Expensive cable!

'pair' of cables

P.T. Barnum was right ;-)

...Jim Thompson

"PE Air Tubes to minimize information smearing"

"Smearing"?

"conductors labeled for proper direction of signal flow"

You have to be very careful to make sure AC flows in the right direction. :^)

"cold-welded silver-plated XLR plugs"

Welded???

"cold-welded" is a fancy term for CRIMPED ;-)

...Jim Thompson

A fool and his money...

What is even more incredible are thousand dollar power cords.

I can't hear the difference; I'm too busy switching the cables twenty thousand times a second in order to keep the current flowing in the right direction.

I've split in 2 part a cheap rca to rca cable ( got that cable about 25 years ago) and connected each part to a pair of cheap 18 gauge wire to connect my pc to the coaxial input of my home theater center.. (about 20 feet) strange enough I hear every thing in 5.1 and no glitch....

"Don Wiss" a écrit dans le message de groupe de discussion : snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

I went to high school with some certified SMFs (smart mothertruckers). One of these SMFs took his money from starting one of the first IBM PC clone companies (back when you made and burned your own BIOS) and started a high end audio company. Since I always respected this guy's intelligence and engineering abilities I spent an afternoon with him at his shop. Dollar wise the sky was the limit. Silver solder and wire, $25 capacitors, power supplies in separate boxes. We spent about 5 hours.

For what I listen to there was no difference.

He had a ambient sound recording from a jungle in Africa. We started with a fairly stock system and listened. As extremely esoteric parts were added or swapped the results were amazing. The ability to hear more sounds improved as the $$ went up. Just to be sure I had him remove items one at a time and the sounds disappeared.

I was a MAJOR skeptic and came in expecting to not hear a difference and didn't on the CDs I listened to regularly. Since I don't normally listen to ambient jungle sounds the extra thousands of $$ would be wasted. Much to his credit he didn't try to sell me anything. It was just a chance for him to share his knowledge.

But I did hear a difference.

My personal opinion is that if you are seriously into audio you need to find a SMF in your area and spend some time with recordings you know. If you can hear a difference and have the money why not make yourself happy. Any worthwhile high end audio shop will be willing to spend the time letting you decide for yourself. Mail order is NOT the way to pursue such a hobby.

I have a strong suspicion that if the changes had been made without your knowledge and participation (or had not been made, but you were told they were), you would have found it considerably *more* difficult to hear any difference. Impossible, even.

Isaac

Were the jungle sounds on a CD or from and analog source? I would suspect that things like power conditioners could make quiet passages more quiet but I'd still be very skeptical about high end wires that were "cold welded" as opposed to the garden variety properly sized and terminated cables.

While your point is well taken, it's very likely there was a difference. Unless that SMF was pulling the old "Circuit City" trick of having much more expensive speakers accidentally also be switched on when you ask to listen to the sale price speakers, there's a very good chance that there was a substantial, detectable difference in the ability to reproduce atypical program material ( i.e. "non-musical" sounds).

Different codecs, amplifiers, speakers, power conditioners and even cables can all have an effect on sound quality. It's very possible, too, that the subject matter has something to do with the perception of "audio quality." Many audio components are designed to eliminate transients that are not part of a normal *musical* performance. Unfortunately, that also tends to degrade the ability to reproduce sounds that would, in musical circumstances, be thought of as noise. Anyone who has a receiver with different "sound fields" is already familiar with how different digital signal processing techniques can substantially modify the "quality" of the sound. Using the sound field selector on my Sony AV receiver I can make certain instruments virtually vanish or make others stand out.

All that said, I believe the *worst* place to start trying to improve your sound quality is with horribly overpriced and overhyped Monster cables.

-- Bobby G.

That's where the SMF was so smart, conning you into believing the nonense. Smart is parting the idiots from their money.

I seem to recall one test where they replaced one of the horrendously overpriced wires with a section so COAT HANGER WIRE. None of the audiophile nuts could tell the difference.

For me the key was "non-musical" sounds. Even though we played some classical samples I could not hear a difference. It could be that my ears are not "developed" enough but I do hear the bus on The Trinity Sessions.

No tricks. Just the two of us and equipment. No switching devices were used. When speakers were switched we physically moved the speakers in and out of position and swapped wires. This did not allow AB testing but what we were listening for was the ability to hear additional background sounds like distant birds and insects. You either heard them, didn't hear them or heard something but couldn't make it out.

The cables are the worst place to start.

The sounds were on a CD. We also played some vinyl but the to my ears the results were not as dramatic.

It has been a few years but I recall the largest differences involved active component changes like adding a external DA converter to the CD player. My point is that until you are able to have time to evaluate high end equipment to your own standards and on your own terms you can't make blanket statements about audible differences.

A fool and his money are soon parted. Many industries prove that on a daily basis.

I said "non-musical" sounds with great trepidation because fans of groups like "Art of Noise" might take serious exception. I just read an article somewhere that claimed that overall, musical fidelity expectations have become quite low since so many people listen to music exclusively through MP3 player headphones. If you know where to listen, MP3 compression has some serious limitations, and ironically, they're in the quietest of passages where it's easy to hear compression artifacts.

I'll bet that acoustically speaking, that a far-away insect looks a lot like a noise transient that needs filtering! There was a time when I could hear the difference between an Alan Parsons LP and a CD, but that was a while back.

The format I chose wasn't about audio fidelity as much as overall audio quality. LPs that had very quiet opening passages were virtually impossible to keep pristine. The "landing" of the needle, no matter how gentle, was a landing nonetheless. Unless you could handle LP's as adroitly as a juggler, after a while, the pops would appear. Not so with CD's. Quiet passages aren't as quiet as they could be, but they stay quiet a lot longer. More importantly, you can make perfect copies of CDs, but not LPs.

I'd probably start with the speakers and the amp, and maybe filtering or conditioning the power input. I'd also use oversize cables with gold-plated connectors because I'm in a high humidity area where nickel-plated connectors eventually get a hazy corrosion "crust" on them.

-- Bobby G.

It's a lot more accurate to call what the MP3 algorithm does "encoding" rather than "compression", as "compression" has a long history with a very different meaning, in audio. "Compression" reduces the difference in amplitude between loud and soft passages; MP3 encoding does no such thing.

MP3 encoding isn't a yes/no thing, it's a toolkit (actually, a group of them, as all encoders are distinctly NOT identical in performance). Which brand of "tool" is chosen, and the skill with which it is used, can make all the difference. Using an inadequate encoding algorithm or too low a bitrate, can certainly make for bad sound.

*Properly* encoded with a superior algorithm, MP3 is indistinguishable from CD source (and that includes "noises" as well as "music") by almost all *professionals* (who know precisely what artifacts to listen for), for almost *all* source material. Less skilled listeners don't stand much of a chance of telling the difference.

Quiet passages on a CD are demonstrably over 20 dB *quieter* than anything a vinyl can manage under any conditions, even when brand-new, and no matter how "fine" the playback gear is. If you can hear "noise" on a CD, it's because it was in the source material to begin with, and so is part of the recording (and therefore something that any good system *should* reproduce).

Isaac