My first post.
Cables are my misery at the moment. I suppose I could be described as a perfect customer.
I have been upgrading my Hi-Fi for some years now and have three totally different systems employed in my house to date. One valve, one solid state and one hybrid.
I have conducted various A-B tests with cables, (both speaker and interconnectors), yet I am bemused by this whole cable thing. I know that I have become seduced by the "Audio-Candy" brigade, yet over a span of 4 years I continued to seek out something 'better'.
I spent too much money trying to match up cables with my different systems. In the end I caught myself on!
What I did was to invest in two rolls of cable, one of interconnectors and one of speaker cable. My choice was based on what was asthetically pleasing and, more importantly, gave me "peace of mind".
I truely believe that a lot of the hype around Hi-Fi in general is about what makes you comfortable, (to a point where you listen to your music without 'brain intrusions' about cables, electricity supply, room gains etc).
I concurr with Digital & Jimbo when they suggest getting your ears syringed. I lost some hearing in one of my ears some time ago which I compensate for by moving a few centimeters from my listening position.
In my experience with cables I have found that my "head" tells me what I want to hear.....If I am happy with "believing" I have good cables then that's one more thing out of the equasion...I can sit down and listen happily.
I would never be happy with 99p cables therefore I would feel something is missing from the music, I am not getting the best that is possible. If I replace them with 20 pound a metre cables then I'm happy, one more thing out of the way.
Been through Cardas Golden Reference and others and I'm now quite happy with QED Silver Spiral because I feel, looking at the cables, that the music flows through as best it could.
Time to tell the music "mixers" to get in tune!!
Regards NaturalVoice
PS. JR149's rule