Interconnect Myth Busted

[DrWho]

Yeah Dave, focusing on software is great, no one is discounting it a bit. However, I tallied up the threads on Page 1 of the 2-channel forum two minutes ago. Here's the results of that talley: 26 hardware threads and 3 software threads.

Well I think that's a bit anecdotal...especially considering that music is so personal, and I would hope that most here are trying to find ways to maximize the music they enjoy.

I've made my own opinion known that spending anything over $49 on a stereo is nothing but a combination of conspicuous consumption and ego boosting...

What about the source material that can't be heard on the $49 stereo? And then what about preserving the artist's original intent? Is it a "combination of conspicuous consumption and ego boosting" to preserve paintings in a museum and maintain control over the ambient lighting, humidty etc...?

I guess I just don't consider music to be expressly utilitarian, but I'm curious if you feel the same ways about art in general too?

[NOSValves]

Strawberry Boones Farm now that's a Drink LOL!!

[DU73]

Darn it, I ran out of popcorn (Again), I'll be right back!

[]

[DrWho]

Wow, anything coming off electronic storage media is noise?!? Are you really that narrow-minded? All music is most certainly not limited to a live event.

And since when does a home stereo need to sound like a live musical event? Why must that be the one and only criteria? Most of the musicians I know aren't trying to reproduce a live musical event because that which they're creating couldn't exist otherwise.

Last time I checked, art was never limited to a single form.

[NOSValves]

What about the source material that can't be heard on the $49 stereo?

Such as?

And then what about preserving the artist's original intent?

I have around 2500 albums and CDs and I have had exactly 1 discussion with 1 artist about his intent - and he never mentioned what kind of stereo his composition should be played on. If I play a Maria Callas opera, who is the artist I need to discuss intent with - Maria Callas? the producer? the engineer? the dead composer? the conductor? the guy who mastered the disc? That idea has no practical meaning to me. If you mean that my home system in my living room ought to sound like Maria singing at La Scala (the theater, not the speaker) well, that's not going to happen with any silly box full of speaker drivers. In 45 years of playing with stereos I have never heard any home stereo of any configuration that even remotely, on it's best possible behavior, sounded anything whatsoever like a live musical event.

Is it a "combination of conspicuous consumption and ego boosting" to preserve paintings in a museum and maintain control over the ambient lighting, humidty etc...?

Of course it is. The paintings had their relevance when they were done, and for whom they were done. Once the artist and the participants are dead, the art loses all meaning. Art is an attempt to influence the milieu in which it was created. (Influences can be very great or really really small).

All this ridiculous preservation expense of meaningless, has-been art is a full blown effort of massive egos at work. Walk through the lower gallery at the Louvre where all the medieval religious art is hung 4 and 5 pictures high on walls hundreds of yards long, more or less floor to ceiling. It's all crap. And it's a deep sin to be spending good money on air-conditioning and environmental controls to preserve this drivel when people are starving to death for want of a few dollars a month for food. The only value it has is by pure fakery. Some guy (an ego in a bag of skin) decides for the public that this junk is relevant and they build monuments to it and for it, and if you charge enough to see it, and place enough security guards around it, it will accrete social value. It's hogwash. The art has been used up. It's mojo has been extracted long ago by those who would have actually been influenced by it. If you were a baseball fan, imagine spending all your time watching baseball games that were played already in the 1950s, and ignoring all the games being played today. Sound dumb? Well, there ya go.

I guess I just don't consider music to be expressly utilitarian, but I'm curious if you feel the same ways about art in general too?

There's music and then there's noise. I make a clear distinction between the two. Music is when musicians play musical instruments in the flesh to celebrate, to mourn, to dance, to trance, to inspire, to honor, to pass the time. Noise is crap that comes off electronic storage media which is fed through noise making systems of amps and speaker cones and all this kind of stuff. Music is art, noise is utility. Playing discs on noise making systems is absolutely just utilitarian entertainment. Noise is to music as a video game is to actual sport.

Although many people do, I don't associate noisemaking with art. Musicians can and do make art - and it floats up into the atmosphere like smoke and is gone forever mere moments after it is created.

You spent the last five plus years on what? What the heck has seeped into the water in Northern California?

[NOSValves]

Well I don't know about the live events you have witnessed...but the majority of the live music I have witnessed over the years had a large set of boxes with drivers at each end of the stage which surely had amplifiers and mixing boards driving them....... very few musicians play with zero electronic helpers to boost and EQ the volumes of the instruments and voices even at small venues.. So IMHO it is indeed very easy to reproduce a live event in your home. The hardest types would be Classical and Opera which rarely have any electronic helpers...

[Jeff Matthews]

Wow, anything coming off electronic storage media is noise?!?

Of course it is. It's just electronic noise. It may sound a bit like music sounds, but it just ain't music. You could say it's simulated music if that makes you feel better. Is a guying putting a CD into a player a "musician?" I don't think so! He's not playing music - playing music is what musicians do. He's making noises with some recorded bits, or carved grooves etc.

And, being a noise maker might be great fun. I have nothing against the practice. But I was answering your question regarding utility and music and art. A guy putting records on a turntable ain't making no art.

One of the problems we always have in any discussion of complicated philosophy like this is understanding terms. It's perfectly ok to me if people want to walk around and say every little noise they hear is "music" - in a generic sense. But in a specific discussion about stereos and art and music, you have to be more precise and put more meaning into each term. So, it's not about being narrow minded - which I certainly am not. It's about bringing enough precision into the discussion to make it meaningful - to make it rich enough to know what we are referring to.

Yeah, kind of like how you are fooled into thinking you are having a conversation with someone, when really, all you are doing is speaking into a hand-held device after hearing some electronic impulses converted to soundwaves coming from it.

[JJkizak]

Does the noise include the electronic "on the fly" pitch correction hardware/software systems being utilized at concerts and live programs?

JJK

[thebes]

Mark has resorted to chastising me by marking up my comments
in red. []When my professors in college did this it was usually I sign that I’d
better buckle down or I’ll be on my way to Vietnam. Fearing being exiled to the Bose Forum I have devoted several hours this weekend to extensive testing and
will now share my results.

Testing was done using Cornwalls, an Anthem Pre1driven with
low hours, formerly NOS, hand selected Gold Aero gold pin 6DJ8’s,; low hours,
formerly NOS, Sylvania 5965 gold pinned, lower mu 12AT7’s in the phono stage; a
NosValve rehabbed Marantz 8B, using Mullard EL34 double o getters, Rca
cleartop, 6CG7’s and RCA black-plate 6BH6’s.
Sources are an Empire 298 with Ortofon RS 212 arm, Zu modified Denon 103
cart, cables by Fini and a Ah Tjoeb ’99 tued cdp with I believe, currently host
a pair of Mullard 12AT7’s.

A note on the Ortofon Din to RCA built by Fini using $60 in
parts alone, replaced the stock ortofon cable, with, sorry Fini, no sonic
change I could detect.

Music: Vinyl used
for speaker wire comparisons: selections
from mint or sealed lps, Janis Ian, “Breaking Silence (Analogue Productions 180
gram pressing); Michelle Shocked “Short, Sharp, Shocked” (Mercury Promo
Pressing) Johnny Guitar Watson, “Love Jones” (unsealed on Thursday
last-Polygram).

On cd:
The Alan Parsons Project Definitive Collection by Arista and Hellhound
on My Trail, Songs of Robert Johnson”, compilation by Telarc Blues.

First up; Speaker wire

Baseline, standard 16 gauge clear on one channel,
experimental wire on other channel. The
Pre1 has a balance control of plus/minus 6bd and listening levels were adjusted
and set at 80db with balance control centered.

Results:

24 gauge twisted Radio Shack clear wire. This was
recommended by Mark as sure to show a sonic difference and unless it did I was
basically tone deaf. At first I thought
I had detected a slight increase in sibilance/ graininess, however, when I
switched the input stage tubes in the preamp, the difference followed so I can only
conclude that I heard no difference.

Heavy Duty all copper twisted Car Battery Jumper
Cables. I thought I’d experience either
a more rounded presentation of slightly deeper bass with something this heavy,
but I heard no difference. Big
disappointment, because if you could figure out how to terminate them, decent
copper jumper cables are relatively cheap, so are car battery cables for that
matter.

14 gauge twisted clear speaker wire: no difference

Twisted Zip cord removed from broken lamp: no difference

Standard Romex solid copper household wiring wire. NO
difference

Monster Sheathed speaker cable. No difference.

Now onto patch cables themselves:

Testing was done using the AH cdp with one channel baseline
a Parts Express (Dayton line) patch cord, the other channel using the
experimental cords.

Acoustics Research. No difference

Monster: Possibly
slightly less noise, but very, very, subtle

Homebrew Silver patch cord, silver wire provided by
3Dzapper, with high quality terminations and soldering providing by Joesporter.
Very slight difference sounded a little brighter/thinner, but barely
detectible.

Those really cheap patch cords that come with everything
electronic. NO difference, Surprising given how really, really cheap they are.

My conclusions.

Patch cords and wires, by and large are doing what they are
designed to do. Bridge two components
and then get out of the way. While I do
believe in empiricism, and indeed, modern society could not exist without it,
all I can bring to the table are subjective impressions. My albeit possibly flawed
impression lead me to reiterate my advice to not waste your money on cable or
wire. It’s a fools game.

Some people will say that we don’t hear the same and thus
what floats one persons boat will sink another’s. I beg to disagree. A
little over a year ago the local DC audio toffs gathered at Rich Place’s house
for a session. At that session we did two things to his system. Changed a tube
in his Blueberry and adjusted his tone arm.
Both changes, although subtle, were readily apparent and could be described
with complete accuracy by all participants.

Would I welcome hard empirical measurements that provides
quantifiable evidence that one cable offers clearly superior characteristics
and sonic improvements over a competitors cable. Sure. But. It ain’t gonna
happen because those supposedly most invested in developing such methodology
are more interested in seling snake oil than facts. And by that I mean the cable companies, not anyone here.

[JBryan]

Well, this is a far tangent from the original poster's intent. If this continues, I may never know how much to spend on cables and wires [8-)] . While I dare not dip into the fray amongst the scientists. engineers and philosophers, I do attend plenty of live shows and can honestly say that I've spent more time in front of musicians in the last 2 years than in front of my system. I prefer small, intimate venues but have seen my share of the big events as well. I have enjoyed most shows and a few have been quite transcendent but with rare exception, I prefer listening to the artists' music at home as the PA systems and the fellas manning the boards usually do more harm than good to the 'live' sound but we won't go there.

Don't get me wrong, in the right room, most instruments and vocals - even an orchestra can sound amazing but the reason I attend live shows isn't necessarily to hear the music, rather to share the experience with the artist(s). To be in the same room, sharing the very moment and note with the musician is a joy and the instantaneous interaction and feedback between the artist and audience is why I'm there and while the music can be recorded and later reproduced, the experience can not.

Most folks here will agree that music can be appreciated through even the crudest AM radio but like the selection of fine wines, tasty beers and good cigars, we can improve the experience of listening to reproduced music by carefully assembling those audio components that suit our ears. Even on this Forum, given that many of us use the same speaker, I'd wager that there's only a handful of folks that share all the same components in their respective systems. Everyone's criteria for choosing a system is different and is constrained by such things as budget, musical preferences, physical space, opportunity and knowledge/ignorance among others and these constraints determine to what degree we pursue the sound we want and how far we journey through this hobby. Some folks are content with the very first system they put together, others spend years slowly and deliberately assembling a system that suits them while others insert new gear like coins in a slot machine and they will never be satisfied. Point is that this hobby lures all kinds of people with vastly different perspectives but a few truths persist - all our systems are compromised, there is no such thing as a perfect set up, there will always be something you can do or add to make your system sound better and... uh, cables and wires do sound different.

[JBryan]

Marty wrote up his experiment while I was submitting my post so I will relent. Cables and wires do sound different...except to Marty - anyone else?

[JBryan]

I wish this forum allowed for polls as I am very interested to know how many cables fellow members have tried and if they noticed any differences. I wouldn't be interested in any recommendations or even if cables alter/improve the sound in any way - just which types of cables were used and if any difference could be heard.

[Mallette]

I think essentially what you're describing here is what I like to refer to as "acoustic focus"....and it's kind of along the lines of those silly pictures that could be perceived as two things at once....like the two faces or the vase thing (anyone know what I'm talking about?). Or the Magic Eye pictures might be a better example. One of the fun things I've learned while mixing live sound, is that when a musician asks for more of themselves in the monitor, I can usually turn them down and they'll think it's louder.....and it's mostly just because they've changed the focus of their listening. I think the very same thing happens when we choose to either listen to the music, or to the equipment. And if I may be so bold, I might suggest the vast majority in this hobby have no clue what they're focusing on, but just simply enjoy exploring the sound-scape.

Well, quite a number of respondents have seized on this or that quote to sum up the thread, but my vote goes for Herr Professor Bentz. I've attempted to say this about 6 different ways and failed pretty miserably.

Thank you, sir.

Dave

[Mallette]

I've made my own opinion known that spending anything over $49 on a stereo is nothing but a combination of conspicuous consumption and ego boosting, as is the case with all hobbies from sewing to hotrods to guns to stereos.

Mark, we're generally good here except this statement continues to rankle me. The Swisher Sweet is a decent smoke, though the Boones Farm will definitely cause serious problems blurring the image even from Klipschorns. Seriously, I do not think the (extremely) modest art collection my wife and I have amassed represents "...conspicuous consumption and ego boosting..." as opposed to velvet Elvis. There are certain levels of cost associated with minimum performance. Now, it would be a whole 'noter fracas if we all went into just where those are, but for me it's not detecting anything associated with the hardware that is altering the signal. That 120.00 system I mentioned is, for all practical purposes, in the same league as your 49.00 boom box to the average consumer. However, the system I mentioned could play back even my Virgil Fox Direct to Disc LP's and, while the volume wouldn't be as loud and the lowest octave and a half or so would be absent, I would hear nothing from the system but what I hear on my main system...just less. One of the things I love about the little Monte Carlos is what I call "graceful" rolloff in the bass. What's there sounds marvelous and provides the understanding there is more, but the little babes let you know that if they tried to provide it the whole sonic landscape would suffer the attempt.

I really like Mike's "acoustic focus" point, and shall adopt it. I focus on accuracy. There are shades of accuracy impacted by everything from the humidity in the room to whether there is a blanket tossed on the sofa...as well as how long the tubes have been on, the barometric pressure, solar weather, whether the person who did the finish solder work on my preamp was upset with his wife that day, etc. I embrace...and do not focus on those things. Others do, and I welcome and embrace them as well.

But if you come to listen at my place, for cryin' out loud don't try to shift my focus to the oxygen content of my left front speaker wire. I'll fire up another Swisher and twist off the top of another Boone's Farm and turn up the volume.

Dave

[thebes]

Marty wrote up his experiment while I was submitting my post so I will relent. Cables and wires do sound different...except to Marty - anyone else?

Why I thought I'd alredy cured you of this foolishness of yours back on page:[]

http://community.klipsch.com/forums/p/137316/1392357.aspx#1392357

[wuzzzer]

I wish this forum allowed for polls as I am very interested to know how many cables fellow members have tried and if they noticed any differences. I wouldn't be interested in any recommendations or even if cables alter/improve the sound in any way - just which types of cables were used and if any difference could be heard.

It does. Click on 'Poll' on the list that comes up when you start a new thread.

[fini]

A note on the Ortofon Din to RCA built by Fini using $60 in
parts alone, replaced the stock ortofon cable, with, sorry Fini, no sonic
change I could detect.

Well, at least they didn't sound worse. [] No labor charge, BTW.

[Mallette]

Speaker drivers moving back and forth on one axis in space don't sound ANYTHING like a guitar sting vibrating in three dimensions of space against, around and inside a wooden guitar body. When I say it doesn't sound anything like, I really mean it doesn't sound ANYTHING like a guitar in a room being plucked. It doesn't have the dynamics, the tone, the complexity, the spatiality - nothing. It sounds exactly like what it is - electronic noise reduced from 3 dimensions down to 2, to simulate real music coming out of some pistons. A crude calliope at best. I've had many people sing in my living room. Good gravy - compare that to the squeeking crap that comes out of speaker cones? It ain't even close.

As, with your stature in the science and practice of equipment design, I rather suspect the culprit is not your system, I must lay this problem to your acoustic focus. I, too, have performed a simple test of this nature. My entire audio quest has involved trying to determine precisely why so many attempts to capture space/time acoustic events fail when it appears the science is there the capture them, if not perfectly, then adequate to fool my cat. I'll not re-play that whole story, as it is chronicled elsewhere in these journals.

The piano recording I made of Stewart Wayne Foster in 1998 was the end product of that quest, and the point at which I fully understood to my own satisfaction what now seems obvious: Nothing but engineering counts, and it can be heard at any reproduction quality from short wave radio to the finest system conceiveable.

As to your belief that it cannot be reproduced realistically, I've had a variety of individuals from golden eared audiophiles to eminent muscians close their eyes, shake their heads, and listen intently until the last decay and make comments like "Spooky..." "The pianist is at the left, and the soundboard extends about 12 feet to the left." Another left the room for a few minutes, then returned. He explained by saying that his ultimate test was to leave the room and see if his brain suggested that someone was playing a recording, or if someone were playing a piano in the next room. He said it passed. Lest it sound like I am just pushing my own work, George Ellis Mimms, emininent organist (amongst other things) and as sharp a set of ears as I've ever heard, sat and listened to one of the pieces on the CD produced by NPR audio engineer Todd Hulslander and dreamlily remarked "That is the sound of the church..."

I suspect you are professionally listening to the equipment, like Craig and Mike. In all of your cases I am not saying this is always the case, as I cannot know what you hear or what you can turn off or on, but it seems reasonable to suggest that many years of professional work in equipment engineering would develop into an extreme sense of "things" in the music.

Whilst I rather doubt it will ever happen, you cause me to consider doing a different take on the old "is it live or is it Memorex" test. Get a guitarist who can play both parts of a duet, and record both parts in my music room. Then blindfold a couple of good ears, put isolation muffs on them as well, and place the guitarist in either the left or right speaker. Play back. Repeat the process and randomly go from live on one side, to live on the other, and mix in recorded on both.

While setup of such an experiment would be rather difficult to get it right, I believe it quite possible I could fool them a reasonable amount of the time...even with my ordinary cables and such.

So, if I am so good, why am I not rich and famous? Well, I don't know of anybody who has gotten rich and famous recording pipe organs, madrigals, string quartets, and such. However, I'd have done just that and accepted the lowered income expectations except for fate. My 1998 experiment coincided with the birth of a child with a heart defect requiring hundreds of thousands of dollars over years...not the kind of thing you can do well as an intenerant audio engineer. So I remain a "wannabe" poor audio engineer with expectations of little but pleasure in preserving acoustic space/time events, but in the real world designing computer-based training simulations for big oil. I draw pleasure from that...but it isn't really the same. As Mick says "You can't always get what you want..."

Maybe next life...

Dave

[Jeff Matthews]

Fearing being exiled to the Bose Forum I have devoted several hours this weekend to extensive testing and
will now share my results.

I am surprised you went through all that. Had you simply asked me, I could have told you that would happen and spared you all the trouble. []

Just because people like to stimulate their minds with debates over nonsense like this doesn't mean you should take any of it seriously. Seriously..... it's a joke. The joke's on you for allowing yourself to get puppeted into wasting your time. But at least you're smart enough not to have wasted any money. [Y]

Speaker wire is a lot like politics. It's all full of B.S., but there are many out there who take it seriously anyway.

[mike stehr]

My albeit possibly flawed impression lead me to reiterate my advice to not waste your money on cable or wire. It’s a fools game.

So some well off dude buys a pair of audio Note mono block tube amps for 250K, along with a pair of Audio Note speakers for 125K. All hand wired amplifiers, silver caps, transformers wound with silver, tantalum resistors,
I've bent over for Kondo San, blah, blah, blah...

Now your saying this guy should just roll down to Home Depot and buy a cheap spool of 16 AWG wire to hook up his fancy AN crap?

I think the point I'm trying to make is when you start getting into the high dollar audio gear, you have to pay some sort of attention to cable and wire.