Audio cables vs cheap wire test

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 no….. anyway
 
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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Sure, if I got those other things free and had to pay for the cables, as I would be unlikely to hear any difference between it and using some expensive cable.
 
Actually he is pretty accurate. You can use normal power cables it works well. Many actually do. Copper gets worse if it oxydizes where silver gets better. Strange but true. And fibre optic just transmits lights in an 0 1 0 1 1 binary. So makes honestly no real difference. Really.

What makes the difference is the speakers you use. If you use a cheap pioneer speaker with limited range then any cable will be the same. But switch to KEF reference with a wider range and you will notice the difference.

So you have to consider what speaker and amp you have, also what music you listen too.

Ie Boston and Mission for Jazz is great but not so much classic. B&W and KEF is great for classic again.

Ive setup close to a few hundred surround systems and you have to consider what you need and what you listen to. If you got money get van den hul cables, ixos is ok but more for its packaging.

For movies try Boston if Budget is tight. Theyre great, mission also (watch their paper comes for tears). KEF is great and B&W. You can find their older speakers cheap and its great stuff
 
A lot of fancy home setups just use normal power cables. Thick solid copper. Works great.
 
If you want to listen to pc sound get a creative x-fi card with logitech z2300 combo. Works great. You dont need surround anymore although the z5300 is nice but so many wires.
 
I got some AudioQuest cables recently for my stereo setup. My system comprises of the following.

Valve Audio Exclame 150 amp
iFi Audio Zen ONE Signature DAC
A set of B&W 683 S1 speakers. But i replaced them this week with a pair of Bentley Acoustics FS150's
SVS NS12-NSD Subwoofer
Audioquest cables.

I'm no audiophile but I like nice components.

Oh and don't forget the cable risers. LMFAO

IMG_0359.jpg.c233dc5af810f2a932b8fd738f1693eb.jpg
 
ToxicBunny said:
Cable Risers?!?!?!

What new level of snake-oil bollocks are those things?
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Apprantly, it is there to avoid the cables picking vibrations from the floor, especially created by low frequencies (low bass) generated by a sub woofer.
 
chrisc said:
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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What is your opinion on the inerconnection between turntable and phono stage and between phono stage to amp. This is the only area where I have noticed a significant audible effect.
 
The best is people who buy expensive Power cables for their hifi. Because that 1m from the wall outlet that is connected using twin and earth from builders warehouse is going to matter :ROFL:
 
Gaz{M} said:
The best is people who buy expensive Power cables for their hifi. Because that 1m from the wall outlet that is connected using twin and earth from builders warehouse is going to matter :ROFL:
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Oh it gets way worse, there's people who can apparently hear the difference between Cat 5 and 6 ethernet...
 
r00igev@@r said:
Anyone using computer audio instead of decent equipment is going backwards not forwards.
Sarcasm is lost on some people
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I compared a Linn Mimik CD player that I have to an Asus Xonar Essence STX internal sound card. The Asus actually sounded a bit better, despite the Linn being an upmarket player. This appeared to be due to the better jitter correction possible within a computer.

To explore the idea further I set up a laptop with a very low latency Linux OS and used the Jack audio transport system. This was tuned to prioritize the audio signal and reduce the latency to an absolute minimum, thereby also decreasing the jitter to a minimum. Playing 24 bit FLAC files the imaging was better than any CD player I have heard. This was despite playing this system through a Focusrite Scarlett audio interface, where the quoted specs are not has high as those for high-end CD players.

The use of computer based hardware can give excellent results, and an old laptop, about R4k to R4k, and some time can yield excellent audio results.
 
Corelli said:
If you want to listen to pc sound get a creative x-fi card with logitech z2300 combo. Works great. You dont need surround anymore although the z5300 is nice but so many wires.
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Depends what you're listening to. Music? Yeah, you can do a hell of a lot better. Unless all you're looking for is thump.
 
ToxicBunny said:
Wow, sometimes one has to be appreciative of the level of snake-oil people can come up with.
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For the same effect in reality

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Much cheaper and keeps the cable off the floor :-).
 
jannievanzyl said:
I've been involved in high-end audio for over 30 years. Built music studios for a living, was a sound engineer. Owned high-end AV stores. Had more high-end speakers on my floor than you can wave a stick at.

I'm happy to put a massive bet that you will not be able to tell the difference between a cheap piece of high-current cable and a R40K speaker cable in a double-blind listening test. :)
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At one stage there was the argument that the audio signal went through about 1.5km of very ordinary cable in the studio during recording and production (not to mention a wheelbarrow load of opamps). One should therefore keep a sense of proportion when adding another metre to this audio path.

With that said I have heard some differences with high-end cables when the impedence of the input or output stages of the equipment are problematic, either through bad design, cost cutting, or degradation over time. The interaction of the cables with poor systems can become noticable (unless this is my imagination kicking in). In this case one should probably not spend a lot of money on cables for such a system.
 
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