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Re: That is a good question concerning twisted pair vs Coax..

Posted by Jon Risch (B) on June 17, 2003 at 21:41:01

In Reply to: That is a good question concerning twisted pair vs Coax.. posted by Tony Montana on June 17, 2003 at 15:24:50:

I gave you the beneift of the doubt with regard to how insulting you were actually trying to be vs. mere insensitivity with regard to your original posted question. But this post leaves no doubt. This is a personal attack, and this kind of post is not allowed at AA.

I know that the AR cable forum naysayers encourage such posts, and regularly get away with them at AR. But this is not AR.

Consider this a warning from the Moderator.

I am going to address this as best I can, so that if you are merely being encouraged by the buffoonery at AR, that you have a chance to stop acting in such a manner. I think that this is more than fair, and more than reasonable.

First, many of your statements here are not based on your own expriences with regard to high performance audio, but are based on what YOU believe is logic and/or physics. Perhaps some of it is second hand propoganda from older hard-line naysayers. You need to realize that many folks here have been down that road, initialy felt that "such and such could not possibly make a difference", and then, when we encountered the real world, and found out it did, had to come to grips with certain undeniable facts of audio life.

I myself felt the same way you do when I first finished college, and felt that the only parameters that mattered for cables were the classic textbook LCR variables. Period, no further consideration.

But like many, once my system and my expereince with audio developed past the simple "plug and play" el cheapo level, and I started to get some hands on experiences, as well as some actual design of audio components, I found out that a lot of what was taught was just a very simple beginning, and NOT the end of the journey.

Just as one discovers that a real world power supply is NOT that perfect battery portrayed voltage source with no sag, no output Z and no noise or ripple, one finds out that the parts themselves are not ONLY resistors, not ONLY capacitors, not ONLY inductors, etc. They ALL have parasitic aspects that affect their operation at other than power line frequencies.

These secondary or parasitic parameter aspects also affect cables. The capacitance is not a pure capacitance, it has DA, DF, and other less than perfect behaviors. This holds true for all of the basic parameters, they are not opure, but rather, have secondary aspects.

So engineers and technicians that found themsleves hearing cable sonics had to go through a learning stage where they puzzled out some of the reasons and the wherefores of it all. Some just take it on 'faith', and do not make a serious attempt to quantify it or understand it. They just know it occurs, and allow for it. Others delve into it as thoroughly as they can, in the true spirit of science and engineering, in an attempt to correlate what they hear with what they measure or resaon out. There are those that go intom denial, and try to pretend with themsleves that it really doesn't occur, and tell themsleves, it is OK if it is a personal preferrence, but they are still denying that it has any basis in reality, rather than accepting or seeking.

Some of this was recently discussed at:
http://www.audioasylum.com/forums/prophead/messages/3784.html
and the subsequent thread that followed.

There are a LOT of engineers that either hobby or workin audio, and realize that there is more going on than mere THD, FR and S/N. They found out the hard way, that to amke a product, or their system sond the very best, they had to go beyond text book, beyond simple meter reading, and really sweat the details.

As for your comment about me merely listening, the listening was under controlled blind conditions, and represents literally hundreds of man-hours at that point (I have probably racked up thousands by now) of controlled listening tests.

However, that gets dismissed by some, those who seem to never accept ANY evidence except a good solid whack along the side the head (hey, no, wait a minute I must have hallucinated that, there is no pain, there is no pain...)

Additional evidence is present in the form of the widespread acceptance and positive comments about the DIY cable designs I make available.
Folks generally concede that the twisted pair with overall shield sounds better than the stock coax. Same materials, similar capacitance, etc. In fact, the DIY designs are the proof of the pudding, so to speak. They are validation of the listening results, as well as the reasoned and logical desing based on those listening tests.

The result is audio cables that sound as good as aftermarket retail audio cables in the several hundred dollar range or higher. At one hundredth the price.

Finally, you do not seem to do very much in the way of a background check, in terms of what has been posted before, what a given inmate posts about or their opinions, and you do not seem to bother to look up and read some of the various references and citations provided.
If you are going to post here, or at any message board, it would behoove you to find out a few things before you decide to "enlighten" anyone else.

[ So if I listen to a coathanger and a coax cable, and determine that coat hanger sound better, then that makes it truth :) ]

Steve Eddy would agree with this, it would sound good to you, and therefore be an inviolate preference, not subject to any one elses disagreement. This has been discussed too, see:
http://www.audioasylum.com/audio/general/messages/206918.html
as well as a recent thread here with posts from me and Steve.

However, I have addressed my methods and why my listening was much more than just listening and making a snap decision.

So you have to decide, if you are going to try and get along with peope, or just want to act uncivilized. Uncivilized behavior at AA will eventuallly result in steps being taken to protect the other inmates.

If you honestly feel that audio cables do not need to be any better than Belden 1505F, then fine, but do not try to force this one anyone here, most people here are not going agree, and all you will do is come off as an uncivilized jerk.

BTW, you should consider Belden 88281 (Todd Krieger's favorite coax), similar to your favorite, but with foamed FEP teflon insulation rather than foamed PE, and with a solid center wire, which some folks swear by as superior to stranded.

In case you did not realize, you can get a free sample of 88281 from Belden, just call 765-983-5200, ask for Customer Service, and request a 6 foot sample, so you can make two 3 foot cables for stereo. You may have to sweet talk the 56 feet, their normal sample length is 3 feet. (Which is enought to make a digital interconnect, which Todd also says is the greatest). Then you could try it for yourself, and see if the dielectric made a difference for you, in your system, at this point in your audio experience curve.

Maybe it won't for now, but it would not cost you much to find out, and you would be able to hang onto them, and see if later on, the sound became noticable with syustem upgrades or more listening experience.

I have to say, the folks who want to try and preach the gospel of no audible differences, but flat out refuse to even try some high performance cables, are the ones who deserve no respect or consideration in my book, they can't even be bothered to go through the motions of testing the hyupothesis, they are not scientists any more, just pseudo-science bullies.

Jon Risch

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