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Cables, DBT & other fun stuff


jimmyjames8

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Curious if anyone had already recabled their HD800? As a rule, I had always heard that silver plated copper wire was to be avoided for analog signals. Tends to sound bright and irritating.

Where did you hear such a rule?

From ipodbj who is not bright but makes up for it by being irritating.

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Quote from Audioquest white paper on cable theory:

"Material Quality also dramatically affects the performance of cables and their terminations. By material quality we mean both the intrinsic quality of the metal, such as gold, nickel, brass, aluminum, copper or silver, and we mean the way the metal has been refined and processed. Pure silver is the very best performing material for audio, video or digital. However, if silver is not carefully processed, even low grade copper will sound better. Silver has also earned a confused reputation because sometimes the term

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Quote from Audioquest white paper on cable theory:

"Material Quality also dramatically affects the performance of cables and their terminations. By material quality we mean both the intrinsic quality of the metal, such as gold, nickel, brass, aluminum, copper or silver, and we mean the way the metal has been refined and processed. Pure silver is the very best performing material for audio, video or digital. However, if silver is not carefully processed, even low grade copper will sound better. Silver has also earned a confused reputation because sometimes the term

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Quote from Audioquest white paper on cable theory:

Oh boy...

My first thought on reading that Sennheiser was supplying the 800 with silver plated copper cable was that they were using it as a tone control, treble boost if you will. I have not heard the the 800 as yet.

<snip>

Cables cannot "boost" anything... amplification or gain is required for that. Cutting (opposite of boost) would also be difficult without a little box of passive parts such as MIT uses.

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In Jimmy's defense, I am a believer in cable materials, and I find the term "stupid" insulting. And even before I heard differences for myself, there is a lot of literature catering to those of us who want to believe, I don't think it's necessarily stupidity which causes us to fall for it. From the skeptics' perspective, "gullibility" might be more appropriate term.

The veiled threat was uncalled for, though, Jimmy, I ain't defending that.

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Coil a few loops of the HD800 cable. The inductance created would probably have a 1000x greater affect on the sound than the silver plating of the copper wire

And probably still not make a detectable change to the sound. I'll have to do a little experiment when I have time.

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What bothers me are the statements that assume that it is undisputed that cables make a difference. I really don't think they make a difference, and even when I have perceived such a difference (my Senn Cardas v. stock), I have generally believed it to be placebo. However, regardless of my position, I acknowledge and agree that there is another side to this debate.

But there are folks on other sites who simply regurgitate, without further reflection, the claims manufacturers make (which we must reasonably agree are outright misleading in many instances) and/or the claims of uninformed posters who make up for their ignorance by stating opinions as fact and doing it repeatedly.

That people believe that cables make a difference is perfectly reasonable even though I disagee with it. That people assume that it is universally accepted that cables make a difference is problematic to me, especially when that assumption is reinforced by certain know-nothing blowhards elsewhere (this is not a reference to you, Jimmy).

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