Decades ago, when I was peddling million-dollar sound systems, an astute potential customer asked me: “If I buy your very expensive system, what will I get that I’m not getting with my less expensive system?” Smiling my best fatherly smile, I whispered to his ear, “Goosebumps, tears, and laughter.”
With a slightly worried look, he asked, “How much did you say those silver cables cost?”
Thirty years later
Changing audio cables always changes the sound of my system, sometimes a lot but usually just a little. Typically, the sonic effects of cable changes are modest shifts in focus, tone, or transparency. But sometimes during blue moons I’ve seen a new set of cables turn a blah, dull, fuzzy system into a macrodynamic, microdetailed one. Or turn a cool, mechanical sounding system into something fierce and mammalian.
I would never blame an audiophile for thinking that specialty audio cables sound mostly the same and that buying expensive wires would be foolish. That view is justifiable because it reflects most audiophiles’ experience. I felt that way myself until one day in the 1980s I went off-piste and experienced my first silver-wire cables from Kimber Kable.
Ray Kimber, who I met somehow through the Audio Amateur magazine crowd, called to suggest I try a loom of his new braided silver wire. His cables turned my well-behaved, even-keeled system into a macrodynamic, microdetailed fantasia. No wolves or mammoths appeared, but the clouds vanished, and the sun came out.
Before that silver sun came out, my system was wired with various gauges of generic Mouser “hookup wire,” which I had discovered by using it for point-to-point wiring in the amplifiers I was building. Mouser’s stranded polyvinyl-coated copper did not appear to stifle or grossly pollute signal currents, so I began fashioning all my interconnects and speaker cables from it, in my preferred colors, with Switchcraft connectors.
Changing from Mouser copper to Kimber silver interconnects and speaker cables threw a brighter, purer light on every recording. Atmospherics and the specters of performers became a more prominent part of the listening experience.
