“I 
You” too!
Oh crap.
I thought it was a 3-D image of a turntable!
Its the original Take 5 album purchased in the 60s. I listened to it on a friends reference system: If memory serves me right, it had 2 JBL Hartsfield corner horns, 2 Marantz 9 mono tube power amps, a Marantz 7 tube pre and a good turntable - state of the art for the mid 1960s. I think it was the 375 compression drivers in the Hartsfields that made the difference. Sounded right. My last system came close but it still wasn’t what I knew cymbals sounded like (from my short orchestra exposure). But then I seem to be very sensitive to all distortion and had similar issues with all my systems and other recordings. That worries me because even if I assemble the best electronics, I have to plan a budget for cables and I don’t know what will sound right - and there’s very little headroom in my budget. I don’t want to buy a $6000 DAC and have it sound like a $4000 DAC.
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You really have to relax your eyes to see that don’t you…
Well, I see “I 
you” on the SECOND look see. But on the first look see, there is an awesome 3D front to back image, too. Look THROUGH the picture to see the second 3d image. Now that I’ve seen the deeper three layer 3D image my brain goes to that verses the I love you.
Figured it out, if I use my NEAR SIGHTED eyeballs, I see the wonderful 3D mosaics. If I put my glasses on, and sight farther away from the picture, I see," I love you".
Galen
And at least I have to move closer to the screen than I usually do.
I realize this is all about ICONOCLAST and speaker cabling, but if anyone is interested, AudioQuest published a whitepaper on their website about their “theory of cabling”. Between it and what Galen has written (here and on other forums), I now know more than I ever wanted to know about cables (What I wanted to know, and still don’t have the answer, is: “how much will it cost to sound good!”). The AudioQuest whitepaper is long and almost guaranteed to put you to sleep if you try to read it late at night.
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Having heard the Belden cable in my system I’d love to hear them again now that Snowmass is released. I think the cables (especially speaker) will really allow this update to shine. I’d like to read an evaluation of the different versions of speaker cable now with Snowmass, if anyone has more than one type on hand.
I also had the top 2 Audioquest speaker cables for evaluation but unfortunately not at the same time as the Iconoclast (several months earlier). That would have been an amazing shootout as they were both excellent but had very different topologies and qualities.
THEORY- a plausible or scientifically acceptable general principle or body of principles offered to explain phenomena such as the wave theory of light.
I didn’t use ANY theory with ICONOCLAST. Every change was driven by real measurement, and accepted calculations on things such as skin depth. I, personally, get tired of STATEMENTS being made with zero actual evidence, just theory.
ICONOCLAST was to prove, to me, that sticking to your proven, and measurable reactive variables can make better measuring and MAYBE better sounding cables. The measurements are real. What happens in your application? There are tens of thousands of reactive component combinations out there, I can’t test them all.
I designed a structure that has measurable attributes. I have ZERO theory. Nothing is indirectly supported by a “theory”.
I leave theory up to you to postulate on. Belden designs with proven measurement(s). Someday, if theory is directly managed in DESIGN, we will use it.
We offer exactly HOW each cable reaches the measured R, L and C variables.
Like it or not, interconnect and speaker cables still follow the telegraphed equation, although in audio the equation is frighteningly complex to calculate across a frequency range that is constantly changing the dielectric constant. Add to this the speakers input impedance instability. This fact, not theory, is WHY so many unexpected results are reached.
Reaching lower reactive variables is good design, and hard to do. The tertiary THEORY stuff will get drug along. Wire directionality, grains, current to strand swapping, the list goes on and on. I can only comment WHERE’S THE BEEF?
I am completely happy to hear a “no can hear a change” or you do because the supported reactive variables ICONOCLAST achieves are still measurably in tact. This is truthfully all I can honestly sell you, and show you. My papers aren’t theory, they are measurements of each and every step I used making them. No more.
Gareis Gareis
So, no yak butter or unicorn sweat?
You’re so boring.
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Don’t worry, I read the AudioQuest article with a good deal of skepticism - note the quote marks around “theory of cabling”. The paper was in the dealer section of their web site and as such (in my view) is more or less shameless marketing. My background is software development so I have an infinitesimally small knowledge of cabling, measurement thereof, and as such will not debate cabling with anyone.
The problem with cabling is that the components on either end of it have gotten so good, that the cable has become the weak link in most systems. That means extended testing at the customers expense and I guess that is what I resent most.
Raystone, In many if not most cases the right cables and interconnects will provide the most significant improvement available for the dollar spent. You are correct, the weakest link is most times in the cables. At BJC with Iconoclast, we don’t ask you to place dollars at risk when testing our cables other than the cost of shipping them back should you decide to do so. I suspect you might hear those symbols sound like ch rather than sh.
So with all this ICONOCLAST talk does this mean that @Paul and PS Audio will use ICONOCLAST in Music Room One and Two to show off the ANx & Infinity IRS speakers?
I’ve been wondering along the same lines. The PSA forum is excellent in the range of discussion allowed (i.e. to include competitive products w/o bashing them), but I have yet to see that Paul and his team have tried these cables and commented on them - although it’s entirely possible I missed a post or two.
OTOH, since BJC makes it free to try them, I’m thinking of test-driving a set of the speaker cables at some point. I really appreciate the approach taken to design these and the sharing of design criteria. Somewhere up above, Galen said: “Wire coherence is easy, more and smaller wires offer better coherence per wire, but all those wires have to act like one wire, or it is worse than zip cord. 48 signals arriving at different times and with different reactive variables is a train wreck.” [emphasis mine]
I’m using MIT Matrix 28 speaker cables and if I understand MIT’s “poles of articulation” voo-doo / mumbo-jumbo correctly, I think this is more or less what they are trying to achieve via their network boxes. I do know that I tried several flavors of speaker before settling on the MIT’s, which sounded smoother and more coherent in my setup, but 28 was all the “poles of articulation” the budget would - or will - allow. More “poles of articulation” gets ridiculously, hideously, stupidly expensive, and I’ve always wondered if there was a better way to arrive at the same endpoint without the need to insert additional circuitry in the signal path.
In fact, if anyone has had the opportunity to compare the Iconoclast speaker cables to MIT designs, please comment.
Paul has been extraordinarily gracious to let people like myself run threads about other companies’ products, competitor or not. There are lots of cables in the world and what Paul finds as synergistic with his system is, of course, his own “biddness.” I’ve never gotten the hint that he uses other brands to push them in any way. What I do know is that he tries to keep the system in room one very consistent so that he is evaluating the merits of PS Audio products with as little “noise” as possible.
EDIT: There are other things afoot, namely Belden Management’s bad, disrespectful behavior vis-a-vis PS Audio (N-O-T Galen or Bob).
EDIT: Again, I remind you that pricing through BJC is considerably less that it was through Belden. To oversimplify, this is a direct result of being freed from Belden’s MSRP agreement.
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I believe Paul did try them but still prefers the MG Audio cables.
I have not had the opportunity to listen to MIT’s for many years. It would be cool to hear your thoughts if you do order a demo pair.
Tho I’m not directly PS Audio I am running the ICONOCLAST Gen 2 XLRs and the SPTPC speakers cables and am glad I got to beta the earlier versions as well. I’ve posted a few times about them to say that the workmanship, design, technology/buck and sound are all excellent. I had a few reservations about the original XLR series, but the Gen 2 (4 x 4) XLRs are great and were great from the first moment in my system.
bingo
Early prototypes yes. Not the newest braid speaker cable or SPTPC wire, or the analog only 1x4 and 4x4 interconnects.
Will Glenn is 100 percent correct, Paul has to arrange things to showcase his products, not ours.
He may use different cables and brands in different rooms to better match an expected budget, for instance. This is completely reasonable.
Galen