[Harmon]

To know whether IC's (or cables in general) are transparent or not is simply to compare the sound of your system with a live performance. This is not easy to do since audio memory is very short. But if you have gone to many live performances it makes it a little easier since you know what you are looking for in terms of sound.

[Bosh]

To know whether IC's (or cables in general) are transparent or not is simply to compare the sound of your system with a live performance. This is not easy to do since audio memory is very short. But if you have gone to many live performances it makes it a little easier since you know what you are looking for in terms of sound.

Uh, well, yeah.  I guess.

But IMHO it's asking a bit much of a signal transfer wire to bear the responsibility of recreating a "performance", live or not.

Odd how "the high end" has rejected tone controls while embracing a far more complex way of doing the same thing...a way that, unlike tone adjustments in the hardware, does not allow the listener to compensate as may be required, recording-by-recording.

In interconnects, I now look for the lowest capacitance and the highest build quality.  And I can usually find it at far below the starting price of most "audiophile" brands (many of which have an oddly high capacitance, suggesting the 'tone control' aspect as a matter of simple math).

If your system is great (however you may define "great"), interconnects are a way of making it greater.  If your system sucks...

you get the concept.

 

[Carlman]

To know whether IC's (or cables in general) are transparent or not is simply to compare the sound of your system with a live performance.

If an IC gets you closer to the live performance, great.  And if it's of your opinion that IC quality is judged that way, I disagree... and probably so do most cable makers.  

What's the point of your statement?

[_scotty_]

Hi Harmon, A great deal goes wrong in most wires and I agree that the sound of the real thing needs to be criteria that interconnects and eveything else in the system needs to be judged by.Yes I have the same outlook on sound reproduction that Stan Warren has. It is not a popular
position with the industry.By the way if you have his interconnects you will probably like his speaker wires.

[Harmon]

By the way if you have his interconnects you will probably like his speaker wires.

I already tried Stan Warren speaker cables in my system but for some reason they did not work out sonically. I do not know the exact reason why they did not work well. Even after a long burn-in the cables were quite thin sounding.

[nathanm]

Recording engineers and the decisions they make are the #1 factor governing how much a recording sounds like a live performance.  That is,  assuming the recording IS of a performance and not a song.  If you are playing back a song then don't expect to hear a performance.

To me it's very simple: use stereo miking techniques in a lively room and DO NOT gate out or digitally edit any extraneous noises made by any instrument or person and there's your live performance right there.  That's a performance recording.  The other kind is creating a song where there is a creative choice made to eliminate elements of the sound that are not part of the musical message.  There's no right or wrong way to do it, but the point is, unless the recordist is doing the techniques you enjoy listening to, no gear in the world will make it any realer than it is.  To me the most enjoyable recordings have reverb and ambient noise in them.  Even if it is from a digital unit it helps I think.

[_scotty_]

I already tried Stan Warren speaker cables in my system but for some reason they did not work out sonically. I do not know the exact reason why they did not work well. Even after a long burn-in the cables were quite thin sounding.[/quote]
 I guess you have to use what works for you. I have more bass and better resolution than I have ever had before.
   For me the more accurately the component or system reproduces the
musical waveform it receives the more realistic most recordings sound
and the better they sound even when they are flawed.Distortion from any component in the system is not our friend. I guess I am making a case for
Hearing what the artist thought they recorded with a minimum of editorial
comments from the system as a whole.