Audioquest

[Gsal]

I can also attest to the superiority of using the Audioquest cables in my Vandersteen system. I currently use the Silver Robin Hood speaker cables (just upgraded from the standard Robin Hood) with my Quatro Wood CT's and love them. In addition I recently had the opportunity to audition the AQ Firebird AC cable with my amp and it did indeed improve the sound. My next step will be to upgrade my AQ McKensie interconnects but since my run is 15 feet that will be a costly acquisition and will have to wait a bit. Just my two cents...

[olds1959special]

Audioquest cables are overpriced rubbish, imo. For a while I made my own interconnects from Mogami 2964, now I just buy them from Amazon made by WBC (World's Best Cables.)

 

For speaker cables, I use banana plug pre-terminated wires I also got from Amazon under the brand name Gear-It. About $20 a pair.

Edited May 3, 2023 by olds1959special

[Jim Heckman]

olds1959special, no doubt what you say about AQ cables and imply about others is true--to your ears.  Great that you can get enjoyment at such a bargain.

I am in the same boat as John Gallup:  whatever the assessments of them may be, I just like the sound.

[Richard Vandersteen]

Until you compare an old standard to a new one it is not wise to assess if the sonic change heard is worth the price of entry!  I have many happy 2Ci owners who are content enough to not want to compare what a new 2Ce Signature Mk III would do to their favorite babies.  If you don't have the funds, it is best not to know.  RV

[GdnrBob]

I was in the corner of 'Cables dont' make significant difference', until I had an audition at Audioconnection of the new Garth Powell cables.

It was an eyeopener.

If anyone couldn't hear the difference, then ....

Oh, never mind.

Bob

 PS 

And, @ctsooner will back me up.

[nymarty]

I don’t think it’s fair to say AQ cables are overpriced rubbish.  Just like it’s unfair to say WBC cables are cheap crap.  I own cables from both brands and they each serve their purpose for my needs.   I know cables make a difference in my system. I’ve heard the changes.  Moving my interconnects from Kimber to AQ was a substantial upgrade for me — to my ears in my system in my room.   

[Steve Edwards]

19 hours ago, Richard Vandersteen said:

If you don't have the funds, it is best not to know.  RV

Sound advice

[olds1959special]

I also use these with one of my tube amps.

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/325635916561?hash=item4bd169c311:g:2BwAAOSwBdtj5IAk

[Oregon]

21 hours ago, GdnrBob said:

....new Garth Powell cables.

?

[ctsooner]

I've been using Garth's new designs since they came out. I still haven't changed my Fire interconnect to the new ones, but may do that after I get the V preamp.  The power cords have made a huge difference in my system and when I went from the Niagara to the WEL balanced years ago it made a huge difference (used was the only way I could get it).  

Cables to me are done AFTER you get your components together.  THEN it's time to do cables. They are worth what folks will pay.  I have never called anyone's products as rubbish etc as that's not fair. We all hear differently and we all have different financial situations.  Many on this board can only afford a used pair of Vandersteen 1's or 2's and an inexpensive integrated amp.  Glad we have companies like NAD and Rotel for 'affordable' components.  

We also have folks on here who can afford any component made in the world and have fun with this as a hobby.  I LOVE talking to you folks and learning how you put your systems together.  Price ALWAYS comes up early in those conversations.  It shows that we are all looking for the same thing.... Great music and gear in our own budget!  We all have a great start with Vandersteen speakers.  From there it's how much you can afford and how much you want to afford.  

To me, in my situation, cords and cables make a major difference and that's why I've splurged the way I have.  I have also stayed within my budget (sort of, lol).  

[olds1959special]

Walk into any Best Buy and go to the Magnolia section and you will see the rows of overpriced Audioquest cables. This always irritated me knowing the cost of the materials to make cables. They are usually made of stranded copper, and they should not be that expensive to make. It makes me feel like they are just trying to make money off the naivety of the average person that doesn't understand the manufacturing costs and the science behind cables.  Good audio should not only be available to the wealthy. I have scrutinized the sound of many cables using my tube headphone gear and I think Mogami 2964 is just fine most of the time.

Edited May 5, 2023 by olds1959special

[olds1959special]

I have been trying some solid silver interconnects that I posted earlier in the thread which are a little more expensive due the cost of materials, but I like these when going from a DAC to an integrated tube amp. They have a leaner and cooler sound that is slightly brighter.

Edited May 5, 2023 by olds1959special

[Holmz]

55 minutes ago, olds1959special said:

I have been trying some solid silver interconnects that I posted earlier in the thread which are a little more expensive due the cost of materials, but I like these when going from a DAC to an integrated tube amp. They have a leaner and cooler sound that is slightly brighter.

What s silver brighter?

 

ok… I have been trying to resist opining.

I am not sure what is fact and what is fiction.
I know that people think that there is a difference, but if someone showed me a graph of the difference at some speaker posts for speaker cables, or end of the RCA for some cable,,, then I would find it easy to believe that it is true that there is an objective difference, and then a subjective difference make sense.

Or if someone explained the science, then it gets easier.
If there is some dielectric polarisation happening, then the battery biased gear should show a difference, and the stuff that is not biased should have something like crossover distortion.
(But no graphs are ever shown.)

Then there is the fact that a whole lot of people rave that this gear works.
So I am willing to believe that it is possible that they do work.

 

Now back into the land of value, there is some solid core silver cable, that is available with cotton or silk insulation that is not prone to the polarisation like PVC, teflon etc.
That stuff is spruiked by Jupiter transformer out of NY (I think). That wire, with some quality RCAs or XLRs may be as good as it gets for a DIY cable… and it somewhat follows the theory behind the battery biased stuff in that the insulation may matter.

 

Technically at the surface of the wire that is not a lot happening, and the energy is being carried by the electric field which is around the wire.
So that field is within, or partially within, that dielectric.
And the fact is that a length of bare wire, with no insulation, will carry the energy down it in some unit of time T.
But the same wire then covered with cotton or silk will take 1.3 or 1.4 T get down the wire… and PVC and teflon will take something like 2T or 3T… means that the insulation must be playing some role in the energy transport.

For me there is actually some real beauty in how the wire works, that is way more interesting than the just knowing that the wires sound different.

[BKDad]

I also have resisted commenting on this.

But, here's a short story.

A while back, maybe 30 or so years ago, a friend of mine's Dad owned a small local specialized cable manufacturing company.  Specialized meant "to order".  The vast, vast majority of the business was making, ahh,  special cables that were used in submarines, aircraft, instrumentation for nuclear power plants and oil wells, various unknown military uses, and so on like that.  Enough to make a living and keep a handful of people employed well.  But, both my friend and his Dad were also audio enthusiasts and had been for a long time.

So, my friend had an opportunity to try some different audio cable ideas.  He'd make maybe 50 meters of this or that configuration and compare the results.  This was mostly an exercise in curiosity more than anything else.  If the machines weren't running some production, why not?  The material cost was really low.

One thing he tried was some interconnect cabling.  One cable configuration was wires in a simple quadrifilar geometry wrapped in Teflon tape (same as used in some of the instrumentation cables) with a Kevlar center string (or whatever it was called).  No shield.  No fancy outer jacket.  All the same wire gauge.  All solid core.  All the same twisting pitch.  The difference between samples was that one used good, but not .9999999999 pure copper wire, a second used silver plated copper, and the third silver, albeit not "four nine's" silver.  

Guess what.   They all sounded different from each other.

At the time, we only had equipment to measure basic cable parameters like resistance, capacitance, and so on.  For one meter lengths, they all measured the same except for resistance, where the silver was a tiny bit less.  Maybe a couple milliOhms less.  We didn't have good tools to measure other properties or how they performed in the context of an audio system.  Just our ears.  I'm sure that I could do a much more complete set of measurements today with what I have on my workbench.

Based on the information I had back then,  I can't tell you exactly why these cables sounded different.  

I don't know, but I suspect that most, maybe all, of the audio cable vendors are no more equipped to make measurements any more thoroughly than what we made back then.  Besides, what is their incentive to do so?  For a lot of people, it would just be another point of contention to argue over.  ("Does the cable impedance at 100 Hz versus 20 KHz really matter in a two meter cable? Waddya mean reflections?  Time based distortion?  It's all in your head!  BS!")  They're not in business to do that.  It's not even fun.

[stratocaster]

3 hours ago, olds1959special said:

Walk into any Best Buy and go to the Magnolia section and you will see the rows of overpriced Audioquest cables. This always irritated me knowing the cost of the materials to make cables. They are usually made of stranded copper, and they should not be that expensive to make. It makes me feel like they are just trying to make money off the naivety of the average person that doesn't understand the manufacturing costs and the science behind cables.  Good audio should not only be available to the wealthy. I have scrutinized the sound of many cables using my tube headphone gear and I think Mogami 2964 is just fine most of the time.

@olds1959special having those Audioquest cables in the Magnolia section in itself is a poor business decision. You just don't walk into a shop looking for toasters, washing machines, digital cameras and then pop over to the hi-fi section to buy expensive cables. The average person that you describe normally doesn't end up spending money on expensive cables anyway and for most part doesn't have equipment that can benefit from better quality cables.

It's not just the Audioquest brand but take any other brand (Kimber, Nordost etc.) and you will see grades/price points of cables. I have used Schmitt audio cables which when he started there was just one type of cable and now he too has different types that vary in price. There's something about synergy that you need to keep in mind when it comes to equipment and that's where the cables make a difference. Upgrading to performance grade tires on a Toyota Corolla is not going to get it ready to compete in a drag race and that's where most of the folks that try expensive cables are disappointed in the performance and dismiss them.

Find a dealer close to you who can lend you cables to try. It won't cost you anything and dealers are always eager to help. At the very least you will be able to determine what's the best that you get extract from your system after exhausting all potential avenues (including power cables).

[olds1959special]

Audio grade power cables are the most obvious examples of snake oil.

Edited May 5, 2023 by olds1959special

[audioNeil]

8 minutes ago, olds1959special said:

Audio grade power cables are the most obvious examples of snake oil.

The only ways I can think of that a power cable can have an effect are:

• rejection of RF noise, or prevention of EMF noise from the cable being picked up by other cables/components
• the cable has an added passive filtering component (for good or bad)
• the cable has terrible connectors or gauge, and actually causes a voltage drop.

I generally do not hear a difference between power cables.  I've never heard a difference on an amp.  I have heard differences with power filtering (usually bad on amps, good on DACs).  The effect of RF on a DAC is nothing to be dismissed lightly.  I've heard a DACs soundstage collapse when another DAC that was plugged into the same outlet was turned on (though I doubt it was a good DAC).

And yet I'm sure there those on here who are convinced power cables make a huge difference.  They may, on certain equipment.  The problem I have with audiophile power cables is that there is no engineering reason why the above 3 issues can't be dealt with by reasonable-cost products. 

There is also the possibility of self-delusion.  I know that there is a chance, when a cable is swapped out that actually doesn't make a difference, that I would hear a difference anyway.  My ears change a lot from the start of a listening session to the end, and I can't guarantee that I will hear minute differences after a 5-minute delay in cable swap (or that my brain won't manufacture the difference).  So, while I do believe there is sometimes a difference with power cables, I'm not a fan of the high prices, and I have understanding for those who believe it is "snake oil".

If we get back on-topic of AudioQuest - I don't know how they justify their tiers of product costs, but I do think their cheap Type 4 speaker cable was a good deal.

[BKDad]

Oh, really?

https://www.jensen-transformers.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/generic-seminar.pdf

Just where do you think the almost inevitable system common mode currents are returned through?  (See page 9)

The thing about power cords isn't so much what they do at 50/60 Hz for the 120/240 VAC powering signal, but how they handle the other currents that pass through them.

It's certainly possible to mitigate a lot of that through circuit design, but that doesn't come for free.  Balanced interfaces or proper audio transformers can get around the problem to some degree, sometimes a large degree, but that only works up to maybe 100 KHz or so.  Maybe.  How about all the digitally generated crap that passes through the power lines, even just within your own audio system?

It's also possible to make a pretty decent power cable for not much money yourself.  Yeah, it would certainly cost more than the generic $7 power cords out there, but not much comes for free.

BTW, you can truly measure all of this.  It's rarely done (why's that??) and a lot of measurements of various audio products really don't explore the systemic aspects much at all (why's that??).  Yet, this isn't some kind of alien science or voodoo.  Yeah, we might not be able to exactly correlate common mode rejection at 157 KHz to soundstage dimensions, for example, but just ignoring it entirely doesn't mean nothing is there.  I think this all is called sophistry.

However, for most of us - certainly for me - this is a hobby.  Not life or death or how we earn our living.  However people want to enjoy it is totally and completely fine by me.  But, declaring that something is snake oil because you don't like the price, which really in truth might be unreasonable, doesn't mean that there's nothing there.  (Or that there's something there in expensive products, either - works both ways.)

[ctsooner]

Thanks for the nice post BK.  Olds, you may not like the costs, but they are priced where they are able to sell them.  None of what Garth is doing is snake oil and he does have ways to measure the differences.  What he has done with cables is pretty amazing and it cost a fair amount of money to get him from Furman (forget the spelling).  I am making a leap here, but I bet you have never heard the different cords and cables that AQ makes, so you can't make an informed decision based on your feelings.  That's just not fair at all.

As I said, many of us do have very high resolution systems and can easily hear the difference.  I forget which speakers you own and how new they're are, but I can promise you that listening to the new 2's it's very easy to hear the difference's between the cords and cables.  That's the reality.  When I put my new cords in one by one, my wife noticed EACH move.  I never told her that I made any changes in the system, but man, it took a minute for her to ask me 'what have you changed this time?  I really like it a lot better. ".  She noticed EACH cord change and then noticed when I installed the Fire interconnect, but liked the WEL better.  

This forum is for all Vandersteen owners and there are plenty here who can never afford much of the gear others have.  That said, they can play and have fun and appreciated what others are doing with their system.  Cables and cords have become the most polarizing components in audio due to many engineers making absolute statements without even auditioning, because they don't know how to measure them etc..  

I'm pretty thrifty and my thrift doesn't even come close to Richard's thriftiness.  That's why he came out with the 2's in a sock.  He wanted to give those of use who couldn't afford more, the ability to GET more.  Even with his new gear and that includes his 80k plus speakers and amps (I think I'm close in price), he gives us MORE for our money in each price range.  Not all agree or care and they aren't Vandy owners. There is gear for everyone in all prices ranges, both new and used.  Pete

 

[BKDad]

One thing that definitely does not help their cause is the explanations some of these companies provide for how this or that product works.  It’s often rubbish that violates the laws of physics and makes no sense.  Why they can’t or won’t provide real explanations beats the heck out of me.

(This is yet another aspect of Vandersteen Audio that I appreciate.  Real explanations.  People may not want to think that time coherence matters for sound quality, but the explanations and even measurements are right there.)

Time to go off the audio grid again…

[ctsooner]

I think that's why I appreciate Garth and AQ.  They use real measurements to show what each change makes.  There are plenty of cable companies that are just BS marketing garbage, but there are some who are outstanding.  I owned Matthew Polks special speaker cable when I had my 10's back in the 70's and into the 80's.  It made such a difference as folks just used lamp cord back then.  Noel Lee was a master marketer who started Monster (I believe Bruce Brisson/MIT) who really got speaker cables going. 

[Holmz]

3 hours ago, BKDad said:

BTW, you can truly measure all of this.  It's rarely done (why's that??) and a lot of measurements of various audio products really don't explore the systemic aspects much at all (why's that??).  Yet, this isn't some kind of alien science or voodoo.  Yeah, we might not be able to exactly correlate common mode rejection at 157 KHz to soundstage dimensions, for example, but just ignoring it entirely doesn't mean nothing is there.  I think this all is called sophistry.

If one digitises the output of say a system not playing anything, it is amazing the level of spurs and other “tones” that can be present but not exactly hearable without the speaker becoming something almost akin to hearing aid shoved into the ear canal

And one can futz with the ICs, and the layout relative to other interconnnects, and see an effect… and wall warts are a new thing to “hi fidelity”.
(An ocsillospoce is of course better.)

I think for some of us the idea of power conditioning mattering is lost.
A few pieces of gear have outboard power supply stages… I never even heard hums and noise from the electronics until I used a DAC a year and a half ago.

And a lot of my gear has an expensive option to run off of a battery, which is about the same cost or cheaper than running off of some Niagara or PS-Audio filter…
I would not consider a power conditioner, when I can run it off of battery.

 

3 hours ago, BKDad said:

However, for most of us - certainly for me - this is a hobby.  Not life or death or how we earn our living.  However what people want to enjoy it is totally and completely fine by me.  But, declaring that something is snake oil because you don't like the price, which really in truth might be unreasonable, doesn't mean that there's nothing there.  (Or that there's something there in expensive products, either - works both ways.)

I like the sound to be good, but I am also somewhat inquisitive.

[BKDad]

3 minutes ago, Holmz said:

I like the sound to be good, but I am also somewhat inquisitive.

Well then...

Get yourself a high frequency clamp on current probe.  Or, build one.  Gather up a low frequency spectrum analyzer as well as a high frequency one.  You can actually collect all of those now for about $500 (USD) because of the minor revolution that's taken place in small test gear.  With all that, you can see for yourself what is actually carried through the power cords.  You can also see the high frequency stuff on the interconnects, if there is any in your system.  Stuff, not interconnects.

If you want to examine the effects of speaker cables with your own amp and speakers, you can run a (low amplitude!!!!!) square wave signal into your amplifier input and measure what you see on both the amplifier output terminals as well as at the loudspeaker itself.  See what currents pass through the power cables.

That should whet your inquisitive desires.

[Holmz]

@BKDad any models or URLs for what you recommend?
I sort of like the “digitising it” approach as I can work slowly… sometimes so slowly I forget what I am doing 🙄

[BKDad]

Kinda late here now.  Plus, I think because the forum here has been attacked a few times of late, adding links to a message means that some lucky moderator needs to examine the message before un-hiding it.

So, watch this space maybe a half day or so from now.