<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Do not all charms fly
\nAt the mere touch of cold philosophy?
\nThere was an awful rainbow once in heaven:
\nWe know her woof, her texture; she is given
\nIn the dull catalogue of common things.
\nPhilosophy will clip an Angel’s wings,
\nConquer all mysteries by rule and line,
\nEmpty the haunted air, and gnomed mine\u2014
\nUnweave a rainbow, as it erewhile made
\nThe tender-person’d Lamia melt into a shade<\/p>\n\n\n\n
-Keats, from Lamia<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sound, as we know it, is\nsubjective experience. It comes at us\nthrough the space around us and we feel its force even as all manner of other\nspectral phenomena pass through us without being felt. This subjective experience is, to us,\neverything — it is everything that music ever is or could be.
\n
\nBut audio reproduction, regardless of how we experience it, is a\nheavily-engineered phenomenon. That this\nis so leads to a kind of split-mindedness in audio discussion. So often we see the subjective discussed only\nin terms of the subjective, and the objectively measurable discussed only in\nterms of objective measurement. That\nelectrical engineers have not, as a class, been receptive to some phenomena as\nreported by users has led, for some in the audiophile world, to a kind of\nobsession with subjectivity itself — as though all of those lovely sound waves\ncould be delivered to us without the “cold philosophy” of electrical\nengineering that makes audio reproduction possible. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This needn’t be so. The problems of any aspect of audio\nengineering must be solved in order to render audio in the first place, so we\ncannot complain, like Keats, that the knowledge of how it is done will unweave\nthe rainbow. Indeed, sound reproduction\nis a bit like unweaving and then reweaving that rainbow, and there’s no getting\naround the objective issues involved in optimizing that subjective\nexperience.
\n
\nA great deal of audiophile wire and cable design has been done by enthusiasts\nof one sort or another, listening to various designs and trying to figure out\nwhat they can. Iconoclast Cable is\nfundamentally different: Galen Gareis, our cable designer, was a distinguished\nwire and cable engineer with Belden long before Iconoclast was even a notion,\nwith decades of experience developing cables for a wide variety of\napplications. When he embarked on the\nprocess of designing the Iconoclast speaker and interconnect cables, he had the\nuse of the Belden Engineering Center, a facility with exceptional capabilities\nand equipment.
\n
\nYes, the process of design is meant to optimize the subjective listening\nexperience. But how does one know what\nto optimize? When are four conductors,\nor forty-eight, better than one, and why? \nHow? And are these things\npractical to manufacture? Galen, with\nhis grasp of wire and cable theory, was as well situated as anyone has ever\nbeen to figure these things out.
\n
\nIn this blog, and on this site, we endeavor to take you behind the curtain to\nunderstand our product — to understand WHY Iconoclast cables are made the way\nthey are and what Galen did to bring them about. Instead of “pay no attention to that man\nbehind the curtain,” we’re committed to openly discussing and showing our\nwork. A product like this should have a\nsound technical rationale, and in addition to Galen’s papers on this site, we\nwill bring you fresh posts from Galen’s work from time to time to talk about\nissues in wire and cable generally, and Iconoclast specifically.
\n
\nBut, back to that rainbow we’ve been unweaving and reweaving. While the realm of engineering is where the\nrubber meets the road in terms of delivering the sound, there’s no substitute\nfor listening. That is, after all, the\npoint, and ultimately the only point.
\n
\nWe invite you to have a listen to Iconoclast. \nBut we won’t ask you to leave your brain at the door when you do. We also invite you to read Galen’s papers on\nthe design of Iconoclast, and if you have questions, let us know. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Do not all charms fly At the mere touch of cold philosophy? There was an awful rainbow once in heaven: We know her woof, her texture; she is given In the dull catalogue of common things. Philosophy will clip an Angel’s wings, Conquer all mysteries by rule and line, Empty…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iconoclastcable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iconoclastcable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iconoclastcable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iconoclastcable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iconoclastcable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iconoclastcable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iconoclastcable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iconoclastcable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iconoclastcable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}