A Scot calling someone a wanker is a term of endearment. It’s when he called him a f***ing wanker that he should have been worried.
1 Like
Gary, you find yourself in the “extreme” minority of those who share your opinion. And, there are some that I simply will not respond to. You cannot argue with a wall. The wall doesn’t win, but neither do you. Galen does his very best to share and to help. With some, it matters not.
2 Likes
Well I certainly wasn’t looking for an argument, just sharing my own personal experience.
Remember when power amps sold all sorts of power ratings and distortion numbers? Yep, no one understood those, either, and you were being taken to the cleaners. When VALID methods of measurement were introduced, those junk products went away because the specs had to be good relative to the field of products tested identically.
Don’t understand the specs? Enough technical consumers police the stuff for you! This allows you to, “not understand” and still get a well made product…well, not cables.
Because you don’t understand the validity of specs means it is OK to shop a product with absolutely zero peer reviewed design parameters? To be straight-up on specs forces valid design decisions and performance relative to the rest of the field.
Most products are FORCED to have true specs on components (cars, planes, trains) to insure their safety and consistency. You, the end user can IGNORE those facts but the standards agencies don’t, they look out for you. The Fair Trade Commission stopped the crazy specs on amplifiers and it made a world of good to allowing us to better understand what we are buying. It DID NOT destroy creative designs, it simply better described HOW they work. Designers can STILL show true measurements and get a different sound.
There has to be a much better set of guidelines and standards to describe cable parameters. OK, exactly HOW those are reached may not be as important as reaching them, but good designers will allow that curiosity to be met too.
Nothing in audio is as poorly policed as audio cables. Yet, we argue to be KEPT in the dark because a spec, formula or test is not understood? That is nuts. To require the specs to be presented, understood even if not by everyone but the critical audience, weeds out the junk for you.
I see no victory in buying a product and saying nothing important was ever tested, shown or documented on how it actually works, but I bought it anyway. And, virtually NO ONE else could ever know either!
I tested several so called audio cables and I will tell you to buy superior testing 1313A and 1694A and 1800F over most ALL of the “numberless” products out there. Flowery prose and verbally defined counter arguments to accepted physics (this doesn’t work to accepted practice, but it does in OUR magic cable) aren’t specs. To me it is straight up FRAUDULANT in presentation to accepted standards. Some cables have NO DATA AT ALL. It is not easy to push R, L and C plus tertiary standards of measurement to industry standards and PROVE it, which is exactly why most don’t. And, so far it is allowed. There are no minimum standards for cable testing at all, and there is absolutely no reason this should be the case for a QUALITY manufacturer. No data means no sale if I were a consumer…data being understood or not. The fact that data is there supports a better designed cable, I hope that is understood. What does no data support?
Galen Gareis
2 Likes
I went to a manufacturer’s site today, to see what their cables were about. When I clicked on “technology”, they talked about materials of construction only. They talked about OCC as if it was their invention, or if all that’s needed to make a great cable are the right materials. Yeah, but what do you do with those materials? Talk about “no data at all”…
But their prices are quite low.
1 Like
I have some cables from Analysis Plus that I’ve used in my systems, and to my ears they do make a difference in the sound. They have a whole section on their website referencing the engineering behind their cables, along with white papers. One of the few I’ve seen that provides documentation to support their products.
Do these white papers include measurements?
Analysis Plus speaker cables were the only ones in the Icono price range I tried recently that could compete. They didn’t have the Edge Definition thing though : )
This is what’s on their website: https://www.analysis-plus.com/make-me-prove-it/
I perused their website and could not find specific measurements for their cables by model. I wonder why.
Good question. I’m just saying they provide more info of the engineering behind their cables that most other ‘high end’ cables. I find their Oval 9’s provide a deeper and wider soundstage than Belden 1313A. The Belden’s are a bit more ‘edgy’ on high frequencies to my ears. Maybe more of the Edge Definition?
What if an auto manufacturer gave you engineering design principles on their hybrid engine, but no measurements on gas mileage or emissions? One assumes that this lack of transparency is motivated by self-interest. It took a long time before food companies were forced to publish nutritional information. I read an article recently about how very little research on what a “calorie” is has been done in the last 50 years. We are left in the dark.
Even the Analysis Plus site states that the ultimate judge of their product is our ears. If this is the case, why not start with our ears and leave it at that? It’s a complicated issue. We buy food based on how it tastes, but does this mean we don’t want accurate nutritional info to guide our decision?
2 Likes
Yes, listen. We can go 'round all day about technology. Galen has more white papers and data than anyone out there but it’s your system and you should choose what you think sounds the best. Opinions can be helpful in sorting out what to try but there is no substitute for having a go with any component or cable in your own system. Keep in mind that, although Iconoclast has been around for a few years, it has lived largely in the dark and is just now penetrating the market. Perhaps someday soon they will be more readily available for trial outside of the US. You can do it now but international shipping and taxes are a barrier.
4 Likes
More info is better than less. Those that need none can buy blind and use their ears…but you still have no basis the cable measures better or where,
as a sign of quality. You deserve to have that information.
How things are done and why is important. Better current coherence, or closer to the dame magnitude at all frequencies in a wire, can be explained and then see how a design uses that. If skin depth is “X” value at a frequency, this simply means that at that frequency the current at that “X” depth is 37% of the surface current deeper it is even less. A pretty big difference. If you make the wire smaller and smaller, the current in the middle of a wire gets closer and closer to the surface current magnitude.
Now we need to establish good R,L and C while we improve coherence with like explanations. You should be told these things.
Some specs are superposition, or many things acting at once. The swept resistance values, Rs, are an example. The effects of skin effect, attenuation and proximity effect are all balled up into one trace. When does a cable start to be non linear? The trace tells you.
Saying what current coherence is, or any variable is not HOW you actually used it to make a cable better. Here we need to show DESIGN aspects that do just that.
I can say my cable is 8-ohms as a spec (it is not) but I better be prepared to show an open short method used at low frequencies sweep that shows exactly that. Those that don’t provide measurements to support a claimed spec, as they will show different than what you’ve been told, will certainly hope you don’t want to understand the spec!
We can get specs, what we say, mixed up with measurement, what it does, with theory, what we wish it would do and hope you believe it does.
I have evaluated attributes that I feel are worth being first; current coherence. I can explain the concept, show how the cable leverages that concept in design but yes, DOES this valid design SOUND better? Now we at least have a DESIGN that is truly better to even approach sounding better. Of course, we listen to the superposition of ALL the key design changes at once. You have to take my ears for it that current coherence is a major critical attribute that has to be leveraged as far as possible and retain good tertiary attributes. That’s my job making good cables.
Specs matter. How you prove you meet those specs matter. The specs stay, if they are valid, no matter the cable’s use. But it has to measure better to sound better.
Galen Gareis
2 Likes
I have a VW, they specified the CO2, but not the dangerous levels of NOX.
In London you have to pay a fortune in daily charges to drive a car over 75g CO2, and vehicles have to be independently certified. Just bought a fully electric car, zero emissions.
So when it gets serious and the car gets a $6000 government subsidy and no congestion charges, specifications become very important.
A bad cable never killed anyone, so expect to be blinded by science.
1 Like
It is all in the ear of the behearer.
2 Likes
It all becomes clear when you spin this manually backward at about 1/2 speed. The CD doesn’t reveal anything, but the LP. . . .
3 Likes
Badbeef, Did you have a chance to test Anticables Level 5 speaker cable? It’s in the same price range as Iconoclast STPC. I have Level 3.1 in my collection.
They posted Level 3 spec, see below, I couldn’t find Level 3.1 spec.
Resistance = 0.0016 Ohms/foot run
Inductance = 0.00026mH/foot run
Capacitance = 0.044nF/foot run
No - I tried three that were recommended by The Cable Co. Library in the $1,500 - $2k price range. They suggest things to try based on what other folks with similar gear have liked, as far as I can tell.
Along with the three Icono’s, I tried the Analysis Plus, Audience Au24 SE (they now have SX) and Kimber Monocle XL. I don’t know about the measurements of any of them. I will take Galen’s word for the measurement aspects, as the proof seems to be in the pudding. Personally, I just listen.
@BobBJC - note that the Cable Co. guy had not heard of Iconoclast. Could be a good outlet.
2 Likes
IMPORTANT MESSAGE!
I updated to an Astell&Kern junior music player for my daily 4 mile walks. This unit is discontinued, but can be found for 220 bucks or so. It was 500 bucks when current. As it is a static device, I don’t care about new, so much as it works, and work it does.
It holds 64Gb internal and 256Gb microSD card. Loads with W10 like a SSD. Sound is crazy good, ambient, open, detailed and natural. This, with Focal Sphear ear buds…more or less just OK, at 30 of 100 volume. Battery life is rated at 6 hours, but with ear buds at 30 percent, looks like I can double that. It has blue tooth connectivity, no Wi-Fi.
It supports all kinds of formats so no worry that I can see.
Some quibble on the display speed, but the last firmware addresses that pretty well. This is a small pocket friendly size. It shuts of such that no settings change in your pocket.
So if you don’t mind buying old stuff at a tremendous savings, check this out. It simply kills any NEW stuff I considered in this price range. A no brainer for 220 bucks or so. Hope this gets someone a nice deal before they are gone.
Oh, you don’t need any expensive cables, either!
2 Likes