Cables “can” introduce an audible difference (albeit slight) with expensive hifi separates but get room acoustics and speaker positioning/isolation sorted first as this will make the greatest influence on the sound you hear/experience, it’s utterly pointless spending big on cables if your room is bouncing sound waves around and muddying what is reaching your ears. Cables are not something I’ve ever considered to be of any great influence on my system as it is relatively cheap/modest. FWIW I’ve spent £2.5k on acoustic room treatment, £2k on a network streamer/krk sub & speakers/isolation with another £100 on cables and most importantly of all, and the cheapest - £300 on a comfortable recliner for my arse to sit on.
I don't know for sure but I've always called bullshit on a lot of these fancy cables. I've always just used the thickest I can get, usually stuff from a soundsystem/Live PA. But I've no idea why I do this, habit I suppose.
I remember reading something on the web, must've been fifteen years ago where they tested loads of things and the best, or one of the best was network cable (cat5 nerds?)
still only £5 a metre
"Only" five quid a metre?
"Only" an idiot would ask for advice, get near-consensus and then do something else entirely.
audition
Stop it
I’d suggest everyone goes and does some reading on the ‘skin effect’. It might go some way in explaining the difference in sound some people can apparently identify with cables.
I'd suggest you do some reading on double-blind testing, as someone else suggested earlier. It might go some way in explaining the difference in sound some people can apparently identify with cables.
If under controlled conditions you can reliably and consistently hear the difference between £5+ per metre 'audiophile' grade speaker cable and a 13A spool, I'll give you my bike.
How did the new passive cable know which electrons were Bass?
Because of inductance and capacitance.
I had some interconnects that published the inductance and capacitance on the back of the packet. I bought the next level up, and they had higher values for both. But multiplied together the resonant frequency was outside the audible range, whereas on the cheaper ones it was well inside.
The materials were basically the same, so the construction of a cable clearly can have a (likely small) effect on sound.
Feeling a bit touchy/out of sorts t’night cougar?, go on then........insert a snarky comment if it makes you feel better.
If under controlled conditions you can reliably and consistently hear the difference between £5+ per metre ‘audiophile’ grade speaker cable and a 13A spool, I’ll give you my bike.
Maybe you ears are crap, but having experimented on a small scale with cheap stuff (and being of a scientific and somewhat cynical persuasion) that is a wager I would certainly not be making!
I mean sure, it might all be placebo effect, but it might not.
... and at the risk of repeating myself,
This entire thread is essentially "what fifty inch 4k TV to watch Charlie Chaplin films on?"
You can kid yourself about 'proper Hi-Fi' all you like, but the cold hard fact is that you're listening to records. 8p/mile bell wire to your speakers likely just adds to that authentic experience, what do you think they were using in the nostalgic 60s? And whilst I totally get the pleasure in the Chinese Tea Party ritual of cuing up vinyl, it hasn't been "Hi-Fi" for about half a century.
(Not trolling, I myself have spent silly money on this stuff. I have a crateful of cable downstairs waiting to be run following a house move. But I wouldn't buy it again.)
Feeling a bit touchy/out of sorts t’night cougar?, go on then……..insert a snarky comment if it makes you feel better.
I was born snarky, you've been here long enough to know this.
Two grand on a network streamer? What, so you've high-end, well defined 1's and 0's rather than potential 0.9999s and error correction doesn't exist?
Maybe you ears are crap,
I'm over 40 so yes they are, by definition, as are most other posters / readers here. Which makes this entire discussion silly.
but having experimented on a small scale with cheap stuff
"cheap = bell wire," I would totally agree. The shit we used to cable up midi hifi speakers with isn't fit for purpose.
(and being of a scientific and somewhat cynical persuasion) that is a wager I would certainly not be making!
Anything with a half decent core though, premium speaker cable of your choice versus a reel of 13A? I will absolutely make that wager with you if you believe you'll be able to reliably and consistently tell the difference double-blind, listening to whatever source of your choice. I've got a Surly Cross-Check worth maybe £700-£800, what do you want to put up against it?
Cougar : Two grand on a network streamer? What, so you’ve high-end, well defined 1’s and 0’s rather than potential 0.9999s and error correction doesn’t exist?
Someone’s eyesight is going along with his hearing.......I never wrote I spent £2k on a streamer, although I may if I had that amount of spare cash.
£800 on a Cambridge Audio CXN v2
£400 on KRK G4 Rokit 7 Active Monitors
£400 on a KRK 10s Active Subwoofer
£100 on IsoAcoustics iso-155 monitor isolation stands
£120 on IsoAcoustics iso-200 subwoofer isolation stand
£33 on 4 x 2m Neutrik/van dame balanced xlr cables
£60 on 2 x 1.5m Audioquest Pearl Ethernet cable, yep.....I bought 2 relatively expensive Ethernet cables, comments are welcome.
£30 on a Audioquest Pearl usb a to usb b cable
And if you want to pick holes in how I spent my money then I guess you need to include my sandisk extreme pro 2tb ssd drive that holds all my ALAC music @ £300, not forgetting my purchase of dbpoweramp @£50 along with an apple SuperDrive @ £60 to securely rip and tag 2000+ cds, may as well throw in my subscription to tidal hifi as well @ £20/month - and it’d be churlish to forget my yearly subscription to roon at £120.
Then again I could have saved the best part of £5k all in and just made do with my iPhone and freebie apple earbuds whilst sat listening on my chair as after all, at the end of the day it’s just ones & zeros, right?
I never wrote I spent £2k on a streamer,
Alright, fair, you 'only' spent £800 on it. My point still stands.
yep…..I bought 2 relatively expensive Ethernet cables, comments are welcome.
You've been had?
Ethernet is a standard of various categories which are either met or not. It's not like the old analogue hifi world. What goes in == what comes out, or it's faulty.
Would office workers get more vibrant colours in their PDF documents if IT give them a twenty quid per metre patch cable?
at the end of the day it’s just ones & zeros, right?
As soon as you move from analogue to digital then yes, yes it absolutely is. 1's go in, 1's go out, all that matters is your DAC and speakers, anything else is the 1970s crying into its soup.
And if you want to pick holes in how I spent my money then I guess
... Well, Ok. Then I guess you've pissed a chunk of that up the wall as well, I'm afraid. As a random example, what the hell is that comedy SSD about? You could've shoved all that lot on a cheap spinny HDD and knocked a zero off the cost.
Also, you'll shit yourself when you hear about FLAC. That'd be an improvement over ALAC, is free, and wouldn't tie you into a single manufacturer's systems if iTunes etc goes bang tomorrow.
Big up Cougar on this thread! I wish I could be arsed to type all that stuff, but I know it's all just pissing in the wind. Excellent work though 👍👍
I’ve got a Surly Cross-Check worth maybe £700-£800, what do you want to put up against it?
Nothing. I said I wouldn't make a wager!
I haven't tried mains cable anyway. Point is that speaker cable does make a difference, and we agree there. T+E may be accidentally better than many HiFi options, but this would be more of an amusing coincidence rather than proof that cable doesn't matter.
I popped into this thread yesterday, thinking "ooh, this'll be juicy", and was disappointed to find there was broad agreement. I'm glad to see that normal order has been resumed, carry on 🙂
“cheap = bell wire,” I would totally agree. The shit we used to cable up midi hifi speakers with isn’t fit for purpose.
Can you explain how better cable than this, say your mains cable, does make a difference; and yet there's nothing better than the mains cable?
That like accepting that a Rockhopper is better than an Apollo, but there is no bike better than a Rockhopper.
That like accepting that a Rockhopper is better than an Apollo, but there is no bike better than a Rockhopper.
The purpose of a cable is to allow current to flow through it unimpeded. Once it's achieved that purpose and has no noticable degradation to the system it cannot be improved upon in terms of it's primary function. Yes you can spend more, but the audio won't sound any better as you're limited by a whole range of other issues.
The problem with the world of Hifi is that the primary function is often to be expensive / look special and the audio qualities are secondary.
Hence you never see any double blind reviews in the Hifi world....
I used to work in a HiFi shop.
My speaker cable recommendations were entirely based on how much extra cash I thought the customer was willing to part with.
My favourite wheeze was making sure both speaker cables were the same length even if one speaker was much closer to the amp.
I've got QED silver anniversary speaker cable, but only because I found a hifi shop selling off cuts in the lengths I needed. It actually replaced some much bulkier Audioquest stuff that I'd also got cheap from another hi-fi shop as the cable outer was all bent and warped from been stored coiled up too tightly.
I couldn't hear the difference between the two cables.
You’ve been had?
Ethernet is a standard of various categories which are either met or not. It’s not like the old analogue hifi world. What goes in == what comes out, or it’s faulty.
Ok complicated.
The audio to the speakers is analogue, so any degradation in that system can affect the sound you hear. However, a low resistance, low inductance, low capacitance cable isn't at all difficult to source. There are lots of other imperfections in the speakers themselves which are far harder to resolve.
Ethernet is a digital signaling scheme where the data is encoded digitally with error correction. The error correction ensures that under 99.999999% of circumstances the digital signal at the end is exactlty the same as the one at the start. Ethernet is designed to work exceptionally well over very cheap twisted pair cables, there's no point spending extra on the cables as it won't make any difference. You can easily see how well your cheap cables are doing as on pretty much any PC you can view the interface stats and see the number of errored packets received etc.
Can you explain how better cable than this, say your mains cable, does make a difference; and yet there’s nothing better than the mains cable?
That like accepting that a Rockhopper is better than an Apollo, but there is no bike better than a Rockhopper.
think of it like a bottom bracket. Holds 2 important bits of your bike together, a really really cheap one might be rubbish, but beyond a basic shimano bb (say, £15?) the extra spend (royce, king, hope, etc) makes absolutely zero difference except for adding bling to your bike
Can you explain how better cable than this, say your mains cable, does make a difference; and yet there’s nothing better than the mains cable?
Yes - as @sillysilly has already posted:
This guy made Hifi back in the day that would set the average person back the deposit on a small house. His article explains it better than anyone else I’ve heard: http://www.roger-russell.com/wire/wire.htm
In summary you just need the cable impedance to be well below the speaker's impedance, cheap bell wire will have a relatively high impedance except on short runs, mains cable will have low impedance in the lengths used by most people. It is not that hard to understand.
Auditioned a CD player years back, and salesman said he just wanted to try some new speaker cable that had just come, would I mind – of course not and he proceeded to change things over. There was probably £300 difference between what he had originally and there was definitely a noticeable difference – mind would not say ‘better’, just different – definitely more bass, more weight and more presence, but I actually preferred the original sound. So yes they make a difference, but its subjective if that difference is ‘better’ or not..
If either you shifted position or the speakers moved position during the cable switch, then that would much more likely explain a difference in bass response. Controlling the bass response within small rooms (with a 'large' room being a concert hall) is very difficult. Even leaning forward to listen 'closer' could have that effect. In the Hi-Fi world, room acoustics is doesnt' seem to be given the same priority as it is given in professional audio. It will hugely influence what you hear from your system.
The mains twin & earth that seems to be recommended: are we talking about the solid core stuff or the multicore? Because the solid core stuff must be a bugger to tuck behind the amp and speakers without pushing them about.
Physics says no. Audiophiles say yes.
Advantage of mains cable is it's easy to coil up as its round, slight disadvantage is it visually looks the same as cables carrying power and is bulky compared to he actual wire core due to the double insulation.
QED 79 strand is still over £2 a metre from most places. I've run a load of cable through two houses and bought reels of TLC's 79 strand 35p a metre on a 100m reel, 63p a metre cut to length. (though interestingly it's described as copper covered aluminium now - I'm sure it used to be pure copper)
are we talking about the solid core stuff or the multicore?
In audio terms there is no difference; but as you note in practical terms multicore is easier to use. But from the audio perspective the key issue is the c/s area of the conductors being enough to give a low impedence.
Never mind Cougar's bike, does the James Randi foundation still offer the million quid prize for this? I know that they used to and to the best of my knowledge no one ever managed to claim the prize.
Yes, it’s common knowledge that the more a cable costs correlates to better sound quality. That’s just basic scientific fact. But what you’re all missing is the importance of getting your sound right at the source. By adding a wooden volume knob to your amplifier: "Dynamics are better and overall naturalness is improved.”
@5lab – that’s a very different analogy, and not relevant IMO.
Weirdly, I thought it was beautifully apt.
@J-R a few m of bell wire is approaching 8 ohms?
@IHN the purpose of the hi fi is to sound good/accurate. The purpose of the bike is to function and endure (is what I take from 5lab's post - if you argue it's to feel good when riding, then weight would play a part too, not to mention that the more expensive BB may last longer also).
If you’ve got any digital devices, make sure you stock up on £1450 usb cables.
https://www.audiosanctuary.co.uk/vertere-pulse-hb-double-usb-cable.html
😆
WTaF? Is that a real website? o_O
you argue it’s to feel good when riding, then weight would play a part too, not to mention that the more expensive BB may last longer also).
I can't argue on the lifespan (my original post had stem instead of bb, maybe that'd be more appropriate) - but a sm-bb52 bb undercuts both king and hope bbs, weight-wise.
This isn't to say a hope bb isn't better than a shimano one. If you get on a bike and feel good about the fact that some halifaxian has spent 2 minutes machining your bb, and it makes you feel good about yourself, or your bike, then isn't that money well spent?
I was thinking more UN52...being retro 😉
Country of origin is a whole other topic...
If you’ve got any digital devices, make sure you stock up on £1450 usb cables.
But you need their £11k speaker cables to hear the difference.
Only the gauge of the wire, you want thicker diameter wire for longer runs - but that's it.
I used to work on the technical side of TV - the only difference between cables (phono, USB & HDMI) was the quality of the connectors at either end. If you were constantly plugging and unplugging cables then the more expensive ones tended to last longer. Apart from that there was zero difference, nothing measurable even using fancy kit.
Hold on a minute, I might have un-learned something I was told 35 y3ars ago...
My favourite wheeze was making sure both speaker cables were the same length even if one speaker was much closer to the amp.
Are you telling me I don't need 4 metres of cable coiled up behind my stereo just to keep each channel the same length?
Are you telling me I don’t need 4 metres of cable coiled up behind my stereo just to keep each channel the same length?
if you think your hearing is good enough to notice the length of time of something travelling at the speed of light over 4 meters (hint, its around 13 nanoseconds) then you're doing it right 🙂
I guess if you have got a cable that's causing problems (high capacitance, high resistance, etc) then you probably do want the same amount of it on all channels, otherwise I can't see a reason to.
I was thinking more UN52…this is a retro thread
So was I, which is why it's a great analogy.
UN52s (mains cable) just work brilliantly doing exactly what you want a BB to do, which is let the cranks spin freely and last for ever. A nasty cheap BB (bell wire) will probably get a bit grindy pretty quickly and will pack in after a while. You can get a Royce (fancy speaker cable) or something for ££££s more, but it will not work any better than the UN52.
if you think your hearing is good enough to notice the length of time of something travelling at the speed of light over 4 meters (hint, its around 13 nanoseconds)
...or the difference between two identical CDs, one of which has had a green felt tip drawn around the edge 😉
I guess we disagree then...and we've all chosen analogies to suit our positions.
dmorts:
If either you shifted position or the speakers moved position during the cable switch
“If”…neither would happen in any half decent demo.
Moving your head position if seated would be enough in a room with significant and uncontrolled* bass frequency room modes, hence my leaning forward example. Moving 20-30cm puts you right into the half wavelength of 130-200 Hz, i.e bass to low mid-range.
*As I also said, these can be difficult to control
