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Beside the mechanical factors, the laying of a given cable on carpet will change the capacitance of said cable. Some are more notable in sensitivity to this than other cables.
Another thing for folks to consider:
Buying a container of cheap ($5) anti-static spray at the local office supply shop *can also bring a notable change to said cables. Why pay some audiophile company $25-50 for some 'excruciatingly similar' spray?
Does one naively think that the audiophile company has the time and energy to test their anti-static spray on every cable in existence? It is also likely that the purveyors of the $5 spray HAVE tested the product on every plastic known to mankind.
This works especially well in dry environments, ie, winter..when humidity is low.
*For all the smart-asses, no, you don't tape the spray bottle to your head, take photos of it and put them in the freezer, make effigies of it and then pin them to death...or tape it to a cross..or even bury it in the back yard. And yes, that does definitely rule out you burying in your back yard, all frozen and taped to a cross - an effigy of your photo of yourself with a bottle taped to your head, all stuffed with pins. Or any variation thereof. OK?
You simply utilize said spray on a cloth or wipe..then run it over the given audio cable. A slight dampness will usually do.
Alex, based on your experience in this area, how much do you think these mass production tools would cost you as a start up company? What quantity of common materials do you buy and keep in stock to keep producing cables? Will you have your company name on the cables or just leave "Belden" on the jacket? Would you use a cheaper equivalent to Belden? How would that impact your sales? How would you counter the claims your cables are just rip offs of another design? Would you pay royalties to the person who placed this design on the internet? Or do they get nothing for their work and contributions? What would be the number of cables you think you'd have to build in your first production run? What's your projection for how many cables you can turn out in a day? How many would you need to turn out in a day to become and remain viable? How long can you run this business without any income while incurring constant outgo? How many employees would it require to get up and running and would you offer your employees any benefits and promise of long term employment or would you just pick up migrant labor on a day to day basis? What sort of distribution network would you establish? Do you continue to put the cables together on your kitchen table or rent a separate building? How does that affect your taxes? At what point in your revenue stream would you quit your day job and take this on as a full time profession? How long can you go by soldering cables, packaging them and shipping them at night while keeping your day job and trying to keep this company going? How would you compete against the established companies with larger name recognition? How would you get your foot in the door so to speak? Can you afford to rent a room at CES and the various shows to sell a $50 cable? How many $50 cables must you sell each month to remain in business? Can you take all the dealers out to dinner to schmooze them a bit to pick up a $50 cable with a tiny profit margin? Where would you advertise and how would you pay for it? Do you do co-op advertising with your dealers? Do you offer your dealers any incentives to display your cables on their demo equipment or just sell the cables in a plain brown wrapper and hope for the best? If your cables are only as good as the other guy's $150 cable (the one you compared your's against), why would a dealer want to promote your cable? If dealers are the profit hungry money grabbers you claim they are, why would they want to sell something that makes them no profit? If your cable burns down someone's house, would you be covered for damages and expenses? How about just plain old legal fees for a start up business? How would you protect your investment against another assembler who takes the same design off the internet and just copies what you've established but undercuts your profit by using cheaper parts and a cheaper wrapper? What would be your fitst design? What would be your second and third? Would they be the same designs that you copied off the internet and want people to pay you just to assemble, advertise, distribute, ship and guarantee while you make unnecessary profit of something they can do themself? Would all that come from capital you donate to the company and expect no return or profit on your investment? Would you require a loan to start this company? What would your business plan look like when you asked for the loan? 10% profit on a long term investment in a design or designs that are in the public domain? What would you do when the banker said no?
This would be a very interesting company. Can we count on your regular 10% profit margin from cost of materials? Free demos and then we can shop for the lowest price on the internet with free return privledges and you pick up the shipping both ways? When do you plan to begin production? Will the Stereophile members get a price break?
Laphroaig and Lagavulin (the 16-year-old) are my two favorites. Islay Scotch requires a special sensibility -- you have to down enough firewater, over the decades, to completely destroy your taste buds. If your Zippo ever runs out of lighter fluid, I recommend Finlaggen. You can drink it, too, if its slightly corrosive action doesn't eat through your innards. I also use it for cleaning my cable terminations.
As I suggested elsewhere, marinate your cables in some Islay Scotch.
Marinate yourself, too. I do it all the time, and when I fall on the floor, my capacitance never changes.
What is your capacitive storage just before you hit the floor? Do you rectify that before or after hitting the floor?
What's even more startling than the statistical odds of so many Laphroiag drinkers in such a small sample is the assertion it is an "acquired taste." Laphroiag is the smoothest, most mellifluous spirit I can think of. Glenlivet, OTOH, would be the Bose of scotch whiskies. (Just causing trouble-I'll pay for that one I'm sure)
I am not particularly interested in running my own business. I don't care what business it is. If I were to run a business, I would do all these things you describe. I would also do all the things Jan described in terms of ramping up production, investing capital, etc. Furthermore, I would not be a one product company. That's a formula for failure. However, all of that is academic since I'm not interested in running a business.
However, as the production ramps up, the cost of each individual cable diminishes and the volume of cables sold would make up for the initial capital investment.
Audiophile mains cable. Ha Ha! What a good laugh. As if any induced RF or EM floating in the atmospere is going to have any effect on a 60Hz 120V waveform!! How much RFI have you got in your living room? Oh, maybe you live next door to a ULF submarine communications facility. Groan.
The (real) topic of this thread hinges on one crucial assertion. That the cable mauled by the cat had been promoted as a superior grade device. It supposedly contained "LiniPur" conductors and was constructed to offer improvements (?) over a regular (cheap) mains cable. Now I don't give a hang wether or not you can hear an "ASTOUNDING" improvement in your stereo "soundstage" or whatever. That is subjective and therefore can be ignored as everyones perception will be different, based on their suggestibility, or "Golden Ear" rating.
The contentious issue here is that the cable offered to the market for $153 with all its claimed special properties, is electrically identical to the cable offered to the market at $5. Not only electrically but using the same type/gauge of wire.
It might also be noted here that the mechanical coonstruction of the $153 cable is poor/unsafe and that a $5 moulded cable would be superior in construction and safety by comparison.
The garden hose and the sandblasting media would have NO effect on the electrical properties of the $153 cable. None, never, ever, ever.
I think that people who manufacture these "special" cables rely on the fact that the customer will never dismatle or investigate the product. Would you tear apart the Transparent cables that you'd paid $20,000 for? Nobody would, so the "magic" stays in the product. What a great scam!
Cue Jan, to tell me what a morally bankrupt individual I am because I dare to question the claims made by a manufacturer.
Not to be a snob, I agree with you about Glenlivet. Try the Lagavulin 16-year-old -- to my surprise, it was even smoother than the Laphroaig. It is expensive as hell, unfortunately. But I haven't tried the Laphroaig 15-year-old.
I notice you are in the LA area. If you want raw Islay on the cheap, go to Trader Joe's and pick up a bottle of Finlaggen for 15 bucks. It has enough iodine in it to cure strep throat. Still, it is definitely Islay and, if you dump some ice in it, you can feed it to your guests, who will promptly leave you alone to hog the good stuff. I always keep Finlaggen around for when I crave that straight seaweed taste and I don't want to exhaust the more expensive bottles.
Jan, the last time I measured my capacitance (with a juiceomometer -- I can't remember if I got it at Liquor Barn or Trader Joe's, and I ain't tellin' you how to use one...), it came out at a healthy 263,000 picofarads. When you hit the floor, rectification is automatic and in technicolor.
Gotta go -- gold is up 5 bucks in Hong Kong, over Friday's close at the Comex, and the freak show on CNBC Asia is about to begin. I think I'll pour meself a wee bit o' Finlaggen -- it never hurts to sterilize your entire inner complex during 'flu season...
Happy tunes, all.
I tend to agree with people who admit they are morally bankrupt and particularly so when they continue to prove they are right. So far moral deficiencies have not proven to be your particular problem.
I will suggest you cannot make any claims about the electrical characteristics of this cable or be positive garden hose was used in its construction based solely upon the pictures provided. You are repeating second hand information that has not been proven to be correct.
The first claim seems to be based on the fact the cable uses the same guage conductors as commercially available cable with the same W/B/G dielectric. That proves nothing. I would expect a 16 AWG conductor to be similar to other 16 AWG conductors in overall diameter. You cannot really think that W/B/G insulation implies the exact same conductor as every other commercially available product. Are you able to perform an analysis on the metallurgical construction of this cable from the photos provided? Or, are you simply assuming, based upon your biases and your self admitted knowledge, that you know this conductor is not "Linipur"? What evidence do you have to dispute the claims made by the manufacturer? Do you know what constitutes a "Linipur" conductor?
The "garden hose" outer shell has the manufacturer's name on it so it's unlikely to be a simple piece of hose from Home Depot. There is no physical proof offered to identify the outer shell as garden hose, only the claim of the op who doesn't seem to be in a postion to correctly identify garden hose. The remark was made by the op based upon the same sort of visual examination Alex suggests is adequate to analyze a cable's materials. What more needs to be said there? And so what if it is constructed of a material similar to that used in a garden hose? No magic claims have been made for the outer shell. It is there to encapsulate the damping material. Until the cat tore the cable apart, the outer shell seemed to be doing an admirable job at this task. The claims for this cable's improved performance seem to be based on the inclusion of a damping material only as a damping material and have not included any claims of improved electrical performance based upon the outer shell's construction. And there is no dispute the damping material was included in the cable's construction, even the op admits to dumping it in his backyard.
The claims of using garden hose were made in an effort to disparage the cable by someone who felt they had been taken advantage of when they bought this $150 cable for $20. Believing those claims ignores the opposing view points in the original thread and a fair number of posts disagreed with the op. Those who tend to enter into anti-cable threads with the attitude that cables are all the same and cables are rip offs are the ones who disparaged the cable's construction in the original thread. Such threads make them "happy". Naturally, many of those posters also suggested there could be no improvement in the cable's performance without even having seen or tried the cable, another common trait among those who enter anti-cable threads. Since none of us have seen this cable, let alone listened to music with this cable in the system, it would seem foolish to assume this cable did not perform as advertised and leaping to that conclusion would be contrary to several posts in the original thread. Nowhere in the original thread was poor audio performance suggested, not even by the op. Actually, several positive comments were made by users of this particular cable.
As to electrical safety, the op does seem to have mistaken the function of a strain relief for damage to the cable. From the photos provided I don't see a damaged insulator, just three conductors under a clamped strain relief. The op doesn't seem to know the difference between clamping the outer shell material and clamping the conductors.
If you personally happen to feel cable is cable and wire is wire, you are welcome to your opinion. But I doubt you'll change anyone's mind about that. I've still not been on an anti-cable thread where by the end of the thread anyone's opinion has been changed even by a slight bit. But, when you argue, do argue with the facts and not just what you've misread. It would be even better if you argued from the point of having this cable in hand rather than looking at photos. And, ideally we would prefer to hear your subjective impression of music played with this cable in the system. Lacking most of those variables, I don't know what to make of your post other than you believe cable is cable. Fair enough but there are more than a few listeners who would disagree and some of them are apparently using this cable.
I won't go into details about why I no longer drink Scotch but only say the flu and bountiful quanities of Scotch coming back up have left ... how do I put this? They have left an unpleasant memory of the last time I drank Glenmorangie.
Aye. Saaaarves y'right, laddie, fer goin' wit' t' Speyside. T' river Spey? Full o' salmon piss and sheep puke. Aye. 'N they gonna make Scoootch ooota THAT?
Go fer the sterilizin' magic o' t' eeluh. Nooothin' cun soorvive the comin' o' t' iodine!
An' I bid y' farewell 'n Gooodspeed! Y'keep drinkin' from poooblic waters, 'n ye desarve whoot ya git!!!
Clufton! Yuh better lay oof tha firewaata Jimmeh! Et's mekkin ya loopy man!
Jan, my dear advisary. I don't need to know what "LiniPur" conductors are, they are vapor-ware. Meaningless sales babble. I have seen enough cable in my time to know what I'm looking at.
Once again you cement your position as the manufacurers/salesmans champion. Boring.
If it's impossible to see the sham in this cable then, good for you. Spend some more money. Better yet, help other people to spend theirs and make a comission!
Hi Fi mains cable OMG you guys will swallow anything!
Good for you, FC! Go after salespeople too. They're just as stupid as their clients and even more greedy for quick cash than cable manufacturers. Gee, isn't this just like every anti-cable thread I've ever been on? Boring indeed!
jan: the scotch parts are interesting.
tom
YES!!!!!!!
Thank you.
so what's wrong with bose, i thought they were the best?
tom
Alright..more booze!
A Saskatoon inventor is thinking small to make millions for the booze and biofuel industries -- and it's been dirty work.
University of Saskatchewan microbiology Prof. Dennis Bayrock has invented a chemical that could increase by a few percentage points the amount of ethanol and liquor produced in the fermentation process.
Xtra Booze
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