Did I damage my amp or speakers?

What is McIntosh’s position on this? Can you share any links on the topic?

Why would you care?

Gow's position was to not chance offending any owner or potential owner by establishing some sort of pecking order of "golden ears" and therefore ended up unfortunately offending those "true believers".

RR dissed one of my client's sensitivity to a 1.5 dB mismatch between channels back in 1980 during a 4 way phone call with Gow, Coderman, RR, and myself, that created at least in my mind skepticism about his perspective. Fortunately Mac's senior engineer, always a scientist at heart was intrigued and Coderman helped me design a custom filter to add the a MQ104 to help solve the client's issue.

So few owners actually tackle the gross issues of room setup and back then turntable setup, Gow was most committed to encouraging clients to get those major issues addressed before stressing over minutia.

I have mentioned Skizo calling him out on that......in front of 40 or so owners.

Your local dealer should have done his due diligence and have assorted cables that you should use your own sensibilities to judge.

As a dealer, I would audition samples from manufacturers so that I could advise my local clients who wanted to explore that last .05%.
 
I am going to be slightly nasty . Directional cables, North or South East or West. Directional cables tells me the cables aren't linear and are tuned to give a specific sound, Which is Ok if you like the results. Its not for me. I mean if you want to tune the sound why not use tone controls, Graphic controls, a MEN 220, a Parametric EQ or a Room EQ, or now the new mini DSP's?

"Directional" in regard to cables (Snake-oil aside) should indicate a shield (not carrying meaningful signal) grounded on one end only. Any noise picked up by that shield is intended to be shunted back to the ground of the component supplying the signal.
 
But lifting the shield assumes the next component is already connected to earth ground using a 3 proved AC plug. What if it isn't or is connected to a different phase of power and the ground paths are different or compromised. By lifting the shield now you have really compromised the system. I doubt if there is but maybe 1 system in 50 where the electrical system in a home or commercial bldg is as it should be has been my experience. Even having my system rewired when we remodeled the house. I still have to use a ground rod to get the quietest operation. When you live in the desert unless you keep your ground field damp ground potentials can really change.
 
Back
Top Bottom