Apparently with these cables the

A cable that makes the track come alive!

Winner of “Unintentional Pun of The Week”

Congratulations.

I have this magical merino beanie that when worn instantly perks you up and banishes all forms of tiredness due to the special alignment of the 10 micron fibres with the earths magnetic field and it neutralises static and background RFI interference from all known interplanetary bodies, i could sell you one for the special price of £199.99 but i have a special offer for today only, two for £299.99 with free postage.

Are you a believer?…….

Sure, or western union money transfer, you may also be interested in an sure-fire investment opportunity, i am trying to breed a form of merino hamster, there are thousand of hamsters in cages up and down the country with a limited lifespan but a rampant breeding cycle. Cross breed the Hamster with the Merino sheep and i’m sure you can see the investment potential that is currently being wasted.

My uncle in Nigeria will handle all the investment monies, do not be alarmed as we have already successfully raised funds for a kickstarter campaign to sell sand to the Middle East.

I think these things are the equivalent of “browsing Ebay when drunk, and i’ve just brought some tat i don’t actually need” but catering for people who’s first name is sheikh……

It’s also worth nothing that plenty of test standards for digital transmission fidelity exist, and exactly none of them are used by people selling / reviewing cables like this for audio applications! Yet, if you buy a cable to link two servers together, then chances are the error rates are fully defined………..

I think you’re the troll, for obvious reasons.

Any sparkys here fancy setting up a business with me to replace ring mains in people’s houses with high quality oxygen free copper conductors? I’m sure if people will pay 1k for a kettle lead you could charge 20k or so for doing something which would make far more difference to the sound quality. Though of course with a ring, careful thought would have to be given to which direction to lay the cables.

I don’t think science has managed to make a magicmeter yet.

I’d rather listen to this

may be a mute point

nice one.

I was going to highlight “mute” my point but thought that’d be far too obvious, glad it amused some peeps :-)….see all you stw forum doubters?, folk actually read thread posts before replying.

Nonononooooo

You can’t slag Naim off on here!

It’s the substitute religion of choice for many.

i.e. If you can’t hear the difference you’re a moron.[/quote]

That’s not strictly true – all of those things can be measured fairly accurately, using, in some cases, a number of scales. That said – it’s a real faff to measure them, and the differences between the measurements are difficult to actually assess unless you have some kind of reference – as with many audio things, they mean little to nothing in a vacuum.

<geek>

Timing – at this level, you’d be measuring this on the basis of system/interconnect jitter, which is related to the quality of the clocking of the system. This *can* have an impact on the consistency of playing back the samples – these should be precisely every whatever milliseconds depending on sample rate – if this drifts, due to poor clocking, then it can impact on phase alignment, but only really when you have more than one cable or system transmitting audio – i.e. it’s of little to no consequence here, because we’re only dealing with a single stereo/greater than stereo signal, not multiple signals from multiple sources being brought together – like in a mixer. You can measure jitter pretty easily by checking the consistency of the sample data in the cable – this is something you can do straight out of the cable itself.

Coherence – I’m assuming this means phase coherence, rather than anything else, and this again, can be an issue, if the left channel arrives at a different time from the right channel then you end up with a skewed stereo image, and potentially comb filtering impacting on the overall tone. However, a cable wouldn’t improve or deteriorate this – even in a system (like optical cables) where the stereo data is sent serially – i.e. left content followed by right content – then the problems could only occur in the reconstruction of it, not the interconnects. You can measure this by comparing the input signal and the output signal – although isolating the cable would be basically impossible – it needs convertors etc. to be able to do the calculations, and then if you changed the cable you’d need to take into account the changes in the rest of the circuit because of the changed cable – but you could come out with something – it’s unlikely to change, but you’d have a difference.

Detail – this is probably the most bollocks on there, the only thing I can think of is total harmonic distortion (THD) to measure this…but a digital cable would need to be seriously crap to have an impact on it, in fact, the point at which a digital cable is impacting on this, you’d end up with no signal.

Tonal Quality This is easily measured by comparing signal in to signal out and identifying areas of difference. This doesn’t mean that change = bad, because I know a heap of people who choose stuff (mixers, EQ, compressors, speakers) because they do change the sound for the better.

Dynamic performance This is crudely measured as an RMS average over time, or more usefully using Bob Katz K system, it has a specific calibration process and meter ballistics to follow, meaning you can compare apples with apples through the system and give you a good idea about relative dynamic performance.

That’s a dishonest comparison because they work on fundamentally different systems – using pulse code modulation to store audio data is inherently wasteful, so all the data included isn’t always needed, just because it’s always there.

Ah, you’ve gone and ruined it now. 😀

I’ve never heard two systems that sounded the same, regardless of how much or little they cost.

Unless daft systems are chosen, the difference should be significant and obvious.

It would depend whether the listener cared. There is a point where some people wouldn’t care whether there was a difference or not. You are never going to be able to convince them to care and they’ve already made their mind up before.

I haven’t spent much time on here recently and reading this thread I now remember why.

You lot are so far up your **** arses it’s a wonder you haven’t got indegestion.

I’m in.

You lot are so far up your **** arses it’s a wonder you haven’t got indegestion indigestion.
That ‘whooshing’ sound you just heard? That the point you’ve just missed going right over your head.
Vis-à-vis differences between systems, I used to go the Bristol HiFi show, and a couple of the London ones, back in the 80’s when I sold the stuff, and I clearly remember a couple of systems on demo, one had a Pink Triangle deck, and MS speakers, can’t remember the amp or arm now, but even then it was up in the five to six thousand quid mark, and there was another little system based, I think, around a Rega Planar deck, B&W speakers, and again, I can’t remember the amp, but the total cost I don’t think topped fifteen hundred.
The PT system was horrid, just really harsh and over-bright, the cheaper system I could have listened to all day, it was smooth and warm, but still had all the detail and dynamics that you could wish for.
Was the problem with the first system to do with the TT, or the speakers? Dunno, but I do recall reading that PT t/tables could be rather ‘bright’, over-emphasising the top-end, as could Mordant-Short speakers, which shows that getting the mix wrong, even when money is no object, means a really unpleasant listening experience.
I left that demo after one track, I couldn’t listen to any more
The point being, you can clearly hear a difference, it just might not be what you expected.
And cables?
Pah! Voodoo, innit.