A good perspective…
But I would add that it is more important to experiment and listen in your room with your system than to debate the merits of kit, tweaks, technology, jargon, specifications, etc.
Enjoy the music and the Hi-Fi journey.
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Yes, and Galen is just as perplexed as the rest of us. The reason there are three “flavors” of the Icono cables - identical in construction and differing only in the copper - is (according to Galen) because there were audible differences in sound that he couldn’t measure or explain by way of known theory.
The observation of outlier events often provokes the development of the theory to explain them. That’s often how discovery works and we gotta roll with it.
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Here is my recommendation if you are doing Audioquest. The Music Room! I deal with Nick they give great discounts off all AQ cables and you have 60 days to try them out. If they don’t work send them back. As far as Belden and Iconoclast? Looks like great stuff and I love reading and viewing Galens extremely educational posts on the Iconoclast/Belden lineup! If I were in the market I’d be giving Belden and Iconoclast a serious look tho I love my AQ cables and they have performed great for my system!
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I think you would get more milage out of using a cord or cable over a couple weeks and do a lot of listening. By then you would have a good feel for the sound. Then switch the cord or cable out and see if you notice a change.
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Thanks for the suggestion. I find power cables particularly hard to evaluate. It takes too long to shut down the system, swap out cables, and fire it back up. By then it’s several minutes later. I read that we have a limited timeframe for audio memory. I think it said less than a minute. That certainly matches my experience. Unless the difference is profound, I won’t be able to really know whether it’s better. I’ll be going on weak recollections of the sound. With interconnects, I usually replace one cable and listen in mono. Then I switch the balance left or right to compare the difference. That doesn’t rely on such a long memory.
When I first replaced my stock power cords, I was very skeptical. But after switching back and forth several times, I believe the difference was profound and so did the non audiophile observers I had with me. I even pretended to switch cables on some of the intervals, and my friends could tell when I made no change.
I’m skeptical that the difference between the cables I’ve got and these more expensive cables would have as noticeable of a difference. I’m afraid I would be more susceptible to confirmation bias and other flaws. I guess I should give it a try, though.
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I’ve heard that recommendation before. People say that by switching back you’ll more readily hear something that’s missing if the cable being auditioned really is better. I can usually only borrow gear over the weekend from my local shop. And I feel guilty about buying things to try out and sending them back. But I should probably just get used to doing that so I can do these longer evaluations. Thanks fir the suggestion!
Is there a tree view or am I supposed to be doing something so that my response are easier to correlate to the original post?
Here’s another gizmo that you plug into the Matrix that I find can bring the performance up another notch. It’s the ifi purifier 3. Even after putting in the Nordost Valhalla2 USB cable which is unbelievable sounding, when I took the purifier out, the sound was a little duller and lost a little resolution. This in-line filter really works!!
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Understood. To me switching back and forth is confusing to the brain. You are trying to hard to hear a difference and you want to hear a difference. That is why A/B testing does not work very well for many people. Most differences are going to be subtle and not easily apparent after a quick listen.
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Snakeoil…
No, it’s not snake oil. Have you tried one of these Purifiers? When I pull it out and put it back in, I can hear it. Sorry if you don’t have a system to hear it.
Try it, without prejudging.
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I have tried one…all it did was nothing to improve the signal. A friend used a scope to look at the USB eye pattern. It actually made it worse coming out of the ultraRendu…
Vastly more helpful, thanks.
What kind of scope is that, and what is the “eye pattern”. This illustrates why I want measurements. It’s possible for things to sound better even if the signal is adversely affected. We don’t necessarily prefer clean, flat response curves.
I’ll let you think about that for a while…
Sorry it did nothing in your system, but I pull the Purifier in and out from my system again and it definitely made the highs cleaner and improve detail. Maybe this thing only works in my weird system.
There are many such examples, such as the Gundry dip, various microphone response curves, tape compression, vinyl compression, etc.
Signal problems on the digital side are nothing like your examples.