Does cables really affect sound?

[quadpsaudiotrioc100]

I just bumped into this article. Here's the link. http://www.roger-russell.com/wire/wire.htm
It sounds interesting to me and I would love to hear your comments after reading it.

[Diapason]

A very enjoyable article. I both love and hate reading that kind of thing.

[Ivor]

I mostly hate articles like that, it implies I have to have a lot of technical understanding to access cables when all I really need are these dumb ears. In answer to the thread title.... yes. It's up to the listener to decide if the difference is good, bad or negligible.

[DaveF]

At one time I was a believer and I'll admit I do love the look of the big fancy cables in their coloured jackets and little wooden blocks on some of them. But in the last few years I've begun to lean very much to the other camp for various reasons. There isn't the slightest shred of proper evidence supporting any of the cable claims, the cable sellers & mags make up laughable pseudo science BS to support their claims. Double Blind Tests have always failed to show any difference. "Listener Stress" is a tired old excuse used by many against DBT yet DBT has been performed so many times now that it has developed a credibility of its own. Any percieved differences heard is mostly down to the good ol placebo affect I think.
Whatever the reasons behind differences heard, if it makes the listener enjoy the music more then more power to them.


This thread will end well.

[Ivor]

This thread will end well.

ah we'll be grand. The placebo argument doesn't really hold up if the difference is still there over time. I'd usually only ever claim that a cable makes a difference and it's up to the user to decide if they like that difference or not. Years ago I went from bog standard "Monster" cable to one of Andy's interconnects and it was like somebody had changed everything in the system. Like cleaning a grubby window. I had no expectations and would rather have found cables were a dead end as my kids were particularly hungry and the mortgage cast a large shadow. But the improvement was clear. Why upgrade hardware when a modest investment in wire would get the best out of the current setup?
Science tells me that speaker cable does very little really so while I used decent quality I never really looked at it seriously, recently I took a punt on the "flavour of the month" and heard my system move up several levels. The effect was instant and clear. It's still there everytime I listen. I have no idea what I would have to upgrade in terms of hardware to get that improvement and to be honest I didn't think such a leap was available.

Using 'science for dummies' logic I would say that various cables which contain different metals, different insulation and even different configurations could be reasonably expected to sound different from each other.

[Diapason]

To be fair to the article, it does indeed show that cables can sound differently, but then it goes on to explain why (in the author's view) this is the case.

Myself? Well, I was a cable denier for years and years, and I still find the scientific argument very compelling deep down. I'm also very sure that there's a whole lot of BS spouted within the cable industry, no doubt about that at all, and I look suspiciously on claims like "a basic system with Valhalla will sound better than a top-of-the-range system with inferior cables". Still, as I've discussed elsewhere, my cable denier status didn't make me happy, and for whatever the reason, changing my cables for the higher-end vareity brought me sonic gains (real or imagined) and I slept easier in my bed at night.

I have to say, the single most compelling cable demonstration I ever heard was at Cloney's launch of the Nordost Odin range. Now, I've been to enough Nordost demos to know that psychology can play a very important part in the whole thing, so I went to this one with a *very* healthy dose of scepticism. At one point they played a Mahler track on Valhalla cabling (the insanely expensive "state-of-the-art" at the time) before playing it again on the Odin cable (the new, even more insanely expensive "state-of-the-art"). Honestly, the difference was enormous. As I recall, they did it twice. I honestly couldn't believe it. I can't square that away with the science, I don't know the answer, I can't swear that there wasn't something else going on psychologically, but the effect was very impressive.

These days, I don't sweat it. I won't be buying cable risers or anything of the sort, but even if there are explainable reasons why cables might sound different (that technically aren't worth anything approaching the price differential), I don't really care. If I'm being a fool parted from my money, then fair enough. It's a harmless vice.

[Ivor]

I'm also very sure that there's a whole lot of BS spouted within the cable industry, no doubt about that at all,

Absolutely no doubt. Usually from the "Lars" of this world, people who represent the manufacturers. They spout pseudo scientific shite with the vigor of a Californian life coach.

[Fran]

They spout pseudo scientific shite with the vigor of a Californian life coach

Love that quote - think I'm going to keep it for future use!!!


I'm kinda staying out of this argument because I'm conflicted - I both believe and don't believe at the same time. I usually use silver in teflon on everything I wire together, having heard clearly the difference between that and no-name copper in the past. Same goes very much for tonearm cables. But do I believe its more important than the actual bit of equipment -eh no, its just the cherry on top I think.


fran

[Rocker]

I am with Ivor on this one. But some time last year I had to dismantle my system to redecorate the music room. The speakers were too heavy to move so they were covered while the work was carried out. After fitting the wall shelf and lugging the amps into place I decided to use bog standard [freebie] mains cables and SE interconnects [rather than my balanced ones]. Also I used 1.5 [lighting] cable for the speaker wires.

My system 'worked' but not much more than that. It sounded little better than a car stereo and I would not have bought it even at half what I paid for the system. Sound was what it produced not music. I left it that way for a month but there was little change in the sound quality. When I got fed up listening to it I replaced all my wires in one go and it was like switching on a light. The music was back.

Could what I heard be measured? Possibly but the usual electricial measurements [voltage, resistance, inductance, reactance etc. etc.] seem woefully inadequate and perhaps inappropriate. I am at a loss to explain it but there is no way that I am going back to the freebie cables.

One swallow does not make a summer but I know that my cable loom does make my system sound better and more like music.

[Gerry D]

I am with Ivor on this one. But some time last year I had to dismantle my system to redecorate the music room. The speakers were too heavy to move so they were covered while the work was carried out. After fitting the wall shelf and lugging the amps into place I decided to use bog standard [freebie] mains cables and SE interconnects [rather than my balanced ones]. Also I used 1.5 [lighting] cable for the speaker wires.

My system 'worked' but not much more than that. It sounded little better than a car stereo and I would not have bought it even at half what I paid for the system. Sound was what it produced not music. I left it that way for a month but there was little change in the sound quality. When I got fed up listening to it I replaced all my wires in one go and it was like switching on a light. The music was back.

Could what I heard be measured? Possibly but the usual electricial measurements [voltage, resistance, inductance, reactance etc. etc.] seem woefully inadequate and perhaps inappropriate. I am at a loss to explain it but there is no way that I am going back to the freebie cables.

One swallow does not make a summer but I know that my cable loom does make my system sound better and more like music.

Really well put. Excellent ! And Happy Birthday to You.