Sound is strange elusive voodoo and every single goddamn thing has an impact on our listening experience. Often things that we couldn’t possibly imagine mattering… matter. We know this in our hearts and it haunts us, sitting in our listening chairs mulling and mulling… “what if I got shorter speaker cables and longer interconnects… what if I rearranged the room again and put the record shelves over there and the speakers over there… what if I just get another house and have Steve Hoffman design the blueprints… wait wait wait what if I rub peanut butter on my earlobes… what if I learn karate…”
I’m reminded of the old George Carlin routine about how when he’s driving anyone else on the road who’s going a little slower than him is always an “asshole” and anyone going faster than him is a “maniac.” I have this response all the time in the audiosphere. I’ll read forums where guys are exhaustively reporting their findings after testing 19 different USB cables, some of which cost thousands of dollars, and I’ll think “well that dude’s just a maniac, at least I’m not like that.” Then I’ll read another forum where a guy mounts a cartridge without using a fozgometer or any other device to measure channel separation and I think… well I don’t think he’s an asshole exactly. Just misguided.
Generally I’m of the opinion that it’s healthier to nudge myself in the direction of less rather than more awareness of the “everything matters” elephant in my listening room. This past weekend, however, I got nudged towards the elephant.
I’ll try to summarize briefly and not get too deep into the gory details. Recently I went to separates after a few years with an integrated. Consequently I was forced to dig out another power cord from the forlorn no-longer-in-use box of power cords in the closet. I opted for an old favorite, a Synergistic Research Master Coupler. Not exactly the easiest cable to work with, but great bang for the buck sonically in my experience. I connected the Master Coupler to the preamp, connected the cable I had been using for the integrated (a Silver Circle Vesuvius) to the power amp, and plugged both components into my power conditioner (Audioquest 1000) which is connected to the wall via another Silver Circle Vesuvius.
So it had stayed for the two months or so since I bought the amp/pre-amp pair (my system details are here). They were a pricey investment for me, this pre/power pair, twice the retail cost of the integrated that came before, and as such I was expecting big things. And I heard big things, no doubt about it. But something didn’t sound quite right to me. It wasn’t what I’d call a “brightness” exactly, but there was some glare to the upper mids that put me off, particularly at loud volumes. Nothing seemed wrong with the sound though – in fact the sound seemed very right to me. But somehow I just couldn’t handle it. At times I thought it was just my propensity to migraines giving me problems, because it often felt the way it feels when I’m outside with a headache on a beautiful day. It’s not the day’s fault, the day is at its most vivid and invigorating. I’m just not having it.
To cut to the chase – this past weekend, just for the hell of it, I switched the two power cables, put the Master Coupler on the power amp and the Vesuvius on the pre-amp. I wasn’t expecting much but the transformation of the sound was stunning. I heard and felt it instantly. Everything became much richer without losing any speed or detail, and the bass was fattened considerably.
I’ll spare us much conjecture on why this happened. I am a believer in the effects of power cables but generally I find them to have the least impact on overall SQ than anything else in the cable family. This was something beyond anything I’ve experienced in the power cable shuffle. One possible explanation is that the Master Coupler did not have a great grip in the IEC socket of the pre-amp. It pulled out as if nothing were holding it in there at all. So possibly there was some sonic deterioration resulting from that. The overall effect I was experiencing now seems to me to have been due to a lack of balance between low and upper-mid frequencies such that the treble, as I said, wasn’t unpleasant in its own right but was overemphasized, dominating my attention. Everything came back into harmony when the low-end fattened up.
I then had a similar experience with some phono cables. A few weeks ago I put a Jelco 750d on my Thorens TD125, replacing an SME 3009. I have not been thrilled with the sound I’ve gotten from it so far, both disappointing and surprising me because the Jelco is generally acknowledged to perform well above its pricepoint and I’ve had great results from it before. But I was running a Soundsmith Aida on the 3009, a $2k high compliance cart that a friend loaned to me. Since mounting the Jelco I haven’t really had a comparable level of cart on hand that would match well with the arm. So I chalked it up to that.
I now think the key variable, however, wasn’t the Aida (excellent as that cartridge is) but the fact that my 3009 (now residing on my office TT, an AR EB101) has been rewired directly through to its RCA plugs. With the 750d, I was using the stock Jelco cable, the JAC-502, which I have to admit is at least a fine looking specimen of phono cable, a sleek shade of red with substantial terminations.
This past weekend, just to see if it worked, I swapped in a DIY phono cable I got in a recent trade. It didn’t look like much, this cable, and once again I wasn’t expecting much. And once again I was wowed, once again it was not subtle (the ultimate audiophile declaration – I should have called this site “Not Subtle”). What had before seemed like a pleasant but somewhat drab affair sonically was transformed into a lively, colorful, immersive experience. There was texture, there was heft. There was fun.
The moral of the story? Well, number one, if you have a Jelco tonearm, put the stock tonearm cable in a closet and forget about it. Number two – when you’re telling yourself you’re a “maniac” because you keep dicking around and dicking around, well, maybe just indulge yourself. Sometimes it pays off big-time, the dicking around. You never know when you’re gonna hit the jackpot.