i know people spend crazy amounts on both power cords and speaker cables but is it really necessary? i'm putting another 2 channel system together and just thinking about buying speaker wire from blue jean cable and i think i'll be good to go?

besides the company claims and stats, any one really notice a difference in real life? power cords? after traveling all those miles the last 3ft really makes a difference?

the reason why i ask is i see a lot of value oriented system where people try to get the most value for their dollar on components and then they blow $600 on a 3ft power cord and $500 for 2 speaker wires.

does it just come to a point where people say might as well, spent so much anyway, or is it just to say you have it, or maybe there is a small improvement in fidelity?

Power cords don't matter at all as long as they can carry the required current. Speaker wire should just be large enough for the run involved. If in doubt, just buy 12gauge stranded wire and be done with it. Belden makes some 12 gauge 2 conductor jacketed wire for the professional market which is has tinned conductors. This eliminates any possibility of corrosion.

If anybody says that they do hear a difference with expensive cables, I'd be interested to know if they've still been able to still tell the difference in a blind test.

Gooomz,
You are now entering an area in audio that can create great emotion and sometimes - an emotional outburst.

Keeping it short.....
speaker cables:
You do not have to spend bunches of money to find good speaker cables. There are several place on the web - blue jeans being one of them, where you can get good quality cables at a good price.
I also like signal cables signal cables.
Monster cables can be fine - but it is an over priced marketing machine.

Power cables:
some people swear by them.... me - i would rather spend money on room treatments or on upgrading speakers then specialized power cords.
If you have good power protection/conditioning.... you should be good.


In the end, it is up to you to decide how important chasing the nth degree sound (surround)reproduction/experience is to you.....

Later,

Yes indeed. There is more BS to be found in audio than any other field, and cables are probably at the top of the heap in BS factor. In the old days, people built their own gear. Now that that is not possible, people obsess over the things they can easily experiment with - like cables.

Well, I can't see the need for expensive power cords, but my experience with several brands of speaker cable has taught me that differences, nuances, whatever, do exist. There's an element of truth in the idea that we obsess over things we can easily experiment with, but that doesn't mean experimentation can't pay off. I went from no-name cable to Monster to Kimber Kable to SignalCable, and was a little more amazed each time. I'm done now, and am quite happy with the sound of my modest 2-channel system. I'm also quite certain that I haven't been scammed.

Big question - did you do a blind comparison between each audition so that you didn't know the identity of the cable you were listening to, and the levels were exactly matched for each audition? If you didn't do this, your ears were probably playing tricks on you.

I know what you were trying to say here but I don't think it came across right. While true that a DIY builder couldn't put together his/her own surround sound processor and DVD player, they most certainly could build the rest of system by themselves.

Actually, this leads me to a question for Altec. A ways back, you posted a great tutorial on how to build your own cables. I know you took it off of the Saloon for legal reasons, but does it still exist anywhere else? If not and if you have time, I could PM you my email address and you could send it there as well. Thanks.

Jason J,
I'm not sure of the CAT5 Altec presented, but thru my family - this web site was found:
http://www.venhaus1.com/diycatfivecables.html

I built them and was impressed by the sound. I did not strip the main cable cover off because the 4 internal pairs are all twisted w/ different radius.
I did twist the cables in the same configuration.
I did not use the exact Belden cable - but one that matched or bettered the one listed.

Later,

Altec. Pretty sure my ears aren't playing tricks on me; I make my living with them—as I've disclosed in another thread here—so I've long since learned to figure out what and what not to trust. I had kind of a blind comparison thing going on through my wife, though; she'd notice things even though I wasn't always forthcoming with what I was doing with our system. Simply put, sometimes I acquired stuff surreptitiously and only disclosed it later.

Interestingly enough, I had to do some troubleshooting not long ago to help out a musician/neighbor and returned to one of the earlier speaker cables for about a day. I can remember being a little leery about doing it, thinking, "Geez, what if I really don't hear a difference?" Not a chance; there was so much less clarity that I almost couldn't believe I'd listened to music that way for so long.

By contrast, I've also disclosed on the forum that my experimentation with PCAs hasn't yielded quite the same level of improvement, difference, whatever, so I've got very little shame about seeing things for what they are. Y'know how it is…win some, lose some…or better, a learning curve…no sense fretting about it.