[Closed] Hifi again!!

mechanical damping! I’ve heard it all now.

Anyone with a proper sound system would have experienced vibration in thier speaker cable, sometimes they start moving all on thier own. It's to stop all the electrons moving around inside the cable.

Oh, wait.

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<p style="padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: unset; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; line-height: 1.5rem; margin: 1rem 0px !important;">What did you upgrade from?</p>

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Too-short NAIM NACA4.

Edit: wish you guys would sort out these edit buttons...

I think the EMR reflecting off the sheilding on the cable is corrpting your HTML

Yes. I wanted to hear more,  so I bought  an upgrade that delivered some more for me to hear. ..

No doubt. However what I am highlighting by posting that image is that your brain is very easily fooled. In that images the two squares, A and B, are actually the exact same shade and colour. However your brain expects them to be different due to chequerboard pattern, but you're being fooled.

This perhaps explains why very expensive loudspeaker cables make such a positive difference to the sound you hear from your hi-fi, while in the absence of any explanation based on physics.

Your brain is very easily fooled

Don't take this personally BTW, everyone's brain is easily fooled. By 'your brain' I really mean 'ones brain'...

NAIM NACA4.

If you can consistently and reliably tell the difference audibly between those two sets of cables in double-blind testing then I'll both give you my bike and discover Jesus.

“Edit: wish you guys would sort out these edit buttons…”

Just use an Apple device. You don’t get the option at all then 🙂

“If you can consistently and reliably tell the difference audibly between those two sets of cables in double-blind testing then I’ll both give you my bike and discover Jesus.”

And so what if he can’t? Do you suddenly become worse at riding a bike if it’s wearing Deore rather than XTR?

550 on speaker cable? You need sectioning. If you buy in in 27.5 lengths it's gonna bring the sound alive....

Oh well.  That's me debunked then...

Oh well.  That's me debunked then...

Happily sitting here listening to a difference that's glaringly obvious.

Bye.

... and here's something for you to chew on...

https://www.stereophile.com/content/minnesota-audio-society-conducts-cable-comparison-tests-0

To be honest coming on here and talking about spending €550 on hi-fi interconnects is ‘asking for it’ and for someone who has been on here as long as you it has to be either tongue in check or, the very least, a bit trolly.

two can play that game so I decided to ‘play’ along but ask a genuine question (which tbf you kind of answered). It’s easy to judge, but my mother used to say if you can’t say anything nice say nothing 😉 Its more interesting to have a conversation than zokes deore diatribe. 25-30 years ago I worked with a guy whose BiL ran a Hi-Fi outlet and he talked about someone spending £30k each on pre-amps. I thought, that’s a shitload just to listen to Brothers in Arms... 🤣

im never going to spend £10k+ on hifi, ever, it’s just not that important to me. Plus at my age my ears!my ears!... Buts it’s your cash and if it brings you joy, great. And you obvs don’t care what other people think about it (which is as it should be).

Happy (enhanced) listening. 🙂

I was reading that report earlier this morning. What’s interesting with that, is that while the listeners could tell a difference and some expressed a preference, the most expensive cable didn’t win

"There were several comments to the effect that the sonics of the second amplifier, which was slightly preferred. Hopefully this did not significantly influence the results of test #3 and remaining tests."

So it's meant to be scientific but they change an amp halfway through?

Load of crap.

Also, they didn't test any decent quality, reasonably priced stuff, say £20 - £50? (Which I would consider "expensive")

It went from $3, then the next was $1000, rising to $8000.

The cheapest one isn't even really "speaker" cable.

Changed amp, all sat in a room together, in the same place as their mate switching the cables. Hardly scientific. And still not big enough results to get a statistically significant result!

If you look across the really cheap wire results with the aim to prove the hypothesis that more expensive wire is better:

1) 18 out of 40 people don't prefer the more expensive wire
2) 23 out of 40 people don't prefer the more expensive wire
3) 24 out of 40 people don't prefer the more expensive wire</span>

And supposedly the first one where they did prefer the expensive wire (although not by a statically significant amount) that was against the wire that "lost" to the other 2 expensive wires.

And that's despite using really, really cheap cable for the cable A and not just some fairly cheap reasonable cable.

I really wouldn't read much into that experiment!

Whereabouts are you Mr Woppit?

if you’re anywhere close I’d love to see/listen to your system - I’m a HiFi fan too, just alon a much lower budget.

im genuinely curious re the “spotting the difference in the cables” question too - I was serious about bringing my £60 cable over...

… and here’s something for you to chew on…

https://www.stereophile.com/content/minnesota-audio-society-conducts-cable-comparison-tests-0/a >

Interesting, but it's flawed. It's not double blind, ie those running the test were aware of which cable is which. One amp broke so the equipment in the test was not consistent.

Also the choice of cables is clearly biased. One $3 set then the rest are all over $1000. What about $20 cables, $50 cables, $100, $200 or $500?

<p style="padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; line-height: 1.5rem; color: #444444; margin: 1rem 0px !important;">Whereabouts are you Mr Woppit?</p>
<p style="padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; line-height: 1.5rem; color: #444444; margin: 1rem 0px !important;">if you’re anywhere close I’d love to see/listen to your system – I’m a HiFi fan too, just alon a much lower budget.</p>

Happy to host.

Orgiva, Alpujarras, Spain.

Just up the Calle from Dave at "Biking Andalucua".

<span style="color: #444444;">"Orgiva, Alpujarras, Spain."</span>

Wow, you lucky fella. Nice place to live!

markwsf - why not book a holiday with Dave and call in here on your day off with your cable?

Mr Woppit - quite tempting!

I suspect hifi might very much take a back seat compared to the local biking though...

Aren’t we getting into the realms of playing recordings back on equipment that’s “higher quality” than the gear it was originally recorded on? And then if that’s the case all this “detail” etc that people say they can here simply isn’t there in the first place?

Diminishing returns in terms of enjoyment/£ is definitely true, but I actually think that the more improvements you make, the easier it becomes to hear the differences.

In some ways those differences aren't so subtle.

My favourite hi-fi dealer makes their own racks ( https://www.musicworks-hifi.com) and on their mid-level systems upwards it's very easy to hear the differences between shelves made out of mdf/acrylic/peek swapped during listening.

But even though in some ways I've been blown away by their high-end systems, I've chosen to stay at a modest level myself just because my priorities and situation are different (kids, cats, room decor, home cinema, etc).

“I paid hundreds/thousands for xxxxxxx and now I can hear the bassist farting at the two-minute mark”, or, “I paid hundreds/thousands for xxxxxxx and now I can hear the singer’s breath wafting over the mic.”.

...is basically how it goes, and demonstrates how the ‘audiophile’ doesn’t really understand audio. It’s much more a matter of ”I spent hundreds/thousands and listened so hard for a difference that I heard something I hadn’t heard before”.

This lack of understanding of sound is usually also made apparent by a failure to adequately treat the space that the equipment is played in.

You've completely made that up Three_Fish.
Most hi-fi people I know talk about the emotion and communication of the music. They also go to a lot of live gigs and concerts. They are basically trying to recreate the same connection that occurs at those at home. It's nothing to do with breaths/noises.

It's to do with musical intent, subtlety and communication.

I leave the specifics to our engineers, but wide bandwidth, phase coherence and fast transient handling are important.

That's certainly the traditional NAIM approach - communicating the emotional content by concentrating on "pace, rhythm and timing" - musicality.

My own upgrade path has been to look for all the "hifi" qualities - soundstaging, detail, instrument placement and so on, whilst retaining the essential qualities on which Julian Vereker founded the company.

My experience is that, with careful choice of upgrade (largely sticking with NAIM boxes but going outside the company for speakers and in this case, speaker cable) you can indeed have the best of both worlds.

http://I was reading that report earlier this morning. What’s interesting with that, is that while the listeners could tell a difference and some expressed a preference, the most expensive cable didn’t win

That's a fairly typical result in these sort of tests. Subjectivity and all that. I'm reminded of a test of oboes. There is a lot of sniffiness about materials used in woodwinds - MUST be wood, DEFINITELY NOT resin or plastic. Anyway in blind testing musicians and non-musicians alike couldn't say which were wood and which were plastic. They could state a preference and it wasn't the same for everyone. So I guess the upshot of that is, whatever you like personally, go with it. I have Radiospares speaker cable and mic cable in my AVI/ATC setup. It sounds fine to me.

Mr Woppit, I know you have NAIM amps but don't which ones. What I have found about the smaller ATC speakers (I have SCM20s) is they need serious amounts of power driving them. I have AVI 150w mono blocks but I know they sound better with the 250w model. I'm talking of dynamics and transients not just ultimate peak SPLs.

Most hi-fi people I know talk about the emotion and communication of the music. They also go to a lot of live gigs and concerts. They are basically trying to recreate the same connection that occurs at those at home. It’s nothing to do with breaths/noises.

It’s to do with musical intent, subtlety and communication.

So what do you do to run it in?

@ slowoldman

At the moment,  I've got a NAC202 into a NAP200.

This hits the absolute minimum requirement for the SM19'S at 70wpc.

Seriously considering ebay searching for a relatively recent NAP250 to bring it up to 80wpc which would be a much better fit.

The Cuervo Gold. A fine Columbian.  Make tonight a wonderful thing.

Nice

At the end of the day, it's your money and if you're happy, then cool.

Curious, but how much were your banana plugs?

No idea.

The cables came made up to my spec.

And 100 hours to burn in? Burn in a cable? What happens when you go from 99 hours to 100?

"wow, that's amazing. Spotify 128k never sounded better"

<span style="color: #444444; font-size: 12px; background-color: #eeeeee;">Possibly, but it’s a very, very rare concert where the sound is on a par with even a £300 home system, apart from volume, of course.</span>

In my experience live music knocks spots of any hi-fi, however expensive. But then again most gigs I go to these days are classical. I find that in general classical musicians couldn't really give a toss about hi-fi. They understand it is a second rate copy.

Of course. Cds and records are mastered to suit an average home hifi, not replicating a live concert. Completely different.

So you bought 2x single runs, you're not bi-amping or bi-wiring? What speakers are you running? Assuming they are front ported as the pics I saw they looked like they were in corners with acoustic dampening and a tiled floor.... Get a rug lol

<span style="color: #444444; font-size: 12px;">Seriously considering ebay searching for a relatively recent NAP250 to bring it up to 80wpc which would be a much better fit.</span>

A little story. I was at a trade show years ago. Martin Grindrod of AVI had an interesting demo set up incorporating power meters showing average power over a 1 second period and instantaneous peak power. This was using ATC SCM20s. He was playing the start of Sibelius Violin Concerto. It's a quiet intro and the average power meter showed about 0.1 watts with peaks of a watt or so. Come the first orchestral tutti the instantaneous power requirement shot up to 400 watts!! That requires an amp of about 250w RMS to reproduce cleanly. What price SETs?

@aphex

I'm pretty sure a giant unicorn leaps into the room through a 6th-dimensional portal in the subspheroidal continuum.

Which is what I suppose you'd like to read as a response to your goad.

Smartarse (not an ironic compliment).

You’ve completely made that up Three_Fish.

I wish I had.

They also go to a lot of live gigs and concerts. They are basically trying to recreate the same connection...

Well there's a fool's errand if ever there was one.

It’s to do with musical intent, subtlety and communication.

Oh give me a break. Nobody, and I repeat, nobody, needs 500quid cables to be able to discern any of those things in a recording. I'm fortunate to know a lot of musicians - I'm a bit of an old hand myself - from punks and grungers to professional jazz players, and I know people who record and produce for a living. Many musicians record and many recording engineers play. I don't think I can think of a single one who is also an 'audiophile'. Most of them love music, though; funnily enough. It's almost offensive to artists and engineers, to suggest that their work can only be properly appreciated with pretentiously over-priced equipment.

It’s nothing to do with breaths/noises.

Really?

Isn’t it great when, even after all this time an upgrade proves to be little short of jaw-dropping? Very familiar with the track, but this was the first time I’ve been able to hear Sandy Denny’s breath passing through her throat as she sings.

Get in the sea man 🙂 Currently listening to the track streamed from YouTube on my MacBook and I can hear her breath as she sings. That's just what her voice sounds like. Granted, it's easier to hear when I stream through the hifi, but if you've never heard it before it's nothing to do with your speakers unless you were previous listening through potatoes. It's a lovely song, on that we agree.

“pace, rhythm and timing” – musicality.

All wholly independent of audio quality unless, again, possibly when played through a potato.

It's anyone's business what they spend their money on, but if you're going to play show and tell then you have to be prepared to have people point out your bullshit. It also totally undermines your 'expertise' when you refuse to acknowledge the significance of one of the most important factors in audio reference.

Oh dearie me.

I just can't be bothered with this thread anymore.

Best argue amongst yourselves.

Haha,  what did you expect?

Still, if you're still reading, which I expect you are as you've only demi-flounced, stick a picture up eh? Be right back, I'm just plugging my phone into charge using a $700 USB C cable as I find I charges better.

X

Also giggling that you had these cables made up to spec but no idea what plugs you have. Money well spent. Well done you.

pace, rhythm and timing

All wholly independent of audio quality

<p>

Diminishing returns in terms of enjoyment/£ is definitely true, but I actually think that the more improvements you make, the easier it becomes to hear the differences</p><p>In some ways those differences aren’t so subtle.My favourite hi-fi dealer makes their own racks ( https://www.musicworks-hifi.com ) and on their mid-level systems upwards it’s very easy to hear the differences between shelves made out of mdf/acrylic/peek swapped during listening. But even though in some ways I’ve been blown away by their high-end systems, I’ve chosen to stay at a modest level myself just because my priorities and situation are different (kids, cats, room decor, home cinema, etc). -Advertisement--

A flounce!

"Look at my brilliant £500 wires. They make the music come alive!"

Really?

"Yes. Here is a completely flawed test to prove it."

Well here's some evidence to debunk your audiophile BS talk of balance, sound stage, detail, colour etc.

"I'm off!"

You OK hun?

Incidentally,

What's the logic behind "directional cables" anyway, how's that supposed to work?  We have a cable which conducts electricity better in one direction than the other?

That has always baffled me Cougar.

We have a cable which conducts electricity better in one direction than the other?

Yes, we do, and it also helps the band play in time. What a pair of them will do will make your jaw drop!

Maybe they do sound better, but I'd be unable to hear the improvement over the sound of my wife saying "500 euros, on ****ing copper wire? That's more than gypsys get at the scrappies,  you dick!"

What about a £350 power cable?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Audiophile-Power-Cable-Professional-Discerning/dp/B01IF3ST60

HTAF can that make any difference?

The 240v has travelled from a sub station maybe miles away, then through the cabling in your home.

How can adding a 1m length at the end make any difference whatsoever?

<span style="color: #444444; font-size: 12px;">How can adding a 1m length at the end make any difference whatsoever?</span>

If you don't understand the physics of snake oil (or $ sign) I can't help.

What you really need is a £1650.00 power cable.

https://mcru.co.uk/product/mcru-no-77-power-lead/?v=79cba1185463

To make that really sing you need some £3500.00 speaker cable

https://mcru.co.uk/product/black-rhodium-thunder-loudspeaker-cables-2/?v=79cba1185463

You guys are really playing at the cheap end....

What about the £1350 ethernet cable or the £1350 USB cable?

https://www.audiosanctuary.co.uk/vertere-pulse-data-ethernet-cable.html

https://www.audiosanctuary.co.uk/vertere-pulse-hb-double-usb-cable.html

Surely there can be nothing madder than those 2?

Never mind that cheap speaker cable.

How about £54,000 for 5m of this:

https://www.audiosanctuary.co.uk/audioquest-wel-signature-speaker-cable-per-terminated-pair.html

They are made with directional unicorn hair.

What’s the logic behind “directional cables” anyway, how’s that supposed to work?  We have a cable which conducts electricity better in one direction than the other?

I'm pretty sure there are materials that are directional conductors, e.g. the stuff in diodes and rectifiers. However, an audio signal alternates about 0 volts reference so directional material is surely pointless

Positive and negative connectors only exist on speaker cable for phase coherence

What’s the logic behind “directional cables” anyway, how’s that supposed to work?  We have a cable which conducts electricity better in one direction than the other?

I can't imagine anywhere in audio where that matters and I say that as someone who used to design the front ends for ultrasonic scanners where the signal levels are rather low.  Doesn't mean I'm right though - just means it doesn't make any sense to me

I can’t imagine anywhere in audio where that matters and I say that as someone who used to design the front ends for ultrasonic scanners where the signal levels are rather low.  Doesn’t mean I’m right though – just means it doesn’t make any sense to me

I have wired together studio installs where the screen is disconnected at one end on balanced interconnect cables between pieces of gear. E.g. screen disconnected on all outputs. That makes each cable assembly directional if you follow it throughout the install (which you need to in order for the scheme to work).... but the xlr cable assemblies are 'directional' anyway due to input and output plugs being different

I'd agree with that actually although it's slightly different in that case as you have 4 wires (hot/cold/earth/shield) and the objective of the screen disconnect is to prevent earth loops rather than a simple two wire system in HiFi where you can only be avoiding noise injection

Yes, it wasn't for speaker cable and was for preventing ground loop hum. A balanced audio cable is a pair of cables inside a screen. Each cable carries an inverted version of the audio signal to the other, then a differential amp is used at the input to reject any noise added on its journey between units

I'm a sceptic regarding cables but here's my experiences 🙂

My first job was at BBC research dept, in a section next to the sound section that designed all the BBC monitors. I bought my first LS3/5as with my staff discount.

I had a Quad 34/306 amp and the LS3/5as wired with either mains cable or something else cheap.

A mate had some Exposure amps and Ruark loudspeakers, and Cable Talk interconnects and speaker cable. He brough the cables round to try.

Surprisingly I found a difference when using the cables. I wired it up, so not at all blind, but I switched back and forth a lot and was obviously not expecting to hear a difference at all.

I am well aware of limited audio memory, expectation bias and all the rest of the problems that might make me think there was a difference. I didn't want to hear a difference as I didn't want to spend money on something as stupid as cables, for one thing.

I also found that if I left my bog-standard interconnects between the pre/power amp then the new speaker cable made no difference, and if I used the interconnect but my old speaker cables, also no difference.

Flummoxed and surprised I refused to spend out on those cables and bought some reasonably priced coax interconnect and some Quad speaker cable, at about £8 a metre. The speaker cable was 4mm stranded. Also some nice coax RCA plugs from Maplin, fairly cheap but well made, and bog standard banana plugs.

I got the same difference in sound - much wider band and more solid, with more bass depth.

[I think differences are often more noticable with small speakers as you are already missing a big chuck of bass response, so if you get the slightest bit more or less, the rest of the spectrum is affected a lot.]

I then got some AB-1 bass extenders for the speakers - which work in series and have a band-pass to the LS3/5as.

When I connected them they sounded very dull and muffled.

I went to my favourite and trusted hifi shop and he recommended trying some Nordost flatline cable, an unusual cable with the conductors all arranged flat.

When I used this all the muddiness went and it sounded 'right' and balanced again.

I changed the 306 for a 707 amp, with twice the power. Sounded pretty similar.

I then bought some external crossovers for my speakers, designed by Derek Hughes who used to run Spendor. Some people would argue that there are not many people who know passive crossover design better.

These were single-wired from the amp to the crossover and then biwired to the drivers, obviously as there was no crossover in the speakers.

I was using the original Quad 4mm stranded speaker wire, but it sounded massively phasy and just wierd (and definitely not wired out of phase...).

I wasn't using the flatline cable as it sounded very sharp and unbalanced.

I bought some Kef cable from ebay, also something like £8 a metre, which was maybe 1.5mm stranded. Using that everything was good again. Also used some blue van damme 2.5mm cable and that was the same as the Kef (but looked rubbish). (Also used Van Damme interconnects).

I have also tried some 4mm stranded Van Damme, which has a clear coat and is reportedly what PMC and Bryston recommend/use. I found that also sounded phasy, just like the 4mm stranded Quad cable.

Along the way I had a discussion with the guy from my favourite hifi shop and he said they always used some particular cables (can't remember which ones) because they were the best bet to work reasonably well with whatever they were demoing.

So I think SS amps are susceptible to the whole 'network' presented to them, and cables with difference impedance characteristics can change how the amp sounds, and it doesn't take much of a change to make it seem like there is a big audiable difference.

I think that small speakers cause this more - the bigger the speaker I have tried the less the cables seem to make a difference.

And the tube amps I have had have seemed much more agnostic to speaker cables.

Indeed some famous amp designer I think once said he could make any ss amp sound like a tube amp by playing around with speaker cables - I just can't find the link now. Maybe something to do with Hafler?

Regarding the £500 speaker cables - if you get them made up with the plugs all put on it is easy to add a lot to the per metre price.

And don't Naim amps have something funny about that requires particular speaker cables - a quick google found this :

"Naim amplifiers do not have extra inductance networks in the output, Naim prefer to use the speaker cable to provide the correct inductance and capacitance."

See, that actually sounds credible when you start talking about real and measurable things like impedance. And badly designed amps that can't just output to a standard.

My experience is that cables can make a difference but it's very small and more a case of crap cables making things worse than really expensive cables improving a system.

I primarily use Naim amps though, and with them most agree it's best to just stick to the Naim speaker cable which isn't expensive. I've got some non-Naim interconnects (moderately expensive ones - certainly a lot more expensive than the Naim ones - that came with some 2nd hand kit I bought) but can't discern any difference in sound quality with them fitted.

This is one way I test cables, supports etc.

Please feel free to try it yourself.

On the Cornershop album When I Was Born For The 7th time there's a track called 'What is happening?'

It has a particularly deep repeated tabla sample.

With some cable, I can hear much more detail in this sample than with others. It's that simple.

There's something about the sample that is obvious with some cables and not with others.

It's that simple.

I've demonstrated this to lots of people. The vast majority can hear a specific difference.

Try it. I'd love to know how you get on and what differences you hear.

I'll not say what the specific difference in the nature of the sample is that I hear until someone else has tried it.

Any takers?

Anyone?

surely some sort of placebo effect? like, $10/m vs $100/m you'd expect the sound to be better, so that's what you hear?

If someone was to blindfold you and switch cables and listen to the same track.....?

Not tried double blind, but I'd like to.

Ime, the cost is irrelevant. I've tried various types of cable including demoing some very expensive stuff at home in my modest system. The type seems to be of more import than the cost.

I like experimenting with this kind I thing and trust my own ears.