Anti-Cables

[bernmart]

Another naive question from an audiophile on a budget. Anyone have experience with and/or an opinion re Paul Speltz's "Anti-Cables" (see link below). Assuming that is that there are differences among cables, which is itself a hot subject here.

Thanks in advance!

http://cls.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/cls.pl?cablspkr&1117553770

[scriven]

I like the bit in the review quote where he says, "True to Paul's claims, this sounded the closest to using no cables that I had ever experienced." No cables equals no sound!

I also liked "I had believed that thicker cables were better for transmitting lower frequencies, but apparently not. These solid-core 12-gauge runs of pure copper wire had no trouble relaying well-articulated, deep thunderous bass when the source material called for it." What, 12 gauge isn't a thick wire for a speaker connection?

And then he says, "I could ramble on" Please don't.

If you really want solid core 12 gauge copper cables with spade lugs on the ends I will make them for you at the absolutely bargain basement price of only $5/ft!

THIS IS SNAKE OIL! (Oh, by the way - I can sell you some of that also!)

Go to your local Home Depot (or whatever is near you) buy a spool of 12 gauge stranded speaker wire, some 12 gauge crimp on spade lugs and the crimp tool for less that you would pay this Bozo for a set of his "magic dust wires." You will then be set up for making custom speakers connections for yourself and several of your friends for many years to come. They will work every bit as good as his! And, as a bonus, since you will be using stranded wire yours will be easier to run.

Let the speaker cable wars begin!

[yaffstone]

Ditto.

[126mhz]

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On 4/6/2005 4:16:50 AM scriven wrote:

I like the bit in the review quote where he says, "True to Paul's claims, this sounded the closest to using no cables that I had ever experienced." No cables equals no sound!

I also liked "I had believed that thicker cables were better for transmitting lower frequencies, but apparently not. These solid-core 12-gauge runs of pure copper wire had no trouble relaying well-articulated, deep thunderous bass when the source material called for it." What, 12 gauge isn't a thick wire for a speaker connection?

And then he says, "I could ramble on…" Please don't.

If you really want solid core 12 gauge copper cables with spade lugs on the ends I will make them for you at the absolutely bargain basement price of only $5/ft!

THIS IS SNAKE OIL! (Oh, by the way - I can sell you some of that also!)

Go to your local Home Depot (or whatever is near you) buy a spool of 12 gauge stranded speaker wire, some 12 gauge crimp on spade lugs and the crimp tool for less that you would pay this Bozo for a set of his "magic dust wires." You will then be set up for making custom speakers connections for yourself and several of your friends for many years to come. They will work every bit as good as his! And, as a bonus, since you will be using stranded wire yours will be easier to run.

Let the speaker cable wars begin!

----------------

Honestly, this subject alone is the reason I came to this site, and the reason I check it almost everyday.

No matter how they try the voodoo cable crowd can't change the laws of physics, we're stuck with them and I love it!

Regards,

Bill Woodward

[Erukian]

Alrighty kids, let Roger Russell, old McIntosh engineer explain to you how this all works out..

http://www.roger-russell.com/wire/wire.htm

Read and weep!

-Joe

[ben.]

Yep. All wire sounds the same with your head in the sand!

[Ki Choi]

The company I work for is the largest Eddy Current probes and instrumentation equipment mfger servicing majority of world's nuclear power plants for steam generator steel tube inspections. One can imagine it's a tightly controlled and regulated industry - no room for errors period. We deal in electrical measurments beyond the audio frequencies using wire and cables with almost no cost concerns - similar to the nutty audio world. Our main concern is with shielding from electrical noise in the analog probes and keeping the lengths of wires to the minimum.

We use no esoteric wire and cables - just funamentally sound physical construction that meets our electrical engineering standards.

If those fancy wires and cables made any differences in performance of testing for safety of your neighborhood nuclear power plants, NRC would have wrote them into the regulations...

Ki

Remember, there's no wire or cable better than not having to use them at all - or at least kept them to the min.

Ki

[bernmart]

Guys, thanks for all the cautionary advice. Just one person, and he not real specific, claims that there's a difference among cables, and I understand both the scientific basis for this, and share the skepticism about marketing hype.

But the truth is that I can hear a difference between the home-made cables I first used, and the the inexpensive cables I bought on eBay a month later--with all other equipment kept the same, the bought cables sound clearer, esp. at the top end.

So I'm stuck. Even if I could afford to spend a lot of $ on cables, I wouldn't, given your and my skepticism. But if there IS a difference, measurable or explainable or not. . . .

Will any of us step up to the plate and recommend a moderately-priced cable that he's willing to support as better than plain speaker wire, appropriately terminated?

[arthurs]

I have a 4 or 6' set of the anti-cables (can't remember exact length) if you'd like to check them out. You get the postage and borrow them ofr a listen if you like.

[Deang]

If you expect to hear a difference, you'll hear a difference. If not, you won't.

[ben.]

I will try to be brief here, as too much effort into this subject gets one nowhere.

Are many, many cables vastly overpriced? Most certainly. This includes the ones that come free with most audio components. However, any link in the chain has inherent electrical properties that affect its operation.

When I first got my VPI Scout, I had a new cartridge installed on it. The bass was very lean. It was pretty discouraging, but I waited for the break-in to develop. The bass never got better. There was one record that particularly revealed the deficiency. The 2nd track from Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots by The Flaming Lips has a rythmic legato synth bass line at its core. The line consists of low and high notes alternating. The high note remains the same, as the low notes trace a more melodic contour. Very baroque in influence. Think Scarlatti or Bach. Anyway, I've got the CD and the LP, but the LP fell flat. The low notes just weren't there, and musically the track ceased to really make any sense.

After a while of waiting for things to improve, and making a few changes here and there, I decided to swap out phono cables. I had been using NXG Sapphires. Well constructed & terminated cables that showed no obvious flaw in line level applications. I bought some top of the line IXOS from one of our distributors, as I was on the right side of the generous markup factored into expensive cabling.

First thing I did was cue up track 2 on Yoshimi... There it was. My guess is that about 2/3 an octave of bass extension was lost with the NXGs. With the IXOS, the song made sense again, as the low bass notes were back. Insist that's my imagination, and I'll wager your transportaion cost plus a night out that you're wrong. C'mon over.

Keep in mind, I'm not saying that any particular cable is worth any particular amount of money. I'm merely relating a specific anectode meant to refute the blanket claims that any wire you find at Home Despot will work as well as any wire you can buy elsewhere.

[Soundthought]

Audioquest Type 4.

Good solid core cable with a decent dialectric, at a fair price.

It's manufactured for bi-wiring, but just twist the matching pairs together, and you've got yourself a winner.

Enjoy.

[mark1101]

The Roger Russell article is very informative. Thanks for sharing that.

My favorite part is when he says the only reason for having the exotic cables is for "pride of ownership" because there are no audible differences from ordinary zip cord.

I'm sure that pissed a few people off.

[bernmart]

----------------

On 4/7/2005 10:28:29 PM DeanG wrote:

If you expect to hear a difference, you'll hear a difference. If not, you won't.

----------------

Dean and y'all, I'm well aware that we tend to hear a difference when we expect to hear a difference. But lots of us "hear" varying levels of quality in aspects of audio that don't seem measurable--like "soundstage", for example--but which matter a lot to us as listeners nevertheless. So I'm stuck between settling for what I have refined to date--which actually sounds pretty darned good--or looking for incremental improvement with small $ commitments, running the risk that the improvement I hear may be self-deception. If any of you have resolved this dilemma, I'd love to know how!

[dragonfyr]

"The Anti-Cables strip off the biggest problem I hear with speaker cables... the insulation dielectric. Beyond the extremely thin red colored coating, there is nothing left but air, and air the best insulation dielectric!"

Oh! And noticing the picture, I wonder how the electrons would know which conductor to flow down if the uninsulated cable were placed as in the website picture (unless it was some of the magic Monster cable with its edumacated electrons!)

I got a kick out of the marketing!

The more it changes the more it stays the same.

Oh well.........

May I suggest an addition for this site!

An archive of plans, diagrams, circuits, mods and a section describing the lowdown on making your own or buying decent inexpensive interconnects and speaker cables!

All would benefit from such an archive (and with all due respect, the search engine is too arcane to find any such articles that exist currently! Read: I can't find a 12 year old to explain its effective function!)

And it would save us all from the weekly rehash of the 25 most commonly asked questions and provide a great repository of easily located reference material.

Of course it would also rob us of the perverse pleasure of trashing the lastest well meaning fellow who has convinced themself that their $1500 1-meter interconnect makes a significant difference!

Is this possible?

[Duke Spinner]

But, But. BUT , Ben ....

YOU are talkin' PHONO Cable

with Mv. .... not Watts ....

i could agree on those .....

[NOSValves]

----------------

On 4/7/2005 10:53:22 PM ben. wrote:

I will try to be brief here, as too much effort into this subject gets one nowhere.

Are many, many cables vastly overpriced? Most certainly. This includes the ones that come free with most audio components. However, any link in the chain has inherent electrical properties that affect its operation.

When I first got my VPI Scout, I had a new cartridge installed on it. The bass was very lean. It was pretty discouraging, but I waited for the break-in to develop. The bass never got better. There was one record that particularly revealed the deficiency. The 2nd track from

Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots

by The Flaming Lips has a rythmic legato synth bass line at its core. The line consists of low and high notes alternating. The high note remains the same, as the low notes trace a more melodic contour. Very baroque in influence. Think Scarlatti or Bach. Anyway, I've got the CD and the LP, but the LP fell flat. The low notes just weren't there, and musically the track ceased to really make any sense.

After a while of waiting for things to improve, and making a few changes here and there, I decided to swap out phono cables. I had been using NXG Sapphires. Well constructed & terminated cables that showed no obvious flaw in line level applications. I bought some top of the line IXOS from one of our distributors, as I was on the right side of the generous markup factored into expensive cabling.

First thing I did was cue up track 2 on

Yoshimi...

There it was. My guess is that about 2/3 an octave of bass extension was lost with the NXGs. With the IXOS, the song made sense again, as the low bass notes were back. Insist that's my imagination, and I'll wager your transportaion cost plus a night out that you're wrong. C'mon over.

Keep in mind, I'm not saying that any particular cable is worth any particular amount of money. I'm merely relating a specific anectode meant to refute the blanket claims that any wire you find at Home Despot will work as well as any wire you can buy elsewhere.

----------------

Ben,

Your absolutely correct the IC between a Turn Table and your phono section can have a huge effect on the sound. But in this application your dealing with a very VERY low and sensitive signal. If you lengthen the cable 2" it will make some difference! This is a completely different application then say Speaker wire or even the interconnect that you use between your CDP and preamp. The turn table is sending a signal in the very low Mv range while your CDP is usual 2V speaker wire can be carrying 1/2 volt to 30V or even more. Yes wire can make a difference but it is VERY application dependant.

Craig

[codhead]

[snilsen13]

I did my own bit to make CAT5 braided cables with my own time and ended up with a single 33' braid before I quit. A few months ago I cut that braid in half and tried it out on the speakers I owned then. It did NOT sound like 12 guage cable of the same length (also braided with the third solid rubber and made a Brit cable company and feels goos in the hand). I thought the sound was thin, if not a little harsh.

Remembering that feeling I was compelled to try them again with a Sonic Impact amp and the Cornwalls I just bought. Everything about these Cornwalls is unpredictable to my ears so everything feels like an option again. Comparing the two cables now, I like the CAT5 single braid better. That is three paired strands of 24 guage copper (I think it's copper), aka "premium" CAT5, bought at Radio Shack for $0.10/foot/strand after unraveling. I don't have a clue why, but the sound projects out of the speakers more and maybe there's some change in the details too, but it isn't thinning or harsh.

I'm pretty sure it's a real improvement. The first CD, nothing special, I listened to today lept out at me and grabbed my attention faster than any in recent memory. I like the first listen test, after this I feel my mind is polluted and comparisons fail. That first listen is oh-so-critical and then it just fades off. I made the cable swap last night so this was my first time coming fresh to the alteration. Maybe they were burning in (whatever that means). Anyhow, it's not a subtle change and that's my only point. You can make changes, maybe not imporvements, the way you hear things with cables but it's probably NOT by increasing the guage. More radical changes in cable architecture are probably needed... it's not an expensive endeavour to find out for yourself, especially if your fidgety and can stomach braiding and braiding and braiding... like I said I stopped at single braid and my goal was the triple braid. yikes! I may need to try for the double braid.

FWIW, I think you should consider the amp. I speculate that the CAT5 sound good because the Sonic Impact is an incredibly quiet amp and smaller cables might allow the sound to travel effectively on smaller cables. (Could the electrons have less space for lateral movement?) I postulate that the hiss of your amp (usually measurable when cranked) is a source of musical distortion in the speaker cable and perhaps low frequencies are lost as the distortion gets added. Thick cables may lessen teh distortion but also slow the speed of the signal.... I know electrons do not flow like water, but I doubt anybody anywhere really has any clue how they flow.

What I'd really like to know if amplifier hiss gets louder with longer leads or thinner leads. This must be well documented. Can anybody comment?

-Steven

[ben.]

(snickering)

I didn't really read the referenced article, I must admit. You can usually get the drift with these threads, though.

I would think that, as you guys say, the discernible difference is generally inversely proportional to the signal strength carried by the wire in question. And I also assume (as I haven't fiddled with speaker wire-just bought good stuff and left it at that) that any reasonable quality speaker wire is fine.