Are "good" cables needed for vintage system?

Right now is a great time to get excellent cables for a song. I'm not completely sure, but I suspect Belkin is either dropping or scaling back their PureAV Silver series cables. The Silver Series (but NOT the Blue Series) are all PCOCC 99.997% pure copper. I'm using a double run of their 14ga speaker cable in my analog 2-channel system and they are sweet.

If you go to eBay and simply search for "Belkin PureAV Silver" you will get lots of hits, most of which are from a couple of vendors blowing out this series at DIY prices. Examples: 4' interconnect pair for $18.49, 12' speaker cables for $20-40. They are superbly built with very nice jackets and terminations.

Best of all, they are liquid and effortless. Signal transfer is very clean and smooth. For all the cables of various formulations and configurations I've had over the last 20 years (Kimber, AQ, Straightwire, TARA Labs, MIT, AudioMagic, PS Audio, Monster), I've found that PCOCC copper has the most noticeably positive effect on the sound quality.

As for whether they'd make any difference on vintage gear, I say it's all about the signal transfer, and if you have a cleaner signal transfer with lower impedance, skin effect, inductance, and capacitance, it's going to showcase the music-making ability of these classic old components better.

You may as well extract as much music from your present equipment as possible. Find some used Kimber PBJs, in here or on eBay. When you improve the rest of your system, you'll have a head start. The PBJs outperform many more expensive interconnects, with regards to transparency.

IMO vintage systems benefit from "good" cables,just like todays modern systems.

In most cases you can have your cables terminated to work with your vintage gear,or you can upgrade the vintage connectors with modern connectors.

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I have a set of Ridge Street Audio Poiema ICs RCA and Morrow SP2 SCs on a C41/MC225 monobloc system with Tannoy DC3s... VPI TT (Morrow PH2 ICs) and MacMini/iRoc DAC (RSA Poiema USB cable)....

and the cabling makes a huge difference... worth every $... lifelike, detailed, musical, simply awesome in every respect.

Also the impedence match between the C41 and the C225s brings a nice synergy that cabling enhances.

:) listening,

Ed

'good' is a relative description, but most systems (vintage are not)will sound fine with radio shack connects and wire.

Good advise above. The improvement wrought by the actual higher quality RCA jacks will probably be most helpfull.

If you are somewhat handy you can check out the many DIY cables out there and really get the most for your dollar. I have made a few for way under $100- and they sound almost as good as cables that I spent $500- on.

Keep it reasonable: Anti cables work very well for me in my Vintage system...Sansui,KLH,Sony ,,,,,,Always good used Anti Cables around

I would not go crazy, keep cable purchases in line with the value of the rest of your system. For well constructed basic cable, go to Bluejeans cable. They are cheap, nice construction wire based on Belden. Typically their best quality 1 meter as RCA would be about $35.00.

http://www.bluejeanscable.com/

The only way I would go above that would be if you intended evolving the cable out of this system and into another one. Then maybe check used here at Audiogon and buy entry level name brands that can be resold with little or no loss to test the waters.