I think you have seriously misrepresented what some of us have been posting in that CAM thread. Jeff ps. The term "snake oil" is never mentioned in that thread.
I'll watch for the lawyer's letter Jeff! The Supertweeter lawsuit! In all seriousness, my comments were not directed at you personally and I'm not really sure why you would think they were. There were certainly others in the thread who implied they have no (or only imaginative/negative) value. The barristers can fight it out as to whether that's snake oil-kind of seems like it to me.
Perhaps this should go in a separate thread, but how can supertweeters do anything with CD or digital files with 44.1 sampling rate when the converted analog signal cannot be above 22 kHz? If this is explained somewhere feel free to link to the page.
If cables are critical, how would you list them in order of most significant effect on sound quality? In this order, or a different order? speaker cables interconnects power cables digital cables If I add up the entire total I spent on cables it amounts to quite a lot, actually, although most of my cables are economy or midline Pangea cables. I spent the most on speaker cables, and the amount spent on each type matches the order of the above list. My reasoning in buying special cables as opposed to Amazon basic or some cheap brand was that I wanted something to do justice to the amount I spent on my components, but not exorbitant, since I doubt I could hear a difference between a $80 cable and a $400 cable.
I would agree with that order. I think as humans, the psychological benefits of having nice-looking cables that look like they "mean business" is not without some "non-utilitarian" benefit even if the likelihood of sound difference is low. Personally, I don't think there's anything wrong with dressing up a system with say $500 worth of cables that look better than non-descript black Amazon stuff. Personally, regardless of the system cost, I would not feel a need to spend more than say $150 for any single standard-length extremely beautiful looking cable though.
Room treatments as a top audio listening priority, more important than even amplification, is woo-woo audiophile snake oil at its finest. I don’t doubt that room treatments installed with genuine expertise for the truly committed can help provide great sound, but the difficulty and impracticality for ordinary people make it a ridiculous thing to elevate to the level of some kind of indispensable essential. Even the semi-deranged advice that you absolutely need two high-end subwoofers or why even bother is more sane than the abstruse complications and disruptiveness of room treatments for ordinary mortals. Yet people with room treatments love to present them as simple, no bigee, and something everybody must do.
imo phono cable, TT to input, phono amp to input Line level, CD, etc. Speaker Digital Power, waaaaay down
Audiophiles (audio fools) are among the dumbest people on earth when it come to power conditioning.They will shell out $$$ for elaborate power conditioners that hurt as much as they help and CHANGE harmonics rather than REDUCE noise.The copper shielding (by itself) on my breaker box DROPPED the noise floor throughout my condo by like 80db.This is the same shielding used to used to shield electric guitars.Shatki stone with the shielding works even better.Stupid good for the modest cost!
I agree with this. This is why I swapped out Blue Jeans cables for Pangea. BJC is a well made cable that would serve any audio application, but they look homemade. Pangea cables are hefty but not insanely fat, they look tough and slick, and I'm happy with the Pangea cables I bought which are mostly their economy or midline grades. If Pangea made a speaker cable I would have bought them, but I ended up paying $400 each for Audioquest speaker cable and REL premium sub cable. I know, it seems like it would be hard to measure sound and frequency to determine ideal placement of panels and baffles, etc. No way I could afford a pro, and as I said I am a renter so I can't make mods to the space. Probably be moving soon anyway, into senior low-income apartments. I have one big REL subwoofer and to me it would seem redundant to get another one. Maybe if you have a really huge listening space it makes sense.
Shielding for electric guitars (meaning, in the guitar cavities) is simply copper tape. Some use a type of paint that shields but I prefer the tape. Amazon.com
I wonder if the OP got the message yet? If it is snake oil, it does not work. It's like the more dangerous issue in my working life: there is alternative medicine, and there is medicine. What do we call alternative medicine that has been proven to work? Medicine.
I thought I'd heard them all but "keeping cd cases in a freezer while cd is playing" is now in my Top Five. Since I've always built my own gear (mostly) I haven't minded buying something to actually listen for an audible improvement with belief suspended. It began back in the Eighties with the VPI Brick , braided CAT cable, meh, some of the fancies of Enid Lumley and copying the grounding scheme for speaker cable in magnet wire of Pierre Spey, . The latter of course was before most actual advances in cable construction came along. Various swaps of capacitors in crossovers and to a lesser extent in amp circuits run the gamut from clearly heard to hearing something but giving your ears a hernia to decide what it is. I've used most every resistor brand listed on Michael Percy and the only difference I found is that some tend to be quieter as measured on a 'Scope and others that were nowhere near spec. Different VPI HW-19 hold downs sound different mainly in bass response. Cartridges are all over the place so never mind those. Everybody knows shielded cables sound worse than unshielded, right? Puhleaze. You want to go from TT to SUT to phono stage with unshielded how can you separate "improvements" from the noise? Here's where I am, having forgotten more than remembered all the tweaks and claims I've actually tried 40 years down the road. Also from the listening perspective of a symphony orchestra musician. Speaker and Interconnect Cables - 3 wire 16 ga. twisted copper, the latter terminated with best sounding Switchcraft 3502A, a Buck Two skeventy eight a pair, the former with swiss made no longer available bananas similarly thin gauge construction. Shielded phono cables store bought'n from Darwin. Excellent! Do get them off the synthetic carpet and route them for least RF. Hard ebony feet under high level signal, amps and soft 75 cent E.A.R. feet under low level signal, line and phono stages. OS Tubes are generally way better sounding, not to mention far more rugged than new production with some exceptions like Gold Lion and KR Audio. Guitar amps excluded of course and the ears of those who stand next to them Now, in closing, here's a bit of audiophile wisdom, Every Classical Recording Is A Live Performance.
What… what is this supposed to achieve? I mean, obviously it’ll be inky black backgrounds, or more lifelike timbre, or some such, but, what’s the yarn behind this one?
And just today I was issued a "board warning" from one of the CAM mods about that thread, and some of what I had posted has been deleted. So, anyone now following the link I posted earlier will see an incomplete picture of the thread. Business as usual for CAM. My offending post, which was deemed "insulting" according to the Mod: "I urge you, of the comprehension-challenged, to go back through this thread and read my posts. Did I ever doubt (or naysay) that STs make a difference, or that users are not noticing a difference? Perhaps you might realize that all I've really done is wonder why and how they make a difference. Apparently being curious about such things is a no-no in your books." Jeff
I have never once in 40 years of playing with audio stuff used "room treatments" to "make things better" - for me, the sound lives or dies by the quality of what comes out of the drivers; if this is below par, then it will always remind you of this fact, no matter how much band aiding you add by fiddling with the room. Audio rigs are nearly always incredibly fragile, in terms of how changing almost anything "makes a difference" - this is not good!! The aim is to make the whole shebang as robust as possible - which means that a recording "always sounds the same"; it's not being doctored by the playback chain on the way through ...
As someone who has some pretty expensive cables in my system(and a job where i should know better),i agree with you.Having said that...they look very nice and why not cover the bases?...you know "just in case"
