Nailed it @reddog1 
Thanks man, appreciate the comment.
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In my opinion, good cables make a difference, they don’t need to be expensive.
For me, power cables don’t make any difference, only if they are out of specification for the device.
The audio industry, especially Hi-End, exists because more than using hearing, it uses imagination.
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reddog1:
How do you know your good quality cables are the ones it ends with? If you don’t care about Audirvana, why are you on this forum? I guess I’d better not talk about the rest of your post, because it says you don’t care about what you play it on.
You should just ignore my next response to Reynaldo.
Reynaldo:
I agree that cables make a difference, I’m tracking my first $200 ic in the mail as we speak, it should be better than my $55 BJC, that was a huge improvement over basically stock pasta noodle stuff.
The first power cable I tried was a $35 one that someone recommended as a cheap one. It made it sound worse than the stock. Then someone gave me a fat shielded one that he said was worth $100, but came free with some gear, but he didn’t like it. I tried it, and didn’t like it either. Then I got a fat version of a basic power cable from Monoprice for $15, and thought that I had found the answer, it was better and didn’t sound wrong. But after getting a better DAC, and reading all the talk about the expensive power cables people were trying, I thought that it must be my bad luck, and that cables were making a difference. The $50 one I got from Amazon was great on my dac, but then even better on my amp. Then my monitor loved one, then my pc sent out better sound and video digitally in the first place, for getting one. Oh, if your pc is plugged into a cheap $20 power bar, get it off of there. Those are the worst things you can plug anything into. A $200-250 distributor will keep it from being congested, and will have some spike filtering in it.
So yeah, after my first 2 attempts at beating my stock PC’s sounded worse, the fatter but standard power cable was the winner for 8 years, or so. Now, the $50 Amazon ones have soundly beaten all my power cable attempts so far.
Oh, and anyone who’s amp is plugged into a distributor of any kind, all the richest guys who have tried the most expensive alternatives, say that your amp in particular prefers to be plugged straight into the humongous power supply behind your outlets. Even though you will notice you lose dynamics because of your neighbors unless its past 11pm. When I tried that, my soundstage got huge and unrestricted.
I know my cables are the ones it ends with, it ends there because I’m not a Phool.
I don’t have to explain my presence on this forum to you.
And, to be honest, when I listen to music, the first thing I don’t do is check out the system it is playing on.
If I hear a new piece of music and it doesn’t move me in any way, I don’t think, oh no, my system must need a new flipdangle, I just think, not for me… and no amount of esoteric high priced bejewelled cable, plug, wotsit, will change that.
Man, you are some piece of work.
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I’ve done the high priced cable thing, but think these very reasonable ones sound better to me:
It’s quite interesting, @Audiophool , that your video changes when you change cables. In that situation you can measure and adjust if necessary to make sure the video comes back into the desired spec. When you hear a change from an audio cable, what measurements and adjustments do you perform to bring the audio back to the desired spec? Or don’t you do that, and if you don’t, is there any assurance the audio is better instead of just different?
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You are correct that I have no audio measurement device.
My Sonarworks EQ software took measurements of a a bunch of pairs of my model of headphones with mic’s inside of a dummy head’s ears, and then made a correction file of the average. I have no idea in what way exactly my particular chain of gear varies from Sonarwork’s playback gear that they use for their measurement, to decide upon neutrality. If you get the Sonarworks version for speakers, it comes with a mic calibration program, to calibrate your own setup in your own room. This is EQ only, remember, and that cables or other gear don’t only or even always shift the EQ. EQ is only one factor, there is dynamics and impact, soundstage, blackness, and so on.
When I say better, I consider all factors. I don’t usually find a piece of gear that is different, but neither is better. I could certainly say that that could happen if I a\b’d two pieces of a same price point.
Anyways, we’re getting off topic, aren’t we? In the Audirvana vs Qobuz thread, I guess all there is to say is that if you think that Audirvana sounds better than Qobuz’ default player, it’s the Qobuz winner.
But the OP said that he was trying to get into comparing local files vs streaming via Qobuz. My answer is that, uncompressed files on a local drive is the REFERENCE playback sound. Lossless compression to flac has to try to prove that it’s inaudible, and then streaming it to you from somewhere else has to prove to be an inaudible factor, also, in order for your playback not to sound wrong.
My home sound is my reference system. I set it up the best I find out how to, and it’s better gear than I hear in cinema’s. I don’t know anyone else who beats there, but I don’t have too many rich friends who happen to have the sound systems, to visit. Every time I hear an old song, it sounds better than I have ever heard it supposed to be, before. My new cable should make a new reference for me in how everything is supposed to sound, if your gear is good enough. I hadn’t listened to that Floyd’s Wall junk since the 90’s, but ‘holy smokes’, I guess, about how it was actually supposed to sound back then. Abbey Road studio bought some nice recording gear for the time, for sure. Those guys totally thought people should smoke a joint right before listening to them, though. Plus, on some of those old tapes, they didn’t set the max volume to 100%, so on that one you have to turn it up to hear it enough, but amps apparently sound best at around 1 or 2 o’clock. I had to turn down the software volume to 20% to try it at the same volume, and it did sound like my amp was making the sound come out with more power behind it, like an amp turned up does. However, the loss of dynamics from the only 20% range killed my toe-tappiness, and combined with the risk of accidentally going deaf from playing a 100% source, makes me keep it at default, only 9:00 on this amp.
Or at least a new reference for how everything sounds now. Without at least some measurements (noise, jitter, phase, frequency response, something as elementary as whether the new cable has slightly different resistance so the music is 1dB louder or softer), there’s nothing to tell you whether the change has been for the better or for the worse.
Knowing this, it would be easier for a manufacturer to make a cable that simply sounds different than others, and customers would love the feeling of a whole new system, regardless of whether the cable accurately transmitted what it was fed.
Whether coincidentally or not, there are many out of spec audiophile cables.
My preference is for accuracy. I’ve tried turning up the bass 2dB, no thanks. Less noise or jitter only improves things, you will not have a preference for the worse. FR can definitely matter, if you don’t manually EQ. Lots of people want to fix FR using components. There is also soundstage, dynamics, timbre, all kinds of stuff I don’t feel like coming up with.
You talk about customers loving the sound of new cables regardless of whether they are more accurate. Do you think all audio q fans are stupid, compared to you? Yes, cable fans talk about how they’re all different, but I never hear any say that they like new ones just because they sound different, and not better.
If you don’t want your power cables to make a difference, they won’t, don’t worry. You can’t even say that mp3’s are wrong, they’re just a smart guys way of choosing the most important 10% to keep and compress. Well, I guess I could say that lossy compression is worse, but I’d probably have to hope you won’t think I’m being a bully who acts like I own the place, for saying that.
F****ng hell, you can’t resist a dig, can you?
Don’t worry, you’ll probably grow out of it when your knackers finally sprout a few hairs.
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Since he came fairly close to claiming he was Einstein in another thread that’s temporarily closed, I think we can say he may have a bit of a problem and take it easy on him. I don’t see how either engaging on the topic or admonishment will get reasonable behavior in return, so I’m considering the ignore list rather than wasting time.
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I think you’re right, it’s pretty rambling and nonsensical stuff.
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