Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Stereo Are You Kidding Me?

Last Saturday I hosted our local group of 20 audio enthusiasts. We started with a BBQ and cocktails on the patio. Then moved to the living room for some serious listening.

My 2 channel system:

Montana PBN EPS2 speakers
Micro Seki table with MA505 MK 1 arm
Hana low output moving coil cart with shibata stylus
Musical Surroundings Phononomena II+ phonostage
Jadis JPL preamp
Conrad Johnson MV60SE KT120 amp upgraded by CJ with teflon caps, etc.
2 EP300 balanced power conditioners
Various Pangea power cords.

Sound was wonderful.

Then we decided to swap out the Pangea AC14SE power cord to the Jadis with a $300 Nordost. No discernable difference. Then we tried a $3000 Nordost. My goodness, but everyone agreed the music sounded better.

We listened to Shelby Lynne's 45 'Just a Little Loving.' It starts with some dramatic drumstick cracks.

The highs were smoother, the cracks more defined, soundstage was discernably wider and deeper.

Then we tried the Isotek $600 cable, which everyone agreed sounded even better. Finally we tried the homemade cord of our tesident electrical engineer, Alex. Solid core silver wire (2 strands) braided around a solid core ground wire. Furtech connectors.

The result was, 'YOU GOTTA BE KIDDING ME!' Alex is making a pair for me. Without going into a lot of description, except to say the drumstick thwacks made you jump, the highs were airier and smoother. The mids, glorious,the music was sensational!

Not done with shattering the expectations of those who came in dubious about the difference between power cords, he opened a box with some $6000 Transparent Cable speaker wire and swapped them in for my Belden 9497 much loved by our Japanese audiophile brothers.

HOLY SAMOLIES!! These cables are bi wired pythons. The sound, true high end glorious!!!

We also compared the Axiom M5s with a pair of mini Graham BBC speakers. The Axioms acquitted themselves very well.

We are going to do a comparison with some B&Ws, Keffs, and Sonus Farbers. The Axioms will be the least expensive. I'm sure they will do very well.

Those who came as disbelievers left at around midnight. They left as believers.

They trusted their ears.

Partial Playlist

Shelby Lynne, Just a Little Lovin' 45
Zoot Sims Plays Johny Mandel
Bennett Brubeck the White house Sessions 45
Phil Collins, Hello I Must Be Going
Tbe Best of Chico Hamilton
Getz Gilberto 45
Janice Ian, Breaking Silence 45

What a great selection!

Interesting.

Every so often I wish that one of the people making super-premium interconnects could make a super-premium switching box to make A/B testing easier

I agree with you there! I emailed Pierre Sprey from Mapleshade with that suggestion. No reply.

Well then. Very scientific and leaves no doubt in my mind.

No, it was not scientific.

On my part, and that of several other participants, there was no expectation that swapping out power cords to the preamp would make any difference. It did and the improvement was not subtle.

We haven't had a good hijacking in a while...

I picked up 2 small boxes of interconnects from a guy off facebook. All new unopened packiaging but clearly old stock. The kind of packing you can't reseal, the cut your finger opening it kind.
I kept 8 or 9 matching brand /series/packaging cables including a long sub cable and gave as much away from other brands.
All for $10.
My memory is bad the cost was uber cheap.

Before

Some are double stacked

There are a bunch of cables branded AR. Audio Research, Acoustic Research. The most interesting are those made by Avi Rabinovitch, they may be from Israel. Any of the ARs are decent. Quality is not necessarily price dependent. I'd hold on to them.

Wow, I have trouble wrapping my brain around how power delivered over the last 3 feet thru an uber expensive cable of "better quality" than the 28 miles of cable between my house and the hydro electric damn is was generated from can be any better than a generic cable of the same quality of cable. Can a superconductive power cable suck more power out of the wall than it can physically deliver?

What magic is happening inside that cable to clean up the power from the outlet to your AV gear or what is generating such noise inference in your power in that last 3 feet?

TDIPablo, "noise" on a power line does not behave the way you think it does. It's quite possible for "noise" to be present at the point of common coupling between the utility and your house and to not be present upstream of that point. As far as cables go, one cable is not the same as another - they have different characteristics and those characteristics are very evident if you study them closely with the right equipment. Having said that, it's not at all obvious to me how those characteristics would result in sonic differences. Properly designed power supplies however, with filtering employed, do result in sonic differences because for one, they lower the noise floor.

It is probably fair to say that the long haul wiring is effectively thicker than the house wiring and the power cord simply because it runs at much higher voltages.

That said, what I always struggle with is house wiring, which runs at the same voltage as the power cord and uses relatively thin (and cheap) wiring.

No idea Pablo. Maybe romex is the best possible power cord material.

two words

placebo effect

just say'n. Having a hard time with this one. I'd imagine people moving around the room would make more of a difference than the cables.

And then you get to the power plug.. perhaps it was that he used a $9000 custom brain surgury grade outlet with 10 carrot gold contacts and zero oxygen screws. Those do make a big difference (to your bank account).

...and the signal still goes through a rather cheap stranded 12-14 awg cable from the crossover to the drivers inside the speaker regardless of any other magic flux you use connecting them.

Nobody mentioned alcohol. Alcohol makes a difference.

Not a lot of alcohol. The Montana PBNs use the highest quality internal components.

I use Acme Audio cryo treated silver wall outlets, about $60 each.

Folks, including me, did not expect to hear a noticeable difference from swapping power cords. EVERYONE heard the obvious improvement. The base line audio quality was very high. The improvement gained by using the Isotek was noticeable. The DIY cable's improvement was substantial. The cost in parts for the DIY cord is $500. Mine will be ready next week. I kept the Isoteks as well. I'll use them with the Bryston BDA 2 DAC.

Any member who finds himself in Southern California is welcome to hear the difference.

Someday I'd want to try this.
No room in my HT. Lots of room to swap cables, no room for people lol.

I was going to add the only difference, and the reason I purchased name brand cables, is the quality of the connection.
Never had an HDMI issue, never had problems with RCA/poor connection noise since.
Factory provided power cables here, never had the opportunity to compare though, FWIW.

I was planning to visit you about 8 years ago but family plans got in the way. I'm in Irvine for business from time-to-time so I'll try to make a point of contacting you.

I sure look forward to meeting you!

You'll get the first class treatment!!!

So, I swapped in a Parasound JC3 phono stage, a Koetsu black goldline cartridge .. substantial improvement.

My problem is Excel Audio, a wonderful high end audio toy store which opened near me. Mike Rose's listening room is unbelievable. Big Wilson speakers, TAD R1s, Dagostino monoblocks and preamp, big Luxmans, top of the line Clear Audio table with Goldfinger cartridge. Cabling which cost far more than my entire system.

I love the sound of my system, then I go there. Sadness.

So, Mike lent me a pair of Nordost Heimdahl II speaker cables. Darn you Mike Rose! I had $1.00/foot Belden 9497 speaker wire. (Much loved by Japanese audio enthusiasts) The difference in sound quality and price, is VERY substantial!

I invited 2 friends over to check my impressions.

I'm going to buy them. I hate myself already.

How long is the cable to one of your speakers?

4 meter ribbon to the left speaker, right speaker is close by the equipment rack, so I have 4 meters to go about 1.5 meters.

Looks like computer power ribbon. I should get some for a buck a foot and see how it compares.

Phil, the Nordost cables have all kinds of specs like capacitance, inductance and velocity of propagation which frankly don't matter unless you are listening to signals above 100KHz. If you are listening to signals above 100KHz, then you don't need speaker cables or any audio gear but rather a nice, quiet padded cell.

The most important spec is missing from the Nordost site. That spec is DCR or DC resistance. I've taken the liberty of calculating that DC resistance which consists of 18 parallel strands of 22AWG. The DCR of the Nordost cable is one sixth of the 16 gauge cable you are using. That might sound significant but it's really not at your cable length. The difference is less than two tenths of a dB.

Atmospheric effects will make a bigger difference to your sound than that cable. If you are hell-bent on reducing your DC resistance, get some 8 AWG cable. It will have a lower DCR than the Nordost cable for a much lower price.

Hi Mojo

I am sure you are correct. I don't know why the Nordost speaker cable makes a difference in sound quality.

Unfortunately, for me, they sound significantly better than what I was using and have brought my relatively modest system to a tiddly flip closer to the real high end sound I love to listen to but cannot afford.

I believe you are perceiving a difference. Many do. I can't hear a difference between my $200 monster cable (free - thanks to Julian at Visions) and $20 twelve gauge. At least one very competent designer in the audio industry claims anyone can hear differences between any kind of cable in his "lab".

Can you describe the differences you're perceiving?

Sitting here I cannot do justice to the improvements, except to say it sounds better. Cymbals and brush strokes sound more realistic.

Big difference when listening to Best of Chico Hamilton LP. (Great album). More vivid, more realistic, more pleasing. My measuring standard is SPM (smiles per minute.) SPM rate way up.

I also have trouble hearing differences between high end cables. My approach is to use the highest gauge cable - 12 for all my runs. I have had opportunity to listen with and technically test all manner of cables and while technically there can be differences, audibly I could not hear those differences.

Are you using a tube amp?

Of course! Conrad Johnson MV60SE with KT120s. Jadis JPL preamp (tube), Parasound JC3+ phono stage.

I have heard demos at Excel Audio with solid state amps, Pass Labs, Luxman (love that Luxman), Berenger ... cabling makes a difference.

And what speakers are you driving with that pentode amp?

Montana PBNs.

I can't specifically find Montana PBNs on this site:

https://pbnaudio.com/

EPS1 or ESP1

I misspoke earlier because I forgot you run tube gear. Your tube amp is relatively high impedance compared to a solid state amp and your speakers are low impedance. It's a really bad combo and any improvements in the cable, will make a big difference.

The fancy cable is not only 1/6 of the DC resistance of the Belden, its equivalent capacitance and inductance is also lower. That will make a difference in the highs of your system.

How big of a difference does the fancy cable make over your Belden? How about 1dB big for voltage seen at your speaker terminals? That's significant and it's about 10% of the voltage sourced from your tube amp. If the amp was pumping out 50 Watts, only 40W was making it to your speakers!

Now I really do recommend you try 8 AWG cable and save some bucks.

That's an interesting thought... some fancy amplifiers might need fancy cables. I hadn't considered that before.

If those speakers weren't hovering around 2 Ohms, it wouldn't be such a problem.

Thanks guys. Wow. It's good to know stuff.

So, I could have put the large chunk of change I paid for the cables toward a solid state amp, and I could have used 8 gauge vacuum cleaner cord.

Come to me my Luxman!!

Sorry, EPS 2s.

With a solid state amp, you wouldn't need the 8 gauge vacuum cleaner cord. You could buy yourself a decent bottle of wine instead.

Mojo, recently, I have heard solid state amps which I like very much. Some are nose bleed expensive.

The Dagostinos not only look like jewelry they sound beautiful. The Luxman sounds great. Pass Labs sound very good

I'd be happy with any of them. Must buy a lotto ticket!

Solid state amps are higher fidelity than tube. That's just physics. I understand tubes can sound pleasant but at the expense of fidelity. I think a solid state amp with speakers properly placed in a large room would be an eye-opener for you.

Maybe.

Well, if I'm spending $2000 a foot for cabling, damn straight I'm spending $125,000 a channel for amplification! First I need to get 220v to my living room... I'm hoping this will really get my acoustimas speakers singing!

You mean singeing? That's exactly what they ought to be doing.

thats crazy talk
$125,000 a channel...

My $125,000 theater would include a poured slab, double walls,...
A wall of axiom amps
Two walls of axiom 10" subs
A whore pile of in ceiling m3's
And still have money for the processing for at least 20 channels.

I can only imagine.

"A whore pile of in ceiling..."

I bet they'd sound real nice.

Think geodesic

A grid would work too

I'll accept either
Lol

TdiPablo was pulling your leg about Nordost Heimdahl II $2000/foot cabling.

Yep
Just got me daydreaming and I got carried away
Lol