Ive just recently swopped my 4 core braided silver plated interconnect for a solid silver 8 core braided one. Im actually quite shocked right now as ive just been listening to a cd and heard some 'rain' in the mix that ive never actually heard before! The nordost cables ive heard upto now havnt been that great (In my opinion)
"Cable with a twist Abbey Road Cable’s characteristic starquad and pair twist has a purpose. Potential electromagnetic waves meet equal areas of positive and negative conductors causing them to cancel out the interference by phase reversal. This type of noise rejection does not use a screen. Without a screen, capacitance is reduced significantly. Capacitance affects imagery and muddies the signal. In short the less capacitance the better. We think it looks great too."
It may come as a surprise but starquad is fairly standard for cableing used in studios, BUT it only really works when the signal is balanced, again standard practice and it is only really of importance over long runs. What I fail to grasp is it's relavance to a 0.5 metre unbalanced signal from a CD player or even a couple of metres of speaker cable!
In fact I do not understand the big thing made out of 'interferance' as if I heard 'interferance' then I would recognise it as such, many years ago I remember hearing the odd taxi cab message coming in, but the worst case of interferance was when I relocated the whole system to a new trendy metal shelf system and the CD player simply refused to even play. I could not believe that simply moving the equipment had made it 'pack up', so some tests. Put the player back on a wooden coffee table, great all was working, then still running move it slowly to the metal shelving. Now at 0.5M it started to mistrack, place it on the shelf and it ejected the disc. Problem serious RFI being picked up by the metal shelving, cure, ground the shelving to the players ground, problem sorted. This particular Sony player was very sensitive to RFI and I was reminded of that again when used with the little class 'D' amp, similar symptoms, mistracking etc. temporary cure put the player as far away as possible, total cure get a new player. First alternative a £17 Jobie from Tesco, no further problem.
So Rik and all others, don't get me wrong I do not discount some of these effects, but I tend to notice that most are quite serious and obvious, rather than subtle and discreet.
Again some time ago my farther had a CD player connected to his respectable Pioneer amp and in his words 'not quite as good as it should be' I listened and it sounded seriously bad, mistracking, cracking up etc. well not surprisingly he had plugged the CD into the CD input, I suggested we reconnect it into the radio input, wow normality restored. Now the reason, I do not really know but I bet that was a little RFI problem.
I took a look at the Abbey Road cable website. Given the value of the "Abbey Road" brand name, mainly thanks to a quartet from Liverpool in the late sixties, I'm rather surprised that they have been this slow off the mark at exploiting the brand. Perhaps it would be useful if they got one or two of their people to check out the accuracy of the information placed, at least in part, in their name on that website.
Take a look at this page. The usual tripe about skin effect, basically accurate but neglecting to mention that skin effect is only starts to become significant at frequencies of about 100kHz. But the real faux pas lies in the words -
"It is important for a hi-fi cable to have many fine strands. With a few thick strands the electrical current is too concentrated which creates strong electro-magnetically induced vibration between strands; this causes distortion. In the past this meant solid conductors were preferred to stranded, however, now is possible to make extremely fine strands, the use of many strands dissipates the electrical field energy so much, it is superior by a long way".
On the surface (engineering joke there, geddit?) this seems like a classic description of Litz wire, the advantages of which in certain circumstances are undeniable. However, for the Litz wire principle to work, the individual strands must be insulated from each other, thus minimizing skin effect by minimizing the amount of skin available to the electron flow!
Without insulation between the stands, this comes down to total BS, I feel. Not an outright lie since there aren't really any significant claims to challenge (and the Litz term is used by me, not them) but I do feel that if Abbey Road need to endorse products to bring a few bob in when times are hard, that they should clamp down on specious technical bull which appears to be endorsed by them.
Very good, but just wait until Rik H gets back, I'm sure he will have a thing or two to say and probably think that I am attacking him for even suggesting it, personally, and without prejudice I think it almost complete BS (I had to look that up in a real dictionary).
Interesting as cables are it is now beyond a joke, I firmly believe that cables should come with a government health warning, or at least a serious wallet warning. The cable scams are beyond belief and are probably earning more than the Nigerian offers of the odd half million, or the 'invest in land' offers.
I sometime wish I were not so moralistic in life, then I could create the ultimate cable, graded strands for a natural connection, plating thickness to accommodate the electron volume, every cable certified by our own panel of 'golden ears', all supplied with a response plot from DC to 1000MHz, FFT distortion analysis down to 0.000001%, God could I make some money, then I could move to a pretty part of the country like the Lakes and enjoy discussions with a well known Hi Fi dealer there and we could all sit around the Barbi and contemplate the gullibility of mankind and the power of marketing.
If what you say is true and you make a very convincing argument, that would mean that the many thousands of people in companies in a worldwide industry involved in the design and manufacture of cables all conspire together to support an obvious lie that anyone with basic electronic training can see is a blatant lie and have got away with it for many years without any real opposition, why has nobody sued them ?
If it is that easy and obvious to tell scientifically and with measurement that the whole thing is a lie it would be pretty straightforward to start legal proceedings on one of the main players which if found guilty the knock on effect would wipe out the whole corrupt industry, but i see no sign of any law suits, not even in the lake district area.
You could argue that the whole HiFi industry is corrupt and self serving ( hence my thread ) and they are in possession of powerful brainwashing techniques in collusion with trading standards and worldwide governments but then it starts to sound like a conspiracy theory !
My main question is how can so many people that seem too believe that cables sound different and that some do a more accurate efficient job that others all be either fools or dreamers that love spending their hard earned money on irrelevant pointless expensive rubbish, a lot of them are professional people whom are intelligent and wealthy and have worked their way up the ladder of life by being nobody's fool but even they seem to be hoodwinked by this universal lie.
More worrying is if the HiFi industry is so riddled with corrupt snake oil salesmen then it stands to reason that most other industries have a similar problem but with different products, if this is so what hope is there for any of us.
Sorry electro, you are I think quite right, many other industries are just as guilty.
Lets look at a few, life insurance, probably one of the greatest of scams.
Payment protection, a massive racket, have you ever tried to claim.
Extended warranties, to guarantee my item for five years will actually cost more than a new one.
I could go on forever but scams are not only in hi fi they are everywhere, the problem is that they are so hard to find, I think all we can do is to 'sensitise ourselves' and therefore pick up on them.
Now 'why has nobody sued them? well that would be difficult as most purchases of this sort are done entirely at the whim of the buyer and therefore have no redress to the seller.
What grounds could anyone have for suing a 'snake oil' company, the only one that I can think of is more of a 'trades description act', if a company were to say 'this cable will definitely improve your sound' and it did not then you would have a case, but read the 'small print' and you will find that all they say this is what our customers claim and therefore exonerate themselves from any legal requirement or responsibility.
There are many intelligent people on this planet and they understand the legalities and they make the most of it, but we're the punters and we have the choice, it is up to us to decide what is good and what is 'snake'.
I find audiophools to be extremely arrogant know-it-alls so now rather than try to enlighten them I watch them buy their expensive snakeoil and laugh. A fool and his money and all that.
It is exactly that confrontational attitude that perpetuates the situation , when somebody is told in no uncertain terms that they are a fool for believing that cables sound different or mains conditioners work they react in a seemingly arrogant manor it's only human, you would probably be the same in a similar situation.
TRY EXPLAINING WHY in a calm informative way without the "know it all " attitude, you may bang your head against a wall for some period of time but eventually your message will get through as long as you are polite friendly and helpful and you don't treat people like idiots ! Calling us audiophools does not help, in fact it only helps the industry you are so opposed too, it makes you look like the dogmatic arrogant fool an gives them ammunition to shoot you down.
So Fred a little less ridicule and a little more reasoned explanation please .
If what you say is true and you make a very convincing argument, that would mean that the many thousands of people in companies in a worldwide industry involved in the design and manufacture of cables all conspire together to support an obvious lie that anyone with basic electronic training can see is a blatant lie and have got away with it for many years without any real opposition, why has nobody sued them ?
I don't exactly see a global conspiracy here, more a marketing opportunity. If the customers are willing to buy, somebody will supply the want. I could rant at length about the way that audio enthusiasts have been manipulated over the last thirty-odd years into believing that cables are really, really, important. Well actually they are important...very....but not in the ridiculously expensive way that the marketeers would have you believe. Well-understood engineering principles have given way to silly flights of fancy about the "sound" of cables. The whole concept of treating your cables as though they were an integral part of the sound creating process has been elevated to the point of sheer nonsense. Cables are like water pipes, which need to transport the water to your taps unpolluted and in adequate quantities. Nothing more, nothing less. I think the analogy with water pipes is quite a good one (why didn't I think of it before?).
So tell me, what more does an audiophile require of his cables that is any different to the requirements of the water pipes in his house?
Somebody did get RA ticked off a few months ago by the ASA (it's been reported and linked hereabouts) but for the most part marketeers are bright enough to avoid claims that would be considered worthy by the courts. In a civil court the question is not about the moral position of somebody selling snake oil, but the actual damage done. This is why, I suspect, more and more vendors of snake oi.....sorry, hi-fi accessories, are now offering money-back guarantees and the like. Provided these companies honour such guarantees, the question of civil action doesn't arise.
My main question is how can so many people that seem too believe that cables sound different and that some do a more accurate efficient job that others all be either fools or dreamers that love spending their hard earned money on irrelevant pointless expensive rubbish, a lot of them are professional people whom are intelligent and wealthy and have worked their way up the ladder of life by being nobody's fool but even they seem to be hoodwinked by this universal lie.
To repeat something I've said many times over - I'm quite happy with the belief that, in some circumstances, cables can sound different for reasons that are perfectly predictable by the application of a few electrical laws that have been around for 150++ years. My problem comes with those who insist that there is more to it than that. Audiofiles are their own worst enemy much of the time. Despite their claimed "skills" and "experience", many are demonstrably poor at identifying the true reasons behind what they are hearing. Secondary effects are irrationally promoted to primary status. Take some of the words often associated with cables, "image", dimensionality", "spaciousness", "colour", "faster", etc. etc. These are all secondary effects, largely due to very basic primary causes...frequency response and its interaction with room acoustics, well-stirred with a large dollop of our old mate, placebo.
Once you accept that cables can only affect simple, primary parameters, you then realise that anything you want to achieve with cable can be done for a few quid. OK - if you're that kind of person I grant you that there's a lot less cachet in boasting to your pals in the pub that your speaker cables cost a tenner from Maplin than three hundred quid from an established dealer, but that's another issue...although one not to be neglected in a society where brand-consciousness seems to have been elevated to the status of a religion. Kids bully one another about the "right" pair of trainers...for adult audiophiles it's about the size of their cable.
More worrying is if the HiFi industry is so riddled with corrupt snake oil salesmen then it stands to reason that most other industries have a similar problem but with different products, if this is so what hope is there for any of us.
I doubt that most of them are truly corrupt...they probably believe along with everybody else. The answer is to be a hard bastard when it comes to proof before parting with your money. If a car salesman makes a claim about a car's performance, it can usually be put to the test. If the claim is of a more subjective nature such as handling round corners, it can still be tested but perhaps only by the better trained driver.
The hi-fi marketeers have done a marvellous job of convincing their audience that proper blind testing is inaccurate and therefore pointless. If that particular lie could be exposed, the rest will follow and the industry could get back to developing products and technologies that really do matter.
BTW has anyone else ever wondered how the gazillions of amp/preamp/speaker etc etc manufacturers who turn up with their 'nasties' at trade shows the world over EVER survive. Jeez theres millions of them and hardly any punters to buy their to my ears mediocre crap. Wish more cable manufactureres would take the time to demo at these shows-God save me from another holier-than-thou Nordost anti-music blasting!
and dont get me started on some of the 'big boys' and their crazy-priced over-hyped and over-here garbage
Sadly I think you may be right, it saddens me to think there are so many people looking to make a dishonest living out of ordinary hard working people, surely there must be some honest people out there.
I think you may have a point when, i go to HiFi shows there are hundreds of manufacturers and i too have wondered how they stay in business with the declining amount of customers and the standard of their equipment.
Nordost are one of the few companies that actually do a proper demo, but i think next time i will take a blindfold and a pair of ear muffs and get somebody to tap me on the shoulder when they change a cable and see if i can still tell the difference. .
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