Well, I would be most interested in hearing the difference, if indeed there is one to be heard! Allow me to repeat a tale I posted elsewhere on just this point:

"I had an epiphany when enjoying the greatly improved fidelity I was getting with my newly installed expensive interconnect. I was doing what we all do at the time, go through the favourites of our music collection hearing things not heard before when after an hour I looked at the input selector of my amp and was horrified to see I was listening through the wrong interconnect! At $1,000 a metre all I could do was laugh at myself, and then sell it."

Such is the power of the mind. Be aware, be objective and if possible, blind test the cables. If you can, get someone else to install one set or another in such a way that you cannot tell which set is active.

Make sure that the cable terminations you buy are good quality. Maplin's posh banana plugs are OK, the cheap ones are not so good mainly because the cable clamp is poor. A great many cable anomalies and oddities are likely to be down to connections, and the fact that every time you make and break a connection you are giving the contact points a good clean. High quality connectors are vital, but high quality does not necessarily mean silly money. The most important thing with any connector is high contact pressure i.e. a good stiff fit.

I would be delighted to know how you get on, and the verdict! BTW, what type of power amp. do you have?

If you push your budget just a little further you could afford Harbeth Monitor 30. This is assuming that you still want bookshelf speakers.

I had ES11 for two years and they are indeed difficult to upgrade from.  I went the LS3/5a V2 route which are quite a bit better but difficult to set up properly.

If you look on the second hand market, you can get Dynaudio Contour 1.1 and 1.3 for less than £700. Generally they're well looked after and difficult to break so a good second hand choice.  Sonus Faber or Spendor might be a better choice though given that you probably need some warmth to balance your Cyrus.

My Uncle, is a serious hi-fi aficionado and is an audiophile expert. He has a 10K+ Cyrus - Wilson Benesch set up with interconnects and speaker cable worth more than a small farm in Surrey.

Basically He's the reason why I'm brassic and indebted to a well known midlands hi-fi dealer. He called me the other day, after we were talking about Pluto's review on the Maplin cable.

By co-incidence he was there during the week buying some capacitors and resistors. He got talking to the Branch Manager about Pluto’s recommended cable, to cut a very long story short, the Manager was also raving about the clarity, responsiveness and sheer brilliant timing of the cable.

Sceptically, he bought 10 meters of the cable and decided to put it to the test.

Removing the exorbitant but “perfect” Chord Company Signature cable was, frankly daunting; however, he has “took the plunge”.

After six hours of listening and burning in the Maplin cable; spinning classics like KC & The Sunshine Band & Mario Lanza through his DACx, he had reached a very simple but precise conclusion;

In his own words; he called and this was the result;

After minimal burning in this cable really surprised me; after a harsh start it became mellow and rounded after about 2 hours.

The bass was rich and tight, the midrange sonically separated every instrument and a commanded a very refined edge. The treble was breathtakingly clear and precise.

I was genuinely amazed that a national retailer with cable by the roll had found such a magical product worthy of some of the top awards.

Pluto has uncovered something pure, something the even great inventors are out of reach of, this is the finest speaker cable in the world!

Like a top-shelf magazine, he assured me that he was glued to the sonic capability of this cable.

As far as reviews go, you can’t say much more than this, Pluto, thank you, for finding this diamond in the rough.

You are a true Gentlemen.

Thanks for the kind words but I think you or your uncle are over-complicating the truth. This cable has no special attributes other than suitably low L, C & R, and adequate current-carrying capability – the universal requirement for loudspeaker cable. As I have stated elsewhere on this board, three whole generations of home-audio enthusiasts have been so influenced by the marketing-led companies that sell overly expensive cable, that they really do believe that the best (i.e. most expensive) audio cables possess certain properties that 21st century physics and engineering are unable to define. Let's call that incredible property "magic" for want of a better term.

The marketing and related money flow are insidious. It pays everyone in the business to keep the myths alive, including the publishers of the various organs upon which enthusiasts rely for information about their chosen hobby. I am certainly not alleging corruption; merely pointing out that this is a game in which everybody participates because it suits them to do so.

I have no idea what your uncle's Chord Signature cable is like - I have never knowingly encountered the stuff. But I do know that I have seen many so-called specialist speaker cables that are, frankly, weird – not the kind of cable I would consider fit for purpose defined by the basic criteria stated above. Some of these cables are so odd that it's unsurprising that they affect the sound in a way that cannot possibly be beneficial, but as they can and do affect the sound because of their obvious lack of fitness for purpose (in many different respects), gullible enthusiasts now accept that speaker cables have a sonic signature that must be matched to the sound of the system!

I am truly pleased that you and your uncle have now discovered a basic truth for yourselves. Now read this wonderful article for more of the same!

I'm kinda there with Pluto on the cable thing. If only I could get Chord to put their loverly plugs on Maplin cable, we'd be away.

I like the "10 lies" article, but take issue with one point - Biwiring. It has one beneficial effect - it means you don't have to use the crappy jumper pins at the back of the speakers. However, you can get the same effect using well terminated jumper cables, so it's semi true.  If you're going to spend on biwire cable - may as well bi-amp

 regards

Rod. 

Im just intrigued Pluto. Obviously this Maplins speaker cable (for the price) is the mutts nuts.

Would you say there is simply NO OTHER CABLE that can beat it?

I have tried Cable Talks cheapie biwire (ok), QED Silver Anniversary (Slightly better, but nowhere near as good as its made out), Van Den Hull (Cant recall which name but ~ WAY better) and now im on some custom built 16 core braided silver and copper  (another step up and im going no further )

In my experience I have tried some others, the 'chord' I tried for example was a let down (especially for the price). My dad has a VERY pricy hifi setup and uses some Black Rhodium DCT stuff (forgets name of that too but it aint cheap), but to be fair, it sounds awesome compared to the others he had tested (though Id hazard a guess my custom built cable would be better)

Im just wondering if your saying there IS such a thing as the PERFECT speaker cable and that it cant really be touched upon?

Also, I dont believe everything I read! I myself tried biwiring out on my very first hifi as an experiment and there was a CLEAR difference between biwired and a single run. The bass was way clearer and I could hear things in the mix that I just couldnt before (though biwiring seems to depend a LOT on the actual louspeaker) and the treble was glorious.

he states "If you move one pair of speaker wires to
the same terminals where the other pair
is connected, absolutely nothing changes
electrically. The law of physics that says
so is called the superposition principle.
In terms of electronics, the superposition
theorem states that any number of voltages
applied simultaneously to a linear
network will result in a current which is
the exact sum of the currents that would
result if the voltages were applied individually."

And I say so what! When I biwire I use my own theory. I keep the 2 signals apart where possible which is why I believe (in some cases) biwiring is better. What I mean by that is that at the amp end I try to feed to speakers a + b (where possible and therefore keeping the frequencies apart) or if not possible I try to seperate them best I can (by say a spade for the low frequencies and a banana for the high so the 2 arnt 'crossing over' one another). I think theres too many people trying to MEASURE something but unsure of what to measure or why!

I also disagree with the 'conditioning' statement. I cant prove what I can or cant hear so i'll goto tvs. I plugged a mains conditioner upto my philips tv (years ago) and there was an INSTANT jump in quality. Thats my EYES not my EARS!  But whilst on that subjectim 100% sure that my amp sounds way better now than when I had my 'kettle lead' attached (Whatever the free cable was that came with it). This to me was down to being braided and silver plated (And I tried the other way round and over an hour or so being quite clear that the amp connected with the  silver plated braided cable was far superior sounding)

Im not a fan of these 'blind' tests because I believe that every cable change (indeed every component change too) needs a certain amount of time before it 'beds in' to the rest of the system and also that people try so hard to tell a difference that thay inherantly forget to do what theyre supposed to ~ relax and enjoy the music......... Theyre trying so hard that they become unsure. My own test is to try cables over a month or 2. It becomes quite clear over that time wether one makes a difference over another or not.

Rik H - just to pick up a few points from your extensive post -

>Would you say there is simply NO OTHER CABLE that can beat it

It appears to me that many folks are using cables as a simplistic equaliser. The system sounds a bit harsh, you end up choosing a high capacitance cable that tames the HF a bit. Job done, harshness tamed, in that situation the cable which achieved that result is clearly the best cable in the world. For my own purposes I require cables that change nothing, clearly an impossibility in the quantum sense. But in audio, given correctly designed equipment at either end of a cable - any cable at all - it is possible to achieve a result in which the cabling has no significant effect. If my system sounds harsh, dull, bland, lacking in imagery, boring etc. etc. etc. I have probably picked the wrong speakers. If I'm sure that the speakers are good, it's probably the listening room that needs sorting out. I've quite possibly got those two in the wrong order. It might be better to get the room as good as possible, then pick the speakers after you know what acoustic foibles you will need to deal with. But either way, cabling is such an insignificantly small part of the overall equation that I simply pick cables that I know to be correctly designed for the job in hand.

> Im just wondering if your saying there IS such a thing as the PERFECT speaker cable

The perfect speaker cable is clearly one of zero L, C, and R. Such a cable could be used in infinite length without any signal degradation whatsoever. Sadly we don't have one like this yet. But we do have sufficiently close to this - certainly when reasonable lengths are involved - that the only time that speaker cable matters is if something is happening contrary to the principles outlined in the previous paragraph.

Right now I haven't the time to deal with all the points you raise in a rather multi-faceted post. I'll come back to it at the weekend, time permitting. But in the meantime, I'd like to ask you what frame of reference you use to ensure that your subjective judgements remain consistent and correct. If I've learned one thing in my years of listening it's that the ear can be fooled - easily - by a multitude of aural and psychological factors. You obviously have a great deal of confidence in your own ability to make aural judgements. How do you ensure that you remain on the straight and narrow and avoid confusing 'correct' with 'nice'?

Pluto wrote (see)

Rik H - just to pick up a few points from your extensive post -

>Would you say there is simply NO OTHER CABLE that can beat it

It appears to me that many folks are using cables as a simplistic equaliser. The system sounds a bit harsh, you end up choosing a high capacitance cable that tames the HF a bit. Job done, harshness tamed, in that situation the cable which achieved that result is clearly the best cable in the world. For my own purposes I require cables that change nothing, clearly an impossibility in the quantum sense. But in audio, given correctly designed equipment at either end of a cable - any cable at all - it is possible to achieve a result in which the cabling has no significant effect. If my system sounds harsh, dull, bland, lacking in imagery, boring etc. etc. etc. I have probably picked the wrong speakers. If I'm sure that the speakers are good, it's probably the listening room that needs sorting out. I've quite possibly got those two in the wrong order. It might be better to get the room as good as possible, then pick the speakers after you know what acoustic foibles you will need to deal with. But either way, cabling is such an insignificantly small part of the overall equation that I simply pick cables that I know to be correctly designed for the job in hand.

Pluto wrote (see)

Right now I haven't the time to deal with all the points you raise in a rather multi-faceted post. I'll come back to it at the weekend, time permitting. But in the meantime, I'd like to ask you what frame of reference you use to ensure that your subjective judgements remain consistent and correct. If I've learned one thing in my years of listening it's that the ear can be fooled - easily - by a multitude of aural and psychological factors. You obviously have a great deal of confidence in your own ability to make aural judgements. How do you ensure that you remain on the straight and narrow and avoid confusing 'correct' with 'nice'?

Well I can only go from what my ears tell me (Or my decibel meter but that VERY rarely gets used). I listen to music and films, programmes etc and judge from what I hear wether it sounds correct. Ive no doubt that someone could easily FOOL my hearing. But not in the long term, in the long term my hearing will tell me whats right and whats wrong with something. Thats why I test everythin over a period of months and NOT within the first 5 mins to an hour like most do.........

I certainly didnt mean the post to be as large as it was but I was rather put out that you posted that link and expected everyone to just believe it. I never even read it all just picked up certain keywords and read the chapters in question (shrugs)