The Science of Cables


It seems to me that there is too little scientific, objective evidence for why cables sound the way they do. When I see discussions on cables, physical attributes are discussed; things like shielding, gauge, material, geometry, etc. and rarely are things like resistance, impedance, inductance, capacitance, etc. Why is this? Why aren’t cables discussed in terms of physical measurements very often?

Seems to me like that would increase the customer base. I know several “objectivist” that won’t accept any of your claims unless you have measurements and blind tests. If there were measurements that correlated to what you hear, I think more people would be interested in cables. 

I know cables are often system dependent but there are still many generalizations that can be made.
mkgus
Some cables are made which incur significant time, material and labor costs. They should sell for more than HEA cable prices in the $1000s and $10000s. They include GroverHuffman cables which one can read about on his site. Just drawing the wire into an embossed ribbon is a time consuming, laborious task. Constructing the 3 powdered metal melded shielding is another messy and laborious task. All together, it takes 2 man hours to construct one cable A/C, IC and more for speaker cables. His prices are $300 to $1000 for his two lines. I am the 20 year beta tester for his designs. I have compared them to many of the best. No contest.

I have heard musically involving systems, even a few at audio shows and salons. The best I ever heard replicates the sound of the recording in its venue but the system costs $1.5 million. My system only does half that sound, lacking mostly the open and ambient sound retrieval of that system (of the deep bass which is also room dependant).

There is too much discussion of cables overall. HEA prices of cables are comparable to pharmaceuticals whereby the cost of innovation results in products that cost an arm and a leg (high priced) for profit to result and additional innovation to be funded (at least privately by HEA rather than govt and university funded for many pharmaceuticals).

There should be greater emphasis placed on the room acoustics as it is for music venues and sound studios. Note how long it takes to design and build as well as important for music venues to have proper acoustics for classical music. Other venues concentrate on sound dispersion, use tone controls for obtaining desired frequency balances and balance controls for performers. What is it that audiophiles seek? Is it even frequency reproduction or just dynamic reproduction or resolution of details, ambiance retrieval or a combination? I suggest room acoustics can address many of these HEA requirements.

Elizabeth, while celander provided the answer, I thought I would respond as well. While a particular IC may may have multiple conductors, Schroeder Method specifically pairs full cables, which means paired ground wires as well.

celander likes the HAVE Inc. product, and I enjoy the Audio Sensibility products (reviewed in a short Audio Blast article at dagogo.com).

My understanding is that theoretically Schroeder Method should sound like a double length IC (Over the years I have found 1m to sound slightly better than 2m), but the outcome that is happening with Schroeder Method is a vastly superior performance to even the shorter single IC. It seems logically to be completely wasteful, redundant, potentially causing problems, etc. In other words, it seems a stupid idea.

However, the sound is fundamentally improved over single IC, on the level of a big dollar component change, not a tweak. Ergo, not wasteful, redundant, causing problems, etc. Smart.   :)

I must add that some very musically involving systems used $300 to $700 cables (Tiode Labs, Wireworld and others not as well known) while the best one used $400,000 of cabling (an extensive amount in a $1.5 million system).
We seem to be struggling to make progress beyond the comments earlier from @jhills who wrote , "Not sure how gallium, indium and tin, a semi liquid goop, 1/15th the conductivity of oxygen free copper, is somehow superior to pure grade, oxygen free copper as a conductor for cables. I guess whatever makes a great sales pitch and you can stick the highest $$$ to. 
 
While there are a lot of bogus claims of all kinds of miracle insulative coatings and shieldings for audio conductors, in reality, the best material, as an insulator for either data or audio signal conductors, is either PTFE (Teflon) or polyethylene, with as little shielding and protective covers as necessary, for a particular situation."

Oh well at least the expensive HDMI cable scam has been widely exposed.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.outofcontrol.online/expensive-hdmi-cables-are-a-scam/

https://www.expertreviews.co.uk/tvs-entertainment/7976/expensive-hdmi-cables-make-no-difference-and-...

https://www.trustedreviews.com/opinion/the-ugly-truth-about-hdmi-cables-2951010

https://www.cnet.com/news/why-all-hdmi-cables-are-the-same/


Post removed