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Re: Message to Commuteman from Soundminded

"its quite the miracle that running an electrical signal through a coil of wire that's in a magnetic field and attached to a cone of paper or composite material can sound anything remotely like a violin, tom-tom, acoustic guitar, or even many instruments all playing simultaneously."

Commuteman wrote that he felt our differences might not be as great as they appeared. I in fact see our differences to be possibly far greater than he imagines, our differences over cables being just the tip of the iceberg. For me the statement that one cable sounds "better" than another or for that matter one amplifier or speaker sounds "better" than another raises a lot of questions and red flags. What does better mean? I know what I mean. I'm not sure I know what other people mean. Everyone's view is colored by their experience including mine. As both an engineer and a musician (a very poor amateur musician admittedly) I have been surrounded by live music and musicians all of my life. I have been priveleged to have heard some of the world's greatest performers of classical music live. I've banged on more pianos than I can count and I know what the sound of a clarinet is all about having had one right under my nose for many years. In my way of viewing music reproduction, the sound produced by audio equipment that reminds me more often on more recordings of the way those and other instruments I am familiar with sounds is the better equipment. I'm not so sure other people agree.

I've also been priveleged to have heard many symphony orchestras, especially amateur orchestras play and it is quite startling to hear them one night in a basement practice room, the next night at full dress rehearsal in an empty concert hall, and the following night in the same hall filled with an audience. You get to appreciate the sound the hall contributes and when you read about acoustics of these halls and come to understand that most of what you hear at a performance in one of them is due to the acoustics and then realize that the technology to record and reproduce those acousical effects is well beyond the current state of the art, your expectations become far more modest. You also cannot expect that our two channel stereophonic system which has become the standard for the best home sound systems can reproduce the effect of a hundred or more musicians seated individually across a performing stage covering 45 to 90 degrees in front of you. Ironically, they are most nearly equidistant from you and at the same height so any auditory effects of stage depth or height seem to me to be relatively unimportant. I have therefore limited my expectations to hoping for audio equipment to accurately present the musical timbre as I remember it, of live unamplified musical instruments clearly and distinctly on as many recordings as possible as an achievable if narrow goal. I am sorry to say that much of what I have heard which was sold as high end equipment over the last 40 or more years does not stand up well to that criteria to my satisfaction. Yes audio cables may play a very small part in that goal and while whatever benefits they might have to offer may not be very cost effective, the question we are (at least I am) discussing is not about that but about whether those benefits are real or not and how to find out the truth.

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