Speaker cables - is gold just bling?

[Milo]

Incidently if anyones up for a laugh look at some of the russ andrews stuff. Silly amounts of money for a power lead which does the same thing as a kettle lead.

 

[TheDoctor]

I particularly love the idea that you need expensive mono-directional mains leads.
I'll nip off and gold-plate the National Grid, shall I?

 

[Milo]

http://www.furutech.com/news/FI-50(R)-(News) .pdf This is another fine example of hifi foo. I like the use of the buzzword nano. Even better its got carbon in it! I want one for my kettle.

 

[Danny]

http://www.furutech.com/news/FI-50(R)-(News) .pdf This is another fine example of hifi foo. I like the use of the buzzword nano. Even better its got carbon in it! I want one for my kettle.

And the "floating magnetic field effects" sound very impressive. I can't imagine how I've ever managed to listen to music without them.

 

[Rhythm Thief]

As a musician, I don't use any of this stuff to record with: my guitar leads aren't gold plated and neither are the connections from my guitar amp to the speaker. Nor are any of the connections in the PA system we use, nor the mixing desk or the multitrack recorder. Why gold cables would suddenly make a difference right at the end of the process I don't know.

 

[Milo]

Gold is not as conductive as silver anyway. You often find gold plate on connecters and stuff simpily as it does not corrode.

 

[Hover Fly]

"Nano size particles", is that a fancy way of saying "dust"?

 

[Milo]

You will find 'nano particles' in suncream. Must remember to apply factor 50 to the banana plugs.

 

[Svendo]

Is there a bad science guide to hi-fi?

Funnily enough, yes sort of. Also mentions the kettle lead thingy:

http://www.badscience.net/category/hi-fi/



Personally my solution is to have BIG speakers and some chunky cables for them (which I was given). My living room is tiny so the positioning has to be crap to fit them in. Also my hearing is so shot due to years of raving and gigs I can't hear small quality changes anyway. As long as it's reasonable and LOUD I'm happy.

 

[Tollers]

QED Silver Anniversary gets my vote (assuming they still make/sell it) for an average setup.

I once spent many, many hours trying out different interconnects and speaker cables (albeit on a relatively high-end system of Arcam / KEF gear) and there are detectable differences. I spent ~ 10 to 15% of the cost of the components on my cables and it sounds all the better for it.

Don't listen to the "copper is copper" arguments - for some reason (and I don't know why), different cables do sound different, although physics says that they shouldn't.

THAT SAID... for a mini system even 50p/metre of multistrand cable is going to be better than the bell-wire the system comes with.

+1 I use QED silver cables too.

As for gold cables/connectors. I'd suggest that if you need to ask this question, then you won't hear the benefit. As someone else suggested there are also a lot of other variables. I've seen people spend a fortune on hi-fi then place their speakers in positions which absolutely destroyed the sound. Of course, they thought it sounded beautiful, but unless you have had a lot of experience playing with sound and understand how hi-fi can have different tonal characters, then you won't really have to worry.

At the end of the day, it's all pretentious guff, but that's me all over

 

[Milo]

Of all the cables I have heard qed silver is the only one I found that made any significant change to the sound. Not for the better though made the highend shrill and horrid.

 

[Svendo]

C+P'd from Charlie Brooker in the Guardian today:

Crackly warm vinyl sounds wonderful, but you can't listen to it on the bus, or squish it into a machine the size of a raisin. And unless your MP3s are encoded at such a low rate that it sounds as though the band's playing woollen instruments in a water tank, and provided you're listening to some halfway decent music in the first place, your brain quickly cancels out any concerns about "lossiness" and gets on with enjoying the music. I've never quite understood the psychological makeup of the self-professed audiophile – the sort of person who spends £500 on a gold-plated lead and can't listen to a three-minute pop song without instinctively carrying out a painstaking forensic audit of the sound quality. That's not a music fan. That's a noise- processing unit.

Full article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/15/charlie-brooker-ebook-convert

 

[Milo]

I just got my first turntable today. Dont think I will ever buy another cd again. Bloody great.

 

[Rhythm Thief]

I just got my first turntable today. Dont think I will ever buy another cd again. Bloody great.

Yes. I've recently bought a phono preamp and resurrected my turntable and vinyl does sound better than the ipod or CDs. Trouble is that I'm pretty much limited to all my old LPs since it's hard to find new releases on vinyl. And I do like discovering new stuff.

 

[Milo]

Amazon do vinyl. Brand new stuff is pricy though.