new scientist

To bring a bit of spice to your hifi product, make it seem a bit more expensive, to assure people they have a special cable, following the lead of other hifi manufacturers, enabling them to charge a bit more, to imply some form of testing has been undertaken and its not just cheap cable off a roll, because its what the audiophile expects, the MD of the company is delusional about cables.

etc etc etc

 

Never thought of that garyi so I guess I must be naïve Still I can quite clearly hear a difference both ways with my Chords.

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Paul

 

from his website

A man with a long-term plan obviously: or delusions of grandeur?

 

Mr Andrews gets a lot of bad press -why? - for simply being a good salesman? He may not have a long list of academic qualifications but has spent a lot of time tweaking and researching in many areas of hi-fi - I remember buying an upgrade kit for my Castle speakers in the mid-90s - new caps / wiring /solder - the difference was appreciable. As I'm sure has been mentioned before, if you buy any of his gear you have 60 days sale or return. Try that with most other dealers - on occasions I have and the responses were most amusing. If you like his/Kimber stuff then it's best to buy second hand due to the large "mark up" on new kit.
Completely unscientifically I "Kimbered-up" my system at 8.00pm this morning and did a little experiment - after a bit of auditioning I reversed the direction of the interconnect cables (KCAG and PBJ) and relistened. I then reinstated the interconnects and reversed the speaker cable (8TC). Results - for the speaker cable nothing I could hear, nada, ziltch. Interconnects -there did seem to be "something", but I'll be damned if I can put my finger on it, maybe just a little bit less overall definition to the sound? I'll maybe try this again in the late evening with cleaned RCA/speaker plugs and sockets.

 

Oh yeah, and cleaned ears too ;-)

 

Good on ya Neil don't let the boys in the white lab coats get ya down :MILD: I've got nowt against RA, just his stuff doesn't do it for me. Makes me laugh though how some hi-fi folks seem to think every dealer or salesman's out to get them. It's only hi-fi, you just buy what's right for you.

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Paul

 

I wonder if any of the "believers" out there would like to volunteer to do the following experiment:
1. Find yourself an assistant- best mate, neighbour, wife, butler, whatever. As long as you have faith in their ability to competently connect and disconnect cables, they're ok.
2. Disconnect the relevant cable from your system.
3. Leave the room. The assistant now rolls a dice. If it's an even number they connect the cable the right way round, if it's odd they connect it the wrong way round. They take a note of what they've done. They conceal the evidence with something.
4. You come back in and have a listen. Ideally your assistant has left by another door so as not to influence you with any nods or winks. You can take as long as you like to rate the sound quality on a scale of one to ten.
5. Repeat steps 3 to 4. The more times the better.
6. Now tally your ratings with your assistant's notes and post them here in full for peer review. Go on! It's sunday afternoon! Have you got something better to do or what?.

 

Yes, actually. I was watching the Man Utd game, and we won

Why is believers inside inverted commas? I'm not a member of some religious sect, but I believe what I hear. My Chord cables sound much better when arranged as indicated by the arrows and that's good enough for me dude.

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Paul

 

do your chords have floating drains.

my crappy old cambridge cables have a definate right way, but they are floating drain,allmy other wires have no directionality that i can hear.

 

Sorry, excuse my ignorance, but what is floating drain? My interconnects and speaker cable are Chord Signature.

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Paul

 

Perhaps the word doesn't need to be in inverted commas ... I don't doubt that you believe one way sounds better than the other. I just suspect that the effect might disappear if you can't see which way round they are. But i might be wrong. We can only find out through the experiment. I'm just curious. I'm sure your football victory will have made everything sound better, anyway...

 

Hi Owl, it sounded great ages ago long before the footie victory I've tried the sort of thing you're on about before with a few mates and we ended up getting so confused we didn't know where the feck we were with stuff getting plugged and unplugged

TBH, life's too short and I just want to enjoy my tunes. The chords made a big difference when they went in and anytime I've had to unplug them to dismantle the system and have accidentally put them in the wrong way the system's sounded worse. Take from that what you will.

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Paul

 

I think I've figured it out then. Foam core coax from B&Q becomes directional when you add some techflex sleeving, call it reference or signature or whatever, and increase the price by 1000%.

 

I got my Chords second hand at a knock down price, and as they were EONS better than the cheapo patch leads I had before, it was a total win-win situation

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Paul

 

Paul, your chord cables do indeed have a floating drain, ie the screen is only connected at one end of the cable.

 

Right-o. Is that a good thing or what?

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Paul

 

You link the drain wire to the ground at the amplifer end. This draws all the nasty RF into the ground. Some/Most regard this as the actual directionality of a cable. I'm trying to choose my words wisely there!


Holistic Audio anyone?

 

Hi Snoo, and cheers for the info. I guess the Chords are good then? Whatever it is they definitely sound better when connected up as indicated by the arrows. I've noticed this on too many different occasions just to be imagining it, and I've been sober every time! Holistic audio?

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Paul

 

don't get too exited ! the chords are above average performance but ....there are better

snoo's right many people think thats what directionality is about ...but not in the case of the article I'm presuming

 

Zanash, I never get too excited about anything! Far too laid back, me :MILD:

The Chords are more than good enough, so I'm happy. I found the article interesting and there's been some good points raised here. My feeling though is there's something in this directionality thing (however it is achieved) and some peeps are perhaps a bit too cynical.

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Paul