Cable Myths Debunked.

Stereo Mic said:
Speaker cables can sound different. Mostly they won't, and they certainly won't because of any of the miguided reasons given in the article I quoted on the previous page. There is no alchemy involved and it's a crap shoot. Lightening can strike twice in the same place.

I am loathe to rely on anything from HFN. The cable article you mentioned previously, whilst sounding highly plausible to the casual bystander, did use terms like 'inductoidance' and 'square root of an inductor' which have a distinct scent of snake-oil about them. There's also a concern as to whether the inductance of the test load didn't have some bearing on the result - it's not actually stated how close the values were. In short - if anything interesting had been thrown up it would have been the subject of a peer review. It wasn't.
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I do agree to some extent,

Sadly I feel anything reputable has been tainted by those vendors out to make a buck, and as you say, by fancy words and such.

I do feel there are good manufacturers and bad, but at times most of us will not see the wood for the tree's. Sadly cables are found to be highly profitable by many manufacturers, which will ineviatably damage opinion to some extent.
 
i replaced 130 cubic cm of wood today with a bit of carbon plate.

it sounded very different.

i didnt measure it, so i may be completely wrong..

details below.



i've just added further mods to what was left of my p5.

i have replaced the rega plinth, POS, with a hardwood block chopping board, 50mm thick. this in itself wasa good improvement with allthe Rega beraring and arm parts remounted, more solid bass, and a reduction in the noise floor. there was also a huge improvement in tonality, removing a lot of the cooking Regas grey tone.

i mounted the motor to the plinth via a sheet of dragonplate carbon/ply/carbon. this was simply placed over the motor cut out and secured to the plinth with a very thin bead of sealant. because the sealant bead is so thin there is no lateral play at all so the motor is rigidly mounted with respect to the plinth, though there is a degree of vertical complience in there.

resulting the motor noise as picked up by the stylus on a static record with motor spinning and belt off is much reduced.

so this got me thinking about the arm mount. i had the RB700 screwed into the plinth, as per the P5 set up. i figured if i cut out a huge chunk of wood where the arm sits and thenn mount the arm to another carbon plate with a small sub-mount underneath the plate thenn i'd get a similar effect in reducing transmitted noise to the arm..

and oh boy did i ever.

i cut out a 10cm circle from the plinth, made a 12cm diameter dragonplate disc and mounted it to the plinth with a ring of sealant. the plate is supported across its circumference by the sealantand the arm screws through the plate and into a small hardwood block that only touches the underside of the dragonplate disc. theres no contact between arm and plinth, juts via the disc.

and it's a whole new ball game. i've gained greater dynamic, with more distance between the loudest and quietest sounds, this has resulted in more bass, and more delicacy at the other end of the scale. i've also gained a significant amount of space around the each voice and instrument.

i can only conclude that i've removed a fair bit of noice that was entering the arm and smearing the signal.

i reccomend it highly.

http://www.vinylengine.com/phpBB2/album_page.php?pic_id=5141

http://www.vinylengine.com/phpBB2/album_page.php?pic_id=4881



but one thing i did notice is how microphonic my tone arm lead is, bloody hell... the spacer is coming out of that ASAP.
 
Nice.

What about mounting the bearing on a seperate sub-plinth coming through a slightly oversized hole in the tonearm mounted plinth that's (unattached) on top with a cork mat in the middle ?
 
If they make the difference the manufacturers claim then why dont they just demonstrate it and silence all criticism if it is that obvious? I think the point of the one link is that the majority of commercial manufacturers say one thing in public and another when it comes to the crunch - as they know there is nothing there and are knowingly ripping off the public.
 
jcl, you might have something there ;-)

i was thinking of mounting the whole thing in netherspace, but i didnt have the right string to use for that theory
 
Stereo Mic said:
You might notice that they are rather more qualified to discuss these matters than some Zerogainers. I particularly found this to be informative.
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Hey SM why did you leave out 'bonus scams'?
Is it because of the bit about RLC boxes slapped on to cables?http://www.audioholics.com/educatio...n-audio-cable-vendor-is-selling-you-snake-oil
Townshend Audio Isolda DCT
This unconventional-looking cable offers several interesting technologies: impedance matching, achieved by closely spacing the two flat strip conductors to achieve theoretically maximum bandwidth; a stability network to prevent the cable's high capacitance upsetting amplifiers; and Deep Cryogenic Treatment, where ultra-low temperature treatment of the conductors is claimed to improve their current-passing properties. And indeed the sound is quite awesome, with bass that seems to go down forever, exceptionally open and clear treble, and image depth that considerably exceeds that of any other cable we've heard. Probably the ultimate cable for upmarket systems.-As sold and used by SM
"Smithers, release the hounds"
 
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JCL said:
Anyone read this - www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=941184

Here's the guys low resolution system http://cgi.audioasylum.com/systems/663.html
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Yes, one thing that caught my eye was that Mike Lavigne has $30k worth of cabling. Which then led me to the conclusion that the guy is probably down a testicle.

His room and system are well sorted though, if your gonna hear differences between cables it would be there. Considering his expenditure on the room and the rest of the equipment, $30k would very easily be under 10% of total budget so what the hell, why not.
 
cooky1257 said:
Hey SM why did you leave out 'bonus scams'?
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Because it wasn't on the list - cryogenic treatment was though if you read it. I posted the link. Are you now accepting that all this is snake oil? Point me to one of my ads of ZG if you would old chap...
 
I like those ones too Fox. They also come in a rather nice airtight container which is mighty useful for keeping ones sandwiches in or for burying your stash when returning from Thailand.

I've since found out these containers are available seperately for less than £1K which makes the cables inside seem a tad expensive.
 
Stereo Mic said:
Because it wasn't on the list - cryogenic treatment was though if you read it. I posted the link. Are you now accepting that all this is snake oil? ..
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To the point of not spending £60 /m on speaker cables with RLC boxes and cryogenically treated conductors? Yes, always have, my position is there are differences but claims of jaw-dropping improvement are ludicrous.
You on the other hand obsess it's all snakeoil and then go ahead and use the stuff anyway!-so which of us is the hypocrite?
I never said you advertised but you do sell the Isolda cables and given your position ...well l'll let the jury decide.
 
You are right of course - I'm an obsessive audiophile really.

See the crossover below. Please do note the careful attention to soldering, the expensive hook up wire and the esoteric connectors feeding the lead out wires. Note the careful selection of matching caps. All very tweaky.

KICX0942.jpg


Funnily enough, I had thought of using Goertz cable here - after all it is one of the few cables on the market that does actually measure substantially differently....
 
Stereo Mic said:
You are right of course - I'm an obsessive audiophile really.

See the crossover below. Please do note the careful attention to soldering, the expensive hook up wire and the esoteric connectors feeding the lead out wires. Note the careful selection of matching caps. All very tweaky.

KICX0942.jpg


Funnily enough, I had thought of using Goertz cable here - after all it is one of the few cables on the market that does actually measure substantially differently....
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Well you've laid it all out very sensibly IMO SM, orientation of coils and caps etc (Hovlands and Mundorf Supremes-they sound rather good don't they? tweaky enough for me;-)
 
cooky1257 said:
(Hovlands and Mundorf Supremes-they sound rather good don't they? ;-)
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No idea I'm afraid - they were what I was given. The yellow one at the top is a different make I think. I'm afraid I haven't listened to any others - but will tell you the well known speaker designers I know think audiophile caps are as dubious as the cable claims.

Layout is common sense surely? You didn't comment on the cheap inductors? Shame ;-)
 

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