Cable Asylum

Interconnects, speaker wire, power cords. Ask the Cable Guys.

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Tuning for frustration...

Posted by Al Sekela on January 3, 2005 at 08:24:35:
Again, with respect, the biggest problem with your approach is that you will likely trap yourself into a false optimum, and prevent further progress.
Yes, I know that all cables have sonic signatures, just as all amps and speakers and source components. Some have signatures that result from suppression of aspects of the signal, while others get theirs from uneven tonal response. The degree of the signature varies considerably among cheap as well as expensive cables. There are plenty of expensive cables that deliberately modify the signal, so money is not the measure of transparency.
If you have a source with a lot of out-of-band noise, for example, it may sound smoother with cables that lack coherent high frequency response. If you fix the noise problem in the source, then you will not realize the benefit of extended treble. In practice, you would not know if a new source component gave better treble, or if some other tweak improved the performance of what you had, so you would likely not pursue these things. You would be stuck with a dull system.
We share the goal of getting the best sound possible within our budget limits. You have articulated your approach well, and I'm only trying to provide an alternative way of thinking that has been fruitful for me.