Mystic Fred... what stuff? Budget hi-fi

Flyingsod wrote: MikeEnRegalia wrote: The problem for me is that electric circuits are like chains, and they are only as strong as their weakest link. So making one of the links 100x stronger is futile if there's only one weak link.  That point isn't entirely true. This isn't  true for chains but,  you can make a circuit stronger and more capable as a whole by increasing the capacity of a 'link'.  In industrial applications we sometimes have to use a conductor size larger than normal for a very long run. This is accomplished by upsizing the conductor in the middle long portion of the run but leaving the line end and the load end at normal size.  I don't know if power/speaker/interconnect cables would make a significant audio change or not. I'm no where near worrying about that! (I have mismatched tweeters atm....)  I'm just saying that it is certainly within the realm of possibility because electrical circuits are not physical chains where the weakest link is not affected by the other links. They are rather dynamic things where each link does indeed affect the other links.

I'm just saying that a few meters of high diameter cable can't "repair" whatever the dozens of meters of low quality cable in their walls did. Personally I don't think that there are any effects anyway, because *whatever* happens between the power plant and the electric device, the power supply will remove it. The power supply is the *only place where you can effectively remove anything that might be in the "current" and might adversely affect the sound. And indeed these effects (spikes, electromagnetic static by other devices etc) are filtered out automatically during the AC/DC conversion.


I think that when it comes to cables you should get expensive ones to connect the devices (CD -> Amp, Tuner -> Amp etc) ... they carry low level signals which are especially vulnerable to electromagnetic static, at least if unbalanced cables are used (which is unfortunately the standard with most consumer hi-fi). Speaker cables ... well, personally I also go for reasonably high diameter cables, but it's mostly a "placebo" thing. They don't cost that much, they look good and are unbreakable. But an audible effect on the sound?

^ then why did I buy a record player last year?