What's "good?"
Seems to me that there is a lot of value judgement done on the basis of what
seems good. Is a pure metal really any better at its job than an alloy? How much does how you
feel about the word
impurity affect your personal judgement about whether you should buy a cable,a dn how much you should pay for it, and whether or not you are going to announce "Oh wow! Night and day difference!"
Oxygen.
What's wrong with it? This one is a bit different to
impure, because we all know we'd die without it --- but
how did we get sold the idea that audio cables should not include it? Was it ever justified? Or has it just become part of hifi folk lore, for which we pay dearly?
Well, some of our members are scientists, and they do understand these things, and some of them say that it makes a difference...
There's only one honest, decent simple and reasonable way out of this, and for some reason, not only the manufacturers, but us buyers, whose interests and wallets are at stake, run, screaming and howling at the very mention of it. Blind testing.
any difference between a high grade interconnect and a coat hanger?
It was meant to be a blind test between Monster (do
they make
"good" cables?) and another cable. The guy doing the set up, unknown to the the listeners, went a little further and added coat-hanger speaker cables in to the testing...
We gathered up a 5 of our audio buddies. We took my "old" Martin Logan SL-3 (not a bad speaker for accurate noise making) and hooked them up with Monster 1000 speaker cables (decent cables according to the audio press). We also rigged up 14 gauge, oxygen free Belden stranded copper wire with a simple PVC jacket. Both were 2 meters long. They were connected to an ABX switch box allowing blind fold testing. Volume levels were set at 75 Db at 1000K Hz. A high quality recording of smooth, trio, easy listening jazz was played (Piano, drums, bass). None of us had heard this group or CD before, therefore eliminating biases. The music was played. Of the 5 blind folded, only 2 guessed correctly which was the monster cable. (I was not one of them). This was done 7 times in a row! Keeping us blind folded, my brother switched out the Belden wire (are you ready for this) with simple coat hanger wire! Unknown to me and our 12 audiophile buddies, prior to the ABX blind test, he took apart four coat hangers, reconnectd them and twisted them into a pair of speaker cables. Connections were soldered. He stashed them in a closet within the testing room so we were not privy to what he was up to. This made for a pair of 2 meter cables, the exact length of the other wires. The test was conducted. After 5 tests, none could determine which was the Monster 1000 cable or the coat hanger wire. Further, when music was played through the coat hanger wire, we were asked if what we heard sounded good to us. All agreed that what was heard sounded excellent, however, when A-B tests occured, it was impossible to determine which sounded best the majority of the time and which wire was in use. Needless to say, after the blind folds came off and we saw what my brother did, we learned he was right...most of what manufactures have to say about their products is pure hype. It seems the more they charge, the more hyped it is.
Audioholics Home Theatre made a little more famous by
The Consumerist
You hear sound as good as the connectors inside the rotary switch
...and as good as the cable inside your amplifier cabinet ...and as good as the cable inside your speaker cabinet
Hey ho... all good fun
