"Speaker"? I don't understand you, syvlr - speakers make a bigger difference than anything else in the reproduction chain, maybe bigger than everything else put together. Also I don't see how charlie's analogy could apply to anything but the power cord. However, I've never heard a demonstration that convinced me that different unbalanced interconnects make much difference, and have myself fabricated stereo interconnects, from 4-conductor phone cord and 4 of the cheapest RS phono jacks, that on direct instantaneous switching were virtually indistinguishable from $700+ Cardas cables, at least with the system in use (Linn CD player & integrated amplifier & small Linn 2-way speakers). That demonstration convinced me that heard differences are mostly aural placebo effects. Hope I haven't offended anyone,

Paul Nay

syvlvr is referring to cables, I think - speaker cables and interconnect cables. In that case, borrowing from charlie's analogy, you have people buying $1000+ speaker cables to go from binding post to binding post, when the wire inside the speaker between binding post, crossover, and drivers is just your average insulated copper wire (of a gauge and quality suitable for the design).

Ok, what I meant was the various interconnects, be they for speakers or rcas/balanced etc., has anyone felt/heard a great diff or is this one of those things that keeps the cable folx in the money...

I would discard the interconnects that come with products (with the exception of the power cord)and buy some that are in the $10-20 range. I would argue this benefit. Anything above this in my opinion is wasting your money. I normally use Acoustic Research Pro series cables for everything. They are pretty cheap:

http://www.buy.com/prod/Acoustic_Researc...1/90130165.html

and perform very well. I would argue with anyone wanting to spend more than this on cables the laws of diminishing returns. Snake oil is abound in the cabling industry.

And another to add in this off-topic thread: today got my cable box replaced, and solved a noisy mystery. My coax feeding the box was causing a very loud hum, which I assumed was caused by the cable company. But when I removed the rca cables from my 950 that were going into the amp, silence.

The cable tech was about as helpful. Said his system couldn't be the source of the buzz/hum.

Next up is the 990/7500 combo with balanced, will see how this fares with the cable company.

A hum that goes away when the cable box (or just the coax into the cable box) is disconnected is quite common, and is caused by a ground loop. The cable company's equipment (not the box in your house, but the stuff further upstream) is at a different ground potential than the equipment in your audio rack which (presumably) is connected to a single common ground point. This is easily solved with a Jensen Transformers VRD-1FF Cable TV Ground Loop Isolator . They can be bought on eBay for about $50.

For more info on ground loops in audio systems, see this audioholics article .

The 990/7700 combo will have the same hum if you have a ground loop caused by the cable connection. I used the Jensen isolator to solve that very same problem.

We sat in a room and listened/watched things. We were told you're now listening to number 1, and gave our opinions on paper making notes. We rated the device on a 1 to 10, but not until we had heard each one, and the process was repeated.

The numbers for the units changed with only the person running the test knowing which was which. We couldn't see the units.

At the end we xeroxed our results. Then he handed out a Key that let us know which unit had which numbers. So the 990 had numbers like 4, 9, 14, 15, etc. We used the key figure out the scores for each unit. The Xeroxes went to an impartial 3rd party who double checked the results. This same person made sure that the units were actually playing when we were told "unit 12," for instance.

I don't know how anyone could have seen thru the test.

Thanks for the test explanation. It sounds like it was a great deal of fun and interesting.

Did you use the digital output of the source equipment for the stereo testing, or did you use analog in a direct mode?

Thanks.