Even my wife who has no interest in expensive stereo bits at all (but has always allowed my spendy ways) could tell the difference in adding the Iconoclast cables. She said “now it sounds like they are in the room singing”.
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Their effect is almost unimaginable… and this is coming from someone who’s recently experienced similar results from some other (cord related, but not speaker or interconnect) upgrades.
My philosophy: they aren’t going to wear out, and no matter what other amps and sources are in the system, they all benefit from these cables.
The fun part for me has been slowly making changes over the last couple months. My brother is still WFH out of my place until his office calls him back, so I make these changes without telling him and wait for the comments. Usually within a few hours, he’s making some observation about detail, impact, or soundstage that he’s just noticing… and that’s just with the “home theater”!
I’ll be interested to hear his observations when I fold the OCC XLRs into the system.
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My wife just told me, for the first time ever, my latest Iconoclast purchase was “worth it”.
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You should get that statement notarized.
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You’re right. The last time I heard that from her was probably when we bought our house close to 30 years ago 
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Axpona came to a close this afternoon. Thank you so very much to the many, many customers and friends who came to see us and to say hello and to the many new interested audiophiles who found Iconoclast for the 1st time. It’s only been 3-years in the making and it looks like things may being trying to get back to normal. A great experience for the the entire Iconoclast team!! To those who may be traveling home, “travel safely!”
Prayers and good wishes to our friends in the SW with crispy dry condition and crazy high winds. Wildfires are devastating! Be safe!
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Great to see my 3 Amigos Galen, Kurt and Jeff at AXPONA.
Did anyone else see the Analysis Plus booth across and down the row from Iconoclast/Belden.
The AP banner read “Scientifically Proven Best Sounding Cables”. I just rolled my eyes in disgust and walked away. If I was Will Smith I might have slapped them.
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Was it an ASR recruitment front?
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Love it! I wasn’t even there and from what you have said, I would like to slap them from here!
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There were many claims at Axpona that resulted in a shudder and eye rolling on my part. Kirmuss took the prize, Analysis Plus, not so much. I did note they, Analysis Plus, use the same design banana terminals, just different coloring. As far as the Analysis Plus cables they aren’t under consideration.
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I don’t think physicality would be necessary, as a few questions regarding their claim would be enough to make the point. 
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Dunno about any of their scientific or marketing claims, but my subjective experience with some of their stuff has been positive.
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Good to know, as when I met with them they seemed reasonable and helpful. I didn’t challenge them on their claim, not much point in it. Either you like the product or not.
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I think that is what the “Academy said.”
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Hopefully, so. At times humor is not conveyed as well on the internet as in person. Especially so when physicality is inferred.
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I am certainly not suggesting they are not good people at Analysis Plus or don’t have great sounding cable. But how did they go about proving their claim? I asked and their answer; “it measured well” you can see on this one graph. I noted the claim and graph does not appear on their website. If I were Johnny Depp I might need a “mega pint of wine” to believe this one.
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I took their claim with a large grain of salt, and left it at that. It’s marketing after all. In all things audio claims can become rather extreme quickly.
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I posted this elsewhere, but it seems most proper HERE The issue was why concern yourself with tertiary electrical issues with cable. Forget about them and just make it cheap. Really good design in a frequency spectrum don’t do that. Digital or analog. - Galen
Cable is a decision puzzle, and all the choices are what makes each design a different cables. How does it all generally interrelate?
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To lower the cable IMPEDANCE at the low frequencies you RAISE the capacitance. The capacitance is FLAT across frequency.
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We need lower cable impedance to counter the speaker’s and cable’s mis-match causing simple reflections. The rise in cable impedance can’t be eliminated, though. Vp drop with frequency causing impedance to rise.
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To address Vp linearity at the other frequency end, you ALSO raise the capacitance. Nice how that worked out! Vp linearity is in the higher frequency end but the capacitance is the same as we designed for the low-end. Capacitance is “stuck” at a fixed design value across the full frequency spectrum into RF. How much capacitance do you add, though? We have a tetter-totter effect at the frequency extremes.
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To further address Vp linearity you can rely on just lower DCR for the LOOP DCR value we need at the low frequency end. We can’t use one big FAT 10 AWG wire. We STILL need a LOW DCR for damping factor and voltage division between the speaker and cable. What is needed for Vp linearity is SEVERAL insulated wires to split the current up into many lower current paths.
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To address the LOW frequency damping factor, where most of the power is dropped, this splitting of the current into SEVERAL parallel smaller wires increases total CMA wire area as we add more wires. The single insulated small wires address Vp, while the total CMA area addresses the DCR needs at the low end. Again, a Teeter-Totter effect.
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People consider tertiary elements like skin depth, and this is automatically forced down with the smaller wires used for Vp alignment. No worries there because skin depth is collected up in the better design with smaller and smaller wires.
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Esoteric things like current proximity effect are also automatically addressed when Vp linearity is considered and low frequency damping factor. P.Effect is when we run high current through parallel wires and the current inside the parallel wires is distorted. Current is pulled either into the outside surface or inside surface (depends on the current flow direction). It doesn’t want to be as current efficient since it is “pulled” to one side of the wire. But using smaller wires REDUCES the total current and proximity effect is addressed. So again, a better design addresses this aspect, too. Good designs help EVERYWHERE.
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Now we still need INDUCTANCE, and this is managed with SMALL TIGHTLY centered wires to reduce loop area (the easier way) and we can add the WEAVE to introduce B-field cancellation (the far harder part). And yep, we already have the smaller wire we need for the other attributes. Inductance is FLAT with frequency, like capacitance, from analog all the way through RF. Once we set inductance, it stays there all the time. The weave (or what ever the designer uses) also has to manage the capacitance. Capacitance depends on the dielectric and wire spacing where the inductance could care less about the dielectric used. One needs the opposite of the other, though. Capacitancew wants spaced wires and inductance want no space between the wires. Again, a Teeter-Totter decision. ICONOCLAST tricks the C and L to be happy with the complex weave that uses field cancellation to replace the spacing needed for capacitance.
All this stuff needs a DESIGN. And EVERY aspect that is considered and UNDERSTOOD improves areas of change that is not only considered “inaudible” but improves areas that ARE very very audible.
People are full of data (we know who they are) but few really understand HOW to make a cable structure that address many aspects of a good design that you would consider paying for. Too bad that “just” what is considered “audible” can be made, but won’t reallt be as good as it should be UNTIL all those pesky “inaudible” things are also rolled in.
We can make unoptimised designs for linearity like ribbon (very high capacitance) and high DCR cable (very high voltage drop and signal modulation), but they will be an “effect” type design that introduced non linearity we may like…or not like. The cable is a “component” of the sound more than a signal pass-through. As long as your amp (ribbon) can take the high reactive capacative load and you like the modulated sound of the speaker caused by the high cable DCR, we’re good to try them
Understanding how all this works allows us to better leverage what that choice entails for our enjoyment. Nothing is really wrong. We are all after the sound in the end.
We have “good” examples of all three choices; flat cable, high DCR cable and more fully optimised cable designs. Well, we can add “box” EQ cables. They all fall into design regions that the designer accepts.
Once you see how all the parameters interrelate, and the more you include the better your design can become, but it will be far harder to make (ugh). Hey, that’s why you pay someone else to do it!
Best,
Galen
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Great, another reason I will not try DIY cable myself. I cannot imagine I can assemble a bundle of tiny wires into a bundle of tiny tubes and jam them into one big tube. 
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