Audio cables vs cheap wire test

I went from really caring about "audiophile" quality, to being very happy with mid range, even entry level stuff, as long as it's good enough for me. I suppose one benefit of getting older is that I can't tell the difference between a flac file and decent bitrate aac/mp3 anymore :cool:
 
Crowley said:
But the "audiophiles" will keep on telling you that expensive copper cables is better than "cheap" copper cables. Kind of remnds me of a certain fruit flavoured cult that will believe anything their lord and masters at *unnamed fruit flavoured cult" tells them to believe. Even if it involves a 16k monitor stand.
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Yup, it's a massive wallop dose of Placebo effect wrapped in confirmation bias due having spent an obscene amount of money on a cable and/or the believe that more expensive must equal better.

There are elements in the audio chain that make a difference, most critical the speaker as this is where significant distortion is introduced. In the measurement below, the distortion is around 10% at 100Hz and about 3% at 700Hz. This was a test done at 95dB at 2m in a certified lab. Not someone's lounge.

No cable, even a cheap one will get remotely near these levels and thus become insignificant. So does most of the other elements with the amp likely adding way less than 1%.

But if I have to sell you a cable @R10K per meter, I'm sure going to sell you BS of note about how the cable makes a difference. And the placebo effect will do the rest.

1646945702485.png
 
SAguy said:
That's an easier one. There's no picture or sound difference between cheap cables and gold plated, diamond encrusted hdmi cables.

Makes a difference in terms of durability and supporting longer distances, but in general there's no difference between a R100 hdmi cable and a R1000 hdmi cable between your blu ray player and tv.
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Well,till you pull out that 5 year old hdmi cable and realize it doesn't have the bandwidth to handle your shiny new UHD
 
Senor said:
Something more useful and relevant would be a comparison between various brands of HDMI cables.
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Linus tech tips did a good one a month or 2 ago (hint - there are differences,but sometimes you get diamonds in the rough)
 
SAguy said:
That's an easier one. There's no picture or sound difference between cheap cables and gold plated, diamond encrusted hdmi cables.

Makes a difference in terms of durability and supporting longer distances, but in general there's no difference between a R100 hdmi cable and a R1000 hdmi cable between your blu ray player and tv.
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When they comply to spec, which cheaper cables often don't.
 
Nuro said:
I went from really caring about "audiophile" quality, to being very happy with mid range, even entry level stuff, as long as it's good enough for me. I suppose one benefit of getting older is that I can't tell the difference between a flac file and decent bitrate aac/mp3 anymore :cool:
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Same, I also used to have dreams of a 7.1 sound system where you could pinpoint from exactly which direction a budgie farted 2 days ago. Now I'm happy with a decent soundbar.
 
jannievanzyl said:
Yup, it's a massive wallop dose of Placebo effect wrapped in confirmation bias due having spent an obscene amount of money on a cable and/or the believe that more expensive must equal better.

There are elements in the audio chain that make a difference, most critical the speaker as this is where significant distortion is introduced. In the measurement below, the distortion is around 10% at 100Hz and about 3% at 700Hz. This was a test done at 95dB at 2m in a certified lab. Not someone's lounge.

No cable, even a cheap one will get remotely near these levels and thus become insignificant. So does most of the other elements with the amp likely adding way less than 1%.

But if I have to sell you a cable @R10K per meter, I'm sure going to sell you BS of note about how the cable makes a difference. And the placebo effect will do the rest.

View attachment 1266636
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I have a 1948 Murphy with a Centillion speaker connected via banana clips. Sounds awesome and hisses and spits like a cornered puffadder.
Best sound system ever.
 
maxxis said:
Garbage in, indistinguishable garbage out.

Coming from a high end audio background I can assure you that cables make a difference.

Would you power a set of Martin Logan speakers powered by a set of Mark Levinson mono blocks with twin flex from builders or with some Van Den Hull Supernovas?

Rule of thumb was always to spend at least 10% of the system cost on cables.
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They really don't, as long as you're not using rip cord, it does not matter.
First bit.
 
ToxicBunny said:
To some people it makes a difference.. But to most people they cannot tell the difference.

There is likely some element of confirmation bias at play
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Audiophiles have super hearing, I mean they must have.
The biggest difference in sound is actually the room, what's in it and where you sit.
But to an audiophile they can hear a micro improvement in impedance apparently
 
There's a definite point of deminishing returns.

Sure, cheap crappy cables arent ideal. Neither is super high end. Get the right guage, shielding and 9/10 times it will be fine.

HOWEVER. a massive amount of music out there, even at a trillion megabits, have probably never been produced/mixed/created properly, all that money and the source music is poop.

Reminds me of video, people go off about 4K/8K this and that and diamond encrusted HDMI. but majority of movies filmed on the Arri for a long time barely did 4K recording.
 
jannievanzyl said:
Yup, it's a massive wallop dose of Placebo effect wrapped in confirmation bias due having spent an obscene amount of money on a cable and/or the believe that more expensive must equal better.

There are elements in the audio chain that make a difference, most critical the speaker as this is where significant distortion is introduced. In the measurement below, the distortion is around 10% at 100Hz and about 3% at 700Hz. This was a test done at 95dB at 2m in a certified lab. Not someone's lounge.

No cable, even a cheap one will get remotely near these levels and thus become insignificant. So does most of the other elements with the amp likely adding way less than 1%.

But if I have to sell you a cable @R10K per meter, I'm sure going to sell you BS of note about how the cable makes a difference. And the placebo effect will do the rest.

View attachment 1266636
Click to expand...


The "I am an audiophile and worked at super duper high end audio for 30 years" clan hates this and will deny it until south africa becomes corruption free.
 
Lupus said:
Audiophiles have super hearing, I mean they must have.
The biggest difference in sound is actually the room, what's in it and where you sit.
But to an audiophile they can hear a micro improvement in impedance apparently
Click to expand...

In all honesty, I wouldn't put it passed some of them to be able to hear somethings, but for the vast majority of people the difference will be non-existant.

I used to be in the camp of a "good" cable makes a difference, and over time I've definitely come to realise that for me the difference is inaudible and definitely not worth the additional cost of these supposed "good" cables.
 
ToxicBunny said:
In all honesty, I wouldn't put it passed some of them to be able to hear somethings, but for the vast majority of people the difference will be non-existant.

I used to be in the camp of a "good" cable makes a difference, and over time I've definitely come to realise that for me the difference is inaudible and definitely not worth the additional cost of these supposed "good" cables.
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I was in that camp as well, got good cables and hooked them up to my amp and speakers, turns out that the "better" cables actually caused my amp to trip every so often, so switched over to a slightly lower guage and cheap stuff from Cash Crusaders, amp didn't trip out.
 
Lupus said:
I was in that camp as well, got good cables and hooked them up to my amp and speakers, turns out that the "better" cables actually caused my amp to trip every so often, so switched over to a slightly lower guage and cheap stuff from Cash Crusaders, amp didn't trip out.
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TBH, and I'm gonna watch @maxxis cringe and squirm like a little girl...

I replaced some of the good cables in my setup with relatively decent gauge twincore lighting cable and it sounds just as good and the cables being smaller and more flexible made it infinitely easier to hide them.
 
ToxicBunny said:
TBH, and I'm gonna watch @maxxis cringe and squirm like a little girl...

I replaced some of the good cables in my setup with relatively decent gauge twincore lighting cable and it sounds just as good and the cables being smaller and more flexible made it infinitely easier to hide them.
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Oh yeah those freaking thicker gauge cables are hard to actually hide, I still have thick conduit running up my wall cause of them. But since switching to a sound bar with wireless rears (which I honestly don't even use that often) my setup looks cleaner and sounds just as good or better.
My son in law loves the old amp and speakers, but he ended up even swapping the cables I gave him to even thinner so he could run it better and you know what, it still sounds okay.
 
The Cape Town Hi-Fi Club have run this experiment many times

They have evaluated:

Mains cables, with or without filters
Interconnect cable carrying analogue signals
Interconnect cable carrying digital signals
Speaker cables
USB cables
LAN cables

It was found with mains cables and interconnect, the difference was marginal. However, it was there and had a cumulative effect, ie when you start to change everything, and the equipment and source is revealing enough, the difference becomes audible

With speaker cables, as long as the cross-section of the cable is of sufficient diameter to carry the current, then there is marginal difference

With USB and LAN cables, with devices like a Digital to Analogue converter, if the DAC is a budget device with a not particularly well-designed input stage, certainly the difference is discernable

But take a well-designed piece of equipment like a Devialet or a La Voce DAC, there is no difference. We have listened carefully, many times

What matters with USB cables in particular is the quality of construction. A R15 USB printer cable will be inferior to a R150, well-constructed USB cable. The LINDY range offer good value

The same applies to interconnect cable. The interface is of utmost importance

Having said all this, there is a lot of snake-oil and pseudo-science involved. Some manufacturers are worse than others

Anyone interested in the Hi-Fi Club can drop a mail to [email protected]
 
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