You know what grinds my gears?

[tmazz]

Expensive wires may have custom conductor alloys, custom braids, custom insulation, custom cable design that you can't do that at the kitchen table. Custom wire vendors can do almost anything. Then they build the final products as you describe.

Agreed, but I think with the exception of Cardis none of these companies actually make the wire themselves.

I don't think JPS actually makes the allumioy wire themselves. I wonder if they have it made OEM to their spec or just buy it as stock bulk wire from a wire house. 

[StereoNut]

Beacause in the end this hobby not about the technology you use, or the amount of money you spend or how you allocated that moey among the different pieces of equipment you need, rather it's all about musical enjoyment, so whatever you do to increase that enjoyment is ultimately, the right thing for you to do.

Spelling errors not withstanding, this is BRILLIANT!  Couldn't of said it better myself.  And of course, it fits right in with my favorite audio word... synergy!

Four thumbs up!

SN

[richidoo]

Expensive wires may have custom conductor alloys, custom braids, custom insulation, custom cable design that you can't do that at the kitchen table. Custom wire vendors can do almost anything. Then they build the final products as you describe.

Agreed, but I think with the exception of Cardis none of these companies actually make the wire themselves.

I don't think JPS actually makes the allumioy wire themselves. I wonder if they have it made OEM to their spec or just buy it as stock bulk wire from a wire house. 

Yeah, that's what I meant by custom wire vendors. Wire and cable mfg equipment is a big investment. No hifi wire sellers mfg their own raw cable. But they do order custom spec stuff, Cardas too.

[tmazz]

Beacause in the end this hobby not about the technology you use, or the amount of money you spend or how you allocated that moey among the different pieces of equipment you need, rather it's all about musical enjoyment, so whatever you do to increase that enjoyment is ultimately, the right thing for you to do.

Spelling errors not withstanding, this is BRILLIANT!  Couldn't of said it better myself.  And of course, it fits right in with my favorite audio word... synergy!

Four thumbs up!

SN

I'm glad I won the endorsement of the grammar police.

Hey, I'm the engineer, my wife's the English major. (But it will be a cold day in hell before she starts to proofread my audio posts.  )

[topround]

I think Jimbones should be banned from this site, he has caused much misery for many of us. I personally have lost at least 8 to 10 minutes worth of sleep over this mess he caused. He had to start a controversial thread..just had to.

Ban him   

Ban him

where is my pitch fork?

[richidoo]

"The lady doth protest too much." - W. Shakespeare

[jimbones]

Jeez. I've managed to survive AC I should be ok here ha ha 

[rollo]

Stereophile declaring "winners" at the RMAF such in the case of a $4100 power cord. Well duh, it better sound good for that much (I know there's no guarantee that it sounds good). Tell me something really interesting like giant killers or new companies and products that think outside the box and offer great products at "modest" prices.

It's almost a given that the reviewers walk around these shows and declare winners by price rather than performance. I've been to shows where some of the priciest equipment sounded like carp. 

Rant over.

  Depends on the reviewer. If from Sterophile or the Absolute Sound yes and yes I agree 100%.
   Our rooms got best of show and second best of show by on-line reviewers like Enjoy the Music .com, Scot Hull and more.
    No 100K systems in our rooms. Our first show with GTA was a killer system and not expensive. The Lenehan speakers at our first showing were dynamite. Same amps different speakers.
    Jim there are many creative less expensive products for us to choose from. Shiit, PSB speakers, Marantz CDP, Rotel, NAD, Vista, Emerald Physics, HSU, GR Research, Belkin, Crown , N-Core and many more.
   Getting to demo them may be a long task but worth the time. What grinds my gears in a good way is to assemble a system with proper tonality and impact for little money. It can be done with hands on experience.
   In general I believe that personal income or spending power is the biggest issue. Then there is plain old good sense. Sit putting a say $1500 IC and digital cable combo on a $400 DAC is well insane or is it ? We have experienced that a more expensive DAC was hard pressed to beat a $400 DAC with the better cables. The $1900 cable/DAC combo beat the more expensive DAC using generic cable. The kicker was the $1500 cables when used with the more expensive DAC sounded like crap. Why is that. Oh Billy boy it is that word again SYNERGY.
   Over the years our experience has showed us that a digital cable connecting the DAC to a transport or computer is a critical link that can drive one nuts.
    Greg I do not think your speaker is too expensive. Custom hand made is not inexpensive for any product. If my thinking was about price only than it would be Maggie 3.7i and $4500 left over for other stuff. But but your speaker kills the Maggie so my other thinking could be rationalized to buy the 9K speaker.
    Back to personal income level. The EQUALIZER for all.


charles
   

[machinehead]

Speakers, wires, speakers... cmon page 14!!!

[Response Audio]

Speakers, wires, speakers... cmon page 14!!!

New subject

Oksy. how bout we pick just one to start with....wires or speakers?

[GT Audio Works]

I have an interesting interconnect experience.

I use Paradox Pulse red interconnects..not cheap $1600 3ft pair retail...but very good.
Only way I could afford them is because Terence from Paradox who I did the CAF 2015 show with, gave me a fantastic deal on a set of cables and interconnects.
Since I use Jupiter wire in my speakers I decided to buy a few feet of their Silk covered Silver wire to make a couple interconnects to compare to Paradox.
The sound I got from my first interconnect was not bad at all, not as good as Paradox but pretty damned good, maybe a bit soft, lacking the killer resolution and sense of holographic stage presentation Terence's wire gave, but for $200 total investment including Eichmann Bullet RCA's not bad at all.
So I changed the ground conductor from silver to copper, better still, not so laid back, but still not as good as my reference wire.
Then I went from copper stranded to flat copper foil.
In an instant it went bad, bright , white and hard. WTF ??

My point is everything in this crazy hobby matters.
If changing the gnd. conductor can make such a difference, I can see how one can go nuts trying to chase down a specific sound, and replicate it for mass production.

Terence from Paradox asked me to send my cables back for an upgrade, I did and when they came back there was in improvement I heard. Not a big one but a definite sense of greater solidity of image and even better feel of the hit you get from large percussion instruments.
I asked him what did you do ?
He said he changed the way he terminated the connection at the rca.

Well if such a change can be brought about by such a seemingly simple action.
I really dont want to go down the road of building my own.
IF I want to pull my hair out, speakers R&D is enough for me.

Greg

 

[tmazz]

I have an interesting interconnect experience.

I use Paradox Pulse red interconnects..not cheap $1600 3ft pair retail...but very good.
Only way I could afford them is because Terence from Paradox who I did the CAF 2015 show with, gave me a fantastic deal on a set of cables and interconnects.
Since I use Jupiter wire in my speakers I decided to buy a few feet of their Silk covered Silver wire to make a couple interconnects to compare to Paradox.
The sound I got from my first interconnect was not bad at all, not as good as Paradox but pretty damned good, maybe a bit soft, lacking the killer resolution and sense of holographic stage presentation Terence's wire gave, but for $200 total investment including Eichmann Bullet RCA's not bad at all.
So I changed the ground conductor from silver to copper, better still, not so laid back, but still not as good as my reference wire.
Then I went from copper stranded to flat copper foil.
In an instant it went bad, bright , white and hard. WTF ??

My point is everything in this crazy hobby matters.
If changing the gnd. conductor can make such a difference, I can see how one can go nuts trying to chase down a specific sound, and replicate it for mass production.

Terence from Paradox asked me to send my cables back for an upgrade, I did and when they came back there was in improvement I heard. Not a big one but a definite sense of greater solidity of image and even better feel of the hit you get from large percussion instruments.
I asked him what did you do ?
He said he changed the way he terminated the connection at the rca.

Well if such a change can be brought about by such a seemingly simple action.
I really dont want to go down the road of building my own.
IF I want to pull my hair out, speakers R&D is enough for me.

Greg

 

Just another reason why cables cost well in excess of their incremental production costs. We as hobbyists spend hours upon hours playing with different combinations for find the right combinations of materials and design for a good sounding cable. But when you are running a company time equals money. and when you are manufacturing in small quantities R&D dollars must be spread pretty thickly.

Does not completely justify the high price of some cables, of course not. But it is something that seems to get forgotten when people complain that a cable costing $X contains only %Y worth of parts.

This is the kind of discussion we need to bring AN back to life. Perhaps it should be set up as the anchor of another thread to swap DIY cable experiences.......

[_Scotty_]

Something to consider. Very frequently the minimum run for a custom type of cable/wire is 10,000ft. At X amount dollars /ft.. If you are lucky. Frequently they require an even larger minimum amount of footage. You hope to hell the 10K feet of wire you just ordered isn't an epic fail. If it is crap, your sunk cost is real big and if you have the capital maybe you try again.
 If you manage to find a cable geometry and a combination of dielectric/ and alloy type that seems to work you will tend to explore variations on this common theme in your cable line.
 Cable manufacturers may get rich but it doesn't necessarily happen over night.
I am excluding those manufacturers who do no ordering of custom cable.
Scotty

[topround]

Congratulations Charlie on Best of Show!

Can you show me the link to that fact? would love to read about that!

Mike

[tmazz]

Something to consider. Very frequently the minimum run for a custom type of cable/wire is 10,000ft. At X amount dollars /ft.. If you are lucky. Frequently they require an even larger minimum amount of footage. You hope to hell the 10K feet of wire you just ordered isn't an epic fail. If it is crap, your sunk cost is real big and if you have the capital maybe you try again.
 If you manage to find a cable geometry and a combination of dielectric/ and alloy type that seems to work you will tend to explore variations on this common theme in your cable line.
 Cable manufacturers may get rich but it doesn't necessarily happen over night.
I am excluding those manufacturers who do no ordering of custom cable.
Scotty

..... or may not be getting rich because the cost of those failed cable orders has to be loaded into the price they get for the final product that the eventually do bring to market and they are not making the types of margins that people think they do.