Fastlayne

I read a suggestion for shielded speaker cable is to connect the shield to the amp (receiver) ground. Will the ground connection for the AM antenna (not in use) work for this? Also, the IEC AC input on the receiver only has two blades, no ground. If the chassis is not connected to the AC ground, would this defeat any benefit of connecting the cable shield to the chassis?

Speaking of money, you might want to consider submitting that to some audio magazines for publication. I enjoyed it, thanks.

Mark Knopfler's "Sailing to Philadelphia" is another I often use. The recording is decent, but he has good depth in his voice and the appearances from Van Morrison and James Taylor are a bonus. I like tracks 10 and 11, "Speedway at Nazareth" and "Junkie Doll" in particular. If you want an electronica workout for the speakers, try Madonna's "Music", "American Life", "Confessions on a Dance Floor"...or probabaly anything from "Ray of Light" on.

Janis Ian's "Breaking Silence" on Analogue Productions gold CD or LP. I don't see the CD available on their website currently, but you might be able to find one somewhere. http://store.acousticsounds.com/browse_detail.cfm?Title_ID=6045 http://www.stereophile.com/recordingofthemonth/763/ Just found it, unfortunately it's this one: http://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Silence-Janis-Ian/dp/B000054P0H/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1241539714&sr=1-9 They were selling for less than the LP when I got mine, which I thought was a lot for a CD at the time. It turned out to be well worth it and an example of how good CDs can sound. Looks like I should have bought a case of them.

The part about the power conditioner was the most flawed to me because the company rep picked their product 2 out of 3 times. There should have been at least one more test which would result in 2/2, which is a guess, or 3/4, a more convincing majority.

That was intense! Still, it really is an example of limited benefits. It would be frustrating to have a car that could never be legally driven on the roads out of 2nd or 3rd gear, not just the Bugatti.

Don't think anyone was blindfolded, but I found this one interesting: http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB120044692027492991-Po6L667z7U6W9ZfTfXBmeCKlV80_20080214.html

Great post and explains a lot. I've heard changes in my sytems from cables and cords, or thought I did at least. Trying to put into words the changes is another thing. Seems like some people have the ability to describe what they hear and sometimes their explanations are very close to what I heard from the same product.

Good article and made me think how visual comparisons can be made simultaneously but audio comparisons cannot. You view video signals on two different monitors, connected side by side, and ask a group of people which picture has the most realistic reds. You look at both and one looks more orange and one very red. Probably most everyone would pick the same as you and be able to describe the differences the same way. Easy. Harder to do with audio because you can't listen to two sets of speakers at the same time. As close as A-B switching is, you often are comparing speakers of different efficiency so the volume is different. The other article was also informative. It was a good explanation and understandable right up to the last part, applying the cream to the cables, when I was thinking "primrose path" and tightened the grip on my wallet. Seriously though, good food for thought.

I'd be interested to know the cables you compared and your general opinion, along with the associated equipment.

When Jim said "measure the same" I took it to mean capacitors of the same value or those made by different companies that can be interchanged for a given application.

Some of those reviews are hilarious, but you don't have to be a customer to review them. In fact, I don't think many of them would be in a humorous mood after they bought it and read they could have used a regular CAT5 jumper in place of the proprietary Denon Link cable.

Since there is no device that will give a % of accuracy you can say the recording is what it is and it will never sound better than what it is.

Do you know if the test subjects listened through headphones or from speakers?

Definitely unusual.... Small world. We've lived in Kokomo for over 14 years now and our daughters have played at least a couple of softball and/or soccer games in Elwood. Home of Red Gold - their Salsa's our favorite as is their ketchup which is really cheap at the local Sam's club ( it just went up to $1.84 for 2 quarts after bing $1.76 for the last couple of years) but $%^#* it, no Salsa in bulk. Go figure. Just took a couple of 2 quart bottles of Red Gold to one of my wife's cousin's husband who is a ketchup lover and really love Red Gold when we visited her Aunt and Uncle and he stopped for some fries for his ketchup on his way home. I don't think I've had a decent tomato since we lived there!

I've lived in Indiana most of my life and I've never been to a hardware store like that. It was unusual to say the least but I was a kid so I didn't try to figure it out. It was Leeson Hardware which was adjacent to Leeson Department store in Elwood. They weren't set up as a display for sale or anything permanent, more like they were just testing them.

Alas, he passed away in 2007. I don't want to nitpick all of his test findings and some of my comments about it are rhetorical or tongue-in-cheek, but words have meanings. "Indeed, during these comparisons (without changing cables), some listeners were able to describe in great detail the big differences they thought they heard in bass, high-end detail, etc. (Of course, the participants were never told the NAUGHTY TRUTH, lest they become an enemy for life!)" Only "some listerners" fell for it? He didn't want to tell them so he just published the findings in a news letter instead. Much better for them to learn they were duped that way. If I ran such a test and every single listener failed to consistently tell the difference from one cable or the other, I would state it in those simple terms. He didn't. Maybe another way to look at the cable industry is it has contributed to keeping 2-channel going. We are already in a minority and the option of downloading mp3 files to playback through some device connected via USB does not appeal to me.

"are there really any significant audible differences between most cables that can be consistently identified by experienced listeners? The answer is simple: very seldom!" The simplest answer would have been "no", if that was the truth.

How can those same golden ears be trusted when giving their opinions on anything to do with audio? Apparently I should trust my own ears.

What has happened since 1996 is that cable manufacturers have been buying advertising in the audiophool periodicals and the editors/writers of these publications have been promoting these pieces of wire as audio components, which they absolutely are not. And people who do not know any better buy into this crap. ... I'll need to reread Dunlavy's findings, but I don't think endorsed by name those cables he found to be superior. There is no denying the ad sales have grown considerably and I'm certain many of them are way overpriced, partly in order to pay for the advertising. When you look at the sum total of their parts, there is no way to justify some of these prices from my perspective. If the cables Dunlavy liked are the ones that cost more than my speakers, I don't care how good they sound I'm not buying them. What has also happened is innovators have found ways to provide quality cables and kept the prices down with direct marketing and no advertising. Some of these might even be improvements on those designs Dunlavy found to be superior.

Two things about that article. It was published in 1996 and the author said then: "are there really any significant audible differences between most cables that can be consistently identified by experienced listeners? The answer is simple: very seldom!" So according to his experience, up to the time of publication in 1996, experienced listeners could consistently hear a significant audible difference between cables, however seldom. If those were the pioneers of the truly improved cables, has the industry grown to provide more consumers an "audible difference"?

Think about this...the recording might sound better than the original performance. Isn't that why some artists sound great on the recording, but live not so much?

Isn't the wire in the Solen inductors stranded? Anti-Cables are solid wire. Someone said it's like transformer wire so maybe it's the wire he uses in the Zero Autoformers. edit: Just did a search and found one report saying the wire is 12ga. enameled magnet wire.

The main reason I mentioned the spades he uses and the extreme high pressure crimp is for duplicating a set of his cables DIY. For a 6' set is would cost you 6 x $1.25 x 4 which is $30 for the wire. Add the cost of 8 connectors, the ability to crimp them under "extreme high pressure" and the time involved might make it worthwhile to just pay him the $60. A marine supply might have similar tinned copper spades. He will terminate the wires with banana connectors, his or yours, but it costs more. I don't recommend bare solid wire with the type of plastic binding posts found on most receivers or speakers because they don't tighten enough with finger pressure. I've heard of some others using solid wire for speakers too. Audio Advisor has Audioquest Slate they terminate themselves, cheaper than factory terminated. Check out the video on the AA website for some good information. http://www.audioadvisor.com/prodinfo.asp?number=AQSLANF If you want a shotgun bi-wire cable, it would be easier to handle than the Anti. As for the tone control aspect, I do see cables as important links in the chain but don't consider them the same as components. I do agree there is synergy and much of the trial and error can be avoided with component impedance matching. The best system I have ever heard was in a recording studio built in a home Just speaking gave a special quality to our voices in that acoustically treated room. If I ever build another house and have a dedicated theater or listening room, I'll use some of the same methods he used for acoustics. My point is the room can be one of the most important links in the chain. We can spend a lot of effort chasing our tails with endless changes of cables and gear in the system that will never produce optimal results until the room is right. Unfortunately, most of us live in real-world rooms with windows and have people in the home who really wouldn't appreciate the look of padding and fabric on the walls no matter how good it sounds. []

I had a set of Anti-Cables forgotten about in a box since '05 from when I sold off my 2-channel system. Decided to replace the 12 ga. zipcord that I had connected to the Klipsch, leftover from the old HT setup, and the solid cables are better. Paul Speltz began manufacturing the Zero Autoformer and the cables came later as "anti" high dollar cables. Personally, I dont' want to buy cables for tone controls...I have those already and they are set to flat. I'm sure several super expensive cables perform well, but I don't want or need them. Seems to me that money would be better spent on new music. Look at the comments on the Anti-Cables website. A lot of people have gotten rid of their mega buck cables after giving the Anti-Cables a try. $10/foot for a stereo pair, $60 for a six foot pair (4 wires with 8 spades) or you can buy his wire for $1.25/ft and DIY. But in the FAQ it says, " Each Spade is "cold welded" (extreme high pressure crimp) to the copper wire." The spades are tinned copper...local RS has nothing like them. Also, there is 30 day return policy. Do they really sound better or I just think they do? I don't keep them because they look cool, that's for sure. I make my own power cords, and they really do look [Y]