An updated amplifier likes different speaker cable..

[The Black Adder]

I'm sure I'm not imagining it but...

I've recently had my amps updated by Glenn Croft and after a little experiment with my speaker cables I found that the cheapest of the lot 'Microphonic speaker cable' @ £8 for 2x 4m lengths seems to be a winner.

Am I imagining this or has others had a similar experience between different amps and speakers?

Makes me want to look in to speaker cables more now...

[Stratmangler]

Speaker cables can and do make an audible difference.
Just don't get carried away wth it :eyebrows:

[The Black Adder]

Nah... I've not got that much time on my hands to start a cable fetish buy there is one cable I do want to try and that is the Abbey Road Reference...

[Ali Tait]

Yes, I have some of that cable and it's very good IMHO. I did post about it a while ago but there wasn't a lot of interest.

[The Black Adder]

Hi Ali.. Yeah, I took your advice.. Thing is the Black Mamba worked better with the Radford but this Microphonic cable seems to work well with the crofts better over the Hitachi SSX-104 and it also works well on my Trio amp too... It's a strange one I can say.

There should be interest in this cable, it's cheap and very good indeed. It's rather thin and not thick beefy stuff like people want to see but who cares for the price.

[The Black Adder]

... and it's no longer in production... bugger!

[Welder]

The Belkin speaker cable mentioned somewhere around here is good value.
I must confess I haven’t had a great deal of luck experimenting with speaker cable as they have all sounded the same to me.
I did get some Belkin though and it’s a cheap enough even including decent spades and bananas.
In fact the terminations cost more than the cable.

[Tim]

Belkin AV53001 12Ft 4M Speaker Cable (http://theartofsound.net/forum/showpost.php?p=207647&postcount=1)

;)

[Mika K]

It is always about the system synergy and in that sense your experience is quite logical - when one component changes its sonic nature this has naturally an effect to the system overall performance and thus some adjustments are needed to achieve well balanced end result.

I have noticed also that changing some component in the source side e.g. cartridge, cable, phonopreamp etc might result to a need to adjust your speaker position in the room (toeinn etc). Basicly this happens because of the same reasons.

[The Black Adder]

Yeah.. I agree Mika. I've always figured that this may be the case regarding synergy but this is really quite profound in the differences and the cable looks like bell wire...lol so what gives there?

[Mika K]

That's true, the synergy issues are not always about the price or the looks ;)

[hifi_dave]

Speaker cables, incons and digital incons do sound different. Sometimes the differences are large and sometimes small or indiscernable but there are differences.IMO

You can't always judge how a cable will sound by looking at the construction and the price often bears no relation to the sound quality. Having seen figures for the manufacturing costs of some very expensive cables, I would suggest that huge profit margins and marketing (often) account for a major part of the retail price.

System synergy comes into the equation when buying a cable and if at all possible, the proposed cable should be tried in your own system.

[Zoidburg]

I bought some of the belkin cable people have mentioned on here and was very impressed with it, for the price I think its amazing. It was certainly much nicer sounding (far more rounded and less harsh) than the QED silver aniversary stuff I was using.