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thebes

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From todays email from Audiogoner:

A Happy Pre-Owned Transparent Tale

Brian found an almost new pair of 1-meter Transparent Balanced Reference Interconnect listed on Audiogon at a great price. He jumped at the chance.

When he hooked them up to his Krell system, though, they just didn't sound right. He was almost ready to send them back for a refund when his friend asked him if he had the cables calibrated for his system.

"Calibrated? What?!"

"Call Transparent, and tell them your serial number. They'll know what components were intended to be used with your cable."


Brian called Transparent. He told Demos, Transparent's customer service guru, the model and serial number of his cables and told him he had a Krell system.

Demos called Brian back with the info: "When we built those cables, they were optimized for an Audio Research preamp and amp. No wonder the cables didn't sound right in your system. The ARC system has totally different impedance characteristics from Krell components. You need to take your cables to a Transparent dealer and have them returned to us for calibration.

You have 2 options: basic calibration or certification."

"What's the difference and what does each cost? " Brian asked.

"Basic calibration for Reference Balanced Interconnects would be $350. Certification includes calibration, new packaging, and a warranty. The warranty will give you upgrade privileges, and future calibrations will be no charge. Certification for your cables would be $700. Your closest dealer would be Paragon Sight and Sound in Ann Arbor. Their phone number is 734-662-3595."

To make a long story short, Brian opted to get his cables certified, and they sound great. When he visited Paragon, he heard a system similar to his own with Transparent used throughout. The system really sang.

Brian is now talking to Larry at Paragon about a pair of Factory Certified Pre-Owned Transparent Reference Speaker Cables and perhaps a digital cable and a few power cords.

To find out more about Transparent products and Transparent's programs that are designed with happy customers in mind, click here.

Having banished tone control from all high-end preamps, we should now come full circle and place them inside our cables. A little $350 service piled on top of whatever the suckers have already paid for the original cable snake oil.

Gotta admit. They do have big cahoonahs when it comes to stealing your money.

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Much to my good fortune the geese have returned to my lake early this year. Having gathered up several droppings it occurred to me that nitrates were ionic compounds that could well alter and mebbe improve the performance of my stereo gear. As a test I rubbed my hands liberally with my abundant gatherings and held my open palms over various parts of my hi fi set up. To my amazement - the subwoofer woofed much more better with my hands at precisely 6 inches to the anatomical left of the rear firing speaker at mid height. So I now have a small shelf piled high with goose poo exactly 6 inches to the left and middle thereof my RSW 15. I suggest you all do the same. PM for prices.

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I assume that the calibration process involves changing the values of filter components in the cables little box to suit the type of gear they will be used on/with. Makes sense to me, as to the price well if you have no idea how to calculate the desired filter values and you like the sound of the cable then have at it otherwise find a different cable. This type of filter design was made popular by Bruce Brisson Of MIT cable fame and goes back a long time I believe Bruce's son runs the company now. Transparent used to build for Bruce and there are stories about Transparent building Bruce's designs. Best regards Moray James.

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OK if you are adding or subtracting capacitors and resistors, who knows, maybe transistors, to a cable you no longer have a cable. You no longer are connecting, You are no longer selling a connector, but some sort of secret sorta RIAA specification thingamagigger. You are building a goofball version of an amplifier, a step up or step down stage, a rumble filter, tone control, a very limited eq circuit. who knows, and how could you the consumer possibly tell.

A real connector is designed to bring two or more components together without affecting the signal. Now if these clowns are real electrical engineers and designers they could start building real audio equipment. But. In that world you have to spend $1000 for parts and labor to make $2000 or 3000. Now in the cable industry you can spend $20 and reap $1000. Gee I wonder why so many people make cables.

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OK if you are adding or subtracting capacitors and resistors, who knows, maybe transistors, to a cable you no longer have a cable. You no longer are connecting, You are no longer selling a connector, but some sort of secret sorta RIAA specification thingamagigger. You are building a goofball version of an amplifier, a step up or step down stage, a rumble filter, tone control, a very limited eq circuit. who knows, and how could you the consumer possibly tell.

A real connector is designed to bring two or more components together without affecting the signal. Now if these clowns are real electrical engineers and designers they could start building real audio equipment. But. In that world you have to spend $1000 for parts and labor to make $2000 or 3000. Now in the cable industry you can spend $20 and reap $1000. Gee I wonder why so many people make cables.

[/quote

My understanding of the little box is that it is a filter which shapes overall response and also helps with the load the components see, there are no transistors in there just simple passive devices. You listen to the sound and you see if you like what the cable does same as when you adjust your tone control filters. No right no wrong only do you like it or not? I personally prefer to use filters to deal with noise but these can and do work and I have heard a few systems with MIT and also Transparent cables which sounded just fine so I think that you are reacting to this without first hand knowledge. Put the high price aside and deal with the concept. You can make your own if you want to or not but don't piss on something that you have never heard. If you could spend $20.00 and make $1000.00 I would be more than impressed and I can tell you I don't think that anyone is doing that. If you could do that in numbers then you either got something(s)very right or you have world class hypnosis skills. If you don't think that successful products are not voiced then you are only kidding yourself. When you design and market a truly world class product then tell me that you don't think that you deserve to get top dollar for your hard work and effort. Sales will soon tell you what the market place thinks about it. Successful products and good products are not necessarily one and the same thing. Ts is all just my opinion ad that plus five bucks should buy you a nice cup of coffee. Best regards Moray James.

PS: it has been my experience that about a 5 to 1 ratio for retail to cost is about the minimum that will keep a business afloat distribution and advertising cost you an arm and a leg. Perceived image and value of a product are what make things fly or not. As a business the higher you profit the better. No one can make you buy expensive stuff you think is no good. A lot of thought effort and work goes into some seemingly cheap things which may not be very cheap to buy. It is up to the consumer to decide.

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While I am a huge believer in the differences and improvements cables make in a system, that made me chuckle too........ :P

Shakey

Here's some food for thought ....

Years ago we did a blind test with 4 different systems and 4 different inter-connects ... on the cheap and very very very expensive inter-connects

suprising result , our homemade cables in a blind test sounded the same as my NBS Dragon fly's and cables costing twice the NBS price ( $250.00 a pair )

Our Home made cables ---- Canare GS6 Guitar cable ( stripped out of it's multi jacket and braided ) The cable is 128 strand OFC , add to those some Cardas ends a tad bit of shrink tube and a few cents worth of solder and your in business .

I think location and proximity to RF interference do play a role for some folks , hence well shielded cables would make a difference .

I'll see if i can find a pic of our homemade cables to post ....

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Here's the cables .... the inner one has zero shielding , the two outer cables have shielding and remain in the braided casing .

I've made dozens of pairs for my buddies and no one has ever complained or had issue with them .

BTW --- The black ends are shrink tubing not electrical tape

post-58676-0-77060000-1407449777_thumb.j

Edited by boxerjake
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OK if you are adding or subtracting capacitors and resistors, who knows, maybe transistors, to a cable you no longer have a cable. You no longer are connecting, You are no longer selling a connector, but some sort of secret sorta RIAA specification thingamagigger. You are building a goofball version of an amplifier, a step up or step down stage, a rumble filter, tone control, a very limited eq circuit. who knows, and how could you the consumer possibly tell.

A real connector is designed to bring two or more components together without affecting the signal. Now if these clowns are real electrical engineers and designers they could start building real audio equipment. But. In that world you have to spend $1000 for parts and labor to make $2000 or 3000. Now in the cable industry you can spend $20 and reap $1000. Gee I wonder why so many people make cables.

[/quote

My understanding of the little box is that it is a filter which shapes overall response and also helps with the load the components see, there are no transistors in there just simple passive devices. You listen to the sound and you see if you like what the cable does same as when you adjust your tone control filters. No right no wrong only do you like it or not? I personally prefer to use filters to deal with noise but these can and do work and I have heard a few systems with MIT and also Transparent cables which sounded just fine so I think that you are reacting to this without first hand knowledge. Put the high price aside and deal with the concept. You can make your own if you want to or not but don't piss on something that you have never heard. If you could spend $20.00 and make $1000.00 I would be more than impressed and I can tell you I don't think that anyone is doing that. If you could do that in numbers then you either got something(s)very right or you have world class hypnosis skills. If you don't think that successful products are not voiced then you are only kidding yourself. When you design and market a truly world class product then tell me that you don't think that you deserve to get top dollar for your hard work and effort. Sales will soon tell you what the market place thinks about it. Successful products and good products are not necessarily one and the same thing. Ts is all just my opinion ad that plus five bucks should buy you a nice cup of coffee. Best regards Moray James.

PS: it has been my experience that about a 5 to 1 ratio for retail to cost is about the minimum that will keep a business afloat distribution and advertising cost you an arm and a leg. Perceived image and value of a product are what make things fly or not. As a business the higher you profit the better. No one can make you buy expensive stuff you think is no good. A lot of thought effort and work goes into some seemingly cheap things which may not be very cheap to buy. It is up to the consumer to decide.

Look I appreciate what you are saying but can only agree with a little bitty bit of it.

First, I have heard expensive cables, and I still piss on them (hey I'm an old man it's what I do) but that's besides the point. I don't have to hear Beyonce in person to know I wouldn't like the experience.

Second, I'm glad that you can admit that these are not cables, not connectors, but some sort of hyper expensive low pass Rf filter, that happens to have rca termination, certainly not a rca cable as I understand it.

Maybe it's some sort of confusion over terminology, but to me a connector is designed to connect two or more audio components..

I'm also thinking that these could in reality may simply be a crude tone control. Now as I understand it most high-end preamps don't have tone controls because it's more stuff in circuit and could cause noise. In other words, these cables could be noise makers, not noise quieters.

As to cost. Come on, even using the best parts available you can't couldn't possibly spend much building a tone control and certainly not more than a $20 to build a simple rf filter.

As to business. We can both agree that many people buy perceived value, not actual value, all the time. Just look at the advertisements on late night tv. However, some people like to know how to spend their money and so they do research before they buy, and for those folks, if they run across this posting, keep you money in your wallet. If you need tone control, buy an old Scott 299. If you need a filter, there's already several types built into what you already own. If you need cable don't spend more than $20.

Oh yeah, these guys also sell filtered power cords. Yup the thing that plugs into the wall, or into their power conditioner, which they also sell and which should have already taken care of any problems coming out of the wall, not to mention the signal coming through their cables, but hey, belt and suspenders at $1000 a throw.

Oh, on five to one ratio in retail. I'm a retail housepainter. Wish I could see those numbers.

Finally, if it so vitally important to tweak the sound, why don't any single manufacture of high-end stereo equipment offer tone controls?

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thebes: I was not defending the cable simply saying what I understand it to be. you are free to think what you will. you don't seem to be able to deal with one thing at a time. filters of one type or another do they do the intended job yes or no? Should they be used yes or no? do you like what they do yes or no? are they worth the asking price yes or no? this all just goes on and sometimes it can be hard to do the yes or now because it is not always black or white. so what exactly is it that you are so disturbed about and who is it that you directing your angst at?

marketing and foolish customers make for a dangerous combination. audiophools have been lead by the nose for a long time and they have drawn many stupid conclusions over the decades and manufacturers who were attempting to corner consumers have from time to time found themselves painted into corners of their own because of lies. common sense is not very common. there are many commonly held beliefs in this hobby which are nothing but fluff.

It was not my intention to comment on the value or the worth of the filters used in the Transparent cables. I said that nobody was making $20.00 filters and selling them for $1000.00. A business with a distribution network and a retail sales network costs a lot more to run than a one man operation. you know full well that every time a hand touches a product the price goes up. everyone wants a percentage for helping a product get along to your house. you know the answers to your questions you just don't seem to like the answers. I can agree with you that so much of the time things just suck but throwing the baby out with the bathwater does not help. figuring out what products do and how they do it is of value because then you too have gained some knowledge which you can use to your benefit. People buy things which may or may not be worth the sale price every day and what is the point of getting into an armchair judgement game when you don't even have a smidgen of the details to go on. I don't want to spend my time with this I was only trying to pass along what I knew about the cables you mentioned. Best regards Moray James.

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