Audio cables vs cheap wire test

[SHL]

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.

I have no damn idea but it sounds like it deserves a

 

[jannievanzyl]

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 lower the signal level, the more important the cable, especially shielding and grounding. So, that connection between the TT and phono stage is rather critical. Amp interconnects already are at hundreds of millivolts but still shielding and grounding is critical. But no need to pay stupid money.

Speaker cables carry massive currents and voltages, no way you are going to pick up interference there. Resistance is important here thus more copper is better. Again, don't spend silly money. If that cabtyre can supply 220V @ 15amp to your domestic device, it can deliver the same power to your speakers.

 

[jannievanzyl]

Oh it gets way worse, there's people who can apparently hear the difference between Cat 5 and 6 ethernet...

A guy once told me he could here the difference between a copper and optic toslink.........

This is where the cable snake oil sales people thrive. They use concepts that have some validity in electronics, like skin-effect or bias, and then apply it to audio cables where it's got f-all impact and sell a cable for a stupid amount.

I've sat listening to these cable companies, wondering how they sleep at night, when they talk about pulling a cable from a single grain of copper or biasing a speaker cable with a battery that has just one pole connected to the cable.

 

[jannievanzyl]

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]

I'd love to hear how a mains cable, LAN cable or USB cable affect the sound quality.

 

[jannievanzyl]

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

100%, spend most of your money on speakers.

 

[P924]

A guy once told me he could here the difference between a copper and optic toslink.........

This is where the cable snake oil sales people thrive. They use concepts that have some validity in electronics, like skin-effect or bias, and then apply it to audio cables where it's got f-all impact and sell a cable for a stupid amount.

I've sat listening to these cable companies, wondering how they sleep at night, when they talk about pulling a cable from a single grain of copper or biasing a speaker cable with a battery that has just one pole connected to the cable.

Copper and toslink is indeed discernible - toslink adds a lot of jitter, so unless you are reclocking, it will alter the sound. But this is easily measureable with the correct equipment, whereas with most of the other interfaces the difference cannot be measured, it "must be heard to believe" (or more accurately believed to be heard).

 

[jannievanzyl]

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.

In music studios we run quite long cable, those hundreds of meters are not uncommon. For these you run balanced lines to reduce distortion and crosstalk.

Definitely an impedance mismatch can result in reflections that will affect the signal but this is not an issue in home audio systems where the input impedance on the low voltage lines (like the interconnects) are very high. Also, the frequencies are very low (sub-20KHz).

 

[Y'all Qaeda]

Definitely wont. My hearing isn’t what used to be after years of riding bikes.

Wait.. But just a few posts up you said this:

Confirmation bias yes and no. The objective of a good audiophile grade system is reproduce music in such a way that you feel that you are truly right in front of the artist performing.

You know exactly what to look for. Things like the environment that the recording was done in. A recording done in London's Abbey Road Studios has a certain warmth and character to it. I want my system to reproduce that accurately.

In many many blind tests we noted certain elements of a recording (for example midbass) can become muddy or higher frequencies can suffer so badly from sibilance that it distracts from the experience.

Cables can change the characteristics of the sound enough to enhance and correct these issues.

Was a fun night or ten testing many different cable combinations and quite easily picking the cheap control pair from the high end cables.

So which is it then? Can you hear a difference like you said? Or can't you hear a difference, like you also said?

 

[Messugga]

I'd love to hear how a mains cable, LAN cable or USB cable affect the sound quality.

I have a little Topping d10s on my desk which simply cut out during usage. Turned out to be the crappy USB cable I used. When your device is powered via USB, the cable can definitely impact things. Doubt it's an issue when the cable actually conforms to spec but whatever.
Same can be said for devices being powered by bad power adapters.

I've had a bad subwoofer cable as well, at some point. It was fine for ages, until something changed somewhere and I could start hearing the power grid's frequency on the sub. Replacing the cable with a properly shielded, grounded cable solved that.

 

[xera]

Many people cannot distinguish between lossless (such as FLAC) and MP3 320kbps.
Definitely not going to join an argument with those guys.

 

[Messugga]

Many people cannot distinguish between lossless (such as FLAC) and MP3 320kbps.
Definitely not going to join an argument with those guys.

Those people just need better equipment. There's a huge difference on particularly complicated pieces of music (quick symphonic stuff) with a lot going on at the same time, even on my relatively modest current audio setup. MP3 doesn't sound bad, but you definitely lose some detail. Worth spending tens of thousands on? Depends on what you value. For me - yeah, probably.

 

[jannievanzyl]

I have a little Topping d10s on my desk which simply cut out during usage. Turned out to be the crappy USB cable I used. When your device is powered via USB, the cable can definitely impact things. Doubt it's an issue when the cable actually conforms to spec but whatever.
Same can be said for devices being powered by bad power adapters.

The USB was supplying power that cause a power drop. For sure shitty USB cables can do this.

But we're talking about audio quality.

 

[jannievanzyl]

I've had a bad subwoofer cable as well, at some point. It was fine for ages, until something changed somewhere and I could start hearing the power grid's frequency on the sub. Replacing the cable with a properly shielded, grounded cable solved that.

So the cable broke. Sounds like an earth went dis for some reason.

But we're talking about 1 mains cable "sounding" better than another.

 

[Messugga]

The USB was supplying power that cause a power drop. For sure shitty USB cables can do this.

But we're talking about audio quality.

Yeah I hear you, but shitty power supply equals shitty audio quality. My point was more that it's not necessarily related to the data stream on the USB cable, since that's digital and with appropriate protocols and error handling by the devices being connected, fine, as long as the cables conform to spec. You're also pushing power into potentially sensitive to noise in that power source device, which would affect audio quality.

 

[Messugga]

So the cable broke. Sounds like an earth went dis for some reason.

But we're talking about 1 mains cable "sounding" better than another.

For the record, mains cables sounding different I think is kak, unless for some reason the cable is fixing some other fault in the power supply somehow.

 

[Obieone]

The lower the signal level, the more important the cable, especially shielding and grounding. So, that connection between the TT and phono stage is rather critical. Amp interconnects already are at hundreds of millivolts but still shielding and grounding is critical. But no need to pay stupid money.

Speaker cables carry massive currents and voltages, no way you are going to pick up interference there. Resistance is important here thus more copper is better. Again, don't spend silly money. If that cabtyre can supply 220V @ 15amp to your domestic device, it can deliver the same power to your speakers.

I think we're on the same page, my interconnects are nothing special, but the cheap rca cables you buy at game,etc sounded really shyte. Just to through a spanner in the works I tried a 0.5m respected brand for a few hundrd bucks ( for the life of me I can't remember the name) and it also sounded harsh and tinny.

 

[noxibox]

Also a lot of the premium brand cables are actually garbage. You’ll do better with decent gauge cable from your local hardware store.

Also watch out for people who try to bamboozle you into buying overpriced wire by using terms like skin effect.

They really don't, as long as you're not using rip cord, it does not matter.

As long as the gauge is adequate any wire will do. Cheap flex is particularly ideal as speaker wire. Unless your speakers are really far from the amplifier. Then all it takes is thicker wire. Not whatever the audiophile charlatans will try to trick into buying,

 

[Okty]

Wait.. But just a few posts up you said this:



So which is it then? Can you hear a difference like you said? Or can't you hear a difference, like you also said?

That's audiophiles for you - it is more about how much each component of the system cost, than actually the music coming out.

Of course, I don't think this guy is a 'true audiophile'. 'True audiophiles' can hear frequencies from 10 Hz up to 30 kHz - that's why ultra expensive cables are so critical.

 

[maxxis]

Wait.. But just a few posts up you said this:



So which is it then? Can you hear a difference like you said? Or can't you hear a difference, like you also said?

3rd option. In the past I could… bla bla

 

[W@P]

Sjoe i can only imagine the can worms if everyone here went on over to the avforums forum. I only got some decent cables recently because i couldn't justify my current components using some shitty cables. I'm already balls deep into this hobby regarding cost another grand would not hurt and then at least i know everything is premium.

Does the cable make a difference to my setup? Not sure tbh.
Am i happy with the current setup? Fsck yeaah.

For interest sake here's a photo of my current B&W's next to the new Bentleys. The Bentleys are monsters.