John Dunlavy On "Cable Nonsense"

I do believe that cables can be 'engineered'. When you change the capacitance and inductance of a cable you are effecting a parameter called the "charateristic impedance"(I will use CI for short). In normal zip cord type wire, the CI is approximately 90 ohms. In RF theory it is said to be very important to match the load impedance to the CI of the cable.

If this theory was applied to speaker cable then we need to design cables with a CI of 8 ohms. The problem with designing a cable to 8 ohms is that a speaker is only a NOMINAL 8 ohms (or 4 ohms) and varies with frequency. It would be practically impossible to build a cable that could match the impedance curve of a speaker.

A few years back I investigated the effects of lowering the input impedance of my power amp. I tried some 75 ohm video cable as an interconnect and a 75 ohm RCA with a 75 ohm termination on the circuit board of the amplifier. This combo sounded very close to the best interconnects I had used in a more conventional manner. My preamp has a very high current output and can in fact drive a 8 ohm speaker at low volumes. It was important to drive the amp with this pre amp but it was less important what interconnect I was using. The differences that I heard in interconnects when the input impedance of the amp was 20,000 ohms was far larger than the differences when the input impedance was down around 100 ohms.

I do not know if it was the reduction of reflections due to the matching of the cable to the load. It may have also been the contribution of a lower noise floor due to the reduced thermal noise of the lower input resistor. I believe that musical enjoyment can come from the contribution of a number of factors, combining in a manner that makes the sound pleasant to YOUR ears. I kept the low input impedance in my amp for about a year until I got a different pre and had to take it out cause the new pre could not drive the load!

So, Sqjudge, R,L& C variations are what detemine(in the largest percentage of) our final sound in ICs?
Do you feel that a direct connection (wire free)will always provide the most accurate results no matter what?
(i.e directly soldered I/O connections to the PC board, an integrated amp wired direct internally with a negligable amount of buss or braid)....Frank

Frank, I am not sure what all effects the sound of cables, but I do feel safe to say (quoting a friend in the know) "everything makes a differance".

I do feel that no connector is better than a connector and there is a lot of connectors with wider bandwidth than a RCA plug. A BNC is one just for starters.

Lets get some oppinions on this ...... Chris

So, big speaker God has spoken and we should bow to his sacred word. No, I don't think so. This guy puts his pants on like any other man and has an opinion. Everyone else has an opinion and their own subjective experiences like his highness. Take what he says with a grain of salt and respect, trust what you hear, and screw the cult of personality BS.

I read alot of 'em, but does anybody wonder "why things sound the way they do?" So you hear differences, but why doesn't anybody explain why it sounds different instead of just arguing whether or not it can be heard. I mean, ya, you put on some cable with a really high capacitance and you get some ringing or overshoot in the high frequencies because your amplifier may not be as great as you thought based on how much you paid for it. But X person thinks "this cable has more detail, must be the silver." Or with some little tube amp that doesn't have much top-end to start with, one finally gets a cable with a lower inductance and you get your high-frequencies back, "must be that solid copper with an optimized crystal structure so those electrons don't have to hop through the micro-diodes." My limited knowledge on the subject is, there can be audible differences between two cables on X amplifier, but they don't sound different for the reason cable manufacturers want you to believe, micro diodes, intercrystal rectification, skin-effect, etc., they sound different because the electronics at hand are sensitive to the basic cable load. Good/better electronics are less likely to be affected by different cables. Now of course this takes us into the whole vacuum tube arena, because alot of people are set on there valves. Honestly, if someone knows of a truly great, moderatly priced cable, tell me and I'd like to hear it. I'm using 4PR and up against analysis plus oval 9, no audible difference, and the designers of my electronics said I shouldn't hear one because the electronics are "not load sensitive" (for all practical, audible purposes).