Not to subtract from your point at all, but all things being equal, opinion is divided… and going by this thread, division is multiplying.

Feel free to come back at me if you have anything to add.

All of them use reflex cabinet designs which are inherently poor at “accurately” reproducing the bottom end simply due to the design – you can do a lot to design out serious problems, but using a ported design is always going to incur at least some time based obfuscation in the bottom end as the signal from the port mixes with the direct signal from the driver.

Don’t get me wrong, I use HR824’s all the time and they do a great job, but they suffer – like essentially all speakers – from inherent compromises to the sound.

Me personally, at home I listen to music on this or this my interest in audio technology is professional, so the specifics of it matter to me – in the same way that things about your job probably matter to you.

no idea I’m just copying and pasting from KVR

This is one of the myths of hi-fi which the industry uses to keep people buying hi-fi speakers rather than often superior active monitors for similar cost. Once you’ve bought active speakers it’s much easier to break the endless upgrade cycle because you have amp/crossover/loudspeaker all in one unit which is designed to work together.

Until I started designing loudspeakers I had no idea quite how far from truly accurate a good hi-fi loudspeaker is. But accurate is good! The biggest problem in hi-fi is not achieving flat frequency response but managing that whilst also achieving excellent polar response (dispersion), dynamic response and transient response (timing) and very low distortion (of which there are many contributory mechanisms). Get that right and you’ve made as good a loudspeaker as is possible. It’s the polar pattern that is the killer with hi-fi speakers – that’s why they struggle to sound real with acoustic, orchestral or choral music.

My old hi-fi speakers are pretty rubbish but I still love good music on them – though I have some much much nicer components waiting to be measured and have crossovers and enclosures designed and built when I get a moment. Maybe I’ll measure them tomorrow as I was testing a new quasi mass-loaded transmission line enclosure today so everything is set up and calibrated!

One upside of getting into loudspeaker design was discovering that when it comes to speaker cable you’d be very well served by standard 13A mains cable! 😛

CGG who do you work for?

I have a relatively expensive Nordost digital interconnect cable between my streamer and DAC/preamp, and guess what? It sound about the same as the cheapo cable it replaced, and I have ears like a bat! (Well, only in appearance terms :-))

http://www.barefacedbass.com

It’s not something I’ve experimented with in a very long time but I feel once you’re getting into expensive cables amounts of money you should be going active anyway!

I’d need to get rid of the electrolytic caps in my home hi-fi speakers before a listening test on cables would have value! 😛 13A mains cable has very good DCR, inductance and capacitance for most loudspeakers if the runs aren’t extremely long.

Can anyone, genuinely, double blind yada yada, as long as the cable is able to carry the current required and not long enough to cause problems from resistance yada yada?

Just answering a couple of points raised with my earlier post…

Come up with some measurable effects that those cables produce and you will have us, otherwise it’s just marketing bollocks.

I was referring to a complete ‘system’ rather than cables themselves so went a little off topic. However it’s a pertinent point when doing blind or open listening tests. Aspects such as sound stage and imaging are not ‘measurable’ however I’ve found them to be a very good means of discerning the improvements (or not) offered by different system configurations. Yes it’s subjective but having spent years in the retail environment and done thousands of demos it has always proved to be useful for clients.

I’m not going to be drawn too much on this but when I refer to ‘tonal character’ I’m not referring to quality but how bright, smooth etc. a system sounds. Whilst I’m firmly in the camp that cables have a placebo type effect in that quality is perceived rather than improved, we used cables to make minor adjustments to systems to tailor the sound to the clients ear. Minor as they were time and time again this process worked so from experience there was (and still is) some impact cables play. Cost of cable was never a serious factor though, just a well manufactured cable.

£1600 on an Ethernet cable is utterly laughable. FFS a £0.20 patch cable will have to be manufactured to the same spec or it won’t meet the category requirements. hmmm, we usually use blue cables for our network connections, we should try red, maybe that will sound better?

Very similar to my experience – small but repeatable differences.

Have you tried?

No, because I know the wiring inside my speakers, or to the terminals on the amp, is just normal (can’t remember the awg) wiring, so anything in between that isn’t thin or made from cheese can’t make any difference without the assistance of magicke. And I’m certainly not spending loads of money on fancy named cables to confirm that! It’s just electricity, flowing through metal.

You don’t need to spend loads of money – try twin and earth mains cable versus a cheapo 79 strand type.

I’ll buy you a pint if you can’t tell the difference.

Indeed. Which is why a lot of people think they are harsh and uncomfortable. Hi fi speakers tend to have an artificial hump in the bass to give plenty of “kick” and a nice warmth. This cuddly warmth is also why a lot of people still prefer vinyl. Accuracy is irrelevant for rock and pop because you’ve no idea what was on the original recording anyway – accuracy becomes a myth.

Most of my listening is classical and as a concert goer and amateur musician I have a pretty good idea what that really sounds like. So my vote is for CD, big solid state amps and properly designed, well built (old fashioned) speakers.

CGG, why would a speaker cable comparison have no value?

Interested in your response.

Funny how there never seems to be a before and after test.

Hmmm, this goes right back to the early eighties when I used to read hifi mags regularly, ‘cos I used to sell it.
HiFi News & Record Reviews was my ‘bible’ especially Ken Kessler’s page at the back.
Anyhoo, I remember reading all sorts of stuff about fancy OFC cables, directionality, and all that stuff, but it was pointed out that using 13A solid core mains cable made just as good a speaker and interconnect cable as stuff costing tens of pounds per metre.
I’m with CGG, I enjoy listening to 6Music through a plastic Pure One tranny, and my home system is a Yamaha DSP-AX2 amp into Sony Pascal 5.1 surround speakers, with most music from my Mac Mini fed vis TOSLink ripped at 320Kb.
The speaker wire is all basically bell-wire, more or less, and I’ve been getting a huge amount of enjoyment from it for getting on fifteen or more years now. (Minus the Mac, that’s just a couple of years old).
Truth is, I get more obsessive about my in-ear monitors, because I spend more time listening to music via an iPod or phone, and it’s much more intimate, I can hear greater variation in mastering and such like because the music comes straight to my eardrums.
And I can’t afford to upgrade my home audio system anyway.

Here’s a good website for those interested in taking this discusssion any further or if you wish to test your system or ears Audiocheck/sound tests/tone generators/blind audio tests

It’s been an entertaining thread so far, but the lack of pics and diagrams is below par for stw, so here’s a nice sounding PMC MB2i tuned and custom specced by someone with 25yrs experience as a BBC Radio sound engineer, they’re for sale btw,

he’s also got a cracking selection of personal DAT recordings from his bbc days . Ti’z a shame i have to settle for my common/garden variety KRK Rokit 5 monitors and KRK 10s sub when i’m at home, 24bit/192kHz recordings whenever possible of course….we’re all about the Linn Recordings here don’t ya know 😉 .

Don’t spend £300 on cables, spend it on room acoustics instead – that will make a significant difference or if your wife/girlfriend will take offence to things hanging on the wall and big foam lumps in the corners then invest in decent quality headphones or in-ear monitors….but that’s an entire thread all of it’s own.

I’m with you.