WHY CABLES MATTER!


I have seen the argument over and over again on why cables matter and the that wire is just wire and how scientifically it’s impossible for them to make a difference. The thing that surprises me the most is that different materials are used. Different shielding is used. Different connectors are used. Different braiding methods of the cables are used. Materials are sourced from different manufacturers and put through different creative processes but I always get some guy who comes on and says. WIRE IS WIRE AND YOU ARE NOT HEARING WHAT YOU ARE HEARING? To me it’s pure arrogance to think you know more than everybody else to the point where you tell me what we are hearing through my ears and we are not smart enough to know when are minds are playing trick on us. But using all these different materials, process and shielding and creative processes don’t make a difference. I spent the last 15 years trying all the cables I could try.  Thoughts anyone?

calvinj

So is  "Cables commensurate to the equipment in use. " your answer?

Basically it seems you don't know the specifics or you read that somewhere.

Doesn't answer my question.

Look, stereo gear comes in differing levels of performance. Some basic 100 w/ch amps can be had for a few hundred dollars these days. They use IC’s, low grade electrolytic capacitors, low grade resistors, inductors, low grade printed circuit boards and wiring. They make music but the distortion and noise levels wash out resolution and detail. Better gear still use op amps but will have better electrolytic caps and resistors, inductors and maybe better grade printed circuit boards. And today’s op amps perform much better than in the past. The best gear uses discrete components, high grade circuit boards, better grade of electrolytic capacitors and some film capacitors- better transistors, or tubes. and better grade of inductors. Now resolution and detail is sufficient to differentiate between the different grades of cables. The top end gear will have more sophisticated EMI and RFI rejection circuitry, silver or gold plated printed circuit boards and top grade wiring, resistors, inductors and film and electrolytic capacitors. Add in some nice metal work and metal boxes for this higher end gear and the prices do get rather high. You get what you pay for- very high resolution, clarity, low noise and detail. Now the best cables and power cords will work together with this gear to provide the ultimate in performance.

Take for example, my Marantz HT receiver. It is a nice 40 lb box that delivers 125 W/ch into 9 channels at 8 ohms. One of my Pass Labs mono amps delivers 280 watts into a single channel. That mono amp is almost twice the size of the Marantz receiver and weighs 110 lbs. I expect it to deliver a much higher level of performance and it does. I also know that the best power cords, speaker cables and interconnects will enhance its performance whereas those same cables would be overkill for the Marantz receiver. I know I would not hear much of a difference on my mid fi system with high end cables- it can’t hurt but it also will not help much.

I hope this answers your question and you are being sincere- not just yanking my chain.

It's the weakest link in the chain story.  Buy a top grade amp, preamp and speakers but use a $200 CD player and the system will not inspire.  Get a good quality source and the system sounds better.  Now get some good cabling to round out the system and it will really sing.

It's like my brother back in high school.  He bought a 1969 Gran Torino with a 4 speed transmission.  He rebuilt the engine and put a 3/4 race cam in it.  Double pumper four barrel carburetor and headers.  First thing that broke were the valve push rods.  The stock push rods could not handle the race cam.  Then he broke the transmission.  Got a Borg Warner T10- the rock crusher, it was called.  Next, he burned up the stock clutch.  Put in a racing clutch.  Took all I had to push in the clutch pedal.  Spun the drive shaft (or prop shaft).   Got a stronger drive shaft.  Lastly, broke the U bolts holding the rear springs.  Finally sold the car.  But it was fast.

@tonywinga - Agree with your commentary. Nice system as well. By the way maybe you should go into the rack business, nicely done!

Rolling up replies to be brief. Me brief?

YES, everyone is under the placebo effect. All the time, for all subjects.  Isn't our brain a wonderous thing?   We are never objective.  Not humans at least.  Understanding this will go a long way in life. 

Bad cables may well be more obvious on great gear, but $30,000 speakers are still 1000 times worse than the the worst cables or the best electronics. 

Mono-crystal OFC copper for interconnects is marketing BS.  That's all.  You can measure the difference in conductivity in the lab. Who freaking cares if one cable has 1m Ohm and another 1.02 when you are driving a 40K Ohm load.  Speakers? OK even dipping to 3 Ohms, don't care.  Perspective folks. Capacitance, inductance, and velocity matter and that comes from geometry. Well understood.

Sure I wish Belden 1500 had PTFE insulation, but in a 2 or 3 foot cable, irrelevant

As far as that silver, now at audio frequencies skin depth is about an 18 gauge wire, so full depth. Why do you want two different conductors?  Marketing!  Look inside that speaker and see what your boutique cable is actually driving in the loop.  Unless you are in the Sabrina range, it is going into maybe 100 feet of 18 gauge cheap Chinese recycled wire. Even then, the VC is nothing special at any price.   Caps?  Aluminum foil. Oh yea, how about that steel wire resistor pad on the tweeter?  Where do I wish we used silver?  CONNECTORS.  Silver oxide has the same conductivity as silver. Remember all those ugly brown tarnished  type N 50 Ohm connectors?   Best ever made.  

Beef?   Yea, I have seen big box salesmen selling $300 speaker wire to ladies buying $300 speakers.   Utterly immoral in my book. 

If your old Ethernet cable gave you dropouts, pixel flashes, jitter etc, it was a BAD cable. So replacing it with a cable that meets spec, i.e. CAT5e, certified, and the picture is now great just proves my point. Defective cables are bad. Good cables are good. Simple dividing line in the digital world.  Analog world is touchier.  

.Speaking picture quality, I have cut open a lot of HDMI cables. Cheap ones. I was having issues with POD and CEC.   Several were not even constructed correctly. Drains not attached, foil backwards.  Lots of problems. Replaced with Monoprice and Blue Jean. No more problems.   HDMI cables are not easy to make or terminate so cheap ones tend to be, well cheap. We are still talking digital here, so any perception of resolution is placebo, not real provided you are using the correct spec cable and it does actually meet spec. An exotic Ethernet or HDMI cable can't make a sharper picture than one than only meets spec. Just the way it works. Not magic.  Now, a really bad or sub-par cable may cause your Ethernet to re-negotiate to a lower speed and the TV may be smart enough to drop to a lower resolution. That you would see.  My Sony LED I tested @ 96MB/s which is enough tor 4K. I am not sure what it takes for 3D- Atmos-whatever. It may be more than a Base CAT5 cable can deliver.  8K is. 5e should be good though. 6a has gotten really cheap.  Science. Not magic. 

Iconoclast speaker and interconnect cables are state of the art MEASURING from one of the top engineers in the wire world.  No doubt.  But is the sound actually different?  Not what you hear, the actual sound.  It is possible under the laws of physics, but at a level so far below the source material I seriously doubt it. I would call them excessive, but not snake oil as they are actually carefully designed products with a measurable difference at least in the LAB. 

So, a $3000 amp is no good?   $3000 speakers no good? The very smoothest amp I have ever heard is on my desk right now.  Big beefy 2W Schiit Rekkr costs $150. Of course, this is only good for my desk nearfield and not pushed very hard. 

I have had dozens of amps home. Much above $500 there is no correlation between price and sonic quality.  Some expensive amps are wonderful " wire with gain". Some add delightful distortions we love. Some sound like crap. Some have well designed feedback and are very load invariant. Some will oscillate with a 4 Ohm load.  You can't price categorize them. The cleanest tweeter I know of is the Vifa XT-25 if used at moderate levels above 4K.  Costs $25.   Play lower or play louder, well then it gets really hard and bucks pile up fast. 

Do you know how many hundreds of feet of plain old XLR cables your fancy TITLE MQA file has gone through?  Know how distorted the mic was? Love those old AKG tube jobs for vocals. Wonderful distortion. Old mixing board full of hundreds of NE5558 Op amps?  Yup. Our brains lie to us all the time. The further down the rat hole we fall, the more they lie. 

No complaints about a decent power RF filter, surge suppressor ,and even a DC filter. The power company supplies quality for incandescent light bulbs and motors. So if we need cleaner power, it is up to us as most even boutique makers do a terrible job internally.   JDS and Schiit do a pretty decent job BTW.   Clean power is NOT going to add weight, air, space, texture, depth, or any adjective a subjective You-Tuber or ad jockey can make up. It just lets your equipment work as intended.  Added the Emotivia DC filter when line issues were making my amp toroid buzz.  They make pretty decent power line stuff. So does Trip-Lite,  Iso-Max, Panamax, Furman and even some Monster.

 

Again: 

Our brains lie

Bad cables are bad

In the digital world we only need a good cable

In the analog world, it is harder but understood and not difficult

Decent power line conditioner is smart.