Belden ICONOCLAST XLR Cable Review

[Chrispy]

Maybe with an RF network analyzer you'd see something interesting? Wouldn't matter for audio, but might shed light on what they were trying to accomplish.

What they were trying to accomplish for audio applications?

 

[Chrispy]

I thought BJC was above this sort of high priced stuff.

Unless it's blow job cables you're referring to?

 

[JeremyFife]

Thought provoking review. No surprise that the cable doesn't make any difference!

What's interesting is that the company seems genuine in its intention. Not 'snake oil' but some sort of fundamental blindness to the basic issue that there's just nothing to hear.
Astounding waste of time and money.

Or, as Amir says, they just need to run proper blind tests and then we can look again.

 

[Chrispy]

Thought provoking review. No surprise that the cable doesn't make any difference!

What's interesting is that the company seems genuine in its intention. Not 'snake oil' but some sort of fundamental blindness to the basic issue that there's just nothing to hear.
Astounding waste of time and money.

Or, as Amir says, they just need to run proper blind tests and then we can look again.

Lots of companies are genuine in their intention to sell you whatever....and some of the 'phool stuff is said to be helmed by "true believers".

 

[Doodski]

Unless it's blow job cables you're referring to?

It would take I'm guessing ~26 of them would be required to be able to afford this $785.00 cable. Too rich for my blood...lol

 

[Chrispy]

It would take I'm guessing ~26 of them would be required to be able to afford this $785.00 cable. Too rich for my blood...lol

I sure wish we had the laugh emojis here

 

[Sal1950]

I thought BJC was above this sort of high priced stuff.

Same here. I voted Poor and it saddens me to do so.
I took a sort of pride in recommending BJC so many times over the years. I was so happy to point folks at
a place where they could buy great cables at reasonable prices and not get handed a line of snake-oil crap marketing.
BJC, if your reading this review, drop this line of ICONOCRAP cables, they have no place in your lineup of "quality cables at reasonable prices".
Until that happens, going forward I will only recommend Amazon's WBC cables which greatly pains me as I'm not a fan of Amazons 'conquer the world" marketing approach either.

 

[ryanosaur]

It would take I'm guessing ~26 of them would be required to be able to afford this $785.00 cable. Too rich for my blood...lol

Oof.
So many jokes in there. So many opportunities to catch a suspension!

*walks quietly past

 

[Sal1950]

I sure wish we had the laugh emojis here

Me too, Amir is soooo stingy with his emojis selection. LOL

 

[Newman]

we see no data that backs Iconoclast cables sounding different. How could that be after tons of measurements and formulas in the company white paper? Well, the heart of it is this statement at the end of one:

The fact that cables sound difference was taken as a given.

And that's because of the all-too-common baseline assumption that, "if I can hear it with sighted listening, it's in the sound waves".

You can do triple-backflips with the science and engineering of electronics and materials and electromagnetic fields and have multiple PhD's in all that stuff, but without enough basic knowledge of human perception mechanisms, it is all a house of cards.

cheers

 

[Chrispy]

Me too, Amir is soooo stingy with his emojis selection. LOL

I don't even want to go into the "emoji menu".....just would prefer like/dislike/funny/optimistic type choices as many fora have

 

[formula 977]

How many more times do we need AmirM to tell us if you get punched in the face it hurts.
Enough with the ”it's just wire“ already. We get the picture.

 

[Universal Cereal Bus]

I thought BJC was above this sort of high priced stuff.

Blue Jeans always seems to find itself at the center of these things.

Expert electrical analysis: $340 audiophile cables test “marginal”

Listeners couldn't distinguish them from spec-failing, garbage-quality cables.

arstechnica.com

Cables, Bits, and Noise: How Cables Can Make A Sound Difference | AudioStream

"It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see." Henry David Thoreau

web.archive.org

Naturally, Michael "Bits are not Bits" Lavorgna fails to see the forest for the trees.

 

[Doodski]

How many more times do we need AmirM to tell us if you get punched in the face it hurts.
Enough with the ”it's just wire“ already. We get the picture.

ASR still gets peeps here after all these reviews about cables that are thinking the science cannot measure and determine if a cable is good or bad. It's as if they think cable technology is still a developing technology and the musical waveform is not understood.

 

[Chrispy]

Blue Jeans always seems to find itself at the center of these things.

Expert electrical analysis: $340 audiophile cables test “marginal”

Listeners couldn't distinguish them from spec-failing, garbage-quality cables.

arstechnica.com

Cables, Bits, and Noise: How Cables Can Make A Sound Difference | AudioStream

"It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see." Henry David Thoreau

web.archive.org

Naturally, Michael "Bits are not Bits" Lavorgna fails to see the forest for the trees.

My internet allergies just went wild with the mention of that superd*ck Lavorgna. I can think of few people in audio I think less of....and they're mostly on staff with him too.

 

[Blumlein 88]

I'll just stick with my $12 Monoprice XLR cables

I have some of those and they don't null any better than the one's Amir tested. Don't null worse either.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Maybe with an RF network analyzer you'd see something interesting? Wouldn't matter for audio, but might shed light on what they were trying to accomplish.

I think they were trying to disassociate themselves directly from this expensive wire and at the same time keeping themselves in the loop to profit from this expensive wire. Don't need RF even in the terahertz range to figure that out.

 

[Blumlein 88]

It would take I'm guessing ~26 of them would be required to be able to afford this $785.00 cable. Too rich for my blood...lol

If your BJ's are $30 per, you need to hang around some classier service providers. You can catch something at the bargain basements you know.

 

[Universal Cereal Bus]

My internet allergies just went wild with the mention of that superd*ck Lavorgna. I can think of few people in audio I think less of....and they're mostly on staff with him too.

Despite the annoyance and inconvenience of having to use archive.org to cite his drivel, I ultimately derive a sublime pleasure from this exercise. I'm not merely remembering that he got shit-canned. The extra key strokes, the additional googling--my whole being participates in a remembrance ceremony.

 

[beeface]

I can understand why people are disappointed in BJC, but what I truly don't understand is how much Belden stand to gain from getting a piece of the audiophile-grade snake oil pie?

In the commercial AV industry, Belden cable is the de facto brand of choice for many types of structured cabling. Their cable is also extremely popular in data and telecommunications. If I had to guess, I'd say that a miniscule fraction of their total revenue comes from cable sold for domestic use.

I know it must be tempting for startups to dip their toe in this market segment when you see the absurd margins that other companies are enjoying, but it perplexes me why a company as large as Belden would even bother.