Steve williams
Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
sorry about that yet I feel it prompts the question of all people here who are researching cables
Taralabs grandmaster evolution: new top of the line cables from Taralabs
- Thread starter Audiocrack
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Andre,
Let us reverse the question. You are a professional audio reviewer - what exact specifications do you think an audio cable manufacturer should supply to please you?
Micro, my comments having absolutely nothing to do with being a reviewer, but a consumer just like you.
I don't want any cable company to please me. But how about the basics? Inductance, Capacitance, and Impedance to start?
Then it gets specific to the cable in question. If a company is making claims that their geometry is passing on an undistorted signal, or that they have a design that shields
the cable completely from EMI/RFI that does not effect the sound, or if they claim total neutrality, etc.....show us the tests and independent verification.
Now if they just claim their cable sounds better than every other cable on the market, without any other qualifications, or pseudo scientific marketing, you just need to hear it, tough to
argue with that.
I believe Shunyata is one of the first to actually attempt to show data.
Does this answer your question micro, I appreciate you inquiry, it was very fair.
Being Andre is an engineer, I am very interested in his thoughts!
Hey Myles!
Is Bill Low of AQ an engineer NO
Is Ray Kimber an engineer? NO
Is Caelin Gabriel of Shunyata and engineer? NO
I could go on.
Hey Andre!
That comment is so naive as to not even warrant an answer.
But since you brought it up, let's start with Ray Kimber. What do you actually know about Ray?
You can start by telling us what the Univ of Utah is known for? Then you can buy clue number one.
I guess no one remember this bit:
http://www.stereophile.com/cables/1206tara/index.html
"Fitted to either end of the Zero and soldered in place are complex RCA plugs, machined to mil-spec tolerances and fitted with O-rings and a clamping mechanism capable of providing a reliable air seal and thus of holding a vacuum. Each plug has a tiny valve, made with a spring and stainless steel ball with a Teflon seat. When assembly of the Zero is complete, the air inside it is evacuated to a pressure equivalent to an altitude of more than 12,000'"
Footnote 1: Following publication of the review, we received a number of emails from readers who correctly pointed out that the air pressure at 12,000' altitude is nowhere near a vacuum. This subject was also discussed on the magazine's Web forum, with contributions from Matthew Bond as well as from readers."
And this:
Inserted into each gallery is a run of bare RSC 2511 0.025" by 0.011" "eight-nines copper," rectangular solid-core, "Generation Two" conductor.
There is NO such thing as "Eight 9s" copper. It does not exist.
THAT is why we need scrutiny. Stereophile readers with had to alert them about false claims, not the other way around.
http://www.stereophile.com/cables/1206tara/index.html
"Fitted to either end of the Zero and soldered in place are complex RCA plugs, machined to mil-spec tolerances and fitted with O-rings and a clamping mechanism capable of providing a reliable air seal and thus of holding a vacuum. Each plug has a tiny valve, made with a spring and stainless steel ball with a Teflon seat. When assembly of the Zero is complete, the air inside it is evacuated to a pressure equivalent to an altitude of more than 12,000'"
Footnote 1: Following publication of the review, we received a number of emails from readers who correctly pointed out that the air pressure at 12,000' altitude is nowhere near a vacuum. This subject was also discussed on the magazine's Web forum, with contributions from Matthew Bond as well as from readers."
And this:
Inserted into each gallery is a run of bare RSC 2511 0.025" by 0.011" "eight-nines copper," rectangular solid-core, "Generation Two" conductor.
There is NO such thing as "Eight 9s" copper. It does not exist.
THAT is why we need scrutiny. Stereophile readers with had to alert them about false claims, not the other way around.
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To put this into perspective for the same money you can buy this......I know where my 42k is headed.
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In USA or Europe maybe . In Malaysia a Ferrari 458 cost RM2.17m in a country where the basic clerk starting pay is less than RM1000. This applies to Asia as well especially HK where cost of apartment & car is exorbitant . So it left us with the next best things ie expensive watching & audio components.
So for USD42k we can merely buy some sport rims & tyres !!!
Champ, I take your point about the gauge and relative quality of internal wiring in components & speakers vs the more extreme cost and larger gauge of high end audio cables. The law of physics suggests it should not be so, but at the level of my current system for example I have found impressive gains in sound can be made by investing in better cables. The S5's are wonderful reference tools btw to evaluate changes to your system. My current Jorma Prime cables are certainly not inexpensive, and on msrp roughly equate to a fully loaded 2015 BMW M3, but got to say stepping up from Jorma Origo to Prime the improvements were immediately obvious. The same should apply to Tara Labs' top line cables. The bottom line? If your system is good enough, your pockets are deep enough & this hobby brings you pleasure, I say why not?
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Agreed though less so among the very top cables. There I find, there's just more of an emphasis on reducing colorations. Of course is the system dependency the components or the cables?
It's easy to lose sight of the fact this is just a hobby. In the end, it's all about the music. Keep smiling Myles
It's easy to lose sight of the fact this is just a hobby. In the end, it's all about the music. Keep smiling Myles
Yes, let's have fun.
Point one. Ray Kimber has done as many measurements as any cable manufacturers on his products.
Point 2: Ray hires graduates from the Univ. of Utah School of Engineering, one of the better schools in the nation, to work for Kimber. As Ray describes it, the university is a ready made source of talent for him.
Point 3: Ray and I were, before I folded my mag back in 2001, going to do a piece on cable measurements. Among the many measurements he had, were some showing the changes that occurred during that burn-in process.
So yes, it's garbage it's Ray's not an engineer.
Point 4 direct from the website:
Within the audio-video industry, there is no engineer with a more complete understanding of the scientific tenets critical to signal isolation and current delivery. These unique work related experiences at the highest levels of government and computer science led Caelin Gabriel to develop a series of fundamental precepts for the patented technologies and custom-designed parts that form the cornerstone of Shunyata Research products.
Michael Fremer would say that is pure garbage. Oh, let me let him tell you himself, from the Nov.2013 issue of Sphile:
"While the TARA cables still provided a better match
for my dartZeel reference gear, for whatever reasons,
they were less useful with the Constellation Centaur
Monos. Don’t get me wrong: the Centaurs’ sound overall
was as stated in the review. But the somewhat laid-
back personality of TARA’s Omega Gold speaker cable
unnecessarily blunted and softened some of what the
Constellations did best.
The Wireworld’s Platinum Eclipse 7 speaker cable let the Centaur’s
remarkable transparency, three-dimensionality and transient speed
shine through. Tara’s Zero balanced interconnect was a mixed bag:
somewhat more open than the Platinum Eclipse 7, it
helped pass along the Centaurs’ sensational decays
into black, which were partly responsible for their 3D
soundstaging abilities – but it also added a bit of hardness
and excess energy to the upper midrange.
The full set of Platinum Eclipse 7’s produced a much
better overall picture in terms of tonality, texture, and
transients, well integrating all of the Centaurs’ strengths
while diluting none.
It’s possible that the TARA cable would work with the
Centaurs with different speakers, or a different digital
front-end. But in this system with these components,
over the long haul, the Platinum Eclipse 7’s produced the
most transparent, most resolving, most three-dimensional,
forget-the-system-and-listen-to-the-music experience –
something Wireworld wires had never before managed
here. Were I buying the Centaurs, I’d try to audition them
at home with the Wireworlds. At least in this system, they
are a benchmark product."
The premise that there is less system dependency or coloration among "top cables" is a joke.
Kimber makes superb cables. I've been to the factory. I own thousands of $ worth of Kimber Kable bro. He is also a brilliant and very ethical business man.
Caelin posted in great detail his background on this forum. He is an electrician by trade. Shunyata also makes superb gear. Steve can attest
to that.
Andre,
Your answer just confirms that there is no technical parameter that can be correlated with subjective sound qualities. L, C and R were shown since long to be not relevant in 99% of the cases, as the cutoffs they produce can not explain how they sound.
Even the nice data of Shunyata is not correlated with sound quality - it shows that their cables have different transmission caracteristics than common mains cable, nothing else.
So all we have are the strange claims ... IMHO the engineers are out of this cable game concerning the sound quality.
A very different situation from what we see in cables for instrumentation, aeronautics or the military!
Myles,
Cable manufacturers carry many PROPRIETARY measurements during development, manufacture and final testing of their cables - this explains, for example the sonic consistency of a cable. However, they do not release them and, besides, they could not be used for objective sound cable comparisons or ranking.
Micro:
Thanks for your response.
Playing devil's advocate here, I am not sure I understand how you can say that no measurements or technical data can correlate to sound quality. I am NOT
saying they do, but how would you know unless you had a sampling of scores of cables with their measurements and listening tests?
I don't think L,C,R are irrelevant, and I have never heard anyone say that before, they are an important part of the equation, but of course, only one part of the story.
Here is an example of technical claims without any data I am aware of:
"Imagine an interconnect cable that has 2.5pf, in an industry where our competitors boast about their double digit pico-farads (pf) Never has the industry seen anything like this before! The legendary Zero Gold was known for its extremely low capacitance and ultra wide bandwidth. The new Zero Evolution has an increase of 75% bandwidth over the Zero Gold, and a 300% increase over any other high-end audio cable in the world today. The Grandmaster Series has the largest bandwidth ever! Ever!"
Largest bandwidth ever? How can they make these claims if they have not tested their cable against every other cable on the market?
Do you see what I am getting at?
That said, I've worked with some "military" grade electronics/radar systems which just so happen to use a specific "grounding-wire" - near IDENTICAL to one particular higher-end, very unique brand of speaker cable. Needless to say, I could've purchased these "grounding-cables" at a much reduced cost compared to the "Audiophile" version ...
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