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Flargosa
I started this post a few days ago, leaving it with some redundancy that is also agreement!
Wire - Do the research...many kinds of copper…different purities, crystal structure, dielectrics, stranded, litz, or solid. Also, lots of kinds of silver, and also all sounding different. Hard annealed silver can be hard sounding, while pure and soft, with good structure, can be pleasantly warm, but also with characteristic, uncolored clarity. 1% gold in silver is coming up, great to me...I like to blend wire types. Saying “copper” is copper, or “silver” is silver, is just not true.
Cables - With your revealing source, power not too bad, vibration relatively controlled, your Decware, a well implemented speaker/room setup, and decent cables...there is no doubt that different cables that measure well will sound different, and that some will make your music better.
Alternately, with notable weak links anywhere in the system/room, or with unfortunate limitations in perception and/or discernment, as stated, it is possible not hear a difference.
Sounds like your source, amp, speakers are good, leaving potential impediments to noise from power, cables, vibration, room and body/mind.
To get the most from a system, everything has to be as revealing and musical as everything else. Even the amp is not up to itself without a good power cable, fine-tuning tubes, likely some vibration control, and though not mandatory, a decent audio fuse.
This is not conceptual, or about belief. It is true that conceptual belief without experience is belief, not real. But for those of us who have revealing systems, personal experience proves cable quality effects the music. What we hear in experience is not conceptual belief.
If some of us can hear things more fully, the difference is that our system/room and body/mind will let us hear things.
Transparent neutrality is a big deal for a lot of us on this forum. Reading through this thread with an open mind shows this.
It is also a fact that every part of system and room contributes its "signature" to the whole, making system/rooms very complex and variable.
A system based entirely on measurement can easily miss what makes music...the right balance and complexity to begin with, and then correct reflections/absorption allowing detail complexity, harmonics, timbre...things that make recordings into authentic feeling music. Though you can do a lot to understand with measurements, for ultimate refinement we need the perception and discernment of the human body/mind.
Below is some of my story toward “neutrality” that is like music:
Always able to hear cables, wires, caps, resistors clearly in this room, it seems I have an exceptionally revealing room.
When I first got Decware, a SE342 and 944s, I went from hearing a lot to hearing a lot more, especially nuance, fine detail, liquidity, harmonics, spaciousness... But I had a good source, decent cables, and a decent room. The SE34 was not a bass powerhouse like the Torii though.
My room has great natural reflection dispersion, irregular plastered adobe walls that slope outward as they rise with virtually no plumb wall surfaces. Also there are angle and space changes, walls, alcoves, segues to other spaces; irregular round log beams; ceiling shifts; an irregular brick floor on sand, all helping reflection issues. Also lots of African sculptures all around; throw rugs in good places; rough wood herringbone ceilings with overlapped tar paper, loads of insulation, and fairly air-tight air space above. Lucky room in many ways.
The unconventional way I set my speakers also helps here, about 5 feet apart tweeter center to tweeter center, and toed out slightly.
Early on, the room being connected living/dining/kitchen areas, and because of design, not allowing much wall treatment, I got a Kemp Schumann Resonator and a used set of Synergistic Research Art Basik. Not night and day in some ways, but very helpful here. Adjusting the resonator changes spaciousness and clarity, one way, more tonal density, and one, more spacious, the middle best for refining music and sound stage here. It cleans up congestion, clarifying timbre, space and stage. Now with two, one on each side of my cabinet, I can fine-tune the soundstage some right to left.
Don’t know how Art Basik works either, but called resonators, I am guessing they reduce reflections and buildup by specific frequency area energy being absorbed and drained into the vibration of the bells. Sound-wise, they open and clarify the sound stage in my super wide living room, while refining authentic tone and resolving some bass resonance. Even now, after more conventional absorption and bass trap work, I can move the little Art Basik bells, finding the right location for solving whatever they solve best. Moving the bass unit slightly, helps resolve thickness, making low mids in particular more rich. Another bell, more for midrange, between the speakers near driver level, up or down a little can tune the mids to clearer or richer/deeper. Like the Schumann resonators, they help clear up congestion, thus consolidating and refining the player’s expression and stage. This is ancient stuff now, but helped complete the better parts of this space.
Then the Torii MKIII, things changed! Much more power, and the bass went from very occasional boom, to too often overwhelming, a serious problem with this room set up. So I built more serious bass traps, and put specifically arranged dense fiberglass and bubble wrap where I could in alcoves and corners; tuned the speakers to be tighter and less bassy; lots of tube refinement; and slowly integrated more and more relatively subtle EQ for the most part, except deeper cuts low down, toward a beautiful, revealing and balanced sound.
Though conceptually and effectively, in most areas a good natural room, and with good everything else, I had to adjust and tune a lot to get neutral sound.
Not perfect, but very beautiful, and beginning from an easier place in many ways than square/plumb sheetrock rooms with more intense tendencies to combing, buildup, and confusion.
This story is one example that great sound is not just about putting good gear in a room. And that tuning is inevitable, whether you measure or not. Interestingly, after I started rudimentary measurement, my EQ adjustments made by ear fit quite closely with the measurements.
But it is fragile. Anything can throw it off. Even with everything sounding great, with excess bass and mid bass, there could easily be masking of important fine detail and associated spacial cues, timbre, nuance, detail….etc limiting ability to hear subtle realities from recordings.
That said, with the gear you have, I have no doubt that if your power, vibration, and room are up to the rest, reflection/room-modes relatively controlled, you can get really good sound from this gear with less-than great cables.
The other side though...why continue the signal path from source to speakers in a potentially amazing 5K system with poor sounding cables? Even your 1000 figure for all your cables, not just one, with the right choices and care in shopping, this could at least approach the quality of the rest. At 15% of the total system, that is not bad economics to me. I think you could get really decent “starter” cable sound cheaper though, bought used, or if you are “handy!” Jeez, I could likely set you up with quite nice used ICs and speaker cables that were bought at good values.
Speaker cables and ICs are the signal path, and they are much longer than the wires inside the amp. So their qualities are that much more important relative to the quality of the wires in the amp if you hope not to degrade the amp, and associated, source and speakers. The longer the wires, the more electronic noise can effect them, as well as progressive and cumulative impact from lower quality metals, dielectrics, shielding, coverings, geometry, degrading the signal as it makes its way from source to speakers.
Power cables are equally important, potentially clarifying current to the amp power supply. If the power supply is receiving weak flow and noise, it will pass that to the signal path in most Decware amps. Bypassing caps in my Torii power supply was crazy good for reducing subtle noise, and thus leaving the signal more intact...less damaged.
For me the last 5-10 percent is worth as much or more than first 90-95. Solving the last impediments to beauty allows an already resolved signal/sound to blossom. The other side of the same coin, reduction of subtle distortions clarifies and empowers the signal, letting us hear what was masked by distortions.
You can work the more obvious percentages and get great sound, but it is very unlikely that it will be a truly “white sheet” without doing a lot with the last 5-10 percent. For me, the last bits bring it closer to sublime, magical, consuming etc.
These things are what better cables are about to me, as are cleaner power and vibration control...better signal integrity. Resolving slurring and distortion (ones you may not discern until they are gone), lessens damage to the signal, leaving more density without thickness, more clarity, more subtle detail and speed, better timbre, ambience...This is the big stuff to me, though not as obvious in measure of percentage.
Effective room and room treatment will definitely help us hear these things if they exist, but not create them. If it is not coming out of the speaker, the best treatment can't bring it out.
And everything has sonic tendencies! So we have subtle to not-so-subtle choices from relatively equal quality parts that solve signal transmission issues and noise. All good cables will present sound more clearly, but with various degrees of detail, neutrality, warmth, smoothness, complexity, richness, bassier, leaner….etc.
If the system/room is revealing, every thing we put in will adjust the whole. So not recognizing and utilizing “tuning,” be it room treatment or cables, is simply unrealistic. Balancing, if done carefully can “make the sheet whiter” in the most pleasant ways.
Like most here, the gradual path is easier, and can be better, learning as we go, our system/rooms improving at a pace we can absorb, helping us make better decisions as we improve our musical experience.
But, very important if solutions are the goal, if the system is hobbled to begin with, we may not hear cables or tubes much, causing us to believe they can’t be heard. So decent cables are a must if you want neutrality that sounds like recordings were intended.
As other have said, if you want to test beliefs, there are a number of good cable makers who are selling what they make at reasonable prices for the quality, including Decware. Most of the small operations allow a decent trial and return period. Or for big company cables, something I have never tried, there are many small and large sellers with good return policies.
Why not try some variety and see, or make some. But remember, it is definitely not all equal….some talked up stuff is not really that good...I for one can’t use the Pangea AC9 SE power cable...too colored for my setup...but that notable color could help some systems to be more neutral!@#$
Doing all we can in room is critical to real sound, potentially solving issues more difficult to solve with alternative treatments, gear, cables, tubes etc. If you can't use obvious tools, like LR said, speaker placement and toe arrangement is huge, speaker placement seriously effecting reflection/modes for better or worse.
With creative thought, often you can hide/integrate some traditional room treatment pretty well, and if that is not enough, there are alternatives to traditional absorption and diffusion, some of which helped here.
Finally, there are a lot of one-bone dogs out there...likely some of the ones who believe different wires don't matter, caught enough by ideology to rule out even listening to other options.
Probably will always be folks who dis things based on conceptual ideology, contempt, bias, etc, and their passion can make them convincing. But in denying effective things they don't get, often with no personal experience, this is self limiting, and also delusion making for those who believe them.
Remember the stories about Columbus being thought mad thinking the earth was round. If good reviews make something compelling, it fits budget, and can be tried cheaply or for free, in my experience, there are things that are hard to understand that really work...the bottom line for me.
Putting all the stories together we can create a more complete picture with general agreement...room is big, setup is big, source is big, amp is big, speakers are big, cables are big, power is big, vibration is big….everything effects everything.
OK...enough.
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