Neither really, when I first logged on to this site they asked for a user name other than my real name, and because I am so fanatical about Electrocompaniet amplifiers and equipment I thought "Electrohead" would be a fitting nickname, also as my real name is David it is considerably less Boring and ordinary !
OK electro, now I know your Norwegian Hi-Fi background, serious and expensive. So what are your thoughts on cables and interconnects, maybe even what are your thoughts on 911.
That is a bit unreal, having taken the time to asses your personality then I should know the answer, and I would say that you are 'underneath' deeply concerned but like so many prefer not to think about it, let alone discuss it.
On the contrary, I think about it constantly and I sometimes become quite depressed over the stupidity of the human race in general, that's not inferring that I am better that anybody else but at least I don,t deny there is a problem. As for talking about it that can be difficult , most peoples eyes glaze over and excuses are made, people want to live in their comfortable bubble and anybody with a pin is usually avoided !
Cable's , well briefly I would say they are the last things to be improved and only after the equipment is "right", a bit like the icing on a cake , not much substance but can finish a system off nicely.
Great stuff, so do take a look at the 911 thread, not an easy subject I know this is something many would rather not discuss or think about, but it is worth thinking about, and the truth will come out in time.
thought I'd check back and see how the Forum was going with regards to analogue interconnects.
Must say some people do have strong views with regards to the benefit of interconnects. Many in a similar price range seem to have little difference but has I found after spending £322 on a pair of Kimber Ag's ( .5metre length) there was a major difference. Only tried them because of the money back guarantee if I was not satisfied.
Being happy with the purchase replaced the interconnects throughout in my system with Kimber Ag's
Needed a i metre length but was reluctant to pay £600 so I purchased a cable on eBay called Straight Thru for £119. They were superior to the Kimber's in my system. Then replaced all my Kimber's with Straight Thru, luckily only needed .5 metre lengths (£69) . Sold the Kimbers on eBay
So there are differences in sound in interconnects, but dearest is not always best which I found to my cost
I think the position has altered slightly as John recently announced that he has changed his stance since the outcome of the Blind Test....attributing the major reason for the differences to "dirt"? Time to inject another tuppence worth....I'm beginning to feel a bit like Max Bygraves by introducing the post with a "Ladies & Gentlemen let me tell you a story..."
Much as I hate revisiting a story I've already told, I justify this one by including an embarrassing truth I omitted from the first tale....
My most recent comparison of interconnects was over 10 years ago (sure I've used a variety of interconnects since then, when comparing amplifiers but not testing the cables themselves) and the cables in question were sub-£100 models by Ecosse and QED...... Neither could be considered expensive but they were close enough to each other on the cost scale to be assumed to be little different from each other in performance (...in theory....)
As far as interconnects are concerned, being of the same mindset as John/Pluto/Gerald I expected it to be a toss of a coin decision between the 2.....but was surprised to find that they sounded different....
Given my mindset the brain went into overdrive trying to work out why, and what made them different from each other. Bearing in mind that these were brand spanking new gold/silver finished cables with no tarnishing, three main things stood out :
1. The Ecosse was a push-fit RCA phono while the QED was the "clamping" variety of RCA.
2. The geometry of each was different.
3. The weight of the QED was considerable compared to the Ecosse.
In the end I "preferred" the sound of the QED - but BOUGHT the Ecosse simply because it was 50% of the price, the application was for Home Cinema only, and I was refusing to pay £90 for a QED interconnect ! (That "Mindset" thing again - that was the embarrassing admission....)
I went home knowing that I would have been happier with the QED cable (and on this occasion it just happened to be slightly more expensive)...and there's the lesson : No contamination but different sound from near-equivalent items. I'll let the Forum speculate as to which of the 3 reasons above had the biggest effect....(to date, I'm still speculating )
Clamping is a great concept for RCA plugs....except it only applies to the shield. All the problems with the pin contact remain unresolved. Depending on the quality of the mating socket, the other remaining problem is the diameter of the pin. If you have a correctly specified socket, it only requires one insertion of a slightly oversized pin to forever leave that socket at a disadvantage when mated with correctly sized pins. A well known example of this problem is when a 50Ω BNC plug is placed into a 75Ω socket. The smaller 75Ω recepticle will not be totally reliable ever again, except when mated with a 50Ω plug.
Quite right, it's strange how people in the profession understand these problems implicitly whilst those outside seem to have no comprehension of the why or how.
Tonight I wrote a long letter to Greenpeace in an attempt to understand their stance on tuna fishing. They suggest that Sainsburys are the most 'fishing friendly' brand of Tuna, do they miss the point that Sainsburys are not a company of fishermen, I can't believe the naivety of their report or of the misguidance of their findings. Do they really believe that Sainsburys have a fleet of fishing boats that go out to catch Tuna in an environmentally friendly way whilst the likes of John West or Princes do it so differently, do they really not understand the marketing rules here, like Sainsburys don't even do it but simply state it in their spin.
So what is this all about, well simply that if John West tuna is the worst example of fishing and Sainsburys own label is the best then we are being conned big time, but this is exactly what is happening with cables, most cables are the same stuff, repackaged, re-branded and given a new spin,
Oh and a new price, like the supermarkets, how many cable companies are actually into mining copper, refining it and drawing it into wire, I think none, so, many are basically selling the same stuff, just like the tuna.
Please world wake up to the cable con, copper wire is only that, no matter what claims are made for it or what price is put on it or how exotic the advertising is for it, it is only copper wire. Just like the tuna, be it Sainsburys, Liddle, or John West it will always be tuna, it will never be salmon or caviar.
Great post about Greenpeace....brings to mind other examples.
Have you ever given any thought to Supermarket fuels? (Petrol)
(Car) Main Dealers insist that Shell and BP own brands are superior to the Supermarkets and less likely to cause valve sticking, but many insist that the fuels are sourced from the same refineries - simply re-branded for their destination.
Is Shell superior ??? (Remember years ago they were the first to introduce Engine Cleaner additives to fuel...which did enhance efficiency)
So ultimately are their drivers dosing the fuel consignment with more Engine Cleaner than the Supermarkets? (Effectively qualifying the Supermarket product as dirty/dirtier fuel?)
It would be nice to hear a Mechanics view on this.
Yea right it would, but like I say about tuna, even Tesco don't refine their own petrol so is it the same as many other brands, of course it is, the same as a famous cable supplier is offereing the same cable as a retailer like Maplin. I tend to look at the packet, when, say tuner is in a small tin that is not 'ring pull' then see many other tins the same could I not be excused for thinking that they may be the same. The same with petrol, many garages offer say unleaded and super unleaded, they all seem to do the same and that is run my car, personally I always go for the super as it not only seems to have more power in it but I believe it better for the engine.
Now I believe branding became popular in the days of very dubious food, when a shop would basically sell you anything, often scraps that they had. So when a brand came along that had a reputation it was always regarded as better, this concept was not necessarily true but was often regarded as such.
Is this not what we are seeing in cables, tell me how many companies actually mine copper, then how many purify it, how many then draw it into wire, then how many actualy turn that into a final cable. I think you will see the pattern here. from step two there can be no difference to the sound of a cable, it matters not a jot as to their claims, nor their prices, it is for 95% of the time the same stuff and therefore will have the same characteristics, and therefore the same sound.
Sorry to say but many truths are unbelievable to swallow in life. John...
Please note this reply is from the Interconnects /S Cables Poll thread…
First a reply to Mo Jo 2 ( at least I use capitols for your name), ‘guess your system just aint good enough to show up the differences’ no of course not, no I am a complete numb head and should bow to your obviously superior knowledge, I’m sure you have a better system than I would ever have heard, anywhere on the planet, I’m sure metals behave differently for you and physics take on a new meaning, but I won’t go on about it here. Oh one last point I did a hearing test on myself last year and could just detect 15KHz, when I was 20 it extended to 22KHz that I think is above average for my age!
Now electro, checked out the website, read up on his cable theories etc. and he does seem to make some sense. Again I will come back to physics, the cables are thin and widely spaced, what effect will that have? First high resistance, not good, second high inductance, not good, third low capacitance, totally immaterial. Now his T connected capacitors, a system dating back to the 20s, a well known solution called a Kelvin connection, from Lord Kelvin who designed the Kelvin bridge, a system for measuring very low resistance. What, slit foil to overcome eddy current flow, well eddy currents only flow in a perpendicular field as in a transformer but never in a capacitor, any such effects can be reduced by a number of smaller capacitors in parallel as many amp designs do. My own amp being battery powered simply does not have the problem.
Lets look at his interconnects, apart from being non shielded, exactly the opposite to everyone else’s claims, he spouts on about eddy currents and magnetic fields. Really virtually no current flows down an interconnect, therefore no magnetic field, therefore no eddy currents, therefore BS.
Pluto, not a lot to say as you seem to be one of the very few that do make sense, I read the link and I recommend all to do the same.
Now Bill, I quote you ‘impedance and resistance are entirely different things’, come on, a few facts here. At low frequencies they are exactly the same, by definition resistance is the effect at DC whilst impedance has the added dimension of inductance and capacitance, I think we have all agreed that these two effects are relatively insignificant at audio frequencies and speaker impedances.
John.....15KHz! Blimey that's impressive!!! There's hope for me then, I'm about 8 yrs younger than you!
Enjoyed the technical "flow" in paras 2/3.....Eddy current formation in capacitors does seem to be a known phenomenon in the industry John and partially accounts for their less than 100% efficiency ....just giving feedback here, but....as you've pointed out...designers have their own workarounds to this problem....
Finally though, in the nicest possible way, I don't remember agreeing with anyone that the reactive effects of real loads are insignificant to the audio fraternity.... (although in the context of cables vs typically imperfect amplifiers, we are still debating the degree of influence that they might have....)
Bill, yes not bad for an old fart, probably the only thing I have going for me, no, not the only one, the other is a deep understanding of electronics and I'll include in that an understanding of eddy currents.
Now a little textbook stuff here, an eddy current is the result of a magnetic field created by current flow in a conductor, and that will tend to produce an opposite current flow in a nearby conductor. It's effects are so small in a pair of wires as to be insignificant, even within a capacitor they are pretty small. But notice here almost every cable vendor seems to pick up on these 'very small' effects and make out that they are the very reason for improvement. Look for a moment as to the words and expressions used:
Reducing eddy current effects, no real effect to start with so nothing to reduce.
Teflon insulation to remove dielectric absorption, that is only applicable to the capacitive element and we have ascertained that it is insignificant. (the capacitive element that is)
Silver is one of the best conductors on the planet, right but how much better is it - Err about 5%
The list goes on and on, science mumbo jumble, highly in depth arguments as to how this company gets a somehow better performance from the same materials than anyone else, one claims screened cable to be the best, another twisted pair, another ribbon etc. If any of the claims made were at all real then the technology would in time converge towards the best, but that is not what's happening.
Marketing must be a wonderful subject, create an imagined problem, then create an imagined cure for it, then market it at an unimaginably high price, insurance companies have been doing it for years now, play on a slight insecurity, extract some cash, then when you feel safe and something does actually happen well that particular something is not covered, 'please it's all in the very small print'. I'm sure then a really good salesman would insure you against 'small print anomolies'.
Payment protection plans, life insurance, funeral insurance, paying a high price now for capped energy supplies, the cons just go on.
Look at some other ways of extracting cash, collectible items, those silly teddy bears that were all the rage not long ago. Collectible plates with certificates that basically stated that you had a plate, or was it to say that you were just had.
Fashion, now that has always been a classic. designer shoes at £500, Tesco £7.50, Guggi belt several hundred, boot sale belt less than a fiver. Yet they all do the same job.
I once knew a second hand TV salesman and he had a shop full of tellys ranging in price from £15 to £150, and I said these are basically the same tellys, his answer, people have an expectation of what is right to pay, so if they think £70 is right then I have one for them, and yes I know they all cost me under a tenner but that is marketing, offer the customer what they want.
Sorry a bit of a rant here but it is Saturday. John...
Just seen a film featuring the Beatles and their tracks dating back to 'A Hard Days Night', a monochrome film, but what surprised me was the audio quality, I'm sure that the sound quality on that film was better than many of the released recordings, mind you just listen to some of the better film sound tracks around, the opera singer in 'The fifth element' the opening scene in 'Octopussy' these are beautifically recorded, totally emotional and not an exotic cable in sight.
tracks dating back to 'A Hard Days Night', a monochrome film, but what surprised me was the audio quality, I'm sure that the sound quality on that film was better than many of the released recordings...
Unsurprising. Optical tracks on a clean, well cared-for print are intrinsically superb. While they don't have the bandwidth we expect today, the distortion is very low with none of the "squeeze" and increasing distortion of mag. as the level rises. A film of that era would have been recorded on standard ¼" tape and post produced on dozens of mag. tracks using magnetic tape that was the same form factor as 35mm film. While I don't remember the details, 35mm mag. film could carry a few (?6) audio tracks and the linear speed of 35mm was high - about 20ips. This meant nice wide tracks running at a good speed. Low noise, good bandwidth.
For these reasons, up till about 30 years ago, the cinema was capable of producing a better sounding end product than the record industry. No vinyl manufacturing processes to get in the way and, sometimes, nice big cinemas in which to listen. That said, the majority of flea pits had awful sound but that was nothing to do with the capability of the technology.
Great, thanks, I always do enjoy a fully backed up technical reason. Maybe just a perception of mine that the record companies were somehow the height of recording... John...
