Holy Cables! Transparent Cable Magnum Opus Speaker Cable

BlueFox said:
What at about it? He says he measures distortion in cables. In fact, he seems to be a measurement fanatic. :)


Personally, I feel that trying to tune your system with cables is ridiculous. It makes zero sense to change cables with gear changes. Buy cables that do not distort the signal, and you can use them with any piece of gear you buy. Of course, this means that if you don't like the sound then the gear is the problem. Buy better gear.
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Big -1. While this sounds good in principle, reality is a little different. The input and output impedance of gear is not standardized and there are big differences between SS and tube gear with regards to impedance. The impedance of cables is also not standardized which further complicates matters. I don't think there is a "one size fits all" phenomenon going on with cables.
 
GaryProtein said:
I simply agree with bluefox.

Besides, everything in this thread is subjective in nature.

What has been stated without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.
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Agree with what? What of many distortions are you referring to? You actually want us to believe that there is a distortion free cable?
 
mep said:
Big -1. While this sounds good in principle, reality is a little different. The input and output impedance of gear is not standardized and there are big differences between SS and tube gear with regards to impedance. The impedance of cables is also not standardized which further complicates matters. I don't think there is a "one size fits all" phenomenon going on with cables.
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True, but I believe his point is that he would prefer to use cables designed to have as little impact on current flow across the audible frequency range as possible, as opposed to those which are specifically designed with inductance and/or capacitance variations to impart changes to the sonic profile of the original source. Or which go even further and actually use traditional resistors and capacitors in a chicken to impart changes. I have no problem with adding tone controls (its a personal thing), but I do try to avoid it in my cables. Bob, on the other hand, thinks everyone should adopt a purist approach. If Bob's approach was mandated by an act of Congress, one size could probably work and I think they would sound a lot like Furutech Lineflux.
 
Myles B. Astor said:
Agree with what? What of many distortions are you referring to? You actually want us to believe that there is a distortion free cable?
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Of course there isn't a distortion free cable. The point is the ideal cable should be attempting to eliminate or, at least, minimize distortion, not adding distortion, and then charging extra for the added distortion. FlexibleAudio described it best when he said it was putting tone controls in the cable versus in the gear. It is amusing when you read people saying how bad it is to have tone controls in the pre-amp, and then read about how great it is to have tone controls in a cable. To borrow a line from today's paper, "Irony can be so ironic."

I personally am a big, big believer in cables, both signal and power. Actually, I think power cables make an even bigger difference in sound quality than signal cables, but this conversation is about signal cables, specifically speaker cables with magic bling.

As mentioned earlier, I want the signal into the speaker to be the same as the signal that came out of the amp. If a vendor can demonstrate that with some form of valid, verifiable experiment then they have a better chance of getting my money. Simply changing the sonic signal is insufficient since that is a trivial trick. Since it is trivial, the problem I see is vendors then add bling to try and justify a crazy price. Of course this is all marketing, and is designed to sell their cables, which is fine. That's the free market at work.

We all respond to some type of marketing. For me, I want science and engineering based marketing. Show me the cable output is the same as the input then I will certainly consider it. Keep the price reasonable, and I will buy it. For example, my Shunyata Zitron Anaconda speaker cables are $4000 for an 8' pair. They worked superb with my Cambridge-Audio 840W amps and Aerial Acoustic 7T speakers. Now with my Pass X600.5 amps and Magico S5 speakers they sound even better, because the signal out of the Pass is getting to the Magico with no added distortion, or degradation. There was no need to replace the cables because I changed gear.

If Shunyata, or someone else, release an even better cable then I will consider a change, but there needs to be a clear demonstration of the technology used to further minimize cable distortion. Simply saying 'listen' is not acceptable.

This has actually been a pretty good thread. Based on threads like this on other audio forums I switched 180 degrees from being a cable sceptic to a cable believer. However, my pragmatic side still exists, so while I do believe in cables, I want data, not faith or bling.
 
BlueFox said:
Of course there isn't a distortion free cable. The point is the ideal cable should be attempting to eliminate or, at least, minimize distortion, not adding distortion, and then charging extra for the added distortion.
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BlueFox, This makes a lot of sense. Did you happen to watch the video that was posted earlier in the thread showing Josh, the chief product designer for Transparent Audio describe what the networks do? I just watched it and found his comments quite interesting. They are only words with no scientific proof or demonstration, but they made some sense to me. He basically said that the frequency spectrum in cables is much broader than the audio spectrum so the networks filter out frequencies which pick up noise which obscures the signal. By filtering out this noise (distortion) the cables sound less "bright" and have a more natural tonality more closely resembling the sound of real instruments.

He does not talk about a signal passing from one component to another completely unchanged, but he does imply that his cables are, as you write above, "attempting to eliminate or, at least, minimize distortion".

Is Josh's explanation consistent with what you think a cable should be doing?
 
Actually, the video started this conversation. :)

While I understood what he was saying, I commented that he admitted they added filters to their cables, and to me that meant they were distorting the signal. While there is no doubt the air is full of RF radiation, I'm not convinced that my cable needs to be tuned to my gear to eliminate the RF.

I use an Acoustic Revive RR-77 for that purpose, and yes I do put that thing into the 'snake oil' category, but it does seem to do something, even if subtle. LOL.
 
BlueFox said:
Of course there isn't a distortion free cable. The point is the ideal cable should be attempting to eliminate or, at least, minimize distortion, not adding distortion, and then charging extra for the added distortion. FlexibleAudio described it best when he said it was putting tone controls in the cable versus in the gear. It is amusing when you read people saying how bad it is to have tone controls in the pre-amp, and then read about how great it is to have tone controls in a cable. To borrow a line from today's paper, "Irony can be so ironic."

I personally am a big, big believer in cables, both signal and power. Actually, I think power cables make an even bigger difference in sound quality than signal cables, but this conversation is about signal cables, specifically speaker cables with magic bling.

As mentioned earlier, I want the signal into the speaker to be the same as the signal that came out of the amp. If a vendor can demonstrate that with some form of valid, verifiable experiment then they have a better chance of getting my money. Simply changing the sonic signal is insufficient since that is a trivial trick. Since it is trivial, the problem I see is vendors then add bling to try and justify a crazy price. Of course this is all marketing, and is designed to sell their cables, which is fine. That's the free market at work.

We all respond to some type of marketing. For me, I want science and engineering based marketing. Show me the cable output is the same as the input then I will certainly consider it. Keep the price reasonable, and I will buy it. For example, my Shunyata Zitron Anaconda speaker cables are $4000 for an 8' pair. They worked superb with my Cambridge-Audio 840W amps and Aerial Acoustic 7T speakers. Now with my Pass X600.5 amps and Magico S5 speakers they sound even better, because the signal out of the Pass is getting to the Magico with no added distortion, or degradation. There was no need to replace the cables because I changed gear.

If Shunyata, or someone else, release an even better cable then I will consider a change, but there needs to be a clear demonstration of the technology used to further minimize cable distortion. Simply saying 'listen' is not acceptable.

This has actually been a pretty good thread. Based on threads like this on other audio forums I switched 180 degrees from being a cable sceptic to a cable believer. However, my pragmatic side still exists, so while I do believe in cables, I want data, not faith or bling.
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That pretty much sums it all up. No one has yet showed a cause-effect relationship. This is all correlations and as any good scientists knows, there can be twenty possibilities to explain an observation. Or even more than one explanation.

These experiments are hardly rigorous nor from scientific peer reviewed publications. They are simply advertorials.
 
PeterA said:
BlueFox, This makes a lot of sense. Did you happen to watch the video that was posted earlier in the thread showing Josh, the chief product designer for Transparent Audio describe what the networks do? I just watched it and found his comments quite interesting. They are only words with no scientific proof or demonstration, but they made some sense to me. He basically said that the frequency spectrum in cables is much broader than the audio spectrum so the networks filter out frequencies which pick up noise which obscures the signal. By filtering out this noise (distortion) the cables sound less "bright" and have a more natural tonality more closely resembling the sound of real instruments.

He does not talk about a signal passing from one component to another completely unchanged, but he does imply that his cables are, as you write above, "attempting to eliminate or, at least, minimize distortion".

Is Josh's explanation consistent with what you think a cable should be doing?
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The frequency spectrum of cables is of course much broader than the audio spectrum and I can understand that filtering outside the audio spectrum may help improve noise floor etc., but I would be very surprised if filtering of frequencies in the audio spectrum is not also taking place inside those chickens to achieve the end result. I think the changes within audio spectrum with these cables are just too significant. Also, why would you need to adjust filtering outside the audible spectrum based on individual speakers. The frequency range outside the audio spectrum is a constant, but within the audio spectrum all speakers are different and adjustment inside the chickens must be accounting for this. (But I have been surprised before.)
 
Thing is you're I suspect, arguing about 7 year old cables. The new Gen. 5 I'm sure sounds very different. Hopefully when Transparent catches up, should have some in house for review.
 
Myles B. Astor said:
Thing is you're I suspect, arguing about 7 year old cables. The new Gen. 5 I'm sure sounds very different. Hopefully when Transparent catches up, should have some in house for review.
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Myles, Do you know what is happening inside those Transparent networks? The argument I keep hearing is that Transparent ripped off MIT's old technology and that MIT has moved way beyond what they used to do and has many patents demonstrating superior technology.

I prefer the sound of my Transparent cables to the MITs that I had on loan, but I don't understand what Transparent is doing technologically and they seem to be very vague in their marketing and descriptions.
 
While I believe cables play an important role in a system, I've never been a fan of FIXED network solutions that are mysteriously tuned to a set of specific equipment parameters. I'm not against this type of solution proposition but I think such an investment is very limiting longer term when the solution is fixed.

I've always been of the view that a cable should perform transparentLY. A proponent of always using shielded cables just like the professional AV industry do, I also look for quality and purity of the metallurgical composition, materials used to minimise EMI/RFI pollution and skin effect, geometry of the wire and materials used to produce the chord, quality and durability of the terminations. Essentially a conventional cable.

Anything beyond this is unconventional. In IT, when you build a network, you plug cables into boxes that do predictable things. Here in the extreme end of HiFi, we have cable manufacturers that build fixed passive network appendages into the cable themselves that do mysterious and otherwise unpredictable things. Whether that be a sealed box or a sealed proprietary plug full of mysterious technology, it is often explained by creative marketing pusedo-science terminology.
 
Myles B. Astor said:
Thing is you're I suspect, arguing about 7 year old cables. The new Gen. 5 I'm sure sounds very different. Hopefully when Transparent catches up, should have some in house for review.
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Guys who spent 5 figures on cables and only used them for a few years commence the audiophile rite of pounding one's head on the table...until being strangled by their wives with their out of fashion cables.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
kev313 said:
Guys who spent 5 figures on cables and only used them for a few years commence the audiophile rite of pounding one's head on the table...until being strangled by their wives with their out of fashion cables.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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That's opposed to your computer that is obsolete before you walk out of the store. Or your car that loses 1/2 its value as soon as you drive it out of the dealer's showroom. Do you know anyone who hangs onto their computer for seven years? Or how many times has your car been the shop in seven years?

C'mon. This world is built on obsolescence. The Japanese perfected it. Look at the poor Maytag salesman.
 
Steve said:
While I believe cables play an important role in a system, I've never been a fan of FIXED network solutions that are mysteriously tuned to a set of specific equipment parameters. I'm not against this type of solution proposition but I think such an investment is very limiting longer term when the solution is fixed.

I've always been of the view that a cable should perform transparentLY. A proponent of always using shielded cables just like the professional AV industry do, I also look for quality and purity of the metallurgical composition, materials used to minimise EMI/RFI pollution and skin effect, geometry of the wire and materials used to produce the chord, quality and durability of the terminations. Essentially a conventional cable.

Anything beyond this is unconventional. In IT, when you build a network, you plug cables into boxes that do predictable things. Here in the extreme end of HiFi, we have cable manufacturers that build fixed passive network appendages into the cable themselves that do mysterious and otherwise unpredictable things. Whether that be a sealed box or a sealed proprietary plug full of mysterious technology, it is often explained by creative marketing pusedo-science terminology.
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Thing is that Transparent Cables have for me worked with a wider variety of equipment than any other cable in my stable. That said, the MM2 series was definitely sounding long in the tooth compared to some of the newer cables out there.
 
Myles B. Astor said:
That's opposed to your computer that is obsolete before you walk out of the store. Or your car that loses 1/2 its value as soon as you drive it out of the dealer's showroom. Do you know anyone who hangs onto their computer for seven years? Or how many times has your car been the shop in seven years?
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I still use my XP computer I bought in 2005. My car has been in the shop 7 times in 7 years. I change the oil, and get basic maintenance, every year, whether it needs it or not. Still runs great after 10 years. :)
 
Myles B. Astor said:
Thing is that Transparent Cables have for me worked with a wider variety of equipment than any other cable in my stable. That said, the MM2 series was definitely sounding long in the tooth compared to some of the newer cables out there.
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Myles, could you describe what you mean by the MM2 series "definitely sounding long in the tooth compared to some of the newer cables out there?" Which cables and how do they sound different? I presume you mean that you prefer the newer cables and/or that they are "better". I'm interested in learning the ways in which they sound better, and perhaps why they do. Thanks.
 
PeterA said:
Myles, could you describe what you mean by the MM2 series "definitely sounding long in the tooth compared to some of the newer cables out there?" Which cables and how do they sound different? I presume you mean that you prefer the newer cables and/or that they are "better". I'm interested in learning the ways in which they sound better, and perhaps why they do. Thanks.
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The two biggest areas where the better, newer cables surpass the old MM2 series are transparency/noise floor and dynamics.
 
BlueFox said:
I still use my XP computer I bought in 2005. My car has been in the shop 7 times in 7 years. I change the oil, and get basic maintenance, every year, whether it needs it or not. Still runs great after 10 years. :)
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Well Bud you're just lucky in computers and unlucky in speakers. Me, it's the opposite. If a computer lasts for more than a year, it's a miracle. The hard drive in that wonderful MacBook Pro I bought two years ago was fried after 9 months. And so on with HP, Dell, etc. junk.
 
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