2. cables
  3. 178187-149317

cheapest cable upgrade ever

I have recently been playing with a very cheap upgrade of signal carrying cables: Attach one or two 1.5V AAA batteries with the ‘-‘ pole in the direction of the signal’s source. Simple strapping on with electrical tape) suffices, no need to connect anything. The benefits are very audible. The weak electric field conditions the outer layer of the conductor to improve electron flow, resulting in a strong increase in transparency and dimensionality. This works particularly well on the digital cable going into the router and streamer as well as the speaker cables (on the latter ‘+’ alligns with plus and ‘-‘ with minus, i.e. two batteries per single post speaker.

At a minimum it is a low cost bit of fun

antigrunge2
grannyring's avatar
grannyring
6,543 posts
 

I tried this idea on both my USB cable and then my speaker cables. Tried both independently and together.  Unfortunately after extended listening it became apparent that the music was a bit too forced and constrained sounding at the same time. The tweak led to increased listener fatigue. Remove them and after about a minute the sound became more relaxed and engaging. My speaker cables are solid core copper as an FYI.

cyclingears
2 posts
 

I tried it in 3 places.

1. No difference. 

2.  Compressed sound

3. Opened up sound with more details without emphasis on upper freqs. This is on the + after the speaker cable going into the xover.

In addition to whatever EM stuff is going on there might be some vibration damping on the wire, too.

ozzy's avatar
ozzy
7,553 posts
 

I have tried them in every way imaginable and sometimes I thought that I might have heard an improvement. But, in the end, I decided to remove them all.

And I am a big time tweaker! Thanks for the challenge, anyway.

ozzy

jwmorris
46 posts
 

Thanks for the tip! It works really well in my system. I will wait a week and then remove them to make sure. 

Has anyone tried this on an HDMI cable?

 

carlsbad's avatar
carlsbad
1,551 posts
 

I like the magnets you pout on the fuel lines to get 100 mpg on your 4x4 truck.

More to discover