I recently posted an article about a hi-fi magazine and how it reviews cables. I thought it would be interesting to look around and see how some other magazines describe audio cables. This is quite edifying. Rather than analyze each of the excerpts I list below, I’m just going to toss them out, and let you try and imagine if they actually have any real value, or if they’re just buncombe.
From Stereophile’s 2014 Recommended Components Cables. This includes interconnects – cables that connect components, either analogue or digital – and speaker cables.
uses an RCA plug of tellurium-copper alloy with a single, small contact point, meant to reduce the formation of eddy currents
lacked some midrange body and warmth but produced a pleasantly forward, detailed sound with an unusually wide soundstage
produced a larger, more present overall sound, with deeper silences, longer decays, cleaner highs, more realistic bass, and richer tone color
lacked body and warmth but was more muscular, insistent, and precise
offered clarity without brightness, and reasonably good amounts of color, texture, and touch
offered a more organized and forceful portrayal of the music, with rounder bass, cleaner highs, and faster transients
the … interconnect is built into a hermetically sealed, helium-filled tube and terminated with proprietary solid-silver connectors. The overall sound was open and clean, with lightning-fast attacks, generous sustains, and long decays.
an air-dielectric–evacuated interconnect with noninsulated conductors … benefited from an enormous addition of lushness, texture, and warmth, along with major extensions of air, detail, and transparency.
infusing music with more low-level resolution, transient speed, clarity, and physicality
presented music with even greater urgency, drama, and purpose
was tonally neutral and produced well-defined images, powerful and fast transients, and incredible transparency
tended to smear bottom-octave pitch relationships, resulting in a less natural overall sound
had a richer, warmer sound, with a softer attack for a slower overall musical flow
Bits may be bits, but you’ll be gob-smacked by the improvement in sound quality
was quieter and produced blacker silences
Two points. Regarding the last excerpt, “blacker silences” is something that should be measurable; it is, most likely, a lack of noise. So I’d like to see the measurements. And, second, a lot of these cables – at least from what I can understand from the above excerpts – seem to alter the music, change it, which, I always thought, was something that audiophiles did not want. Things like “generous sustains, and long decays” are created by reverb; if a cable does that, isn’t that a bad thing?
In attempting to understand the above – and audiophile blah-blah in general – one may wish to seek out this book.