyes:

unc2701 wrote:

There are a lot of reasons why cable do matter and a lot of entry points for newbies to hear this for themselves. Please, pick up your game, put those 36 years of audio experience to good use.

Nothing wrong with my game, you wish you could keep up. Do your homework before opening your mouth, I'm sure I have at least one post in here detailing the differences in cables.

NEXT!

wingnut4772

I have A/B'd my Cobalt Cables with my DH Labs Air Matrix and the difference is BIG. There is no doubt about it that the Dh Labs have tighter bass and better articulation, spacing and soundstage. I am a believer from experience but if I had not tried several different cables I could see how I would be skeptical.

PolkThug

wingnut4772 wrote:

I have A/B'd my Cobalt Cables with my DH Labs Air Matrix and the difference is BIG. There is no doubt about it that the Dh Labs have tighter bass and better articulation, spacing and soundstage. I am a believer from experience but if I had not tried several different cables I could see how I would be skeptical.

Was it a blind test?

exalted512

Why not set up "CABLES: DOES IT MATTER?" test at the next polk fest?

I've never been there, but do they have a theater room with seating that a bunch of ppl can sit down ?

If so, I'm sure they have some high quality cables there and then try a pair of nice $50-75 cables and see if the people in the room can tell the difference...

I think that would pretty much shut everyone up and end this argument thats been going on ever since i first registered on this forum 5 years ago
-Cody

wingnut4772

PolkThug wrote:

Was it a blind test?

No. But the difference was not subtle.

TroyD

I hear a difference. I also could care less if others don't.

Nothing will shut people up on this issue. My attitude in regards to Polkfest has been (at the ones I've hosted) that I'm not there to change anyone's mind in regards to cable and wire nor is that the purpose of Polkfest.

I also think that in an HT setting, the differences are harder to discern for a number of reasons. One being too many things to pay attention to. Two, HT gear is, generally speaking, lower fidelity gear and therefore less of a convincing demo for that sort of thing.

Again, if you believe that everything that is audible must have a corresponding measurment, than it's unlikely that anything will change your mind.

BDT

madmax

"I have a catalog in front of me and I see real hot specials. How does $175 for a power cord sound? Or even $649? No way those are cheap… let us look at one for $1,995.00 yeah nearly two grand for a dumb power cable that this company claims will almost cure the common cold if asked to do so! If $1,995 is too much they have a slightly less expensive model at $998.00 – wow what a bargain. There is another company offering what they call the “Magic Power Cord” at a steal of a price of $1,499.99 for 1.8 metres (5.85 feet). The reporter who “tested” the cable said “The first thing I notice is the presentation becomes BIG, stage width, depth and the space between instruments all seem larger, images are more solidly located in space and don’t wonder about” I think this dude has been wondering about himself. It performs magic on your wallet and that is about all it does. It lifts the Dollar bills right out of your back pocket without you being aware."




Ignorance with an agenda sums up that statement. Lets pretend he is a democrat and we are all republicans. Lets follow his thought process.

Prove that we are familiar, know they are out there and people buy them. (refering to seeing in a magazine as he has probably never been within a quarter mile of a good power cable)

Start out small ($175 and then go to the extremes so everyone believes it is a nutty thing)

Throw in the word "Magic" to keep the minds moving over to the crazy side.

Put quotes around "tested" to induce doubt. Who "tests" a $2500 power cable anyway, I'm sure it probably works...

Question the guys manhood to capture that audience...

Now, for the finale, tell them they are being ripped off. Do it in a funny sort of way so they think I'm on their side, not laughing at them. Maybe they will ignore the issue completely and just agree with me because I'm a nice guy.

madmax

MacLeod

I think a cable test at Polkfest would be a bad idea. Polkfest is about getting together, drinking, having fun, drinking, listening to great music and drinking. I think a cable test would cause too much friction and could ruin an otherwise great weekend.

As for my beliefs on cables, I subscribe to Maha FrankZ's teachings:

Frank Z wrote:

My ears - no difference
Your ears - not my problem

MSALLA

I don't care what kind of improvment it makes. I'm never going to pay 1499.00 for a power cord. If it will make my music sound better, give me "oral" as I listen to the music, make me something to eat and a drink when I'm done, I'm still not going to pay that much.

cfrizz

If a tree falls in the forest does it make a noise?:rolleyes:
WAAAAAAAAAA!!!!

PolkThug wrote:

Cables make a HUGE difference, that can't be measured.

Rock on

F1nut

Let's run with the "everything that is audible must have a corresponding measurment" idea. We can measure watts, one watt is one watt. However, that doesn't tell us how that watt sounds when all is said and done. We can measure THD and tube amps always have a higher THD rating, yet a large number of folks find that tube amps sound better than sand amps.

Measurements are a rough guide, nothing more. Your ears are the ultimate authority.

The bottom line is that if you're relying on specs alone to judge how a piece of audio gear (that includes cables) sounds, you are selling yourself short and are in this hobby for the wrong reason.

madmax

"I of course assume that your speaker run is not 3Km (1.8 miles) long which may act as an antenna."

How did he even make this stuff up?
madmax

cfrizz

This was suggested for one of the PF's. So many people said that they would boycott it that it was promptly dropped!:eek:

There is NO way to end this debate. People believe what they want to believe, people hear what they want to hear.

The ultimate decider for me is MONEY! I gained an improvement in sound when I upgraded my wires from what came in the box with the equipment to Blue Jeans Cable. Are there other wires out there that will improve it even more? Probably, but I will never know because I'm NOT interested in spending that kind of money to find out!

And if there wasn't an improvement I would be PISSED that I wasted my hard earned money on something that didn't make an improvement.

And since I'm not one to convince myself I did hear an improvement just to justify the expense I don't have to worry or obsess about it!

Therefore, I'M HAPPY!!!!:D

exalted512 wrote:

Why not set up "CABLES: DOES IT MATTER?" test at the next polk fest?

I've never been there, but do they have a theater room with seating that a bunch of ppl can sit down ?

If so, I'm sure they have some high quality cables there and then try a pair of nice $50-75 cables and see if the people in the room can tell the difference...

I think that would pretty much shut everyone up and end this argument thats been going on ever since i first registered on this forum 5 years ago
-Cody

ND13

"And we'll have fun, fun, fun till her daddy takes her T-Bird away"

The majority of the people that hear the difference, have much higher resolution 2-CHANNEL systems than those who don't. That is not a knock on ANYONE'S rig, AT ALL, just the truth. I doubt very much that many will/can tell a noticeable difference in an HT system ran through the average receiver and generic dvdp or the 2-channel listener that is using a receiver and generic cdp. I was once on the cables don't matter "much" side of things, but as my system got higher and higher resolution gear, the differences became much more apparent. Now I'm not saying that you have to spend $2K on a power cord, but a nice $100-200 cord can make a slight difference in the right rig. ICs are a little different story than the power cords, as I have heard noticeable improvements in those and in those in the same price category(no brands will be mentioned as not to hurt anyone's feelings). But, in my experience, the speaker cables were where I had the most improvement, but there again, one doesn't need to spend stupid money for those to get good results, either. Just for example, the PS Audio X-Stream Statement bi-wires I have had a list price of over $1300 and on close-out were bought for around $400...just to show you the mark-up some of the retailers have out there in the marketplace. If one is patient and doesn't have to be the first on the block to have something, they can usually get a pretty good deal on something, either on close-out or used.

One other thing that always gets to me is that some of these "engineers" tend to forget that people aren't friggin machines, meters, o-scopes, etc...and we all are different in just about every way possibly imagineable.

PolkThug

Sound is measureable, even sounds that are too low or too high for human ears to hear. Remember, all the music you enjoy on your records, was recorded with a microphone. Then when we put that music on CD's, it becomes all numbers. You can compare measured output from your speakers and compare it to the CD data to see how accurate your system is (Disclaimer: You may not like what you find).

Measuring audible results from different speakers, crossovers and speaker placement can be a lot of fun, just don't spend more time measuring than actually listening to music. Measuring audible differences is a necessary element of speaker building, just ask Polk Audio.

However, the simple frequency sweep techniques used to measure the above don't seem to apply to interconnects. The best chance you have at catching a difference from an interconnect, if doing so floats your boat, is to create a waterfall output as fast as your computer can sample, but don't call me to help you interpret your data.

Keep on keepin' on!

ND13

Noone is saying that some scope/meter/puter can or can't measure a difference.:rolleyes:

ALL WE ARE SAYING....IS GIVE YOUR EARS A CHANCE
ALL WE ARE SAYING....IS GIVE YOUR EARS A CHANCE
ALL WE ARE SAYING....IS GIVE YOUR EARS A CHANCE

PolkThug

ND13 wrote:

Noone is saying that some scope/meter/puter can or can't measure a difference.:rolleyes:

Nobody asked you to quote the Beach Boys either. :rolleyes:

ND13 wrote:

"And we'll have fun, fun, fun till her daddy takes her T-Bird away"

ND13

I'll quote whomever I please. Like John Lennon, kinda sorta.

Noone is trying to pick a fight with you. Go smoke some unsuspecting Camaro or Trans AM.:p

zombie boy 2000

I'm thinking the Beatles...:p

reeltrouble1

Excellent responses.

I am certainly with Cathy on the budget and waste of money if no improvement camp.

RT1