Wisdom of Russ

[Fretless]

Well I never. A hifi shop that talks sense.

Here an inspirational thought from Russ Andrews:

Russ's 10% Rule

Hi-Fi magazines and Dealers will tell you that you should not spend more than 10% of the hardware budget on cables or you are wasting money. They believe in the Rule of Diminishing Returns! I have discovered a Rule of Increasing Returns that comes into play when you upgrade the right things in the right order. To achieve this you need to apply my 10% Rule. Spend 10% of your budget on the hardware and 90% getting the best out of it! (Okay, I may be exaggerating a little but not by as much as you might think.)

The standard '10% Rule' might sound fine, but it vastly underrates the fundamental importance of the cabling in a Hi-Fi system. There's no point spending money on your hardware and then never hearing its full potential because the cables you use add distortion and lose information. Think about it in terms of the size of improvement you'll gain rather than what you might 'expect' to pay eg. if a £100 cable makes your £200 CD player sound better than a £500 CD player then that's excellent value for money by anyone's standards

https://www.russandrews.com/eu/russs-10-rule/

[Trevethy]

In the often misquoted words of Mandy Rice-Davies, "Well he would say that, wouldn't he?"

[valvesRus]

Russ was one of the first people I was aware of (long time ago - pre internet or forums) who advocated using the biggest VA transformers you could afford and bigger power supply capacitance.

In those days he published various guides for DIY upgrading of popular hi-fi gear. I still have the Quad 11 and LP12 ones and his power supply upgrading guides.

[antonio66]

I'm sure he is right in the statement above, the gripe is with some of the products he sells and the prices he charges: My brother still uses a RA Mains Block and a couple of his mains leads

[karatestu]

Personally I don't agree with him on this one.

Yes, cables are important but I would blow most of my budget on speakers.

[Progmeister]

I can't bring myself to agree with the cable philosophy.

[CN211276]

My ears tell me that cables make a big difference, both analogue and digital. They should not be skimped on but you need to be wary of the sharks charging silly prices, with huge margins, for cables no better than quality ones at a fraction of the price.

[CN211276]

I was struck by that RA article because it mirrors my current approach. Cables are one of the things that, as a HIfi hobbyist, you can have the most fun with. They sit quietly under/behind equipment and are relatively affordable (usually). The 'spend 10% on equipment and 90% on improving it' made me laugh, as I feel that to be true.

My cable selection here of i/c, USB, coax and Toslink leads includes brands like: Supra, Profigold, AudioQuest, MIT, DH Labs, Accuphase, Inakustik, Oehlbach and NVA (of course) and swapping things around between the various little installations I have is a fun way to spend an afternoon.

For the budget-minded, cables are affordable and there is always loads of info to be found on The Web. Certainly digital installations benefit enormously from proper cabling. As said above, a decent component with good leads will sound better than an expensive device with poor-quality connections - and cost less. If I look at my own Hifi purchases over the last few years then my new components have got cheaper - but there has been far more expenditure on quality cabling. Although I hope that I haven't strayed into silly money territory (been tempted though).

Even a relatively cheap and simple Pi-based streamer will sound noticeably better with a standard CAT8 ethernet feed and a decent coax link to a DAC. Give it an LPSU and it will blow your mind and will compare to a 'big-name' streamer costing many times more.

Cabling also allows you to 'tune' a system - some sound brighter, so will liven up a stuffy-sounding installation or a smoother cable will refine an overly edgy setup. There is also a certain 'synergy' of cabling to equipment - as the NVA owners will know. NVA has been designed as an integral entity where the cabling and equipment all play their role together in the signal chain. So also do other units and cables interact with each other and then you come into the dark and mysterious world of resistance, impedance and capacitance. Or - every wire sounds different.

Fiddling about with the linkages, means that gear can sound okay with an expensive cable but might be magical with a cheap one. Trial and error coupled with a bit of online investigation and a small cash outlay CAN provide surprising results and the contented feeling of having achieved something. Couple this to acquiring decent PSU's (AliExpress has 'em cheap) or things like USB regen devices or properly-shielded ethernet switches and you're having a fun time.

The question then arises - what is this hobby called Hifi? Many would have you believe that it is forking out for a set of the most expensive bling apparatus that you can afford and showing it off to impress your acquaintances. Some would say it is about assembling stuff that sounds incredible but looks like it was knocked together in a cowshed (no offence, Stu - love what you're doing ). Some would say it is just trying to get the best out of what you already have.

Some would say - it's only about the music.

[Vinyl-ant]

To play devils advocate, i would suggest that the article has it arse backwards.
I would argue that if you have to spend almost the same cost on cables as you have on the equipment to get it so sound right to you, that you have a fundamental problem with the selection of equipment you have.
I would suggest that rather than spending 1000 on an (insert component here) and 800 on cables, that you could have been better served by spending 1600 on (insert component here) and 200 on cables.

Tailoring a sound with cables to get it smoother, or more resolved ect, is entirely valid, correcting fundamental deficiencies, or trying desparately to make something sound as you want it to sound by using cables that cost as much as the equipment itsself seems to me to be a completely redunculous approach.

The cables whatever they may be have electrical properties, the components on either end have impedances, they inevitably create a filter. There is nothing to say a 100 quid cable is inferior to a 500 quid cable, because there arent any metrics to prove or disprove that one is better than the other.
A budget for a cable is completely irrelevant. What is relevant, is that the cable must tweak the sound to make it better for you.

If a component needs a grands worth of cables to sound satisfactory, then its broken.

Discuss




(This is tongue in cheek to an extent)

[CN211276]

I seem to recall Richard saying that the most effective NVA upgrade is cables. This is bourne out by my own experience of upgrading to TIS and TISC. It has nothing to do with rectifying deficiencies in other parts of the chain. It is all about obtaining the opimum performance of major components. As Fret has said there is a lot to be gained through synergy. It is DH Labs all the way for me on the digital side. Digital is less straight forward as I have found that filtering out "muck" has a greater impact than cables. Cables also have a great effect on video. I was amazed at the effect the upgrade to AQ Carbon had when we bought the new tv last year. It was bigger than the jump from HD to UHD. My other half was equally taken aback.