I always believed that the more money you could throw at cables...the better.
Some time ago, a friend and I conducted an experiment. Using very exotic OTL tube monoblock amps, electrostatic hybrid speakers, and our standard mega-buck speaker cables in a 6ft length. This familiar "benchmark" set up was then compared to a <1ft length of generic, industrial copper stranded "wire". 16ga or so. You can do this sort of thing with monoblocks. There was clearly a difference. Mostly in the bass, which instantly stood out as being clearer, and more defined.....with the short section of generic wire. This isn't exactly what I/we expected, but it was obvious that cables DO have a role, and most of it is negative. Resistance, capacitance, inductance...I suppose they affect different amp/speaker combinations in different ways, and some more than others, but it would seem to be a fair assumption that "less is more" where these things are concerned. I think that like interconnects, speaker cables are being used to "shape" the sound of the audio system much like a very expensive tone control. In the end, this seems like a genuine waste of money. Very good cables (with engineering test data to detail their electrical characteristics) are produced in vast quantities at extremely affordable prices by OEMs. Why pay more?? My main speakers are actives...so I don't worry about speaker cables. My secondary system uses Canare at about $1/ft + terminations. No regrets. Caveat emptor. -- Curt962 Transporter...Touch....Boom...... ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Curt962's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=31949 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=86298 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
