Except it does. I've done it myself - made up set of short well screened phono leads with 32-core copper wire to replace the el-cheapos that came with the cd player, and the difference was instantly noticeable. There's an optimum beyond which it's not worth going, but a pair of thicker well screened leads will give a better sound than the 7-core bell wire leads. This isn't the same debate about £3 HDMI cables over £79 leads from Comet.

I do wonder reading some of the opinions on here if some posters have ever sat in front of a proper hi-fi, and then actually listened to it by going beyond the easy volume WOW IT'S LOUD!!!! and the unexpected bass that always catches the newcomers ears (along with the eyes on the price tag). There's someone claiming to be surprised that it's possible to buy a CD player for £300, and has clearly decided it can't possibly be worth spending that much for a disc spinner regardless of how good the DAC is, its error handling, build quality, and its looks - yes it does live in the living room and needs to look nice too. There's some fantastic gear available and for the price of a decent push bike or a nice second hand car you can quickly end up with an absolutely brilliant sound system that will blow any of these "yeah £100 for cd player, some thin wire, 200 sovs on an amp and some big speakers for 500 will be more than enough" systems into the weeds.

Be more interesting to see if you could tell which was which in double-blind tests

Perhaps you would care to explain the science behind you claim?.

That pretty much sums up my thoughts.

I sat down to write a reply along the same lines last night after reading some of the comments, but then decided it just wasn't worth my time. There's a saying "You can't fix stupid". I don't think it applies here but I do wonder if there's a similar say for those with limited real world experience. I know that might sound harsh but sometimes I have the feeling that I'm trying to describe the experience of driving a Porsche to people who have only ever ridden the bus

Some of the most useful experiences I have had with Hi-Fi dealers were when someone really knowledgeable took the time to explain what they were listening for within the music when changing bits of gear in a dem. This first happened for me in the mid 80's when I was a teenager buying my first turntable. The Hi-Fi mags had been my bible and my head was full of those buzz words they used in reviews such as "delicacy" and "veiling". Yes, I thought I was well prepared for my first proper dem. What happened next took me by surprise.

Rather than just playing one turntable then the other the dealer started with a little experiment with the speakers. He played some music with the speakers sitting directly on the top plates. Then he isolated the speakers by placing three Meccano nuts on the top plates for each speaker to sit on. After playing the same piece again he asked if my mate and I could hear a difference. Here I was prepped with all my buzz words, but I'd missed what was happening in the sound. My mate nailed it. "The bass notes start and stop better." He was a musician, and he was listening without an agenda. The experiment was repeated and what the dealer was trying to show me clicked in to place.

This is actually a really good way to test if a dealer's salesman know what they're talking about or if they're just trying to flog you some gear. Ask them what they're listening for and why they think something is better. I remain convinced that the majority of Hi-Fi dem sales are a case of the blind leading the blind.

I'm sure the more cynical here will probably think this guided listening is just some kind of dealer trick, and nothing I can say will change that. It's their loss. Sometimes we need a teacher or guide to help us get the most from an experience. I have done the same 'guided experience' thing at shows and exhibitions where I have demonstrated the benefits of video calibration. It's interesting to see how the penny drops with folk who previously thought that more colour and extra sharpness were the main benefits of a better TV.

Coming back to this thread, the irony isn't lost on me that one of the main proponents of the cables don't matter argument is the same person who insists we're all putting on aerial plugs the wrong way and that the braid should go over the claw.

Exactly.
Subjective appraisals that are not the result of blind tests are pretty much meaningless because bias creeps in, especially if you've spent a fortune on the cables.

Well I don't have a dog in this particular fight; I fully embrace my ignorance and am just looking for advice. As with anything there will be people with different views - I suppose it's no different than asking "what's the best car you can buy with £10k".

My main instincts when it comes to consumer purchases is that I want to pay for quality and style - not a name, fashion or urban myths. Obviously then it becomes a question of logic - what's the most efficient way of improving 'sound quality'. Should you spend an extra £100 on the CD player or amp, if better cables do have a noticeable effect on sound quality than they are clearly the first thing that extra money should be spent on.

Personally I don't have a clue; but I'm wary of both the "emperors new clothes" mentality and vested interests muddying the waters . . . .

But like I said on p1, I listen through speakers not an oscilloscope. Ftr I had a NAD 3020 amp with the NAD CD Player, NAD tuner + a pair of Mission speakers, and was a bit disappointed with it. Because I could, I got hold of some 32-strand copper cable, ordinary stuff of the sort you might have found in cars' wiring looms back then. Add some braided outer shielding, better phono plugs and a bit of rubber heat shrink plus proper soldering technique (always a useful tool in the armoury) and an hour or so to measure it all up and make it. It was a daisy chain arrangement with the screens all joined by a short length of more braid, the cable lengths all the same and all long enough to form a nice arc from source to amp. It looked pretty smart I must say.

So - home, put on REM's Document CD. It's ok, but lacking. Swap the cheapo leads for my new daisy chain, play it again and there was a massive improvement. More bass mainly, a bit more treble, it just sounded nicer. It didn't and still doesn't need science - it's a feel, it's what your ears tell you.


Quite. I nearly went off into a rambling analogy about how some are arguing about whether a Suzuki Swift is better than a VW Up!, or maybe a Fiesta is a better buy than a Mini, without considering that a Porsche 911S or a Range Rover Evoque (or whatever...) is so far ahead performance wise that the difference between an Up!, a Swift, a Cooper etc isn't worth arguing about as they're not close to what is available. For me HiFi didn't sound like HiFi until the move up to the next level, and even then there isn't a right sound, just different. My last speakers weren't silly price but the guy doing the demo suggested we try a pair worth £7k, just to compare what I was looking at. There was a huge difference, but to my ears it wasn't a good difference - I didn't like the harsher sound. Some would I'm sure, but no thanks.

Sting's Ten Summoners Tales cd was often touted as an example of a fantastic sounding CD when it came out. I always found it thin & lacking in life till I heard it properly. The same applies to tracks from let's see... John Martyn, Sandy Denny, even Dire Straits' So Far Away was always just a meh track on the CD till I heard it properly, then it all came to life and made sense. Some music sounds great on a Woolies cassette player, some needs more to bring it to life and to draw the listener in. Unless you've sat in front of a really nice set-up in a comfy armchair with the obligatory nice glass of red and heard what a half decent set-up can do to music, it's probably better not to claim that thin wire is ok or that a £100 cd player will be fine. It's an experience worth having.

See my note - I made em m'self, minimal cost.

So it wasn't a blind test then and you spent a lot of time instead of a lot of money on your cables.
Don't get me wrong, if your original cables were very thin then 32 strand cable may well improve the sound quality as analogue signals are prone to interference and degradation, unlike HDMI which is digital and all or nothing. It just depends how crap your original cables were to start with whether the perceived improvement was real or wishfull thinking.

It depends only on whether I sat down in front of the things and straight away thought 'yeah that's a lot better'. I did the work during office hours so was paid for it (don't tell anyone, though it was 20-odd years ago ); I was quite happy for it to fail so that I didn't have to upgrade cables, but it made a difference. This constant nay-saying, that because I don't have a set of graphs to prove it so there can't possibly be a difference, makes me smile.

Waste an hour on Saturday morning by strolling into a decent hifi shop and asking them to demo a system with cheapo cables, then with some a bit better. You'll hear a difference. To repeat, no-one's claiming that cables have to be £100 specials, but they do need to better that the 7 strand standard issues that come with flimsy phono plugs that have been soldered together in China by a 9 year old who has to knock out 250 an hour.

No, you'll IMAGINE you can hear a difference

Anything other than double blind tests is meaningless.

If you say so Nigel.

Have you ever heard any high end gear or had any demos, I'm not talking about gear found in electrical super stores, I'm referring to gear from manufacturers like Primare, Cyrus, Arcam, NAD, Bryston, Parasound, Arum Cantus, PMC etc, components that cost thousands?

I doubt spending Chord/Audioquest money on a £50 CD player with £79 speakers and a £99 amp will reward the listener, these components are made for a price, the freebie leads will be more than enough for the quality they are capable of, it's a totally different story for high end gear. You also need to know what to listen out for, so I suppose that depends if you are just a casual listener or a serious one.

I wonder how many here saying cables make no difference have ever demoed or heard various setups to confirm what they are saying, or it's just something they think.

So, what about the standard speaker cable you buy from richer sounds:

http://www.richersounds.com/product/...e-symphony-200

Is this good enough for a £1000 system or should you buy better, and if so, what.

The question questions too vague to be answered with any certainty. Also the lack of even a basic spec (or at least as far as I can tell from the mobile site) means that even if the question was better defined it would still be hard to answer with certainty.

Ok, let me set the question differently:

If you had, say, a set of Mission SX1 speakers and a Yamaha AS501 amp what speaker cable would you recommend? Would it matter at that level.

What about a set of SX2s and a Yamaha AS701?

You may as well use cooker cable, as mentioned earlier. It's thick, flat so good for hiding under the edge of the carpet, and cheap as chips.

Use 10% of equipment costs for cables/interconnects, I find that is a good balance.

As for speaker cable, you won't go far wrong with QED Original or Silver Anniversary.

£1000 should get you a decent system whatever you need but without knowing what is wanted it is hard to recommend which bits of kit. Afaik the distance of the speakers from the amp is the biggest factor with regard to speaker cables and if it isn't very far you are wasting your money on expensive branded cables. For example do you need a record turntable and CD player or just a CD player, do you want to run two sets of speakers? Most amps will handle digital input from the likes of an MP3 player but if you don't need a turntable then you don't need an amp with that input.

Not even close, the speakers are far more important. I'd be surprised if you'd hear the difference between a £100 CD player and a £1000 CD player in a blind test especially if played over £100 speakers.

It's different if you were using vinyl where the cartridge and stylus make a huge difference and spending more money will improve the sound.

It's a crazy ratio - why spend £100 (as we're talking a £1000 job) on wires that sound no different whatsoever from a small fraction of that price.

The only leads which do make a difference are speaker leads, and that's only a question of having a decent amount of copper in them.

Nothing wrong with 79 strand, but if you want that, why waste money on a brand name like QED?.

Why £100? Because as a minimum you'll need a pair of ok phono leads, which will be £20 - £30 (unless you're happy with the damp string & falling apart std issue ones in the box), which leaves £70 to buy enough for spkr cable from the amp to each spkr. At a guess I'd say at least 4 yards x 2 (equal lengths ideally) = 8 yards of cable thus about £8 - £9 a yard, which is the bottom end of the cable market. You've said yourself that speaker leads make the difference.

Sorry, working in metric here

The bottom end of the speaker cable market is £1 a meter that richer sounds charges for its standard stuff. The most expensive is £10 a metre.

I Google 79 stand cable and it came back at £2 a meter.

Hang on. We are discussing audio cables here. And the fact that the audio cables supplied with equipment are perfectly OK.

B/L plugs are not used on audio cables. They are used at RF which is completely different. Having said that if you are making up your own cables, whether it be RF, audio, video, or even mains leads it is important that you do it correctly. A made audio cable with a poorly connected screen will cause buzz and crackling.

Did you measure or calculate from first principles the characteristic impedance of your home made cable?

Jesus, who would be crazy enough to spend that money on a pair of phono leads, that sound no different to the ones provided - or if they do, they will probably sound WORSE!.


Not at £8-9 a yard it doesn't, all you need is thickish mains lead - something with enough copper to give a low resistance to the cable.

The shops must love to see you come through the door - someone who likes to buy massive mark-up expensive wires.