[Vintage-Audio] Audiophool Cables

Thu Mar 6 22:04:10 EST 2008

Not to my dying ears. There is almost no reason to have 
premium line level interconnecting wires. These are 
rationally high impedance being driven by rationally low 
impedance and most any wire can get the stuff from here to 
there with little change. Good shielding, stable electrical 
connectors reasonably low wire resistivity (under 10 ohms) 
should pull the train.

My valued Carver C-400 pre is dying. I have cleaned and 
worried the switches and they will only stay good for a 
couple months. I keep loosing the right channel. Must be a 
liberal pre and an election year.

WBob

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Duane Fischer, W8DBF" <dfischer at usol.com>
To: "Vintage home and professional audio equipment from 1975 
back" <vintage-audio at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Thursday, March 06, 2008 7:05 PM
Subject: Re: [Vintage-Audio] Audiophool Cables

> Hey Wolfman Bob,
>
> Now what about these six foot long, gold plated RCA type 
> male plug, 14 gauge multiple strand wire audio cables I am 
> using from the Sony GX-80 ES amp to the Sony ZA5 ES DAT 
> deck? I have them for both the input and the output.
>
> I am also using another set from the amplifier to the Sony 
> CDRW deck and back to the amp.
>
> As you know, these are not cheap, nor are they super 
> expensive either.
>
> It was my thinking when I purchased them, that since I was 
> using the Sony "ES" series, supposedly the best Sony 
> makes, that I should also be using a better grade of 
> input/output cables then one could purchase at any audio 
> store for $9.95 a pair, or less! Less loss, less corrosion 
> and improved conductivity with the gold plating and lower 
> resistance due to the 14 gauge wire. So I talked myself 
> into buying them!
>
> Actually, Sony sold me defective DAT tapes, I called 
> management in Flordia, lodged a formal complaint with a 
> human etc. Much to my surprise, and delight, Sony sent me 
> a twelve pack of new top quality 120 minute DAT tapes! 
> They also included four of the six foot gold plated 
> cables!
>
> So Bob, am I deceiving myself into thinking that these 
> gold plated connectors on the heavy duty 14 gauge cables 
> actually improves the audio over the el cheapo Dollar 
> Audio Store cables? Or do they truly help?
>
>
>
>
> Duane Fischer, W8DBF/WPE8CXO
> dfischer at usol.com
> HHI: Halligan's Hallicrafters International
> http://www.w9wze.net
> HHRP: Historic Halligan Radio Project
> hhrp.w9wze.net
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "wolfbob" <wolfbob at csnsys.com>
> To: "Vintage home and professional audio equipment from 
> 1975 back" <vintage-audio at mailman.qth.net>
> Sent: Thursday, March 06, 2008 11:20 AM
> Subject: Re: [Vintage-Audio] Audiophool Cables
>
>
>> Depends upon the speller. If you are trying to make fun 
>> at these skilled folk then all kinds of spelling seems to 
>> appear. Like Awed-eye-oh-file. or Audeofylle. But I think 
>> the common spelling is Audiophile. I scoffed these folk 
>> for quite a while as I am a resistor/capacitor type 
>> engineer, but them folks can hear things that are not in 
>> any graphs or equations.
>>
>> My problem is so what.
>>
>> Just what are you trying to do with your music listening? 
>> I can think of several different things and I am sure 
>> there are nearly as many as there are listeners.
>>
>> If you are trying to get a sound that sounds just like 
>> the musicians would sound like if they were in your 
>> house, good luck. Even this has a couple variations. what 
>> if the music was presented in a stadium with several 
>> thousand watts and several thousand people, or in a 
>> theater with all of those acoustics and noises, or in a 
>> tightly controlled studio with room and other stuff 
>> electronically added? I have a friend who wanted his 
>> music to sound like a rock concert. His audio system 
>> consisted of a reel-to-reel tape deck or three a 25 watt 
>> amp and a 15 inch single channel Klipsch-horn speaker. He 
>> could (and did) break windows at 25 ft. in his apartment 
>> (yes, he lived in a second story apartment).
>>
>> If one wants any fidelity from recorded media then you 
>> have to go a very long way. ALL RECORDINGS ARE 
>> COMPRESSED. Yes, all, even master tapes. You will not 
>> find any source for the dynamic range you can experience 
>> in a live exposure. There is a couple good and a couple 
>> bad reasons for this corruptions. In the vinyl world, the 
>> music had to be limited to prevent the grooves from 
>> either being too deep or two wide (stereo) and to reduce 
>> excursions and allow tonearm/needles to stay in the 
>> grooves. When it became popular to play recorded material 
>> in a car with all of its background noises, they found 
>> that half of the music couldn't be heard over the ambient 
>> noise, so instead of putting compressors in the car 
>> equipment, they simply raised the average sound level on 
>> the recording, keeping the peaks the same (this is called 
>> compression). The radio stations loved it as now they 
>> could keep their loudness up, a thing tat seems to 
>> attract listeners. Radio stations add another 10 or more 
>> dB compression to the recorded material anyway.
>>
>> Who does this crime to the music? The mixer does most of 
>> it as he is operating under some proven guidelines that 
>> sell music. The engineer does some as he must keep the 
>> recorded material within the limits of the recording 
>> equipment, but a good tape deck has 60-80 dB dynamic 
>> range and a DAT has over 120dB so that doesn't explain 
>> the 15-20 dB resulting dynamic range of rock CDs (It only 
>> gets up to 30-40 dB for good classical CDs). As Duane can 
>> hear a flea fart (let's say this is around the limit of 
>> audibility of 0 dBSPL) and a full orchestra blast of say 
>> 105 dBSPL and throw in a few more for real life and you 
>> would like to get around 120 dB of dynamic range out of 
>> the recording if you are trying to make the orchestra 
>> appear in your front room.
>>
>> Another issue is that the CD is set up so the loudest 
>> part is mashed down so the average is about 10 dB below 
>> the max. This is not necessary anymore as the CD 
>> recording and playback hardware can now use the full 
>> dynamic range of the CD (in the beginning the artifacts 
>> and crap in the lower bits could be heard so they simply 
>> moved the music up some 20 or more dB, mashing the top 
>> end, and it is still there today although the artifacts 
>> and noises in the lower bits are gone).
>>
>> An interesting hunk of lore and illustrative of the power 
>> of the mixer in recordings is in the making of the 
>> recording of the theme song from the movie Shaft. The 
>> movie is fine, but the CD sound was mixed before the 
>> movie was released and the sound is quite different. The 
>> cymbal crashes at the lead-in and throughout the 
>> recording define the music rhythm and are the key to the 
>> entire piece. Distinctive and very rememberable, but as 
>> lore has it was a mistake. The mixer twisted his knobs 
>> until the sound was right to his ears, and he has great 
>> ears, but the tweeters were burned out in his studio 
>> monitors resulting in some 20 dB more highs than he 
>> heard. Great story, but not too probable...yet...
>>
>> WBob, WB6JPI
>>
>> ----- Original Message ----- 
>> From: "Duane Fischer, W8DBF" <dfischer at usol.com>
>> To: <w9ran at oneradio.net>; "Vintage home and professional 
>> audio equipment from 1975 back" 
>> <vintage-audio at mailman.qth.net>
>> Sent: Wednesday, March 05, 2008 5:44 PM
>> Subject: Re: [Vintage-Audio] Audiophool Cables
>>
>>
>>> Question: How is the much malined term for a serious 
>>> audio devotee known as an "Audiophyle" actually spelled?
>>>
>>>
>>> Duane Fischer, W8DBF/WPE8CXO
>>> dfischer at usol.com
>>> HHI: Halligan's Hallicrafters International
>>> http://www.w9wze.net
>>> HHRP: Historic Halligan Radio Project
>>> hhrp.w9wze.net
>>>
>>> 