To screen or to not screen? Cables
First of all I’m not trying to start a mains cable argument but am genuinely interested trying to get to the bottom of the screen or unscreened discussion.
I’ve in the past been of the opinion that screened mains cables was the way to go. Following a long conversation with James at Whest Audio who told me not to use a screened mains cable, not to use a filtered mains conditioner and plug directly into the wall socket with an unscreened cable.
This peeked my interest and with a friend present we started to experiment. I used the unscreened mains cable that came with the Phono Stage and it sounded so much better than the screened cable I had been using. This led me to try some Black Rhodium Libra mains cable which is unscreened. The SQ quality improved once again with wider soundstage and smoother, deeper bass.
As a further trial I decided to use the same cable on my Aries G1 and once again SQ improved, not as much as the phonostage but a definite improvement.
My dilemma now is should I replace the screened cables on by BluRay player and pre-amp
James went on to tell me that the BBC did a lot of tests in the seventies with mains cables and could find no gain in using screened ones and in fact found screened to be detrimental. Something about the electron flow being bounced back by the screen and thus producing distortion.
I don’t pretend to know or understand the science and can only judge what my ears hear. If you can’t hear any differences with mains cables, that’s all well and good, I’m not trying to argue with you. I’m just interested in this bit about screening, Does this affect all cables?
SOURCE:OPPO UDP-205 BluRay, SkyQ, Technics SL1210M5G/HexMat Eclipse/MN Bearing/Origin Live Gravity One puck/Isonoes with Boots/Jelco TK-850S Tonearm/Hana Umami Blue, PS Audio Stellar Phonostage. I also have an AT-OC9XSH as a spare cartridge.
AMPLIFIER: Bryston BR-20 Pre/DAC/Streamer & Bryston 4B3 Power Amplifier
SPEAKERS: Spendor D7 on Iso-Acoustics Gaia III’s
HEADPHONES: OPPO PM-1 with Atlas Zeno cable, B&W Pi7 S2 and B&W C5 v2.
CABLES: Analogue: Speaker Atlas Mavros Grun. Interconnect - Atlas Mavros XLR x3, MCRU Silver Tonearm cable
Digital:Audioquest Carbon Ethernet x 4, Audioquest Carbon digital, English Electric 8Switch, Chord Optichord, Atlas Optical.
Mains: PS Audio Perfectwave AC-05 x 5, Isol-8 Powerline Extreme with Quantum Science yellow fuse on input cable, Sounds Fantastic 6way Mains Blocks.
STORAGE: Synology DS216J NAS with 2 x 3Tb WD Red hard-drives. Samsung 500Gb SSD.
TV LG55B7 OLED