One Thing Audio
Speaker Cables
Article
Our views (for what they are worth) on expensive
speaker cables and ‘sweet spots’
Our good friend in Australia, Cameron Jackson, asked us what we feel about expensive loudspeaker cables. Cameron is musical and down-to-earth, and probably suspects (in common with a good many people) that it is all something of a black art and usually indulged in by people with more money than sense. To quote him: “Despite people’s best attempts,
I think I have to disagree with you about what sort of art it is. I think it remains a “black art” because no-one has been able to satisfactorily explain why (beyond certain very easily defined parameters) it matters!
I try to ignore what people say about a sound and listen for myself. I don’t think most people realise how suggestible the human brain is when it comes to what it is hearing”.
We are inclined to agree with Cameron, but as we are frequently asked to hold forth on the merits of this or that cable, we felt it would save time in future if we quoted here our reply to Cameron (somewhat expanded to provide a more general overview):
Ron Best to Cameron Jackson, 10th July 2010:
Your healthy scepticism does you credit, Cameron! However, although I’m sure I know what you mean, I think you could have expressed it differently! It matters because people hear a difference, and moreover the difference they hear (in many cases) is worth paying serious money for. Whether their financial situation means that they have serious money or are just prepared to get themselves into debt (send the kids to school shoeless) might make an interesting study. Either way, they are prepared to make a sacrifice to make their equipment sound better, or more accurately ‘achieve a perceived improvement’.
The subject of how suggestible the human brain is when it comes to hearing (or indeed how suggestible the human brain is on all matters) is another subject, and there has to be an element of that clouding the issue, but I think this is largely irrelevant. If you sit 10 people in a room and allow them to make independent notes on, say, 10 different cables, you will find when the notes are compared that there is a general area of agreement (suggesting that our aural equipment is incredibly sensitive and discriminating, and moreover, even when some listeners – perhaps due to age – have some degree of hearing impairment). But what will probably strike you is not the area in which most appear to agree, but in the minute differences in the way they describe the sound. I once thought this was down to language, and whilst that must be true to a degree, I feel that it is not the whole truth. When it comes down to details I am convinced that we all perceive sounds in a slightly different way.
Now you could (and probably will!) argue, “Yes, but if you have 10 people in a room they are all sitting in different positions, so the sounds that reach them. .etc, etc.” Now although people fret about their speaker’s horizontal dispersion characteristics (esp. the ESL 57s!) and a roving microphone will show these differences, it will make very little difference to the way the sounds are processed by the brain. With some slight frequency adjustments the overall impression of the sound will be very similar (and much the same applies to ‘live’ sound in a good concert hall) – in other words, not so vastly different as to produce contrasting statements of the ‘shared’ listening experience. This is fact – note all those who fret endlessly about ‘sweet spots’! And also please note that I am talking about good live or studio recordings properly balanced – not synthetic pap meant to sound good on your iPod.
Now if you think I am just making a case for expensive leads – not a bit of it. A lot of these leads look a lot better than they sound, so the “male jewellery” quip is not far of the mark! Nor is it necessarily a “rip-off” because most of this product is expensive to make and is produced in relatively small quantities. If you are fortunate enough to be able to afford it and it gives you what you are looking for, or even if you think it gives you what you are looking for, well. . . . you earns your money and you takes your pick.
However, at the end of the reproducing chain is a loudspeaker. This is the final ‘link’ between the advanced state-of-the-art electronics you have acquired and your ear drums – this critical item has to translate the excellence of your low-level audio information by moving air between the equipment and your ear drums. In view of this we are surprised that many people consider the loudspeaker less important than many other items in the audio chain – in our view the deepest folly perpetuated by contemporary thinking trends (themselves governed by domestic acceptability, cost and press-driven fashion). Somewhere the plot got lost (and can be dated to the frenetic 1970s – but that’s a subject for historians!)
The way a loudspeaker performs will be, to a large extent, governed by the relative excellence and sophistication of the amplifier’s output stage. The amplifier unfortunately has to drive the lead as well as the loudspeaker. In the same way that the ‘rediscovery’ of the Quad ESL 57 (fuelled mainly by a singular magazine) produced a fresh and stimulating ‘back-to-basics’ view of real hi-fi, so it should be possible – by the same pairing down of conceptions – to cuts one’s way through the quagmire of confusion and sophistry surrounding the “black art” of loudspeaker cables.
There is a beautifully simple way of establishing whether a lead is any good: simply take it out of circuit!
Achieving this is quite difficult in a practice, but so conclusive that we can’t understand why most manufacturers don’t employ the test as standard practice (or might this spell the doom of their profitable product?) The best loudspeaker lead would be, effectively, no loudspeaker lead at all – or virtually no lead at all.
To achieve this, we positioned two high-quality identical monoblocks at the rear of each (ESL 63) loudspeaker, fed by a top-notch preamp and CD player in close proximity. The distance between each amplifier’s output and the loudspeaker’s input was a mere 10mm, and this ‘gap’ was bridged by two gold rods (OK, a ‘lead’ of sorts, but no more “lossy” than the amplifier’s internal wiring or p/c board). Numerous commercial leads were then substituted for the gold links, including two costing more than the entire system we were using!
What we were listening for here was the ‘neutrality’ of the substituted lead, or, perhaps more accurately, any perceived difference between the gold links and the lead under test.
When we compared notes afterwards it was at least confirmed that the 5 sets of experienced ears were capable of a surprising unanimity – even the same words and phrases appeared again and again to describe the differences. Cheap stranded cables came off worst – the sound “grainy”, “unfocussed” – bass weight not lacking but unclear, uncontrolled, soft, wallowy. Medium-priced cables, especially twisted or platted cables aquitted themselves very well, and moreover no difference could be detected between short runs and long runs (this certainly could not have been predicted and surprised everybody).
But by far the biggest surprise was the performance of the expensive cables. Initial impressions were that these sounded quite superb, especially the midband, which was more detailed, slightly brighter, more
forward, more enhanced.
More than one listener opined that the effect might become tiring particularly on bright and forward recordings or on ‘bright’ loudspeakers.
We repeated the experiment with a pair of valve monoblocks and a pair of very good quality ‘conventional’ (moving coil) speakers. If anything, the midband ‘enhancement’ was even more marked here, one listener describing the midband as “chromium-plated” but opined that a very low-distortion graphic equaliser could achieve the same effect! However, although the sound of these cables made us sit up and listen (the differences between the two were so subtle that we tired of making comparisons, although one impressed slightly more for faster bass on some material – but everyone became uncertain when other recordings were tried). . .although these cables undoubtedly ‘stood out’ amongst the others, in the context of the experiment we had so carefully planned and instigated there were some very serious questions to be asked.
Returning to our original set-up with the gold links reinstalled (admittedly this was on a different day) we felt the sound was so good – so rich and communicative and satisfying – that we all agreed that a “no-cable” situation would cater for all our musical needs [and by extension all the medium-priced leads which came closest to this experience]. Superficially, the expensive cables made their point – and looked too gorgeous to hide behind book cases, coffee tables and magazine racks – but their “presence” had to make itself felt [if it hadn’t already done so by a price tag which would buy you an extension to your house!]. . .but if our ‘scientific’ experiment had any value at all, the impressive performance of these ‘supercables’ was scientifically untenable. For it is hard to argue with the assertion that a “good” loudspeaker lead should sound as if it wasn’t there, and most of the medium-priced leads came impressively close to this ideal. At the end of this listening marathon it is fair to say that we would all have settled for the gold links – but with gear clustered around and in between the speakers and the necessity to operate it on one’s knees, the option lost some of its appeal!
To end on a cautionary note:
On a number of occasions which never fails to amaze us, we have encountered owners who have spent a small fortune on interconnects and other costly accessories to address what they regard as a ‘deficiency’ in their system. . . .only for us to find out in the course of servicing that their equipment has been faulty all along. Correcting the fault often produces a revelation to the owner, and the need to reassess all these expensive accessories some of which will now seem inappropriate or even redundant. Tut tut. . .more money than sense?
Ron Best July, 2010
