Holy Cables! Transparent Cable Magnum Opus Speaker Cable

BlueFox said:
Yes. Thank you. If a vendor wants to sell me their cables then prove it does not distort the signal. All cables distort the signal. The trick is minimizing that distortion.
Click to expand...

So does that mean you don't buy any cables?
 
BlueFox said:
Yes. Thank you. If a vendor wants to sell me their cables then prove it does not distort the signal. All cables distort the signal. The trick is minimizing that distortion.
Click to expand...

Who says minimizing distortion is always the goal? Surely that is not the case in this hobby. I buy all of my gear including cables because it gets me closer to what I want to hear. The reason I buy Transparent (and MIT prior) is because of what they do to the signal. I could care less how it is done, just so that something is done. As far as pricing is concerned we all draw a line in the sand as to what we are willing to pay for any speaker or component in our systems. If someone prefers Monster Cable, Synergistic Researh, Tara Labs, Wireworld, ....... I have no issue with that.
 
still-one said:
Who says minimizing distortion is always the goal? Surely that is not the case in this hobby. I buy all of my gear including cables because it gets me closer to what I want to hear. The reason I buy Transparent (and MIT prior) is because of what they do to the signal. I could care less how it is done, just so that something is done. As far as pricing is concerned we all draw a line in the sand as to what we are willing to pay for any speaker or component in our systems. If someone prefers Monster Cable, Synergistic Researh, Tara Labs, Wireworld, ....... I have no issue with that.
Click to expand...


Agree completely. Where we decide to put our tone controls is a personal thing. But some of us prefer not to do it in cables. Also agree, price should have nothing to do with this issue.
 
Myles B. Astor said:
Might I suggest:

http://jockohomo.net/data/johncurl-v.0.1.pdf

You can start around pg. 131 but the rest makes for interesting reading also about how little we know and how most of it is rediscovering the wheel. Or as Dick Sequerra once said to me when viewing another designer's schematics, I made that mistake 30 years ago.
Click to expand...


Thanks for saving me from the first 130 pages. :D

After reading the cable part, I still don't see anything that refutes the view that the signal delta is what tells you about the cable, not what particular test you decide to run. John uses several tests in his work including a sensitive test which he originally designed to set negative feedback on his preamps and he has it available to measure very subtle changes in cable too. The point is he is still looking at the subtle changes, irrespective of the test. Unless I completely missed something.
 
Myles B. Astor said:
Might I suggest:

http://jockohomo.net/data/johncurl-v.0.1.pdf

You can start around pg. 131 but the rest makes for interesting reading also about how little we know and how most of it is rediscovering the wheel. Or as Dick Sequerra once said to me when viewing another designer's schematics, I made that mistake 30 years ago.
Click to expand...

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.
 
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.
Click to expand...

Where dem square waves?
 
I forgot what the original purpose of this thread was. Were we debating the look of the latest CF enclosure for Transparent Audio cables or are we debating the value of Transparent Audio cables in particular and network cables in general?
 
mep said:
I forgot what the original purpose of this thread was. Were we debating the look of the latest CF enclosure for Transparent Audio cables or are we debating the value of Transparent Audio cables in particular and network cables in general?
Click to expand...

No, no, nothing so debate inducing. We were simply trying to decide if it looked like a chicken or something else. LOL.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Mike said:
No, no, nothing so debate inducing. We were simply trying to decide if it looked like a chicken or something else. LOL.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

Haha, looks like a chicken in carbonite to me!:P
 
BlueFox said:
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.
Click to expand...

At first glance, I agree with this statement. I want to think that cables should just pass the signal unchanged between components. However, as this thread is about Transparent cables, it seems ironic that one must send his cables back to the factory for adjustment every time he buys new equipment.

I own Transparent REF XL from phono to speakers and really like these cables. I demoed MIT cables before buying the Transparents. Those dials on the MIT speaker cable network boxes certainly do something to the signal.
 
Transparent is not that bad at all , I was a user for many years late 90
My only two concern is the price and if you are going to install a passive crossover like MIT make it adjustable on the field.
 
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.
Click to expand...

I agree tuning with cables isn't for me and try to follow a similar path to you, but I certainly wouldn't call it ridiculous. It is personal choice and many people tremendously enjoy the process as a fundamental element of the audio experience. I say good for them if they enjoy themselves. The whole cable industry is predicated on the phenomena of tweaking inductance, capacitance, and filtering; I certainly wouldn't disparage those who find value there.
 
FlexibleAudio said:
I agree tuning with cables isn't for me and try to follow a similar path to you, but I certainly wouldn't call it ridiculous. It is personal choice and many people tremendously enjoy the process as a fundamental element of the audio experience. I say good for them if they enjoy themselves. The whole cable industry is predicated on the phenomena of tweaking inductance, capacitance, and filtering; I certainly wouldn't disparage those who find value there.
Click to expand...

If we are talking about speaker cables, I disagree with the "and filtering" portion of your statement depending on how we define "filtering." If it's meant as the type of filtering that MIT and Transparent (who has basically followed the lead of MIT since their inception) perform, I don't agree the whole cable industry is following those examples.
 
mep said:
If we are talking about speaker cables, I disagree with the "and filtering" portion of your statement depending on how we define "filtering." If it's meant as the type of filtering that MIT and Transparent (who has basically followed the lead of MIT since their inception) perform, I don't agree the whole cable industry is following those examples.
Click to expand...

I was referring to tweaking inductance, capacitance and filtering collectively as used by the entire industry to change sound. Of course MIT and Transparent do things in their chickens vis-a-vis "filtering" on a different level than most cable companies. However, as a technical matter since dielectric constant is actually frequency dependent, changes in capacitance in all cables "filter" the sound based on frequency (to some degree) as dictated by the designer.
 
I am specifically referring to installing passive filter components into the cables in order to change their sound vice the normal resistance, capacitance, and inductance parameters cable designers muck around with. We also have to include the differences between shielded speaker cables vice non-shielded cables.
 
mep said:
I am specifically referring to installing passive filter components into the cables in order to change their sound vice the normal resistance, capacitance, and inductance parameters cable designers muck around with. We also have to include the differences between shielded speaker cables vice non-shielded cables.
Click to expand...


Gotcha, you are correct in that regard; also, agree on shielding....its a whole other design parameter impacting these variables.
 
And we should acknowledge another variant, and that is ICs and speaker cables specifically designed for components such as the relationship between MIT and Spectral. What MIT is doing for Spectral is different than what MIT is doing for everybody else when they have no idea what their cables will be lashed up to.
 
FlexibleAudio said:
I was referring to tweaking inductance, capacitance and filtering collectively as used by the entire industry to change sound. Of course MIT and Transparent do things in their chickens vis-a-vis "filtering" on a different level than most cable companies. However, as a technical matter since dielectric constant is actually frequency dependent, changes in capacitance in all cables "filter" the sound based on frequency (to some degree) as dictated by the designer.
Click to expand...

Or as Lew Johnson said to me, "I'm against everything about a network box but damn it does seem to work." Note cj uses Transparent when designing their equipment. Also note that cables change from inductive to capacitive at specific frequencies. That is in part what Transparent and I assume MIT (?) attempts to control.
 
bluefox said:
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.
Click to expand...

big +1
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top