austinwrx

I'm saving up for an Amstrad with a twin tape deck.

Auto reverse on one tape, with a tape counter.

you can get the amp, tuner, cd and tape deck in one handy unit.

none of this wiring nonsense

Black Ash, smoked glass door.

Oh Yeah !!!!

grahamk23

does any1 know any1 selling some musical fidelity x cans??

dazdavies

iTrader: (22)

Musical Fidelity Setup with Custom Made ProAc speakers.

grahamk23

does any1 have any ideas to some the dam cats clawing my speaker grills..apart from shooting um.....tryed pepper but i think they like it lol.

ScoobyDoo555

Dribble!!! Fantastic monitors, not loudspeakers

PMC rule

f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

Nice, very nice

Dingdongler

Lack of imagination?

Dingdongler

Who told you 10% of spend should be spent on cables? What Hi Fi or the guy in the hi fi shop that wanted to sell you expensive cables?

Very expensive cables are a waste of money and usually bought by the sort of moron who reads What HiFi. The same moron then usually swears blind that they can hear extra detail or see more vivid colours

I've got about £20k's worth of AV kit (I note that others here have some high end kit as well) and there is no way I would spend £2k on cables. I think I may have spent £350.

Stu, you described your Chord speaker cable as 'directional', could you explain what that means?

Trout

iTrader: (1)

Interesting post - why would you believe in spending £20k on hifi and then not believe that cables make a difference.

Cables can make a tremendous difference to tonality if nothing else, and balancing cable to kit can make a big difference to the subjective experience.

Having said that my kit would be a lot of money at new prices and I haven't spent that much on cable - but the cable I have is specifically designed for the kit that I use.

Myles

iTrader: (40)

Well behaved electrons?

I dont know if you frequent the Wigwam but if you do you might remember a lot of guys binning £3-400 interconnects for Hitachi replacements at £15! I got a pair and they were streets ahead of my Chord Calypso (Iknow, not exactly cutting edge). People will always be sucked in by cable company promises and snake oil bragging! That is why they are all so rich!

Evolution Stu

iTrader: (2)

Well spotted, it was supposed to be the RCA Interconnect that was directional, not the speaker cable.

Dingdongler

Not sure I understand your question mate. Why should I spend £20k on AV kit but not believe that cables make a significant difference?

Because every bit of kit I've bought is after hours of auditioning. Then I'll spend money if there is a difference (up to the most I can afford of course)

The biggest difference is made by speakers, and hence I bought the best ones I could afford. My left, right and centre speaker retail at about £8k together.

There is really no difference in Blu Ray players if you are not using them for decoding and so I have a £150 one. Spend money where it makes a difference and not where it doesn't.

Similarly, cables etc make very little difference, so why waste the money just because the people selling them are brain washing the public into thinking they do?

I don't believe in buying poor quality cables btw, but thats not the same as buying into all the hype.

AV Cables and Interconnects, UK Cables Shop

These are all the cables you will ever need, and made up to custom terminations etc by a no bull**** seller. The stuff he sells for £50-£80 is the stuff that Chord etc sell for £400+

All imho of course!

jods

Arcam Source. Bowers & Wilkins Output.
Panny plasma visuals. Sorted.

jods

Similarly, cables etc make very little difference, so why waste the money just because the people selling them are brain washing the public into thinking they do?

Sorry but that's wrong!

Jamz3k

If the big cheese of SN can't use the search function of this forum, what chance do plebs have of using it? I believe we already have a show us your hifi section.

My stereo setup in the back bedroom, speakers need to be positioned better but its a nice system that never gets used.


Monitor Audio GR10 Bookshelf speakers on Arc 360 stands filled with cat litter for extra weight. Connected with a custom made copper speaker cable.
Marantz PM17 Ki-sig mk2 Amplifier
Marantz CD17 mk2 connected to amp via Ixos Ixotic IX2 phono cables.
Myryad MCD500 cd player as backup.
All nestled in an Apollo rack oh and all power cables swapped from Russ Andrews powercords.

As for the subject of cables not making a difference, my phono cables and custom made speaker cable spoke for themselves.

f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

What do you mean, I bought some B&W surround speakers instead of Naim speakers... what more do you want me to do?

I just love the Naim sound - unbeatable for the money IMO.

Trout

iTrader: (1)

It was kind of a rhetorical question and I find your answer even more intriguing.

You selected your product based on audition and yet you are critical of others who may audition cables and select based on their choice!

The implication of your statement is that cables don't make a difference - so wouldn't that be true all the way up the chain to electrical components too? So why pay more?

As for your system architecture I find that even more intriguing - you spent hours auditioning and spent a LOT of money - and yet your system goes against the grain of just about every high end architecture. It is also a system architecture that is likely to be less revealing of changes in interconnects, IMHO of course!

Without a great source the best speakers in the world will still sound pretty ropey. Garbage in, garbage out and all that.

But, and it is a big but. The best value system that anyone has is the one they are prepared to spend their money on because it sounds best to them (and surely that also applies to cables should one wish to pursue that path!).

BTW my cables are around 1.5% of the new value of my system

Trout

iTrader: (1)

PS He doesn't do cables that would fit my system

corradoboy

Digital cables don't make a difference. There either is a signal, or there isn't. The actual signal of eight ones and zeros cannot be influenced by cable resistance, microphany, or any of the other factors which used to be an issue. Only run-length resulting in signal break-down is an issue here. But with RF signals, the cables can and do make an enormous difference. Any analogue signal transfer needs to be protected by the best cables you can afford which meet your sonic preferences. Speaker cabling in particular, even in an all digital set-up, are the only remaining rf (analogue) part and MUST be treated with respect.

However, there is still a lot of snake-oil, smoke and mirrors. I have auditioned cables from free up to £1k, and the law of diminishing returns removes the more esoteric stuff from consideration. I once judged some £6 Tandy cables as better than £80 Audioquest's, and thus used them satisfactorily in my system for my tuner and tape deck connections. The Audioquest Quartz Hyperlitz 3 (£120) however blew me away and that was used for my CD player.

I even spent a few days messing with non-branded stuff to see if I were being foolish spending large sums, and tried my speaker runs with everything from bell-wire, mains cable (multi and solid core) up to some really thick industrial three-phase stuff I blagged from w*rk. None of them held a light to my Cyrus solid core (12/m bi-wired).

dazdavies

iTrader: (22)

Nordost cables here including some val halla interconnects, you really don't want to know how much they were per metre.

From the days when I used to have a disposable income

grahamk23

does it have a mic socket?? slammin

grahamk23

ive never been a monitor audio fan, i dont like the finish

mike1210

Another vote for Mark Grant cables, great price and performance

stormyuklondon1

cheers, ive always liked PMC( ive owned 2 pairs of db1's, two pairs of fb1's and a pair of ob1's prior to my current ones..), they seem to make just the type of sound i like. and theyre a cracking company to deal with!
cables, opening a huge can of worms there.. being active monitors, I have no need for speaker cables, and the interconnects i use are the ones the manufacturer of my speaks and pre amp use, Van Damme grand total of about £100 for all the leads and connections. if its good enough for Abbey road, Metropolis studios and to wire the eurofighter, its good enough to connect up my system!
another cracking and sensibly priced cable is MOGAMI® - Professional Audio Cables

Dingdongler

Trout, you are talking gibberish mate

1) I bought the bits of kit I have after weeks of auditioning in my own home. Everything else kept constant. Even then its fraught with problems as auditory memory has been shown to be very very short and the placebo effect is huge.
How many people have done that with their expensive cables.

2) What high end system architecture are you talkng about? The one thats told to you by the guy in the HiFi shop or What HiFi mag??? If you go by those ridiculous 30% + 10% for cables formulae then you really are way off mate. Life is not that simple.

As for rubbish in rubbish out, I'm not sure my source components would be described as rubbish. The Quad CDP2 costs £1k and is known and accepted to punch way above its weight. My preamp is a £3.5k multi award winning Audio Research LS17. Its bigger brother the Ref3 has often been described as one of the best preamps in the world.
Power is supplied by 2 x Quad 909 poweramps (each rrp £1k), again an amp with a fantastic reputation, and I'm using two!

So thats £7k worth of well thought out kit in front of the speakers, I'm not sure it fair to describe it as rubbish.

DCI Gene Hunt

Cables make a difference, end of. But before paying out £1000's on a stereo it's well worth a quick hearing test to ensure you're able to pick up all the various frequencies.... as if you've a problem in the old ear canal spunking a few grand on a high end system's not the best way to go.....

Markus

I shall post my setup, though it's not as glamourous as some of the setups mentioned here, but I'm happy with it.

Denon AVR-1804 AV Receiver

4 x Bowers & Wilkins DM601 S3 speakers (Black Ash finish)

1 x Bowers & Wilkins LCR60 S3 (Black Ash finish)

1 x Bowers & Wilkins ASW 300 (Black Ash finish)

1 x Denon 910 DVD Player

TV is some 28" Toshiba thing, I know, a bit of a letdown

Dingdongler

No point making statements like 'cables make a difference, end of' ', it means nothing. Back it up with something, what kit do you have and what back to back testing did you do with which cables?

Your other statement is pure nonsense as well. Most people above the age of 30 will have some degree of hearing loss, that does NOT mean they will not be able to tell the difference between a £300 system and a £3000 system.

I think you better with comedy posts mate

DCI Gene Hunt

Thanks, but you're the one that's making hilarious statements that cables make no difference to the quality of the sound. My second point is equally valid, the fact you've acknowledged it and at the same time dismissed it is also mildly entertaining - so you're saying that they'll be able to tell the difference - whereas they won't have full appreciation of the potential - i.e. with their known hearing deficiency (all 30+ year olds).

So to conclude; spend £3000 to get the benefit of something a 18 year old can get from £300..... christ on a bike

End of. Again.

Dingdongler

Your post makes no sense, its a case of adding 2 and 2 together and making 5.

In the same way then, you are saying its no point anybody over the age of 30 buying decent AV kit because they can't hear the difference! Only 18 year olds can appreciate high quality kit! Nice one

You also still haven't backed up your first arguement. What comparisons have you done with what kit and cables that leads you to say cables make a difference, end of? I would assume the reason you haven't bothered to answer that is because you haven't?



I get the feeling you know very little about AV and even less about the physiology of human hearing. Please think and question your own experience and knowledge before posting silly statements.


Whats really hilarious though is your idea ()that everbody should have a hearing test before they buy any AV kit. Maybe go into the HiFi shop with a print out of the hearing test and then choose items accordingly??