Cable Costs Relative to System

Well, here is my two cents worth on cables. I just bought a Rega Jupiter/IO DAC on this site. The Rega supplied digital cable was replaced due to a reviewers recommendation for this combination. I bought an $11 silver digital cable from a guy on ebay because I too was a skeptic about throwing $500 at a cable. I can say that this $11 silver cable made a TON of difference in the sound of this Rega CDP. It opened up the soundstage and turned the muddy midrange into a delight. No longer a cable skeptic.

My next question has to do with a different digital cable. I'm tempted to buy a used Kimber D60 or Nordost Silver Shadow to see if there is an audible difference to this no name cable that cost $11. I'm also curious what difference a power cord will make for the amp. I'll let you know.

My curiosity concerning power cords goes to how your house is wired. Most residential homes are wired with 14 gauge copper. Hmmmmm..... what then is the meaning of a fancy 6' silver cable attached to an 80' run of copper.

My system is low to mid-fi. Everything was bought here on Audiogon. Jolida JD801A(J&J KT88/6SN7EH/Sovtek 12AX7LPS), Rega Jupiter/IO DAC, Vienna Acoustic Bach's, and a Velodyne CT80 sub. Silver 12ga. 50' speaker cables (ebay), Straightwire Encore Interconnect(ebay), and $11 digital cable(ebay). Nothing great but a nice sounding system for $ 2,261. New this system would have been around $5,000.

My thought is this. Buy decent but not the best. I hear more of a difference in the CD's that I buy and the engineering that was done there than I will ever hear in a decent versus ultra-expensive interconnect or power cable.

Digital cables,I compared a kimber digital cable costing in the UK.£570 with a cable from bluejeans costing $40 (£20) I connected both up to a levinson dac with two inputs so I could do a/b tests there was not the slightest difference in them,only the price.Cables are an absolute rip off.

At a recent audio party, we tried a half dozen digital cables between transport, and DAC. It was a blind test. We had: On one end of the scale was a cheapy, with the three RCAs, red white, and yellow. At the other end of the spectrum was a thousand dollar Virtual Dynamics digital. In between were some silver connectors, one I remember being "Homegrown."

All the connectors sounded the same, except, darn, the thousand dollar VD. It sounded better.

We've done some blind testing using digital cables and the winner was always the same cable in several different systems. This specific cable makes use of resistive terminations as described in this article at Borbely Audio.

While Borbely talks about a low grade cable with these terminations working better than a high grade cable without these terminations, the cable i'm talking about was designed to work well in every aspect and then the terminations added. That is, it uses a specially shaped solid core silver center conductor to minimize skin effect, high grade Teflon dielectric and then a braided silver shield. I have this cable in both BNC and RCA form and they both work very well.

The manufacturer also made this in a copper version at a later date, which was still some 10+ years ago. When i called them up to get some info on the silver cables, they couldn't even recall ever making such a cable or any of the specifics about it. I know that this was a standard item though as i've got at least three of them here and my Brother is running one too. From what i've seen, none of their digital cables after this series makes use of materials or designs that are anywhere near as good as what i've described here. The profit margin was probably only 500% rather than their goal of 1000%, hence the decision to revert back to less expensive materials and production techniques.

Please take note that Borbely makes mention of impedance matching being an "old trick" to RF people. As most of the regulars here know, i've discussed impedance matching of cabling and components for many years now. I've specifically mentioned the fact that one obtains the best performance possible when the output impedance of the source component matches the nominal impedance of the cabling used and the input impedance of the load. I've also stated that i only know of one specific manufacturer that has designed their entire product line to do this, so it is not very common within the field of audio design. As such, the benefits of such a design could only be fully achieved if using that one brand of components in every position of one's system.

Outside of interconnects, selecting a loudspeaker cable that displays the proper nominal impedance is also very important. Test results demonstrated the superior bandwidth and linearity of such a design was presented by Audioholics a short while ago. It was no coincidence that this cable, which i've recommended for several years now, beat every other cable tested by a wide margin. The fact that the folks conducting these tests at Audioholics are basically "cable naysayers", and their test results DID show a measurable difference in electrical performance between different makes, models and geometries, demonstrates that there is a method to the madness when designing and purchasing cabling for a specific application.

As i've said before, spec's can tell one quite a bit about the sonics and measurable levels of performance. That is, if the spec's were properly obtained and they are properly interpreted. If such weren't the case, we wouldn't be able to move forward in terms of electronic technology and would still be in the dark ages. Cabling is no different. You don't have to spend a lot of money on cabling in order to obtain excellent performance. You just have to buy competently designed active components, and therein lies the major problem. Sean
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My system retails for $30,600 without the cables. I'm getting ready to spend $8,700 on two interconnects and a set of speaker cables. When I tried the new cables I found they elevated the whole sound of the system more than changing any one component. They offered me sound that I didn't even know my system was capable of. Down the road I'd like to change the power cords as well.

I recently sold my Hydra 4 in favor of running dedicated lines. A friend helped me and it wasn't a big job at all. I have a dedicated line and outlet for each component. The dedicated lines offered me a more natural open sound with much better range then either the PS Audio Ultimate Outlet I had or the Shunyata Hydra with a Taipan power cord (you need a 20AMP connector). The retail on the Shunyata products is $1,350. I installed the dedicated outlets using Porter Ports for a total of $200. That was by far the greatest upgrade I've ever made for the least amount of money.