high end audio

Wire-Just Getting From Here To There
On the face of it, nothing could be easier than just getting an audio, video or digital signal from one place
to another-no amplification, no conversion of mechanical energy to electrical energy or vice versa. The
truth is, every cable must transfer a complex multi-octave signal without changing any of the information
carried in that signal.
Damage Control
We all like to describe how a good component improves the performance of our system, a perfectly
legitimate comment. Unfortunately, buried in this statement is often the misunderstanding that the better
component actually improved the signal in some way. There are certain areas of digital processing
where this is possible, but in the analog world signals don’t get better, they only get worse. The substitution
of a superior component improves a system only because it causes less damage.
Cables, like all components, should be chosen because they do the least damage. This "damage"
comes in two basic forms: a relatively benign loss of information, or a change to the character. A visual
analogy might illustrate this distinction: consider "perfect" as a totally clear pane of glass. Since no
component is perfect, the best we can strive for would be analogous to a pane of glass with a light gray
tint. Lower quality components would have a darker gray tint. These various densities of gray tint would
represent various amounts of lost information.
If the glass were tinted green or yellow or red, these colors would represent changes in character. We are
far more likely to notice, and be bothered by, a light colored tint than a denser gray tint. It is this mechanism
of character versus quantity that causes much of the confusion in the pursuit of higher performance.
Chain Analogies, Synergy, Enhancement and Other Lies
We have all heard the truism that "a chain is only as strong as its weakest link."Certainly this is true
of a chain, but it becomes a misleading lie when applied to the world of audio and video. The quality
of sound coming from your speakers and the quality of picture from your video monitor have both
been compromised by some degree of distortion in every component, starting with the microphone or
camera. No one actually believes that if you changed every piece of equipment except the proclaimed
"weak link"-that there would not be any change in the sound or the picture. No matter how bad a CD
player might be, no one would argue that you couldn’t hear the difference if you changed speakers. It is
worth noting that some components are more cost-effective to change than others, or that a particular
complaint will not be eliminated until a specific component has been changed. These truths might seem
like an approximation of the chain analogy but the chain story has so much strength because it is an
absolute, and it absolutely doesn’t apply.
The logic of a good system is very simple: Every component matters!
The electronics, the speakers, the cables, even every solder joint, all
cause damage. Each component is like one of the dirty panes of glass
in this illustration. Each one blocks a bit of the view. The quality of the
final performance, or the clarity of the view, is the original signal minus
the damage done by all the pieces in-between. Improving any one of
the components will improve the performance. Cleaning any one of the
glass panes will allow a clearer view.
Recognizing that the challenge is to reduce negatives, to prevent distortion, makes it much easier to
understand "unexplainable" improvements. If the panes of glass are not only dirty, but also have a red
tint, then as each pane is cleaned and the tint is eliminated, the "view" of the music will improve as expected.
However, the red, and the awareness of the red, will not be eliminated until the last pane has
been de-tinted.
De-tinting this last pane will seem to make a bigger difference than de-tinting any of the previous panes.
We are naturally more impressed by the elimination of the red tint than by the previous reduction in the
tint’s density. If you didn’t want to hear traffic on the str eet, reducing the traffic from three cars per minute
to none at all would be more impressive than reducing the flow from nine per minute to six. People
are more sensitive to the presence of a phenomenon (the red or the cars) than to the quantity.
This type of surprise result, where we expected 1+1=2 and we think we got 1+1=3, is often called "synergy."
In truth, the "synergistic" aspect of this improvement would have been the same no matter which
pane of glass happened to be the last one cleaned not much magic or synergy in that.
Sometimes we are faced with empirical data that we simply don’t understand. However, such a lack of
understanding doesn’t mean the phenomenon is magical or incomprehensible. A visual analogy might
be; just because something is too far away to see doesn’t mean that the distance in-between is infinite.
Our limitations might seem infinite, but that doesn’t mean that a phenomenon we don’t understand takes
place on the same scale. A more rigorous application of logic and scientific method might prevent all the
brouhaha we get about magical combinations.
Assembling or upgrading a system to cost-effectively maximize performance requires a broad perspective
and a trustworthy evaluation methodology. Combined productively, these ingredients make the
process predictable and enjoyable.