Home Propeller Head Plaza

Technical and scientific discussion of amps, cables and other topics.

[ Follow Ups ] Thread: [ Display  All  Email ] [ Propeller Head Plaza ]
[ Alert Moderator ]

Re: Excellent points

BS64, I have had experiences with wire, like yours. When I brought back my first exotic, all silver 1M connecting cable as a souvenir of my trip to Tokyo in 1978, I thought that I might hear something different, then maybe not. Unfortunately, I DIDN'T like what I heard when using the silver wire. Puzzled, sent it over to a hi end audio store for evaluation. They heard the same thing. It was bright sounding! I avoided silver wire for years, until I started working with Bob Crump. He had found that the best wires were indeed silver, BUT you had to break the wire in first, before it was useful.
Did Bob know something that I didn't know or understand? Yes. We knew each other for about 15 years, until his unfortunate demise. I kept hearing good sound quality at his presentations at CES even before we did anything together. Bob attributed a lot of the sound quality at CES to the cables that he made and broke in, before the show, along with quality audio components connected to it. This included power cords.
Well, over the last 7-8 years that we actually worked together, Bob always supplied the cables for the CES show, and every year we had a run at 'best sound of show' We did not always get that honor, but we usually came very close. Certainly the attention to detail, including cables, gave us a shot at this.
The cables that I use at home are from a mixed group of manufacturers, but generally they are very good cable companies. I have no connecting cables from Bob Crump. Why, because he did not give any to me, but I do have a number of cables from other quality manufacturers that appear to outperform the Radio Shack, etc cables that I used initially.
Hang in there, BS64, your opinions are certainly real to me. I think that this is a left-right brain thing, where SOME people just don't listen in the same way. For THESE people, we seem to hear what they can't, and this disturbs them. DB blind tests seem to turn US into THESE people while we are being tested, then WE revert to our normal mode of hearing differences again in open listening. THESE other people don't seem to revert to our normal mode of hearing, because of how THEY listen today. This is not necessarily a natural state, but can be developed through intense academic training that takes the 'right side' of brain out of the loop, so to speak.
For example, let's say that I listened to something with Dr. Stanley Lipshitz. For example, it might be a tantalum cap vs a polypropylene cap of the same value, let's say 10uF.
Stanley would politely listen, and but he would never commit himself to hearing a real difference. It might appear obvious to me. He would still insist on a formal ABX listening test to test for the difference. Well, what would be the results? Of course, a NULL test.
This actually happened, and Stanley reported back that he could not hear the worst tantalum caps that Walt Jung could find in an ABX listening test.
Oh well, I guess that I should go back to using tantalum coupling caps, like I did, over 30 years ago. :-)

This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:
  Kimber Kable  

Follow Ups Full Thread
Follow Ups
You can not post to an archived thread.

[ Top Top of Page ] [ Contact Us ] [ Support/Wish List ] [ Copyright © 2024, Audio Asylum, all rights reserved ]
[ General ] [ Speakers ] [ Tubes ] [ Vinyl ] [ Digital ] [ Hi-Rez ] [ Video Asylum ] [ Cables ] [ Tweaks/DIY ] [ Music ] [ Films ]