About 25 years ago, I was asked to check out the system of a well-heeled audiophile to find out why, after investing almost $100K in his system, it sounded so bad. He had some serious hardware in that rig: Krell amps, Wilson speakers, etc. He had just dropped $5K on some Teflon-insulated, solid silver speaker cables in an effort to improve the sound. The system did, in fact, sound terrible. But that was because it was in a room with a wood floor, wood paneling, plaster ceiling, a large bay window without curtains between the speakers, and only one chair. No carpets. Nothing at all to dampen reflections. I told him to stop wasting thousands on cables and buy some carpet, a cloth-covered couch, and some curtains. Two weeks later he called and thanked me profusely, saying he had spent about $6K on those items and it was the best "system upgrade" he had ever made.
Yes, there is audiophiles that spend their whole life by carrying in and out expensive equipment, in the same lousy room. And then thinking that they could get a different result..😢 First off fix the room there's plenty of companies to choose from if you can't do the DIY route. Then when the physical domain is done it is time to learn and fix the rest of the acoustic issues with DSP and verify with REW.👍 I can not imagine how my TT, CD and streaming would have sounded without the DSP. Only the imagination is the limit. Can implement ISO226:2006 and Interaural Crosstalk Cancellation and other enhancing technology from researchers and doc:s. 👍
The missus said to me... "let me get this straight, you spend over a £1,000 on speaker cables because you can 'hear the difference' but you can't hear me calling you from the kitchen" 😊
My RCA cables were 15k (each). Yeah, I had to sell my car, but now I can hear a guy cough on take 33 of a Thelonious Monk record. Well worth it, in my opinion.
A few years back, some French chaps visited BBC Archives to take a copy of a concert we held on 16mm sepmag film. They brought with them a very expensive Devialet ADC and some phono leads that were as thick as hosepipes and cost over 5000 Euros (Absolue TIM Signature). Not only were they directional, but they also stipulated which was the right and which the left. Le sigh. Only thing is... in the professional audio world we are balanced and phono is of course unbalanced. This totally threw them, as they hadn't brought a balancing box with them. Evil BBC engineer wot I am, I went down to my store and brought back the crustiest, rustiest Alice MatchPak I could find... :P
That was something I wondered about when I first encountered these "hosepipes" 25 years ago. If an unbalanced set of interconnects could be so bulky, what might a balanced pair look like? I did get the chance to use a pair of unbalanced directional interconnects once. It was at a live gig in a pub where we had cobbled together a bunch of known equipment between a few of us for a rock act. At the last minute the brother of the guy who owned the speakers and amplifiers produced a set of freshly constructed and yet to be "burned in" directional cables which we used to patch the FOH EQs to the power amps. We rang the PA out as usual - halfway through the gig and we were adjusting the upper bands on the EQ to compensate for ever increasing levels of unexpected high frequency content. Which we were assured was part of the cables "burning in" process; all I know is it did our heads in. I've used more conventional interconnects ever since. YMMV of course.
The $1000 dollar cable needs to be cryogenically treated for at least 48 hours, then the cable needs to be subjected to a period of 'burn in' of at least 6 weeks. Finally, you need to strap a small plastic bag of magic pebbles to the cable approximately 127.683mm from the tip of the cable at the output end. Before connecting the input end to an amp, wait at least 3 days or until the next full moon, unless rain is forecast within the next 8 hours.
The best part of this video was referring to signal path in an audio console. Such a great analogy that totally killed the $1000 one meter cable thing!
It's about by the same crap people are buying 1000$ IEC power cables... forgetting the whole 20 cents a foot cable running in walls from power panel to the socket!!! I remember being in an HiFi boutique and the guy changed the regular IEC cable for a 1000$ one, saying just after "See, it's much better!" I said "i hear no difference at all". He responded "you're about the first person who doesn't hear the difference, you may have hearing problem" !!! I said "Well thanks, i have to go"!
@@guyboisvert66 Some days ago a friend of mine was showing me some catalog photos of AC Circuit Breakers made for "AUDIO" together with Goldened Fuses for the distribution box. Well...
@@lotsofcouscous Gosh... as BS as it can be! The video (URL provided just after this sentence) shows a guy putting a dimmer feeding the power supply of a DAC and demonstrate that properly engineered power supplies are designed knowing AC may be a unstable and filled with noise. ua-cam.com/video/OL23xkLfPTU/v-deo.html The result: Audio not affected at all by this very bad AC supply! So when i see "Audio fuses", "high end" audio IEC cords and all that audiofool's / peddler's crap, all i have to say is spend your money elsewhere, much better get a proper room!
I think if you're going to buy one of these then you absolutely have to go for the Quantum Science audiophile mains fuses too, these sell for upwards of 4000 pounds each and are presented in little jewellery boxes so they have to be good, and if you manage to pop one it will be the most high fidelity bang you ever heard, your listening pleasure guaranteed.
My favourite theory about expensive cables sounding better is that when you pull out your cheap cable and plug in the new expensive one, all the contacts get a good wipe clean and some very low levels of distortion might be reduced. You could achieve exactly the same, of course, by unplugging your old cable and then plugging it straight back again.
I service vintage audio gear for a living, been working with audio professionally since 1977. I can verify that this is a legitimate thing you're describing, and the longer the system has been set up, the more likely it is that connections have corroded and become semiconductive. Cleaning those connections (and the pots and switches inside the units) can make a massive difference.
@@Douglas_Blake Yes, likewise I've read that many audio professionals (i.e. studio and broadcast engineers) give all their XLR connectors and TRS jacks a good clean periodically. A lot cheaper than replacing with snake oil cables.
My dad was a tv and audio engineer. Serviciing them and later in R&D and training. When I worked selling hifi we were discussing gold connections. That's when he confirmed it. I sold more gold cables than most because I was honest. No one wanted to think about having tarnished connectors.
@Douglas Blake for the purposes of selling cables for a high street retailer it was enough, and I'm sure customers appreciated the lack of bullshit that so many other sales people exhibited.
the non snake oil part in a passive audio system is, every rca cable and every speaker sounds different on a system that is very good at revealing differences. Personally i use nordost leif blue heaven 2m speaker cables. My shielded rca cables are custom made by GOTHIC AUDIO in the UK, with same gauge wiring as my nordost speaker cables with 0.4mm strands of pure silver with 4+ 4- and are connected with silver plated copper aeco connectors . My two way and now old speakers are my modified and now only a two way only and not a 2.5 way Monitor Audio GR20. Their original bass units are now used for the mids / bass . Cabinet walls internally lined with dead internal resonance . They are excellent two ways, especially with my two old AVI S2000MI amplification each used as mono amplifier. My short circuit active preamp buffer used for my DAP PLAYERS is my old linn kolektor, because it uses top of line burr brown TI instruments out put amps, and you can cut or boost bass by 10db below 40hz, and at 20khz. . Personally i cut the bass by 10. I also cut down the low frequencies from DAP PLAYERS line output. This means the mids and bass are always clear clean with no distortions with excellent dynamics no matter how loud i play them. There always is a vice grip on the drivers with no long excursions leading to driver excursion distortions, zero port noise, no cabinet resonances .
That's $1 per buzzword. Just give me a nice bit of copper with well soldered connectors. Having worked in live theatre sound, the bit of cable I care about is the solder and strain relief, a busted cable has a pretty bad frequency response and distortion figures.
Back in 1980 or thereabouts, I was working with a country band. One day we were setting up at a random bar nightclub when the bass player suddenly came unglued ! Apparently he couldn't find his special cord, (from his bass to his amplifier). I had picked it up thinking it was one of mine. I had already finished connecting my system and was noodling around on my guitar when the bass player noticed what had happened. I had not heard of (audiophiles, or audio extremists at that time), so I thought he was making some kind of joke. He said I had ruined his cable by sending a guitar signal through it, and now I owed him 100 bucks. The guy went completely nuts as the situation escalated into a total brawl. I left that band that night. It's next to impossible to reason with delusional people !!!
@Ronin Zanan - I'm a bass player and EE and would be pissed off if someone had stolen my bass lead, but a mistake would not have been a problem. The dude was obviously nuts.
Holy crap! I can believe this story too... some people are brainwashed into what they need to own or buy to improve their sound. Audiophile gear really does exist - expensive, quality gear.. but swimming in that same pool are the sharks making money from people that don't know better but want good sound still. It's been tested consistently.. so long as metal is conductive, cables aren't going to make a blind bit of difference to the sound quality whatsoever. I've seen blind testing and audio analysers tested with coat-hanger wire as compared with "Monster Cables" costing $2,000 a meter... zero difference. It's the ultimate in Audiophile snake oil. Some of the descriptions on ultra expensive HDMI cables on Amazon are hilarious.. higher transfer speed and superior digital transfer.. Zeros and Ones. Either are or Aren't. There's no inbetween. Also, thanks to redundancy and error-correction encoded into many digital file types - you can lose chunks of data and it still be reconstructed to the original without loss . CD-DA had excellent error-correction redundancy built into the file format itself - it was made so that any scratches or dust on the disc that were interrupting the laser reading the data could reconstruct the original audio stream without any loss whatsoever.
These obsessive end-users are incredible. Don't get me wrong, you're free to spend your money on whatever you like. But don't forget that Nebraska by Bruce Springsteen was recorded on a Tascam 4-track, and two SM-57s.
I can remember, back sometime in the eighties I think it was, when the colour of the insulation on the cables was being seriously considered as a possible contributor to the sound.
Back in the early 1990s, I had a friend who was an audiophile who gleefully purchased $1000 cables for his home theater setup. One cable he was particularly in love with was the digital audio cable that connected his DVD player to his amplifier. He said it ensured the wave-fronts of the digital signals were nice and square, that all the digital signals were the same height (voltage), and that the timing was as close to perfect as possible. Yes, this was a *digital* cable he was talking about. I explained that the voltage of a digital signal needed only to cross a threshold voltage to be classified as a "1" instead of a "0", and that "height" considerations beyond that were pointless. I also explained that the receiver uses a timer to sample the voltage on the cable, and that the wavefront doesn't matter because the receiver samples in the center--not the leading edge--of each pulse. For the same reason, the timing of the pulse wavefronts doesn't matter because the receiver isn't even looking (sampling) when the wavefront hits the receiver. I further explained that the digital pulses that come in through the cable are not digitized sound. Rather, they comprise digitized sound that has been packetized with checksums and other failsafe mechanisms that are not directly related to the sound. I told him to think of digital data as being instructions--like a recipe--telling the receiver how to reconstruct the sound, not the sound itself. (I made another dig by telling him that saying he can hear whether the timing of the digital pulses is optimal is like knowing a cake recipe was written in italics by the taste of the cake. He didn't appreciate that at all.) And even if I was wrong about all that, the digitized packets the wire delivers are *buffered* in short-term memory circuits within the receiver. so that when the sound is reconstructed, it is done so from the buffered data, not the data from the wire itself, rendering completely moot any concern about the timing or wave shape of the digital data delivered by the wire. But he continued to insist that his super-expensive digital cable sounded "warmer, more full and robust". I proposed a single-blind study in which I would switch out his digital cable with mine to see if he could hear a difference. We did the test, and he declared quite emphatically that "Cable B" was his because it sounded so much warmer and fuller than "Cable A" I invited him to come around to the back of the receiver and showed him that "Cable B" was my cable, not his. Moreover, I had constructed my "Cable B" from two clothes-hanger wires bent into random shapes to keep them from touching (so they wouldn't short out). We haven't spoken since that day.
@@jimsimpson1006 I guess I'll let it slide, then... THIS time. 😎 In all seriousness, I can't say I've missed his company. But I do wonder to what extent his ability to hear whether there's dust on the speaker cables (and other miraculous aural feats) has helped him in life.
Buyers remorse and denial in face of facts helps snake oil audio companies safe from a crowd with pitchforks. Unfortunately most people aren't tech savvy or engineers, so it's your word against word of the guy who gushed over and sold him 1000$ cable + buyer's remorse. All the person who doesn't understand anything about it can do is chose who to believe.
Around 1979 I was working at Rists Wires & Cables, who at that time produced a lot of cable and car wiring harnesses. One of my colleagues spotted a review in a hi-fi magazine for speaker cables. The winner was something like Sony "oxygen free copper" cables costing an arm and a leg; second place came a homemade cable made with Rists household cable (just a few pence). The company were only geared up for producing miles of cable so couldn't get on the bandwagon.
much cheaper than that isn't usually build that well and it carries a risk find cables made out of chinisum that has perceivable quality on a negative spectrum.
Ooooh, as someone who worked with RF and EMI and other messy stuff it sooo refreshing to hear someone mention relevant parameters for cables and instead of the normal "anti-cable" bunch that argues from "it's impossible" but rather the, and a lot more correct, "how much" perspective. I felt it included a lot more nuanced and relevant information than any other cable review I've ever seen (regardless of camp). I really liked your take/view on cables and would definitely watch more on the subject, a suggestion for new videos it would be regarding what makes a bad cable/good cable (as in when does issues become audible). Personally I don't trust any cable makers and think they are crazy overprized, so I buy by the meter so that I can get the materials/geometry I like for a fraction of the price.
The most exposed disadvantages of audio systems are hidden in phase shifts. In analog systems phase shifts are affected by anything because they are result od 3 parameters - R, L and C. And their exact combination (with linear character each has infinite number of values) are hard to replicate even we make them from the same materials and in same size of products. In digital we face even more problems because they are on fact hybrids of two. Wise conduct is to make them not exposed because it is only interfernence . But many say they prefer to listen just to revealing deatils charactristics with tweters working to 40 kHz and amplifiers working to 100kHz and sounding artificialy exposing that unusual bands It is as to build by purpose systems for detecting differences which in naturakl sound are covered and masked, in result are unnoticed. That is why in my opinion such differences are said to be observed only in High End price systems.
@Douglas Blake It is big mistake suspecting that cable will "consume " signal internally and there will be noticeable difference between in and out from cable Cable has too low serial resistance and on both sides will be of course tha same data. Anyway this "perfect cable" is affecting signal because electronic cannot handle nor equqlize it's deviations caused by own created in cable operation electrostatic and magnetic fields. Sorry if not easy but tried hard to explain it i shortest way and you are misleaded by all that long lines behaviours which have nothing to do in audio . This are separate subjects.
@@Mikexception You do not make any sense. Go look at transmission line theory. As soon as you have alternating current, DC resistance is not the only factor any longer.
A few years ago I had a conversation with a customer at a very high end audio store in northern NJ. I did some bench tech work repairing gear for them. This guy went on and on about how much better cable 'X' was than any other cable out there. How it 'opened the soundstage', etc... I went along with him because I wasn't going to deny a sale to the owner of the store, knowing full well that what he was spending on 2 meters of speaker cable was ridiculous. When he finally bought his cables and left I noticed he was wearing not one, but two hearing aids. He must have been 70+ years old. Yet his 'perfect ears' heard the difference in cables. Many , many years ago I had a conversation with a guy who, I'm sure, forgot more about electronics and sound than I'll ever know. Basically he said to get nothing less than 10 gauge stranded cable for speaker lines and you'll be set.
Don't know if they're still around, but I've seen "audiophile" AC power cords selling for hundreds of dollars, too. They even had different models for 60Hz vs 50Hz AC lol. Even if the premise was plausible, I can't fathom the logic of thinking that this 1m power cord is going to make up for the 50km of whatever back to the power station.
I recalled one story happened here in Moscow in Moscow Technical University of Communications and Informatics. They have an Department of Electroacoustics and they once invited head of the department of communication lines to bring two sets of his own cables with absolutely same measurements in which he is absolutely sure, to check if there will be listenable difference between them. He came, they listened his cables, after that he gets up and says: "I hear the difference, but it is impossible!" and gets out.
Jays Lab just released a video today with speaker cables costing $80,000. I also saw today a mono block amp stand costing $130,000. But it had double isolation. So there’s that.
I suspect that the amp will provide more value per dollar than the cables. But if I had $130,000 to spend on an amplifier, I'd probably spend it on something else. DM
Many years ago I did the opposite as an experiment. I had three cables. One was a nice $20 cable, the other a cheap $1 cable, and the last was an identical $1 cable that I whacked with a hammer on a cement floor and made it about as bad as I could. I flattened the one cable so much that no one would even think to use it in anything. I tried my best to stress it without ruining it. I walked on it, tied it around stuff, used it as a whip. The result did surprise me. They all sounded the same. They sounded exactly the same on some decent equipment.
Oddly enough, some analogists swear by flat speaker cable because it 'sounds better'. Of course, for practical purposes it runs better under carpet. DM
I heard a difference from the cheap cables they included with cable boxes and the mogami cables I made. It was warmer and fuller sounding more bass too. I had one side the mogami cable and one the cheap cable. I used the balance to shift left and right and swapped the cables over to the other side after to confirm both sides sounding the same. I wouldn’t spend more on cables then the $40 they co
@@jeff666p The problem with your experiment is that you know which cable is on which side, so mentally you could be biased towards one of the cables. Only when you have someone else plugging in the cables without you knowing which is where can you have a real test to determine which cable sounds better. It might still come up the same as you have decided now, but it would eliminate the bias.
@@YouHaventSeenMeRight I don’t listen with bias.. I have extremely sensitive hearing. People said coat hangers was an audiophile secret that it sounds much better. I tested it before buying solid wire . I could hear a big difference it made really warm but got rid of the higher frequencies. I didn’t like it so I didn’t buy it. I don’t fellow the crowd I make my own decisions. Even if I got $1000 cables for free I wouldn’t use them if I didn’t like how they sounded . I would sell them. I don’t like spending money on things that I find wasteful/useless. I spent 3 hours testing the difference on multiple days.
@@YouHaventSeenMeRight add in to the last post. (My tablet won’t let me hit edit). I always test things. My last monitor I spend 6 months deciding before I picked one. My mouse . I went to the store t
An excellent example of the application of just the right amount of knowledge to deliver common sense analysis and a breath of fresh air. Well done. I forgot to add: yes, I'd watch a part II, but it would be a challenge indeed to improve upon part I !!
If you want to have some fun, google "poles of articulation" you'll only see it mentioned in one place.. I get a couple print audiophile magazines - when done reading at home I take them into work so my electrical engineering and physicist colleagues can get a good chuckle. It's amazing what people concern themselves with, all in fantasy. I often wonder what the typical buyer of one of these products would do if they ever looked into their home wiring that goes to the outlet they plug their power conditioner into? They'd likely flip over and play dead like a frightened Opossum (one of my favorite animals).
OMG! What is people talking about in the comment section, just rambling?! Big thank you for this video and very thought out presentation! Very strange that people in general does not mention your intention in this video that is straight forward and concise... Has anybody done some serious listening comparisons between an expensive IC cable vs a cheap one? Is it only fake or can we really hear a difference? What is your story? I am sick and tired of all bull in this hobby. I mean, I can have a bad day when I think my rig is not giving me the pleasure until the next listening session without changing any cables or equipment - it is just me. That tells me that we (humans) has the over all most impact of a systems response - not a single IC cable... C´mon get mature!
Blue Jean Cables out of Seattle Washington make cables using Belden and Canare wire mostly, and they describe them using plain language. I have no relationship with them, but I do appreciate what they do and have bought their products in the past (when I was too lazy to build my own). I am especially amused that they were sued by one of the "Colossal" cable companies for patent infringement and did not back down from the frivolous claims of the much larger company. If you do a Google search for Blue Jean Cables and lawsuit you will find the story. It's a good read.
@@AudioMasterclass Video about this and other frivolous lawsuits in audio, perhaps? I could look it up, but it might be more fun to have Betty explain the claims to us...
@@TerryClarkAccordioncrazy Unbelievable. In the UK, I don't know about anywhere else, trademarks are issued in classes. Audio cable is Class 9, golf is Class 28. But of course when lawyers get busy, it's usually whoever has the most money wins. DM (NAL)
I have participated in many double-blind tests of all sorts of equipment. Here is my favorite: A few years ago we performed a test comparing cables. A group of 6 people listened. I announced that the first was a 40 dollar cable. They listened. I then announced: "I am switching to a $1500 cable. Listen for the improvement in soundstage and imaging!" They listened. Everyone agreed that the improvement was astounding. THEN I explained that I hadn't changed anything...the same 40 dollar cable was in place for both listening periods. Much chagrin was the result. People often hear what they want/expect to hear. ;)
I love your analogies, as a transmission engineer of more than 50 years, I had a good chuckle. Strange that us old folks know so much more than expected.
There is such a thing as "bad wire" but at some point...wire is just wire. I look for quality build and that's about it. Back in the seventies I was in Wally Heider's studio in SF...there was some problem with a cable.....we were told to go get some coffee while they straightened it out. As we were going out the door...one of the assistants was also leaving...he said "Don't go far...there's a Radio Shack right around the corner. It was fixed and we began recording again.
I remember a 'high end' audio cable company mentions in an explanation video that the direction markers on there cable are only to prevent customers to call the service hotline. Recently, I soldered my own RCA interconnect with 2 wire + shield per channel. Happens to be 1m long and has cost me about €25,- (parts). I think I hear a small difference in the sound compared to the €10,- cable from amazon. But maybe that is only because I made it my self. And we all know, self made cakes are better. No idea how to make a A-B compare which is objective. Or how to measure a cable without very expensive equipment and no knowledge how to do it. Spending > €1000,- on a cable? Never!! If I had that money I would spend it on CD's, because then I have defenitly a different sound coming from my loudspeakers.
" No idea how to make a A-B compare which is objective. Or how to measure a cable without very expensive equipment and no knowledge how to do it." High end oscilloscopes and spectrum analyzers would do it. But it's surprising, isn't it, that in a century of audio engineering there's not yet been a famous hit where the producer said it's all because they spent a week choosing the best sounding cables.
@@editingsecrets no, instead they produce music with distortion in it (too much loudness). So why bother distortion-free cable. If it was an issue. Normal cables are good.
Several years ago I was trying to research SPDIF vs optical digital audio and found a great thread - there was a huge debate raging with audiophiles SWEARING that some $400+ SPDIF cable made a huge difference, citing pretty much all of the things that you mentioned for these cables - "bass is much tighter!" "transients are WAY more accurate!", etc. Never mind that digital audio has no physical way of responding like that to any cable. Anyway, the thread culminated in a double blind experiment at a local audiophile shop with the expensive SPDIF cable vs literally a coat hanger with RCA plugs soldered to either end. The coat hanger won.
Most interconnects are expensive, fixed parameter tone controls. I’ve heard differences between interconnects, but it’s usually attributable to emphasis on a particular part of the audio frequency spectrum.
Working my way through your videos after having discovered your channel. Entertaining and educational. I like to think I've got a pretty decent system that I enjoy to listen to my favourite music. I've dabbled with cables (although never near as expensive as the subject here) and I couldn't discern differences objectively. What really made a big difference was going for room correction (an incorrect name as one doesn't correct the room). I'm a convert now where I used to be highly sceptical. What a difference; Thight and fast controlled bass; open, clear midrange; better timing, dynamics. Get a Mini-DSP or NAD with Dirac and spend 30m setting up. No amount of cable or other modifications to your precious systems will give you the improvement a decent RC system will. Would love to see/hear you investigate that.
"Magic" parts in audio has always been a particular annoyance to me, cabling especially. I used to make the argument that, in the USA at least, typical household wiring for a 15 amp circuit is 14 AWG Romex (around $0.50 / foot) and could be as long as 80 feet. So you want to tell me that that final 3 feet is going to make a difference? Sure is pretty though.
Perfect! That's what I always said to my audiophile friends... And, as he mentioned, the cables inside the equipment. any equipment hi-end or not, doesn't cost $1000/m. It's cents...
Inside the devices the audio signal travels through copper tracks and thin wires full of impedance, parasitic capacitances and inductance. And when the signal leaves the device, the person demands cables made with copper purified by the monks of Tibet. Trust me, it will be great.
I used to dabble in electronics and I found that the layout of the printed circuit board was important and getting things wrong could easily result in high frequency (above audio range) oscillation. When I'd dabbled enough in that, I decided it was best to leave things to the experts. DM
I got my cables from the advanced alien civilization from alpha centauri. They sound amazing. All it cost was a little intel for their impending occupation of earth and enslavement of the human race. I believe they said they were made from bullshitnium. And they were so appreciative of my perspective on human mating rituals that they gave me a perpetual motion device. I swear I can hear the difference over the one I made in my garage a few years back.
For a LOT less money, per meter, you can get 3 1/2" Andrews rigid co-ax. With a pump/dehydrator or cylinder of nitrogen (to pressurize it), total cost would still be less, at least, for say, a two meter run. This set-up worked very well for the 50KW AM broadcast transmitter I used to work on, to connect its output to the antenna tower. So it would PROBABLY suffice for connecting stereo components together.
Probably the least affecting yor sound are the cables. Not saying that it doesn't but there are far more important and often simple things that matter. Positioning of your speakers (1st reflection point...), audio rack or furniture, the floor where to put everything upon and the power supplies. Cables matter but from my own experience by far the least of all the above. Tip: spend the money on a good MC cartridge 😊
Cables only need to have good contact, made properly, and have enough strands (thickness) for doing its job for its purpose of choice. A good cable per metre shouldn't cost more than £1, which you can find from e.g. Klotz or others. Solder yourself.
Hello DM, I'm doing my best not to laugh out loud ! What's next, SWR meters for these cables ? P.T. Barnum must be howling right about now ! Best regards, Bill P.
I build one meter cables using the best materials for about $35 a pair. It may not look as fancy as an expensive cable but it sounds just as good and takes about 15 minutes to build a pair. My cables have twisted conductors with a copper braid shield, the wire and connectors are best quality.. Because one of the inner conductors carries the ground I do not connect the shield at both ends to lower the noise. This means the cable is "directional" because you want that shield connected at the source end
Good video, great presentation and attention to detail. Cables are sold by there marketing and not by their performance. With regards to fancy silver plating etc there's a natural flaw in this argument, any plumber will tell you that two different metals touching each other is a definite no no as it will react with each other over time and the metals will be inferior. Sticking to one metal if high purity will offer the best and consistent performance over time. Stick to high purity copper with good dielectric and you wont/cant go wrong. They will always be the best in all circumstances. Avoid the pitiful marketing and save lots of money and disappoint.
You are 100% correct and that effect is known as galvanic corrosion...or electrolysis. I don't know how much it affects audio signals, but it can definitely be an issue in plumbing and HVAC.
I remember my school chemistry, or was it physics. Two different metals in an acid makes an electrical cell and one of the electrodes will corrode. It doesn't take much of an acid for corrosion to occur over time and, as we know with our motor vehicles, rainwater will do. But where there is no electrolyte there shouldn't be any corrosion. If any chemists or physicists can expand or correct this, please do. DM
@@AudioMasterclass Two different metals may be also source of voltage. Some little some more - the value of voltage depends on temperature. It may in some cases create problem. Beacuse the internal resistance of such thermosource is low. At least I observed in my systemsome 10 yeras ago that periodic washing with alcohol repeatedly made something noticealby better in sopranos (which have naturaly lowest voltage in audio signal) . So I started to repeat it each few days. Now I switched sounding to natural and I do not notice any disadvantages which could do better by "servicing".
@@AudioMasterclass Physics Cables are not gas right so oxygen comes into contact with the metal and the corrosion is the metal "burning" 2nd law of thermodynamics.
I was once in a big comment ("2013 TAS Editors’ Choice Awards: Digital Interconnects") feud between computer savvy people from reddit and audiophiles insisting that very expensive USB cables somehow sounded much better than cheap ones. There are a lot of audiophiles who don't know the first thing about science and engineering.
I've always had the idea to let 'audiophiles' listen to three different 'interconnections' from different brands and let them put these three into the right order with 'the best' on top and 'the worst' below. I think that will turn out to be quite hilarious. (and pretty painful for those who fail this easy task,,,)
I once did a test with an ex-audiophile colleague of mine, on one of the audiophile forums that he frequented. We used some reference audio tracks that he provided, compressed them with a whole range of MP3 compressors (from terrible ones to the best you could get at that time). We then converted those MP3's back to WAV files and created a set of A/B tests that the forum users then had to judge on quality to see which was the original recording and which was the one pulled through the MP3 compression/decompression cycle. All but one of the forum users miserably failed to identify the original tracks. When informed of their results they of course came up with all kinds of reasons why they failed, the most hilarious one was the guy who always boasted about the fact that he could hear the difference between good and bad power leads, who claimed that he had used the wrong power lead.
@@YouHaventSeenMeRight I'm afraid that only one of your candidates knows how mp3 compression works and therefore was able to choose right. (Or he neither understands mp3 compression but simply got a lucky shot, of course.) I also think that most audiophiles suffer from a nasty 'keeping up with the Joneses' virus infection for which no vaccine has been developed. I mean, buying a Tesla doesn't automatically turn you into an EV technology expert.
I just found a $6000, 1-meter RCA cable. The Chord Company's ChordMusic Analogue RCA Cable. They use their own Taylon® insulation. That alone apparently "reveal[s] a musical landscape so believable that you can step into it."
It's really important to include the fine-structure constant when calculating optimal speaker placement, room-treatment composition acoustic coupling coefficients, and ideal qubit density/sq. cm. for the quantum regenerative AI back propagation amplification modules. As the rest can get messy pretty quickly, a good slide rule is your friend.
A slide rule my friend is futile. A microscope, electron accelerator and quantum physicist is more useful. You will also need 3 cable ties, 2 non ferrous locking nuts and a dead parrot.
Great piece! Pity the ones who fall for this snake oil. Yeah, 'audiophiles' are in denial of how roughly the signal is handled on the professional side before it reaches their esoteric systems. Have they seen the cables used inside audio electronics or speakers (even 'high-end' ones)?
You should borrow it and see if it’s got any merit. I think in professional equipment the interfaces are built to the same specifications. So the cables change the sound less than with domestic equipment where impedances and capacitances at either end of the cable depend on how fastidious about technical standards each equipment manufacturer is. Cables that stray from technical norms connecting equipment that strays from rechnical norms will change the sound. The trip is to choose something that excites your ear if you are an audiophile. In the studio cables will affect the outcome but probably less noticeably or significantly. Balanced feeds and impedance matched interfaces combined with correctly used cables level the playing field in professional use. However some professionals stray to the dark side and buy audiophile wires to spice things up…
I have to admit that ten years ago, I allowed myself to get sucked into the idea that purchasing a $100 (Canadian) Monster™️ 20 foot instrument cable, “designed for Bass Guitar”, was a good idea. 😂 I can’t honestly attest to it sounding any better than a normal inexpensive cable but it truly is VERY robust, having withstood the test of time and incredible amounts of heavy abuse with zero problems in connectivity or anything. It is still the cable that I use to connect to my Bass amplifier to this very day. Every once in a while, you do get what you pay for.
Hi-fi cables are one thing, instrument cables are most definitely another, potential problems being the tone being dull due to capacitance, interference, and of course crackling as the cable moves. This would be a different topic for another video, but if you have a cable that works for you I'd say buy another one in case you lose it. DM
Due to the high impeadences that guitar amps work at, high cable capacitance can result in loss of high frequencies. So good quality long cables are a must, whether you need to spend as much as $100 is outside my experience.
@@peters7949 Define long. Some years ago someone tested the HF rolloff on guitar cables and determined you should keep your (high impedance) instrument cable under 18 ft.
@@Wizardofgosz I would always suggest keeping cables as short as is practical, but on large stages with lead guitarists that wander all over the place, cables longer than 18ft (6m) are not uncommon. Although radio guitar transmitters are often used these days to overcome this problem. An alternative approach is to use a DI box close to the guitarist (or their foot pedals) then run a low impedance balanced cable to the amp. However the interaction of specific guitar & amplifier can be part of what makes the particular sound the guitarist wants, changing the lead & anything else in the signal path can have a noticeable effect on the sound.
How is it for flexing? One thing I always run into even with Fender(tm) cables is they tend to break at the plugs and I have to keep resoldering them. I finally got fed up and went wireless but the tone isn't quite as warm or at least that's my impression.
Yes, two Shunyata power cords, $1500.00 a piece plus a Kimber cable, $2500.00 for the first meter, and $2000.00 a meter after that. I have also had good results with an interconnect of pure copper with solid copper RCAs for $30.00 made somewhere in Asia.
It is simply voodoo. But not the only voodoo... one sees all the time how ultimately tangible signal and system theory (Fourier, Nyquist - Shannon) are completely unknown or misunderstood, but supposedly every difference wants to be heard that is supposed to result from doubling the sampling rate. If it's fun to get ripped off for such humbug, well then... I would rather treat myself to some concerts.
An Audio enthusiast friend once told me to forget about buying posh RCA cables, just replace the 5amp fuses in the mains plugs for 13amp versions as it makes much more of a difference. After a brief demonstration I got my coat.
For the sake of comment readers everywhere, not an electrician but I'm absolutely sure that replacing a fuse with a higher rated one is a safety hazard. DM
As many audiophiles will tell you, this particular audio frequency interconnect gives exceptional inverse reactive current on lateral phase detractors. It's small wonder that it can be sold for only £1000 and would still be a bargain at £2000. I will be ordering several sets - plus of course, the matching pseudo-mesmerizing perspirimeter which will ensure crisp optimal sonic clarity and accentuate the transient response across all frequencies. I don't understand how you missed this detail in your video.
At the end of the day, it is a length of wire that takes a signal from point A to point B. The most perfect cable or interconnect in the world would convey the signal without any change. Therefore any changes you hear (or think you hear) will be caused by the cable degrading the signal. True story - I have a Spotify family account that is used for casual listening, For the same money I can get an Amazon lossless account, so I took out the free trail. Sat down and listened to some of my favourite all time songs, tracks I was familiar with. Sure, enough when I went to the lossless stream, I could pick up out subtle nuances in the music. WOW! Being a bit of a nerd, I switched back to Spotify, guess what I heard the same nuances that had heard in the lossless stream. After switching back and forth between the two service I concluded that to my ears there was no real difference and quiet honestly was not worth the hassle of changing. My point is if you convince your self that you are going to hear a difference then you will. People are free to spend their money as they choose, but remember to enjoy the music .
The mere mention of cables (aka Interconnects) will send audiophiles into apoplectic fits, claiming that cables "improve" the sound of their system. I was fortunate years ago to have a conversation with an Engineer from a famous cable manufacturer BICC about their manufacturing process and quality management, we got onto the subject of "HiFi" cables - his response "we love Hifi enthusiasts, they will pay so much more for 'special' cables than our normal cables, in reality they come off the same production line". I have never found measurable evidence that expensive cables are better than a properly manufacture budget cable, but then I don't have audiophile ears - I'm just a simple electronics engineer who listens to the music ! Always love the enthusiasm in the videos
@@AudioMasterclass If the cable in question is a passive component then while it is possible to alter the frequency response due to IRC, an "improvement" is unlikely. But as you have said so many times, this is subjective change only the performer/producer/mastering engineer are really in a position to know. "Buying expensive cables produces a miserable difference" 😀
@Cary Scheck - Both ends need the ground return, normally supplied through the outer shield. Without it and using your source only grounding, means we have to employ the power supply's ground connection. A circuit needs a return path, whether that be a battery and bulb or a pre-amp and power amp.
It's been tested consistently.. so long as the metal is conductive, it's going to make no difference to the sound quality whatsoever. I saw a test with coathanger wire compared to Monster cables costing $2,000 a meter... zero difference. It's the ultimate in Audiophile snake oil.
Hey, just want to quote from extreme audiophile, 'You can't say anything unless you have used it on your highly resolving system! If you don't find a difference, upgrade your system to the next level, as your current one is not "resolving" enough. Repeat until you find a difference to justify the price tag!" Another quote, 'ABX Blind test is non reliable, when someone is blind folded, it affects your hearing capability, and repeatedly tests will just put strain on the listeners!' I usually suggest, 'then, how about making use of high precision equipment like Audio Precision boxes to test?' Replies are, 'trust your ears!'
I definitely agree it's not a transmission line and it's just resistance and capacitance that counts on a short audio cable. I needed a 3m cable to connect the turntable. So I used "shotgun" satellite cable with F type plugs and F type to RCA adaptors at each end. Well screened so it won't pick up any noise on that tiny signal and as it's designed to carry radio frequencies it's not going to lose anything due to capacitance.
Unless I'm very much mistaken most copper cables are oxygen free or they'd break easily. The elephant in the room is, once those interconnects complete a circuit, what are the internal cables constructed of? What solder, what PCB grade of copper? It's akin the utterly pointless purchase of a silver mains cable. Unless your home ring main has been rewired with silver cable, and you've got your electricity company to run silver from the local substation, the phrase 'an utter waste of money ' is appropriate. If we're talking shielding of interconnects, then star quad xlr (balanced) will out perform any single core without question. Ignorance separates a fool from their money.
I always ask myself, do these audiophools spend as much money on the down cable from their TV dishes. I guess not! Just by the way, hard drawn copper is not oxygen free, but annealed copper is since it is heated after drawing, allowing oxygen to escape during the heating process.
I've always been able to hear differences in petty much ALL cables. One has to pick one that appeals to them, whatever the cost or availability. Many people who cannot hear the differences are LUCKY. The best cable today might just be a bare silver solid conductor wire it you don't have noise generation in the stereo room.
Thank you for exposing the pure snake oil that are interconnects. All any normal interconnect needs to be, is shielded and have low capacitance. And the capacitance only matters if the source driving it is high impedance. Shout out to Amir at the excellent Audio Science Review channel who takes the time to test many of these audiophool products with proper high quality test gear and has never yet found a reason to waste your money on them.
It all is a mattter of how much is low interconnect capacitance and how much is high source impedance. In Pioneer SX34 tube amplituner output source impedance is 470 kOhm Is it realy disaster when comes to interconnect capacitance. In my ITT stero radio output impedance is 220k Ohm - interconnect makes disaster. In my Bang Olufsen output impedance is 100kOhm - it makes sometnhing to think about. Of course it is not about price and High End tag - it is all about technic.
That's why I buy the cheapest audio components they sell as soon as the distortion is under 0.1 %............nobody can not hear the difference with a10000$ amp or other component , they measure the same ...
As someone who’s tried a fair yet comparably modest amount of cables, and also studied physics, (namely material science & solid state physics are the ones you want for this), so would like to think I have a basic understanding of what’s happening with materials… & having been into HiFi for 28 years+, I conclusively can say that interconnects can make difference. Although, there are obvious terms and conditions to this & taking a cable and plugging it into another system won’t necessarily give them same results. The reason I’ve posted this, in spite of all of the “cables don’t make a diff’ comments (keep it scientific and open minded please) is because I enjoy this channel & the topics discussed - I’d love to see this explored on here more. The conversations and presentation styles are great. Great work & thank you. … back to it: As I’ve said, the cable is just part of the system, it’s not the entire system, & as for “snake oil”, I wouldn’t go so far as to use that term, I’d simply say however: there are cables that are expensive, cables that are cheap, ones that make the sound nicer, or make it sound worse (in my opinion), ones that are a good value, ones that are great value and some that are expensive - even if they make a noticeable difference. Comparison: Even if the sometimes questionable activities of something can be measured, like taking taxes, the perceived value is not the same as the measured result - opinion plays heavily here. Does taking taxes from people benefit even if it can be measured what they’re used on?… does a 2% difference justify a £300 cost for a cable? There are no facts, only opinions here. The other thing I’d say is that the “system” needs to be able to allow you to hear the difference the cable makes, & vice versa - also the new cable has to be that much further ahead than the old cable (or vice versa); so the system needs to have the technology internally to carry a very high quality signal and not degrade it before it even gets to said cable. 1 cable of type A and 3 cables of type B are not equally to 4 cables of type A, so the system as a whole from source to speakers (even the room surrounds), matter. Think of it as a chain from the power that your router / CD player receives, (in truth the original recording is the start), all the way through to the deconstructing noise outside of your window of trees blowing in the wind or that pneumatic drill digging up the pavement and sending drowning out sound energy into your room; it all matters… & more importantly, interferes. You want to hear the small tiny crumbs of the music at this level, the micro noises, so anything that is not on the recording, the buzz of a light switch or spin of a hard drive, is unwelcome. & that’s a key thing to recognise on cables, good cables don’t add, they simply become invisible. The best cable is no cable at all. If you could load a CD into your head, or LP for those who prefer, this would likely be the highest fidelity you could get from that source material. I wouldn’t try however. To (almost) summarise, if you’ve bought a component (not some cheap as chips component from the local Argos, or Tandy / Rumblelows, if you remember them, but an actually high fidelity & highly resolving system), and you’re feeding it a high quality source material, not to mention you have a half decent room set up… then cables are the way to squeeze that extra 2-10% out of what you won’t change. Albeit at what cost (and therefore value), is a separate question. And expensive is not equal to better necessarily. A £300 - £1000 cable when your next best DAC is £30k plus… it starts to make more sense, even for that extra 5% clarity gain. Everything matters and cabling is included. Even the quality of your carpet, thin vs thick pile, what’s behind your head in the listening position, toe of speakers, spikes or isolating feet, glass windows in the room, speaker distance from wall, noise traps in corners… if you’re talking science, sound travels differently in cold air vs hot air… it all matters and to my ears, such improvements can be heard (both a curse & a blessing - I’ll save that for another day). Not the hot vs cold in a room, that would be weird… only outside on a cold day, you may hear distant traffic if you listen carefully. Again, to make a final analogy before I close: a Ford Fiesta or an F1 car both get you to the local shops, at what cost & value is questionable if all I want to do is get to the shops. They are notably different, and even if the F1 car can only do 20-30mph, is it worth me buying the F1 car or is it snake oil? It’s a matter of opinion. Final final comment (before the final comment): trying to keep it scientific, run a test, but it would need to be a highly resolving one. Let’s do it by ear as opinion does matter. It’d be good to compare it to a scientific study afterwards to see how things match up, i.e. using a mic to record then compare. For the human test, 1st it would be necessary to certify the listener’s ears are up for the test - I even find listening is more accute at night - then with a highly resolving system, let’s say at least a £20k-ish plus system to be sure, £8k each for: speakers, amp (ideally pre amp & power) & DAC, grab a cheap as chips loom of cable, so OEM stuff from wherever, & listen & note down parts of a very familiar song. Actually take notes. Then swap out the entire run of cables with expensive ones (that come with a 5 star Best Buy or Highly Recommended review from a reputable HiFi reviewing platform, £1k a cable (new) should be good enough. Speakers cable probably £1k for a 2m run - just pulling some numbers from review memory) & listen. Then if you fancy, change 1 cable at a time. Always helps if someone can swap out as you do a blind test. … then share what you find. Happy experimenting… & remember, yes there are marketing departments out there trying to sell you unaffordable things…. Most importantly of all, there’s beautiful music and there’s technology. One more comment: As UA-cam doesn’t seem to object to my long winded story… think of a signal flowing down a perfectly straight narrow stream. In that stream are blue and red balls, being dispensed perfectly so they all arrive as blue and red balls in that repetitive order and perhaps in a continuous column on 5 balls, one after the other at the end. If there are small pebbles in that stream, hence imperfections in the material or a wire or interference such as RF that impacts the perfection of that flow, then the balls at the other end will not all arrive in the perfect red - blue arrangement. They arrive, but not as “cleanly”. It might only impact 2% of the balls, maybe it’ll it be the balls that represent the midrange of the signal, maybe it’ll be 10%. Can you notice it, how good is your eyesight, how good is the rest of the system and the original configuration in regard to keeping that red-blue pattern!? This is how I see the impact of interconnects and “noise”. But mentioned before, the less wires there are, the less chance for this given the same material. When the sounds of a song starts to sound like individual instruments and not just sounds; when the beat of popular song sounds like someone is beating a drum in front of you or a piano in the recording has creak and dampening or you can hear the wood of a guitar when its strings are strum, then you’re onto something! Good luck…. Your wallet will NOT thank you!
Amir at Audio Science Review has tested (i.e. measured the performance) all sorts of cables from really high end expensive to cheap supplied with product cables, and found very little difference. In fact, some of the uber high end stuff actually measures worse in some regards than much cheaper cables.
At a local electronic surplus store I asked why the price of silver placed teflon wire had gone up in price. The owner said all the audiophiles are buying it up because they say it makes the music sound better. We both laughed at the stupidly and lack of knowledge of transmission lines.
Digital audio & video design guru John Watkinson stated in one of his “Slaying Dragons” articles, sadly I forget the pro audio magazine they were published in. “if changing the interconnect cable, changes the sound. The audio interfaces have not been designed properly”. In my 40 years in the Pro Audio industry, as long as the cable was well constructed & used non tarnishing connectors (brass PO & Bantam jacks needed regular cleaning), they all sounded the same; ie did not affect sound quality. And don’t get me started on gold plated Toslink (optical fibre) connectors, yes they do exist! Remember the old saying about a fool and his money………
That is exactly what I was hoping to explain here but Iv'e got no success because it takes serious knowledge - it is rare to find in YT. . Cables do not harm the current but they make unstability to audio interfaces.
The mag was 'Resolution'. Some of the Slaying Dragons articles are available freely at ips.org.uk/category/slaying-dragons/, others behind a paywall. DM
I had some fun looking at hifi shops in the Netherlands. It appears they are not as mean about precious metals as here in the UK because they had offcut lengths of silver 10A speaker stranded cable in bargain bins for a few euros. It is as well to consider specifications as a starting point before buying anything. Silver will have a higher speciation because it has a higher conductivity than copper . This can be reinforced by the fact that the best instrumentation is also silver soldered.
I was brought up to understand that signal currents move along the wire surface and not within. Hence a multi-core cable will be better than a solid core one, especially at higher frequencies (it's why Litz wire is sometimes used in radio coils at LW/MW for those who remember AM radio). Thus ordinary 13A mains rated multi-core wiring will work well for speaker connections. I regularly used 50m and greater lengths of such cable in theatre work without obvious problems. For example, reactance at about 150pF per metre is like putting a 6.8 nF capacitor across the amplifier output or a 2.5K resistor - something any respectable PA will take into its stride having a typical output impedance of some milliohms!! But then, my hearing is defective due to the effects of rather loud music.
@Douglas Blake You are of course right. Skin effect becomes measurable at >45kHz, way above our audible range and even then small. Apologies for getting my impedances in a twist - I was schooled in my youth by an old radar technician. (Who told me he had worked with Watson-Watt!) At least the multi-core is more flexible!
@Bob T The typical mansplainer. No one cares about a 6.8nF capacitor across the amplifier output or a 2.5K resistor. If you want to talk about Ω and farrads, go else where.
Your comments about not affecting audio frequencies is very relevant. Most of these cables, when measured by current engineering standards, have poor responses in the audible range/band.
A fool and his money is easily parted, and the Master makes that point so well. And Betty helps with her knowledgeable asides to drive it home further. I hope the Master will now take the time to tell us whether we should go for a second sub-woofer...now that we are all going to save a bundle by refraining from the urge to purchase that one-meter cable or the...aahh...interconnect.
Go ask Abbey Road if they use £1000 per metre cables 😊 Completely for those with more money than sense - if you can't hear something on 'decent' mid price cables you are not supposed to hear it! And if you have noise in your system, find out where it originates from and repair/replace as necessary. Oh....and treat your room....properly. Otherwise just enjoy the music and stop obsessing.
I've no idea about this, but I did hear of a musician/producer/audio engineer who used 2-core 5-amp cable professionally for his interconnects. I don't know the technicalities of this, but I've taken the "If it's good enough for him" view. (The only difference is that I got 6-amp cable instead of 5-amp, as that was what came most readily to hand.) Obviously, I had no idea what I was doing - I relied on the self-reported practice of one expert - but I have been very happy with these cables' performance (well, it's not bell wire). Anyway, this came in at rather less that £1,000 a metre.
It is like the discussion about special USB cables to prices which us cry, as the advertisement say; it will make sure that the bits will arrive correctly - if that was a problem then we would have even bigger problems in the computer industry.
I love your no nonsense backed by factual data approach in your videos…very good. So let me share this….my system is not an expensive one, but it’s components make for a very neutral and revealing one. I don’t waste my money on vinyl as I grew up with that in the 60-70 & 80’s and it is simply inferior. High sensitivity KLH Kendalls(96db) driven by a Yamaha AS801, which boasts a very low 0.009 THD, pushing 100+ High Current Amps. I’ve experienced/auditioned High End speaker and power cables that simply didn’t warrant their price. For a whole lot less money, I terminated a set of 12 gauge Ox Free copper speaker cables with Silver Plated Banana Plugs from Audioquest that immediately made an audible difference, particularly in Bass response. Offerings direct from China…love or hate ‘em…have made higher end cables mush more affordable. My second “upgrade” was a locking coax cable terminated with silver connectors from my BlueSound Node2i to the amplifier. Again an audible difference was heard by not as pronounced as the speaker cables. And my last upgrade in my system yielded a quite astonishing difference in the complete sound signature my amplifier was delivering to the Kendall’s. Disclaimer, I have no affiliation with any company I’ve mentioned or am about to mention…whatsoever. There are many who think the term “Snake Oil” applies to any thought when it comes to power cables. But I found on eBay for less than $150, the Viborg MTR1501(I could be wrong) power cable about a half a meter or more long, that left me with a mouth wide open that I couldn’t close!!! I simply didn’t or couldn’t comprehend that there was that much more musicality inside my system! From decay, to textures to a completely more realistic tonality….I can say hat it is the single most important component, yes component in my system. So to answer your very valid question of “would you pay 1000 bucks for one meter of cable?” Absolutely not! But for all those who think Power cables don’t make a difference…..they do! Speaker cones vibrate at speeds defined by the current fed to them. The accuracy in which drivers vibrate to recreate particular sounds produced by performers and their instruments, including voices, is solely dependent on how clean the current is delivered to the drivers from the amplifier. And who the hell knew it would be that monumental?? I’m sure many have and do know……but I surely did not. Viborg is a Danish company who’s offering are made in China, which keep the costs down…way down! And they have proved, that as pretty as some of the cable on the market available are, none are worth the many thousands of dollars they ask for them. How much is that Viborg worth to me…having heard and loved with it…..it’s safe to say, I’d spend $500 for it. My total cost for cabling in my system is about 300 bucks. Again love your videos….a true reference source for any and all Audiophiles and newbies gettin into the Hobby!
I can also back this up when I added the iFi iPower (now outdated by iPower 2) to my DAC in my speaker setup and it made a BIG improvement to the bass quality, I now have an emotiva CMX-6 power strip which filters out noise and jitters from the dirty wall outlets as well.
@@rabarebra It's easy to say that if you've never heard clean audio before. Just think logically for a second, The Power grid is a very dirty current, so powering your audio gear with dirty power is like a flickering light on a cheap store, it can't give the full power potential and your missing quiet details cause it can't process them fast enough, In the same logic as driving audio gear properly with enough power, if that power isn't clean, there will be holes at points which effects the end result (these holes aren't obvious until you've heard it properly). I'd like to remind you that this wasn't an audiophile psychoacoustical snake oil moment like "oh I think I can hear a difference". This was a jaw dropping night and day difference like the power cables are just as important as my amp. I should also specify you don't need to spend anymore than $200 on a power cable, anything more expensive is diminishing returns.
I like the cables OCD Mikey talked about. Good copper cable wrapped in your favorite cloth and the Teflon sheathing is filled with sand. Now that’s a cable. Don’t forget the human brain is capable of letting you hear or imagine you hear what they claim.
Thanks for your insights! I've recently learned to build my cables myself, using the best materials for a fraction of such pricing (which IMHO is similar to a scam). With a bonus: they look great (as I want them to for no additional cost), and fit well with my deco - even if they're mostly hidden lol. I'm now trying a combination of one end from the amp having silver-plated copper connectors + silver braided shielding over Teflon (a Marantz, so that I lift high freq definition), and gold-plated copper connectors to the speakers (affordable ELAC's Uni-Fi 2.0, which already have a good definition in high frequencies, whereas the gold plating "could" lessen any harshness) ; the cores are pure Oxygen free copper (I could've gone with the Japanese pure copper which is about twice the price, but I don't think it would make a huge difference given the gear that I'm using)... Anyway, I'm just having fun experimenting with this, I'll see if it's relevant in the end.
About 25 years ago, I was asked to check out the system of a well-heeled audiophile to find out why, after investing almost $100K in his system, it sounded so bad. He had some serious hardware in that rig: Krell amps, Wilson speakers, etc. He had just dropped $5K on some Teflon-insulated, solid silver speaker cables in an effort to improve the sound. The system did, in fact, sound terrible. But that was because it was in a room with a wood floor, wood paneling, plaster ceiling, a large bay window without curtains between the speakers, and only one chair. No carpets. Nothing at all to dampen reflections. I told him to stop wasting thousands on cables and buy some carpet, a cloth-covered couch, and some curtains. Two weeks later he called and thanked me profusely, saying he had spent about $6K on those items and it was the best "system upgrade" he had ever made.
Yes, there is audiophiles that spend their whole life by carrying in and out expensive equipment, in the same lousy room. And then thinking that they could get a different result..😢
First off fix the room there's plenty of companies to choose from if you can't do the DIY route.
Then when the physical domain is done it is time to learn and fix the rest of the acoustic issues with DSP and verify with REW.👍
I can not imagine how my TT, CD and streaming would have sounded without the DSP.
Only the imagination is the limit. Can implement ISO226:2006 and Interaural Crosstalk Cancellation and other enhancing technology from researchers and doc:s. 👍
He bought $200,000.00 rugs?
@@TheSpoonwood Where do you get that figure from? He said he spent $6,000 on carpet, a couch, and curtains.
If he only had a chair why did you tell him to buy a couch?
@@6doublefive3two1 to soak up some of the reverberation in the room. Upholstered furniture is very good at deadening a room.
The missus said to me... "let me get this straight, you spend over a £1,000 on speaker cables because you can 'hear the difference' but you can't hear me calling you from the kitchen" 😊
I choked on my coffee reading that 🤣 and I would bet this has happened!
Try this, if you dare... ua-cam.com/video/c0jnBzvRkHs/v-deo.html&ab_channel=IowaPBS
@@AudioMasterclass 🤣 Fabulous !!! Was that PTF...O(ld)
@@AudioMasterclass I would love for you to ask the cable company for a review cable... And I bet you that they will not do so!
Give an audiophile 50 sets of cables to try out, and the response back will be 50 hallucinations.
Exactly.
My RCA cables were 15k (each). Yeah, I had to sell my car, but now I can hear a guy cough on take 33 of a Thelonious Monk record. Well worth it, in my opinion.
😂 👍
In my system the guy was wearing sneakers
@@filipedasilva8512 but can your system resolve whether or not they were Keds or Adidas?
🤣@@filipedasilva8512
LOL!
A few years back, some French chaps visited BBC Archives to take a copy of a concert we held on 16mm sepmag film. They brought with them a very expensive Devialet ADC and some phono leads that were as thick as hosepipes and cost over 5000 Euros (Absolue TIM Signature). Not only were they directional, but they also stipulated which was the right and which the left. Le sigh. Only thing is... in the professional audio world we are balanced and phono is of course unbalanced. This totally threw them, as they hadn't brought a balancing box with them. Evil BBC engineer wot I am, I went down to my store and brought back the crustiest, rustiest Alice MatchPak I could find... :P
typically english.
That was something I wondered about when I first encountered these "hosepipes" 25 years ago. If an unbalanced set of interconnects could be so bulky, what might a balanced pair look like?
I did get the chance to use a pair of unbalanced directional interconnects once. It was at a live gig in a pub where we had cobbled together a bunch of known equipment between a few of us for a rock act. At the last minute the brother of the guy who owned the speakers and amplifiers produced a set of freshly constructed and yet to be "burned in" directional cables which we used to patch the FOH EQs to the power amps. We rang the PA out as usual - halfway through the gig and we were adjusting the upper bands on the EQ to compensate for ever increasing levels of unexpected high frequency content. Which we were assured was part of the cables "burning in" process; all I know is it did our heads in. I've used more conventional interconnects ever since.
YMMV of course.
You're not entertaining
The $1000 dollar cable needs to be cryogenically treated for at least 48 hours, then the cable needs to be subjected to a period of 'burn in' of at least 6 weeks. Finally, you need to strap a small plastic bag of magic pebbles to the cable approximately 127.683mm from the tip of the cable at the output end. Before connecting the input end to an amp, wait at least 3 days or until the next full moon, unless rain is forecast within the next 8 hours.
You forgot the quantum dots to be placed on the ceiling at a golden ratio distance between the tweeter and the listening position.
You also have to sacrifice an unused minidisc player at the winter solstice otherwise won't work
Good tip! 😅
And the outer part of the cables insulators need to be handwoven by seven virgins under the full moon! Don’t forget this essential ingredient!
Audiophile basics..! 😂
The best part of this video was referring to signal path in an audio console. Such a great analogy that totally killed the $1000 one meter cable thing!
yes but as we know, once it goes in a box, it doesnt count
It's about by the same crap people are buying 1000$ IEC power cables... forgetting the whole 20 cents a foot cable running in walls from power panel to the socket!!! I remember being in an HiFi boutique and the guy changed the regular IEC cable for a 1000$ one, saying just after "See, it's much better!" I said "i hear no difference at all". He responded "you're about the first person who doesn't hear the difference, you may have hearing problem" !!! I said "Well thanks, i have to go"!
@@guyboisvert66 Some days ago a friend of mine was showing me some catalog photos of AC Circuit Breakers made for "AUDIO" together with Goldened Fuses for the distribution box. Well...
@@lotsofcouscous Gosh... as BS as it can be! The video (URL provided just after this sentence) shows a guy putting a dimmer feeding the power supply of a DAC and demonstrate that properly engineered power supplies are designed knowing AC may be a unstable and filled with noise. ua-cam.com/video/OL23xkLfPTU/v-deo.html The result: Audio not affected at all by this very bad AC supply! So when i see "Audio fuses", "high end" audio IEC cords and all that audiofool's / peddler's crap, all i have to say is spend your money elsewhere, much better get a proper room!
I think if you're going to buy one of these then you absolutely have to go for the Quantum Science audiophile mains fuses too, these sell for upwards of 4000 pounds each and are presented in little jewellery boxes so they have to be good, and if you manage to pop one it will be the most high fidelity bang you ever heard, your listening pleasure guaranteed.
Every audiophile would do well to learn the physics of electricity
Then they wouldn't be able to brag about all their fancy equipment. What fun is that?
😂 I studied material science and also have cables.
My favourite theory about expensive cables sounding better is that when you pull out your cheap cable and plug in the new expensive one, all the contacts get a good wipe clean and some very low levels of distortion might be reduced. You could achieve exactly the same, of course, by unplugging your old cable and then plugging it straight back again.
I service vintage audio gear for a living, been working with audio professionally since 1977. I can verify that this is a legitimate thing you're describing, and the longer the system has been set up, the more likely it is that connections have corroded and become semiconductive. Cleaning those connections (and the pots and switches inside the units) can make a massive difference.
If only there was a telephone service you could call where they would tell you to pull out the cable and plug it back in.
@@Douglas_Blake Yes, likewise I've read that many audio professionals (i.e. studio and broadcast engineers) give all their XLR connectors and TRS jacks a good clean periodically. A lot cheaper than replacing with snake oil cables.
My dad was a tv and audio engineer. Serviciing them and later in R&D and training. When I worked selling hifi we were discussing gold connections. That's when he confirmed it. I sold more gold cables than most because I was honest. No one wanted to think about having tarnished connectors.
@Douglas Blake for the purposes of selling cables for a high street retailer it was enough, and I'm sure customers appreciated the lack of bullshit that so many other sales people exhibited.
Love this level of snake oil, only beaten by the ceramics that keep your cables off the ground
and those $1000 hdmi cables from wireworld lol
What is your system?
the non snake oil part in a passive audio system is, every rca cable and every speaker sounds different on a system that is very good at revealing differences. Personally i use nordost leif blue heaven 2m speaker cables. My shielded rca cables are custom made by GOTHIC AUDIO in the UK, with same gauge wiring as my nordost speaker cables with 0.4mm strands of pure silver with 4+ 4- and are connected with silver plated copper aeco connectors . My two way and now old speakers are my modified and now only a two way only and not a 2.5 way Monitor Audio GR20. Their original bass units are now used for the mids / bass . Cabinet walls internally lined with dead internal resonance . They are excellent two ways, especially with my two old AVI S2000MI amplification each used as mono amplifier. My short circuit active preamp buffer used for my DAP PLAYERS is my old linn kolektor, because it uses top of line burr brown TI instruments out put amps, and you can cut or boost bass by 10db below 40hz, and at 20khz. . Personally i cut the bass by 10. I also cut down the low frequencies from DAP PLAYERS line output. This means the mids and bass are always clear clean with no distortions with excellent dynamics no matter how loud i play them. There always is a vice grip on the drivers with no long excursions leading to driver excursion distortions, zero port noise, no cabinet resonances .
@@Kowinaida what does that have to do with what I commented
@Keary Gallagher I'm not asking you. If you look my reply is to the initial post.
That's $1 per buzzword. Just give me a nice bit of copper with well soldered connectors. Having worked in live theatre sound, the bit of cable I care about is the solder and strain relief, a busted cable has a pretty bad frequency response and distortion figures.
Over 10 years ago I paid (for work purposes) over £3000 for a pair of half-metre interconnects. For a 40GHz network analyser!
Those 7mm precision connectors Keysight uses do cost a pretty penny.
Back in 1980 or thereabouts, I was working with a country band. One day we were setting up at a random bar nightclub when the bass player suddenly came unglued ! Apparently he couldn't find his special cord, (from his bass to his amplifier). I had picked it up thinking it was one of mine. I had already finished connecting my system and was noodling around on my guitar when the bass player noticed what had happened. I had not heard of (audiophiles, or audio extremists at that time), so I thought he was making some kind of joke. He said I had ruined his cable by sending a guitar signal through it, and now I owed him 100 bucks. The guy went completely nuts as the situation escalated into a total brawl. I left that band that night. It's next to impossible to reason with delusional people !!!
@Ronin Zanan - I'm a bass player and EE and would be pissed off if someone had stolen my bass lead, but a mistake would not have been a problem. The dude was obviously nuts.
Whoah. It's a good thing you didn't plug it into an electric ukulele. That would have let all the smoke out of the cable.
Holy crap! I can believe this story too... some people are brainwashed into what they need to own or buy to improve their sound. Audiophile gear really does exist - expensive, quality gear.. but swimming in that same pool are the sharks making money from people that don't know better but want good sound still.
It's been tested consistently.. so long as metal is conductive, cables aren't going to make a blind bit of difference to the sound quality whatsoever. I've seen blind testing and audio analysers tested with coat-hanger wire as compared with "Monster Cables" costing $2,000 a meter... zero difference. It's the ultimate in Audiophile snake oil.
Some of the descriptions on ultra expensive HDMI cables on Amazon are hilarious.. higher transfer speed and superior digital transfer.. Zeros and Ones. Either are or Aren't. There's no inbetween. Also, thanks to redundancy and error-correction encoded into many digital file types - you can lose chunks of data and it still be reconstructed to the original without loss . CD-DA had excellent error-correction redundancy built into the file format itself - it was made so that any scratches or dust on the disc that were interrupting the laser reading the data could reconstruct the original audio stream without any loss whatsoever.
These obsessive end-users are incredible. Don't get me wrong, you're free to spend your money on whatever you like. But don't forget that Nebraska by Bruce Springsteen was recorded on a Tascam 4-track, and two SM-57s.
I can remember, back sometime in the eighties I think it was, when the colour of the insulation on the cables was being seriously considered as a possible contributor to the sound.
Back in the early 1990s, I had a friend who was an audiophile who gleefully purchased $1000 cables for his home theater setup.
One cable he was particularly in love with was the digital audio cable that connected his DVD player to his amplifier. He said it ensured the wave-fronts of the digital signals were nice and square, that all the digital signals were the same height (voltage), and that the timing was as close to perfect as possible.
Yes, this was a *digital* cable he was talking about.
I explained that the voltage of a digital signal needed only to cross a threshold voltage to be classified as a "1" instead of a "0", and that "height" considerations beyond that were pointless. I also explained that the receiver uses a timer to sample the voltage on the cable, and that the wavefront doesn't matter because the receiver samples in the center--not the leading edge--of each pulse. For the same reason, the timing of the pulse wavefronts doesn't matter because the receiver isn't even looking (sampling) when the wavefront hits the receiver.
I further explained that the digital pulses that come in through the cable are not digitized sound. Rather, they comprise digitized sound that has been packetized with checksums and other failsafe mechanisms that are not directly related to the sound. I told him to think of digital data as being instructions--like a recipe--telling the receiver how to reconstruct the sound, not the sound itself. (I made another dig by telling him that saying he can hear whether the timing of the digital pulses is optimal is like knowing a cake recipe was written in italics by the taste of the cake. He didn't appreciate that at all.)
And even if I was wrong about all that, the digitized packets the wire delivers are *buffered* in short-term memory circuits within the receiver. so that when the sound is reconstructed, it is done so from the buffered data, not the data from the wire itself, rendering completely moot any concern about the timing or wave shape of the digital data delivered by the wire.
But he continued to insist that his super-expensive digital cable sounded "warmer, more full and robust".
I proposed a single-blind study in which I would switch out his digital cable with mine to see if he could hear a difference.
We did the test, and he declared quite emphatically that "Cable B" was his because it sounded so much warmer and fuller than "Cable A"
I invited him to come around to the back of the receiver and showed him that "Cable B" was my cable, not his. Moreover, I had constructed my "Cable B" from two clothes-hanger wires bent into random shapes to keep them from touching (so they wouldn't short out).
We haven't spoken since that day.
😂 oh dear. How NOT to win friends and influence people?
@@jimsimpson1006 I know, right? That guy was SUCH a complete...
Wait... You're referring to me, aren't you? 😏
@@Astronomator yes, but light-heartedly. 🙂
@@jimsimpson1006 I guess I'll let it slide, then... THIS time. 😎
In all seriousness, I can't say I've missed his company. But I do wonder to what extent his ability to hear whether there's dust on the speaker cables (and other miraculous aural feats) has helped him in life.
Buyers remorse and denial in face of facts helps snake oil audio companies safe from a crowd with pitchforks.
Unfortunately most people aren't tech savvy or engineers, so it's your word against word of the guy who gushed over and sold him 1000$ cable + buyer's remorse.
All the person who doesn't understand anything about it can do is chose who to believe.
Around 1979 I was working at Rists Wires & Cables, who at that time produced a lot of cable and car wiring harnesses. One of my colleagues spotted a review in a hi-fi magazine for speaker cables. The winner was something like Sony "oxygen free copper" cables costing an arm and a leg; second place came a homemade cable made with Rists household cable (just a few pence). The company were only geared up for producing miles of cable so couldn't get on the bandwagon.
Bought an interconnect last month for just over a tenner and thought that expensive :)
much cheaper than that isn't usually build that well and it carries a risk find cables made out of chinisum that has perceivable quality on a negative spectrum.
Let me guess, there was no difference.
You’d be better off spending the money to build a Faraday Cage around your listening room. 😃
Ooooh, as someone who worked with RF and EMI and other messy stuff it sooo refreshing to hear someone mention relevant parameters for cables and instead of the normal "anti-cable" bunch that argues from "it's impossible" but rather the, and a lot more correct, "how much" perspective. I felt it included a lot more nuanced and relevant information than any other cable review I've ever seen (regardless of camp). I really liked your take/view on cables and would definitely watch more on the subject, a suggestion for new videos it would be regarding what makes a bad cable/good cable (as in when does issues become audible). Personally I don't trust any cable makers and think they are crazy overprized, so I buy by the meter so that I can get the materials/geometry I like for a fraction of the price.
The most exposed disadvantages of audio systems are hidden in phase shifts. In analog systems phase shifts are affected by anything because they are result od 3 parameters - R, L and C. And their exact combination (with linear character each has infinite number of values) are hard to replicate even we make them from the same materials and in same size of products. In digital we face even more problems because they are on fact hybrids of two.
Wise conduct is to make them not exposed because it is only interfernence . But many say they prefer to listen just to revealing deatils charactristics with tweters working to 40 kHz and amplifiers working to 100kHz and sounding artificialy exposing that unusual bands It is as to build by purpose systems for detecting differences which in naturakl sound are covered and masked, in result are unnoticed. That is why in my opinion such differences are said to be observed only in High End price systems.
@Douglas Blake It is big mistake suspecting that cable will "consume " signal internally and there will be noticeable difference between in and out from cable Cable has too low serial resistance and on both sides will be of course tha same data. Anyway this "perfect cable" is affecting signal because electronic cannot handle nor equqlize it's deviations caused by own created in cable operation electrostatic and magnetic fields. Sorry if not easy but tried hard to explain it i shortest way and you are misleaded by all that long lines behaviours which have nothing to do in audio . This are separate subjects.
@@Mikexception You do not make any sense. Go look at transmission line theory. As soon as you have alternating current, DC resistance is not the only factor any longer.
@@nicoras8803 . Three sentences and three "agendas" without sign of valuable information. Nothing to negate and no any input. Are you politician?
A few years ago I had a conversation with a customer at a very high end audio store in northern NJ. I did some bench tech work repairing gear for them. This guy went on and on about how much better cable 'X' was than any other cable out there. How it 'opened the soundstage', etc... I went along with him because I wasn't going to deny a sale to the owner of the store, knowing full well that what he was spending on 2 meters of speaker cable was ridiculous. When he finally bought his cables and left I noticed he was wearing not one, but two hearing aids. He must have been 70+ years old. Yet his 'perfect ears' heard the difference in cables. Many , many years ago I had a conversation with a guy who, I'm sure, forgot more about electronics and sound than I'll ever know. Basically he said to get nothing less than 10 gauge stranded cable for speaker lines and you'll be set.
Don't know if they're still around, but I've seen "audiophile" AC power cords selling for hundreds of dollars, too. They even had different models for 60Hz vs 50Hz AC lol. Even if the premise was plausible, I can't fathom the logic of thinking that this 1m power cord is going to make up for the 50km of whatever back to the power station.
Yes a cable video. I love audiophile cable talk as much as the next person, more perhaps.
I recalled one story happened here in Moscow in Moscow Technical University of Communications and Informatics. They have an Department of Electroacoustics and they once invited head of the department of communication lines to bring two sets of his own cables with absolutely same measurements in which he is absolutely sure, to check if there will be listenable difference between them. He came, they listened his cables, after that he gets up and says: "I hear the difference, but it is impossible!" and gets out.
I've recently paid £20 for a 3 meter cable, and I thought that was overpriced.
Jays Lab just released a video today with speaker cables costing $80,000.
I also saw today a mono block amp stand costing $130,000. But it had double isolation. So there’s that.
I suspect that the amp will provide more value per dollar than the cables. But if I had $130,000 to spend on an amplifier, I'd probably spend it on something else. DM
@@AudioMasterclass I think the $130,000 was for the stand, not the amp!😳
@@zetmoon I don't think there's an emoji sufficient to comment on that. DM
Many years ago I did the opposite as an experiment. I had three cables. One was a nice $20 cable, the other a cheap $1 cable, and the last was an identical $1 cable that I whacked with a hammer on a cement floor and made it about as bad as I could. I flattened the one cable so much that no one would even think to use it in anything. I tried my best to stress it without ruining it. I walked on it, tied it around stuff, used it as a whip. The result did surprise me. They all sounded the same. They sounded exactly the same on some decent equipment.
Oddly enough, some analogists swear by flat speaker cable because it 'sounds better'. Of course, for practical purposes it runs better under carpet. DM
I heard a difference from the cheap cables they included with cable boxes and the mogami cables I made. It was warmer and fuller sounding more bass too. I had one side the mogami cable and one the cheap cable. I used the balance to shift left and right and swapped the cables over to the other side after to confirm both sides sounding the same. I wouldn’t spend more on cables then the $40 they co
@@jeff666p The problem with your experiment is that you know which cable is on which side, so mentally you could be biased towards one of the cables. Only when you have someone else plugging in the cables without you knowing which is where can you have a real test to determine which cable sounds better. It might still come up the same as you have decided now, but it would eliminate the bias.
@@YouHaventSeenMeRight I don’t listen with bias.. I have extremely sensitive hearing. People said coat hangers was an audiophile secret that it sounds much better. I tested it before buying solid wire . I could hear a big difference it made really warm but got rid of the higher frequencies. I didn’t like it so I didn’t buy it. I don’t fellow the crowd I make my own decisions. Even if I got $1000 cables for free I wouldn’t use them if I didn’t like how they sounded . I would sell them. I don’t like spending money on things that I find wasteful/useless. I spent 3 hours testing the difference on multiple days.
@@YouHaventSeenMeRight add in to the last post. (My tablet won’t let me hit edit). I always test things. My last monitor I spend 6 months deciding before I picked one. My mouse . I went to the store t
An excellent example of the application of just the right amount of knowledge to deliver common sense analysis and a breath of fresh air. Well done. I forgot to add: yes, I'd watch a part II, but it would be a challenge indeed to improve upon part I !!
My RCA cables cost about $30 from Amazon, and my speaker cables were found in a cardboard box in a storage unit. My system sounds awesome.
If you want to have some fun, google "poles of articulation" you'll only see it mentioned in one place.. I get a couple print audiophile magazines - when done reading at home I take them into work so my electrical engineering and physicist colleagues can get a good chuckle. It's amazing what people concern themselves with, all in fantasy. I often wonder what the typical buyer of one of these products would do if they ever looked into their home wiring that goes to the outlet they plug their power conditioner into? They'd likely flip over and play dead like a frightened Opossum (one of my favorite animals).
I feel another video coming along. DM
OMG! What is people talking about in the comment section, just rambling?! Big thank you for this video and very thought out presentation! Very strange that people in general does not mention your intention in this video that is straight forward and concise... Has anybody done some serious listening comparisons between an expensive IC cable vs a cheap one? Is it only fake or can we really hear a difference? What is your story? I am sick and tired of all bull in this hobby. I mean, I can have a bad day when I think my rig is not giving me the pleasure until the next listening session without changing any cables or equipment - it is just me. That tells me that we (humans) has the over all most impact of a systems response - not a single IC cable... C´mon get mature!
Blue Jean Cables out of Seattle Washington make cables using Belden and Canare wire mostly, and they describe them using plain language. I have no relationship with them, but I do appreciate what they do and have bought their products in the past (when I was too lazy to build my own). I am especially amused that they were sued by one of the "Colossal" cable companies for patent infringement and did not back down from the frivolous claims of the much larger company. If you do a Google search for Blue Jean Cables and lawsuit you will find the story. It's a good read.
Yes, it's a monster of a story. DM
@@AudioMasterclass Video about this and other frivolous lawsuits in audio, perhaps? I could look it up, but it might be more fun to have Betty explain the claims to us...
They also sued Monster Mini Golf.
@@TerryClarkAccordioncrazy Unbelievable. In the UK, I don't know about anywhere else, trademarks are issued in classes. Audio cable is Class 9, golf is Class 28. But of course when lawyers get busy, it's usually whoever has the most money wins. DM (NAL)
I have participated in many double-blind tests of all sorts of equipment. Here is my favorite: A few years ago we performed a test comparing cables. A group of 6 people listened. I announced that the first was a 40 dollar cable. They listened. I then announced: "I am switching to a $1500 cable. Listen for the improvement in soundstage and imaging!" They listened. Everyone agreed that the improvement was astounding. THEN I explained that I hadn't changed anything...the same 40 dollar cable was in place for both listening periods. Much chagrin was the result. People often hear what they want/expect to hear. ;)
$1000 is a bargain if it gets rid of my 8k tinnitus hell.
Ditto, brother.
For a repair, I soldered salvaged 22ga wires from a phone line onto the pcb of my audio technica stereo mic.. worked great
I love your analogies, as a transmission engineer of more than 50 years, I had a good chuckle. Strange that us old folks know so much more than expected.
There is such a thing as "bad wire" but at some point...wire is just wire. I look for quality build and that's about it. Back in the seventies I was in Wally Heider's studio in SF...there was some problem with a cable.....we were told to go get some coffee while they straightened it out. As we were going out the door...one of the assistants was also leaving...he said "Don't go far...there's a Radio Shack right around the corner. It was fixed and we began recording again.
I remember a 'high end' audio cable company mentions in an explanation video that the direction markers on there cable are only to prevent customers to call the service hotline.
Recently, I soldered my own RCA interconnect with 2 wire + shield per channel. Happens to be 1m long and has cost me about €25,- (parts). I think I hear a small difference in the sound compared to the €10,- cable from amazon. But maybe that is only because I made it my self. And we all know, self made cakes are better. No idea how to make a A-B compare which is objective. Or how to measure a cable without very expensive equipment and no knowledge how to do it.
Spending > €1000,- on a cable? Never!! If I had that money I would spend it on CD's, because then I have defenitly a different sound coming from my loudspeakers.
" No idea how to make a A-B compare which is objective. Or how to measure a cable without very expensive equipment and no knowledge how to do it." High end oscilloscopes and spectrum analyzers would do it. But it's surprising, isn't it, that in a century of audio engineering there's not yet been a famous hit where the producer said it's all because they spent a week choosing the best sounding cables.
@@editingsecrets no, instead they produce music with distortion in it (too much loudness). So why bother distortion-free cable. If it was an issue. Normal cables are good.
This is a useful perspective. For £1000 GBP I could buy 500 or more CDs secondhand from boot sales. DM
Several years ago I was trying to research SPDIF vs optical digital audio and found a great thread - there was a huge debate raging with audiophiles SWEARING that some $400+ SPDIF cable made a huge difference, citing pretty much all of the things that you mentioned for these cables - "bass is much tighter!" "transients are WAY more accurate!", etc. Never mind that digital audio has no physical way of responding like that to any cable. Anyway, the thread culminated in a double blind experiment at a local audiophile shop with the expensive SPDIF cable vs literally a coat hanger with RCA plugs soldered to either end. The coat hanger won.
Most interconnects are expensive, fixed parameter tone controls. I’ve heard differences between interconnects, but it’s usually attributable to emphasis on a particular part of the audio frequency spectrum.
@@Douglas_Blake With electrical characteristics, which have the potential to alter the signal, albeit by relatively minor amounts.
@@Douglas_Blake So cable manufacturers quoting capacitance & impedance figures etc is pointless then? Thanks for the 101, btw 😉
Working my way through your videos after having discovered your channel. Entertaining and educational. I like to think I've got a pretty decent system that I enjoy to listen to my favourite music. I've dabbled with cables (although never near as expensive as the subject here) and I couldn't discern differences objectively. What really made a big difference was going for room correction (an incorrect name as one doesn't correct the room). I'm a convert now where I used to be highly sceptical. What a difference; Thight and fast controlled bass; open, clear midrange; better timing, dynamics. Get a Mini-DSP or NAD with Dirac and spend 30m setting up. No amount of cable or other modifications to your precious systems will give you the improvement a decent RC system will. Would love to see/hear you investigate that.
"Magic" parts in audio has always been a particular annoyance to me, cabling especially. I used to make the argument that, in the USA at least, typical household wiring for a 15 amp circuit is 14 AWG Romex (around $0.50 / foot) and could be as long as 80 feet. So you want to tell me that that final 3 feet is going to make a difference? Sure is pretty though.
Perfect! That's what I always said to my audiophile friends... And, as he mentioned, the cables inside the equipment. any equipment hi-end or not, doesn't cost $1000/m. It's cents...
Open the back of the amp and there's a tin plated pin to a solder pad going to a PCB trace of course.
These people will be horrified if they ever open up their amps. "Everything I was told is a lie!"
Inside the devices the audio signal travels through copper tracks and thin wires full of impedance, parasitic capacitances and inductance. And when the signal leaves the device, the person demands cables made with copper purified by the monks of Tibet. Trust me, it will be great.
I used to dabble in electronics and I found that the layout of the printed circuit board was important and getting things wrong could easily result in high frequency (above audio range) oscillation. When I'd dabbled enough in that, I decided it was best to leave things to the experts. DM
I got my cables from the advanced alien civilization from alpha centauri. They sound amazing. All it cost was a little intel for their impending occupation of earth and enslavement of the human race. I believe they said they were made from bullshitnium. And they were so appreciative of my perspective on human mating rituals that they gave me a perpetual motion device. I swear I can hear the difference over the one I made in my garage a few years back.
For a LOT less money, per meter, you can get 3 1/2" Andrews rigid co-ax. With a pump/dehydrator or cylinder of nitrogen (to pressurize it), total cost would still be less, at least, for say, a two meter run. This set-up worked very well for the 50KW AM broadcast transmitter I used to work on, to connect its output to the antenna tower. So it would PROBABLY suffice for connecting stereo components together.
Newflash - Audiophiles rush to pressurise their cables. DM
Probably the least affecting yor sound are the cables. Not saying that it doesn't but there are far more important and often simple things that matter. Positioning of your speakers (1st reflection point...), audio rack or furniture, the floor where to put everything upon and the power supplies. Cables matter but from my own experience by far the least of all the above. Tip: spend the money on a good MC cartridge 😊
Cables only need to have good contact, made properly, and have enough strands (thickness) for doing its job for its purpose of choice. A good cable per metre shouldn't cost more than £1, which you can find from e.g. Klotz or others. Solder yourself.
Don't forget to give Jack a ring when the instructions say 'insert connector and phone jack'.
Improves your sound no end.
Hello DM,
I'm doing my best not to laugh out loud !
What's next, SWR meters for these cables ?
P.T. Barnum must be howling right about now !
Best regards,
Bill P.
It wouldn't surprise me. Here's a link for anyone interested... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWR_meter DM
I build one meter cables using the best materials for about $35 a pair. It may not look as fancy as an expensive cable but it sounds just as good and takes about 15 minutes to build a pair. My cables have twisted conductors with a copper braid shield, the wire and connectors are best quality.. Because one of the inner conductors carries the ground I do not connect the shield at both ends to lower the noise. This means the cable is "directional" because you want that shield connected at the source end
Good video, great presentation and attention to detail. Cables are sold by there marketing and not by their performance. With regards to fancy silver plating etc there's a natural flaw in this argument, any plumber will tell you that two different metals touching each other is a definite no no as it will react with each other over time and the metals will be inferior. Sticking to one metal if high purity will offer the best and consistent performance over time. Stick to high purity copper with good dielectric and you wont/cant go wrong. They will always be the best in all circumstances. Avoid the pitiful marketing and save lots of money and disappoint.
You are 100% correct and that effect is known as galvanic corrosion...or electrolysis. I don't know how much it affects audio signals, but it can definitely be an issue in plumbing and HVAC.
I remember my school chemistry, or was it physics. Two different metals in an acid makes an electrical cell and one of the electrodes will corrode. It doesn't take much of an acid for corrosion to occur over time and, as we know with our motor vehicles, rainwater will do. But where there is no electrolyte there shouldn't be any corrosion. If any chemists or physicists can expand or correct this, please do. DM
@@AudioMasterclass Two different metals may be also source of voltage. Some little some more - the value of voltage depends on temperature. It may in some cases create problem. Beacuse the internal resistance of such thermosource is low. At least I observed in my systemsome 10 yeras ago that periodic washing with alcohol repeatedly made something noticealby better in sopranos (which have naturaly lowest voltage in audio signal) . So I started to repeat it each few days. Now I switched sounding to natural and I do not notice any disadvantages which could do better by "servicing".
@@AudioMasterclass
Physics
Cables are not gas right so oxygen comes into contact with the metal and the corrosion is the metal "burning"
2nd law of thermodynamics.
@Douglas Blake As in a thermocouple. I didn't know it could cause break down so I'll look into that for future reference. DM
I was once in a big comment ("2013 TAS Editors’ Choice Awards: Digital Interconnects") feud between computer savvy people from reddit and audiophiles insisting that very expensive USB cables somehow sounded much better than cheap ones. There are a lot of audiophiles who don't know the first thing about science and engineering.
I've always had the idea to let 'audiophiles' listen to three different 'interconnections' from different brands and let them put these three into the right order with 'the best' on top and 'the worst' below.
I think that will turn out to be quite hilarious.
(and pretty painful for those who fail this easy task,,,)
I once did a test with an ex-audiophile colleague of mine, on one of the audiophile forums that he frequented. We used some reference audio tracks that he provided, compressed them with a whole range of MP3 compressors (from terrible ones to the best you could get at that time). We then converted those MP3's back to WAV files and created a set of A/B tests that the forum users then had to judge on quality to see which was the original recording and which was the one pulled through the MP3 compression/decompression cycle. All but one of the forum users miserably failed to identify the original tracks. When informed of their results they of course came up with all kinds of reasons why they failed, the most hilarious one was the guy who always boasted about the fact that he could hear the difference between good and bad power leads, who claimed that he had used the wrong power lead.
@@YouHaventSeenMeRight
I'm afraid that only one of your candidates knows how mp3 compression works and therefore was able to choose right. (Or he neither understands mp3 compression but simply got a lucky shot, of course.)
I also think that most audiophiles suffer from a nasty 'keeping up with the Joneses' virus infection for which no vaccine has been developed. I mean, buying a Tesla doesn't automatically turn you into an EV technology expert.
Better yet, lie to them about which is which and how much it cost.
I just found a $6000, 1-meter RCA cable. The Chord Company's ChordMusic Analogue RCA Cable. They use their own Taylon® insulation. That alone apparently "reveal[s] a musical landscape so believable that you can step into it."
Taylon? Let me guess, they mined the Taylon from the moon, and they had to kill all the fairies which were guarding it.
There is a lot of snake oil in the Hi Fi business
It's really important to include the fine-structure constant when calculating optimal speaker placement, room-treatment composition acoustic coupling coefficients, and ideal qubit density/sq. cm. for the quantum regenerative AI back propagation amplification modules. As the rest can get messy pretty quickly, a good slide rule is your friend.
A slide rule my friend is futile. A microscope, electron accelerator and quantum physicist is more useful. You will also need 3 cable ties, 2 non ferrous locking nuts and a dead parrot.
Great piece! Pity the ones who fall for this snake oil. Yeah, 'audiophiles' are in denial of how roughly the signal is handled on the professional side before it reaches their esoteric systems. Have they seen the cables used inside audio electronics or speakers (even 'high-end' ones)?
Regardless of that. Have you seen the mess of cables on a mixing desk, there are cables everywhere?
Exactly
You should borrow it and see if it’s got any merit.
I think in professional equipment the interfaces are built to the same specifications. So the cables change the sound less than with domestic equipment where impedances and capacitances at either end of the cable depend on how fastidious about technical standards each equipment manufacturer is. Cables that stray from technical norms connecting equipment that strays from rechnical norms will change the sound. The trip is to choose something that excites your ear if you are an audiophile. In the studio cables will affect the outcome but probably less noticeably or significantly. Balanced feeds and impedance matched interfaces combined with correctly used cables level the playing field in professional use. However some professionals stray to the dark side and buy audiophile wires to spice things up…
I have to admit that ten years ago, I allowed myself to get sucked into the idea that purchasing a $100 (Canadian) Monster™️ 20 foot instrument cable, “designed for Bass Guitar”, was a good idea.
😂
I can’t honestly attest to it sounding any better than a normal inexpensive cable but it truly is VERY robust, having withstood the test of time and incredible amounts of heavy abuse with zero problems in connectivity or anything.
It is still the cable that I use to connect to my Bass amplifier to this very day.
Every once in a while, you do get what you pay for.
Hi-fi cables are one thing, instrument cables are most definitely another, potential problems being the tone being dull due to capacitance, interference, and of course crackling as the cable moves. This would be a different topic for another video, but if you have a cable that works for you I'd say buy another one in case you lose it. DM
Due to the high impeadences that guitar amps work at, high cable capacitance can result in loss of high frequencies. So good quality long cables are a must, whether you need to spend as much as $100 is outside my experience.
@@peters7949 Define long.
Some years ago someone tested the HF rolloff on guitar cables and determined you should keep your (high impedance) instrument cable under 18 ft.
@@Wizardofgosz I would always suggest keeping cables as short as is practical, but on large stages with lead guitarists that wander all over the place, cables longer than 18ft (6m) are not uncommon. Although radio guitar transmitters are often used these days to overcome this problem.
An alternative approach is to use a DI box close to the guitarist (or their foot pedals) then run a low impedance balanced cable to the amp. However the interaction of specific guitar & amplifier can be part of what makes the particular sound the guitarist wants, changing the lead & anything else in the signal path can have a noticeable effect on the sound.
How is it for flexing? One thing I always run into even with Fender(tm) cables is they tend to break at the plugs and I have to keep resoldering them. I finally got fed up and went wireless but the tone isn't quite as warm or at least that's my impression.
Yes, two Shunyata power cords, $1500.00 a piece plus a Kimber cable, $2500.00 for the first meter, and $2000.00 a meter after that. I have also had good results with an interconnect of pure copper with solid copper RCAs for $30.00 made somewhere in Asia.
It is simply voodoo. But not the only voodoo... one sees all the time how ultimately tangible signal and system theory (Fourier, Nyquist - Shannon) are completely unknown or misunderstood, but supposedly every difference wants to be heard that is supposed to result from doubling the sampling rate. If it's fun to get ripped off for such humbug, well then... I would rather treat myself to some concerts.
Audiophiles sometimes forget that a live concert is the ultimate form of hi-fi. DM
An Audio enthusiast friend once told me to forget about buying posh RCA cables, just replace the 5amp fuses in the mains plugs for 13amp versions as it makes much more of a difference. After a brief demonstration I got my coat.
For the sake of comment readers everywhere, not an electrician but I'm absolutely sure that replacing a fuse with a higher rated one is a safety hazard. DM
Sounds even better without a fuse ...
As many audiophiles will tell you, this particular audio frequency interconnect gives exceptional inverse reactive current on lateral phase detractors. It's small wonder that it can be sold for only £1000 and would still be a bargain at £2000. I will be ordering several sets - plus of course, the matching pseudo-mesmerizing perspirimeter which will ensure crisp optimal sonic clarity and accentuate the transient response across all frequencies. I don't understand how you missed this detail in your video.
I'm glad you got the half-word "pseudo" in there! :D
At the end of the day, it is a length of wire that takes a signal from point A to point B.
The most perfect cable or interconnect in the world would convey the signal without any change.
Therefore any changes you hear (or think you hear) will be caused by the cable degrading the signal.
True story - I have a Spotify family account that is used for casual listening, For the same money I can get an Amazon lossless account, so I took out the free trail.
Sat down and listened to some of my favourite all time songs, tracks I was familiar with.
Sure, enough when I went to the lossless stream, I could pick up out subtle nuances in the music. WOW!
Being a bit of a nerd, I switched back to Spotify, guess what I heard the same nuances that had heard in the lossless stream. After switching back and forth between the two service I concluded that to my ears there was no real difference and quiet honestly was not worth the hassle of changing.
My point is if you convince your self that you are going to hear a difference then you will.
People are free to spend their money as they choose, but remember to enjoy the music .
The mere mention of cables (aka Interconnects) will send audiophiles into apoplectic fits, claiming that cables "improve" the sound of their system. I was fortunate years ago to have a conversation with an Engineer from a famous cable manufacturer BICC about their manufacturing process and quality management, we got onto the subject of "HiFi" cables - his response "we love Hifi enthusiasts, they will pay so much more for 'special' cables than our normal cables, in reality they come off the same production line". I have never found measurable evidence that expensive cables are better than a properly manufacture budget cable, but then I don't have audiophile ears - I'm just a simple electronics engineer who listens to the music ! Always love the enthusiasm in the videos
One worry for me is that a cable might indeed improve the sound. I prefer the sound that the producer intended, without improvements. DM
@@AudioMasterclass If the cable in question is a passive component then while it is possible to alter the frequency response due to IRC, an "improvement" is unlikely. But as you have said so many times, this is subjective change only the performer/producer/mastering engineer are really in a position to know.
"Buying expensive cables produces a miserable difference" 😀
The direction thing is real. An outer shield needs to be connected at only one side, the source.
@Cary Scheck - Both ends need the ground return, normally supplied through the outer shield. Without it and using your source only grounding, means we have to employ the power supply's ground connection. A circuit needs a return path, whether that be a battery and bulb or a pre-amp and power amp.
@@twistedmister1 This is not always the rule. Have you ever made balanced XLR cables? 😉
It's been tested consistently.. so long as the metal is conductive, it's going to make no difference to the sound quality whatsoever. I saw a test with coathanger wire compared to Monster cables costing $2,000 a meter... zero difference. It's the ultimate in Audiophile snake oil.
True audiophiles can easily tell the difference between a $2000+ interconnect and a coathanger. Of course it has to be a wooden coathanger.
@@AudioMasterclass Hahaaa... brilliant!
How can a cable weigh a thousand pounds?
Hey, just want to quote from extreme audiophile, 'You can't say anything unless you have used it on your highly resolving system! If you don't find a difference, upgrade your system to the next level, as your current one is not "resolving" enough. Repeat until you find a difference to justify the price tag!" Another quote, 'ABX Blind test is non reliable, when someone is blind folded, it affects your hearing capability, and repeatedly tests will just put strain on the listeners!' I usually suggest, 'then, how about making use of high precision equipment like Audio Precision boxes to test?' Replies are, 'trust your ears!'
audiophiles for the most part are dickheads. Think they have audio engineering like knowledge and experience. Vast majority do not.
The A-B'ings will continue until moral improves
I definitely agree it's not a transmission line and it's just resistance and capacitance that counts on a short audio cable. I needed a 3m cable to connect the turntable. So I used "shotgun" satellite cable with F type plugs and F type to RCA adaptors at each end. Well screened so it won't pick up any noise on that tiny signal and as it's designed to carry radio frequencies it's not going to lose anything due to capacitance.
Capacitance loading of Cartridges must be scammmmmmmmmmmm....?!
Unless I'm very much mistaken most copper cables are oxygen free or they'd break easily. The elephant in the room is, once those interconnects complete a circuit, what are the internal cables constructed of? What solder, what PCB grade of copper? It's akin the utterly pointless purchase of a silver mains cable. Unless your home ring main has been rewired with silver cable, and you've got your electricity company to run silver from the local substation, the phrase 'an utter waste of money ' is appropriate. If we're talking shielding of interconnects, then star quad xlr (balanced) will out perform any single core without question. Ignorance separates a fool from their money.
I always ask myself, do these audiophools spend as much money on the down cable from their TV dishes. I guess not! Just by the way, hard drawn copper is not oxygen free, but annealed copper is since it is heated after drawing, allowing oxygen to escape during the heating process.
I got a pair of WOWLED High-end Pure Copper from Amazon Warehouse - half price at £11. Best ever, so happy with the extra nuances from the cymbals.
I've always been able to hear differences in petty much ALL cables. One has to pick one that appeals to them, whatever the cost or availability. Many people who cannot hear the differences are LUCKY. The best cable today might just be a bare silver solid conductor wire it you don't have noise generation in the stereo room.
Did you do a blind test? If not, it's all in your head
"Would you pay $1000 for a 1-meter cable?"
No. Next question.
Thank you for exposing the pure snake oil that are interconnects. All any normal interconnect needs to be, is shielded and have low capacitance. And the capacitance only matters if the source driving it is high impedance. Shout out to Amir at the excellent Audio Science Review channel who takes the time to test many of these audiophool products with proper high quality test gear and has never yet found a reason to waste your money on them.
It all is a mattter of how much is low interconnect capacitance and how much is high source impedance. In Pioneer SX34 tube amplituner output source impedance is 470 kOhm Is it realy disaster when comes to interconnect capacitance. In my ITT stero radio output impedance is 220k Ohm - interconnect makes disaster. In my Bang Olufsen output impedance is 100kOhm - it makes sometnhing to think about. Of course it is not about price and High End tag - it is all about technic.
That's why I buy the cheapest audio components they sell as soon as the distortion is under 0.1 %............nobody can not hear the difference with a10000$ amp or other component , they measure the same ...
As someone who’s tried a fair yet comparably modest amount of cables, and also studied physics, (namely material science & solid state physics are the ones you want for this), so would like to think I have a basic understanding of what’s happening with materials… & having been into HiFi for 28 years+, I conclusively can say that interconnects can make difference.
Although, there are obvious terms and conditions to this & taking a cable and plugging it into another system won’t necessarily give them same results.
The reason I’ve posted this, in spite of all of the “cables don’t make a diff’ comments (keep it scientific and open minded please) is because I enjoy this channel & the topics discussed - I’d love to see this explored on here more. The conversations and presentation styles are great. Great work & thank you.
… back to it: As I’ve said, the cable is just part of the system, it’s not the entire system, & as for “snake oil”, I wouldn’t go so far as to use that term, I’d simply say however: there are cables that are expensive, cables that are cheap, ones that make the sound nicer, or make it sound worse (in my opinion), ones that are a good value, ones that are great value and some that are expensive - even if they make a noticeable difference.
Comparison: Even if the sometimes questionable activities of something can be measured, like taking taxes, the perceived value is not the same as the measured result - opinion plays heavily here. Does taking taxes from people benefit even if it can be measured what they’re used on?… does a 2% difference justify a £300 cost for a cable? There are no facts, only opinions here.
The other thing I’d say is that the “system” needs to be able to allow you to hear the difference the cable makes, & vice versa - also the new cable has to be that much further ahead than the old cable (or vice versa); so the system needs to have the technology internally to carry a very high quality signal and not degrade it before it even gets to said cable. 1 cable of type A and 3 cables of type B are not equally to 4 cables of type A, so the system as a whole from source to speakers (even the room surrounds), matter. Think of it as a chain from the power that your router / CD player receives, (in truth the original recording is the start), all the way through to the deconstructing noise outside of your window of trees blowing in the wind or that pneumatic drill digging up the pavement and sending drowning out sound energy into your room; it all matters… & more importantly, interferes. You want to hear the small tiny crumbs of the music at this level, the micro noises, so anything that is not on the recording, the buzz of a light switch or spin of a hard drive, is unwelcome. & that’s a key thing to recognise on cables, good cables don’t add, they simply become invisible. The best cable is no cable at all. If you could load a CD into your head, or LP for those who prefer, this would likely be the highest fidelity you could get from that source material. I wouldn’t try however.
To (almost) summarise, if you’ve bought a component (not some cheap as chips component from the local Argos, or Tandy / Rumblelows, if you remember them, but an actually high fidelity & highly resolving system), and you’re feeding it a high quality source material, not to mention you have a half decent room set up… then cables are the way to squeeze that extra 2-10% out of what you won’t change. Albeit at what cost (and therefore value), is a separate question. And expensive is not equal to better necessarily. A £300 - £1000 cable when your next best DAC is £30k plus… it starts to make more sense, even for that extra 5% clarity gain.
Everything matters and cabling is included. Even the quality of your carpet, thin vs thick pile, what’s behind your head in the listening position, toe of speakers, spikes or isolating feet, glass windows in the room, speaker distance from wall, noise traps in corners… if you’re talking science, sound travels differently in cold air vs hot air… it all matters and to my ears, such improvements can be heard (both a curse & a blessing - I’ll save that for another day). Not the hot vs cold in a room, that would be weird… only outside on a cold day, you may hear distant traffic if you listen carefully.
Again, to make a final analogy before I close: a Ford Fiesta or an F1 car both get you to the local shops, at what cost & value is questionable if all I want to do is get to the shops. They are notably different, and even if the F1 car can only do 20-30mph, is it worth me buying the F1 car or is it snake oil? It’s a matter of opinion.
Final final comment (before the final comment): trying to keep it scientific, run a test, but it would need to be a highly resolving one. Let’s do it by ear as opinion does matter. It’d be good to compare it to a scientific study afterwards to see how things match up, i.e. using a mic to record then compare. For the human test, 1st it would be necessary to certify the listener’s ears are up for the test - I even find listening is more accute at night - then with a highly resolving system, let’s say at least a £20k-ish plus system to be sure, £8k each for: speakers, amp (ideally pre amp & power) & DAC, grab a cheap as chips loom of cable, so OEM stuff from wherever, & listen & note down parts of a very familiar song. Actually take notes. Then swap out the entire run of cables with expensive ones (that come with a 5 star Best Buy or Highly Recommended review from a reputable HiFi reviewing platform, £1k a cable (new) should be good enough. Speakers cable probably £1k for a 2m run - just pulling some numbers from review memory) & listen. Then if you fancy, change 1 cable at a time. Always helps if someone can swap out as you do a blind test.
… then share what you find. Happy experimenting… & remember, yes there are marketing departments out there trying to sell you unaffordable things…. Most importantly of all, there’s beautiful music and there’s technology.
One more comment: As UA-cam doesn’t seem to object to my long winded story… think of a signal flowing down a perfectly straight narrow stream. In that stream are blue and red balls, being dispensed perfectly so they all arrive as blue and red balls in that repetitive order and perhaps in a continuous column on 5 balls, one after the other at the end. If there are small pebbles in that stream, hence imperfections in the material or a wire or interference such as RF that impacts the perfection of that flow, then the balls at the other end will not all arrive in the perfect red - blue arrangement. They arrive, but not as “cleanly”.
It might only impact 2% of the balls, maybe it’ll it be the balls that represent the midrange of the signal, maybe it’ll be 10%. Can you notice it, how good is your eyesight, how good is the rest of the system and the original configuration in regard to keeping that red-blue pattern!? This is how I see the impact of interconnects and “noise”. But mentioned before, the less wires there are, the less chance for this given the same material.
When the sounds of a song starts to sound like individual instruments and not just sounds; when the beat of popular song sounds like someone is beating a drum in front of you or a piano in the recording has creak and dampening or you can hear the wood of a guitar when its strings are strum, then you’re onto something! Good luck…. Your wallet will NOT thank you!
Amir at Audio Science Review has tested (i.e. measured the performance) all sorts of cables from really high end expensive to cheap supplied with product cables, and found very little difference. In fact, some of the uber high end stuff actually measures worse in some regards than much cheaper cables.
At a local electronic surplus store I asked why the price of silver placed teflon wire had gone up in price. The owner said all the audiophiles are buying it up because they say it makes the music sound better.
We both laughed at the stupidly and lack of knowledge of transmission lines.
Digital audio & video design guru John Watkinson stated in one of his “Slaying Dragons” articles, sadly I forget the pro audio magazine they were published in.
“if changing the interconnect cable, changes the sound. The audio interfaces have not been designed properly”.
In my 40 years in the Pro Audio industry, as long as the cable was well constructed & used non tarnishing connectors (brass PO & Bantam jacks needed regular cleaning), they all sounded the same; ie did not affect sound quality.
And don’t get me started on gold plated Toslink (optical fibre) connectors, yes they do exist!
Remember the old saying about a fool and his money………
That is exactly what I was hoping to explain here but Iv'e got no success because it takes serious knowledge - it is rare to find in YT. . Cables do not harm the current but they make unstability to audio interfaces.
The mag was 'Resolution'. Some of the Slaying Dragons articles are available freely at ips.org.uk/category/slaying-dragons/, others behind a paywall. DM
Excellent discussion. Thanks.
The cable itself is, of course, a waste of money. But wait...
They paid import duty on it and VAT.
It is Taxation of Stupidity.
I had some fun looking at hifi shops in the Netherlands. It appears they are not as mean about precious metals as here in the UK because they had offcut lengths of silver 10A speaker stranded cable in bargain bins for a few euros. It is as well to consider specifications as a starting point before buying anything. Silver will have a higher speciation because it has a higher conductivity than copper . This can be reinforced by the fact that the best instrumentation is also silver soldered.
Loving the delivery, content and punch ! Entertainingly informative, or is it informative entertainment. :)
I was brought up to understand that signal currents move along the wire surface and not within. Hence a multi-core cable will be better than a solid core one, especially at higher frequencies (it's why Litz wire is sometimes used in radio coils at LW/MW for those who remember AM radio). Thus ordinary 13A mains rated multi-core wiring will work well for speaker connections. I regularly used 50m and greater lengths of such cable in theatre work without obvious problems. For example, reactance at about 150pF per metre is like putting a 6.8 nF capacitor across the amplifier output or a 2.5K resistor - something any respectable PA will take into its stride having a typical output impedance of some milliohms!! But then, my hearing is defective due to the effects of rather loud music.
@Douglas Blake You are of course right. Skin effect becomes measurable at >45kHz, way above our audible range and even then small. Apologies for getting my impedances in a twist - I was schooled in my youth by an old radar technician. (Who told me he had worked with Watson-Watt!) At least the multi-core is more flexible!
@Bob T The typical mansplainer. No one cares about a 6.8nF capacitor across the amplifier output or a 2.5K resistor. If you want to talk about Ω and farrads, go else where.
@@rabarebra You would obviously prefer to spend the $1000 in perfect ignorance.
@@last1059 What do you mean? I solder my own cables.
@@rabarebra So you really agree that ordinary cable can do the job without resorting to special (costly) alternatives. Have a nice day.
can you believe people actually buy these cables with free burn in service
Free burn in service?! Thank you for the good laugh.
Your comments about not affecting audio frequencies is very relevant.
Most of these cables, when measured by current engineering standards, have poor responses in the audible range/band.
A fool and his money is easily parted, and the Master makes that point so well. And Betty helps with her knowledgeable asides to drive it home further. I hope the Master will now take the time to tell us whether we should go for a second sub-woofer...now that we are all going to save a bundle by refraining from the urge to purchase that one-meter cable or the...aahh...interconnect.
Go ask Abbey Road if they use £1000 per metre cables 😊 Completely for those with more money than sense - if you can't hear something on 'decent' mid price cables you are not supposed to hear it! And if you have noise in your system, find out where it originates from and repair/replace as necessary. Oh....and treat your room....properly. Otherwise just enjoy the music and stop obsessing.
I've no idea about this, but I did hear of a musician/producer/audio engineer who used 2-core 5-amp cable professionally for his interconnects. I don't know the technicalities of this, but I've taken the "If it's good enough for him" view. (The only difference is that I got 6-amp cable instead of 5-amp, as that was what came most readily to hand.) Obviously, I had no idea what I was doing - I relied on the self-reported practice of one expert - but I have been very happy with these cables' performance (well, it's not bell wire). Anyway, this came in at rather less that £1,000 a metre.
It is like the discussion about special USB cables to prices which us cry, as the advertisement say; it will make sure that the bits will arrive correctly - if that was a problem then we would have even bigger problems in the computer industry.
Stuff like this is aimed at people who have absolutely bucketloads of money where buying a £1000 cable is like your average person spending £10.
The Aliexpress cable also has a pair of ferrite chokes at each end which is a good thing in an RF environment.
"She got that from Chat GPT because Google thought she just wanted to buy one"! I lve that.
I assume that "letting the music flow out" is different from "letting the magic smoke out"?
This just keeps getting better!
I love your no nonsense backed by factual data approach in your videos…very good. So let me share this….my system is not an expensive one, but it’s components make for a very neutral and revealing one. I don’t waste my money on vinyl as I grew up with that in the 60-70 & 80’s and it is simply inferior. High sensitivity KLH Kendalls(96db) driven by a Yamaha AS801, which boasts a very low 0.009 THD, pushing 100+ High Current Amps. I’ve experienced/auditioned High End speaker and power cables that simply didn’t warrant their price. For a whole lot less money, I terminated a set of 12 gauge Ox Free copper speaker cables with Silver Plated Banana Plugs from Audioquest that immediately made an audible difference, particularly in Bass response. Offerings direct from China…love or hate ‘em…have made higher end cables mush more affordable. My second “upgrade” was a locking coax cable terminated with silver connectors from my BlueSound Node2i to the amplifier. Again an audible difference was heard by not as pronounced as the speaker cables. And my last upgrade in my system yielded a quite astonishing difference in the complete sound signature my amplifier was delivering to the Kendall’s. Disclaimer, I have no affiliation with any company I’ve mentioned or am about to mention…whatsoever. There are many who think the term “Snake Oil” applies to any thought when it comes to power cables. But I found on eBay for less than $150, the Viborg MTR1501(I could be wrong) power cable about a half a meter or more long, that left me with a mouth wide open that I couldn’t close!!! I simply didn’t or couldn’t comprehend that there was that much more musicality inside my system! From decay, to textures to a completely more realistic tonality….I can say hat it is the single most important component, yes component in my system. So to answer your very valid question of “would you pay 1000 bucks for one meter of cable?” Absolutely not! But for all those who think Power cables don’t make a difference…..they do! Speaker cones vibrate at speeds defined by the current fed to them. The accuracy in which drivers vibrate to recreate particular sounds produced by performers and their instruments, including voices, is solely dependent on how clean the current is delivered to the drivers from the amplifier. And who the hell knew it would be that monumental?? I’m sure many have and do know……but I surely did not. Viborg is a Danish company who’s offering are made in China, which keep the costs down…way down! And they have proved, that as pretty as some of the cable on the market available are, none are worth the many thousands of dollars they ask for them. How much is that Viborg worth to me…having heard and loved with it…..it’s safe to say, I’d spend $500 for it. My total cost for cabling in my system is about 300 bucks. Again love your videos….a true reference source for any and all Audiophiles and newbies gettin into the Hobby!
I can also back this up when I added the iFi iPower (now outdated by iPower 2) to my DAC in my speaker setup and it made a BIG improvement to the bass quality, I now have an emotiva CMX-6 power strip which filters out noise and jitters from the dirty wall outlets as well.
@@SomberShroud BS
@@rabarebra It's easy to say that if you've never heard clean audio before. Just think logically for a second, The Power grid is a very dirty current, so powering your audio gear with dirty power is like a flickering light on a cheap store, it can't give the full power potential and your missing quiet details cause it can't process them fast enough, In the same logic as driving audio gear properly with enough power, if that power isn't clean, there will be holes at points which effects the end result (these holes aren't obvious until you've heard it properly). I'd like to remind you that this wasn't an audiophile psychoacoustical snake oil moment like "oh I think I can hear a difference". This was a jaw dropping night and day difference like the power cables are just as important as my amp. I should also specify you don't need to spend anymore than $200 on a power cable, anything more expensive is diminishing returns.
@@SomberShroud Still BS
You can call me A. You can call me Ray. You can call me A Ray. But you don’t have to pay £1000 for a cable! 😃
It's nice to have such an affordable pal who appreciates the true value of friendship.
I get around all these cable problems by going full wireless.
I like the cables OCD Mikey talked about. Good copper cable wrapped in your favorite cloth and the Teflon sheathing is filled with sand. Now that’s a cable. Don’t forget the human brain is capable of letting you hear or imagine you hear what they claim.
Thanks for your insights! I've recently learned to build my cables myself, using the best materials for a fraction of such pricing (which IMHO is similar to a scam). With a bonus: they look great (as I want them to for no additional cost), and fit well with my deco - even if they're mostly hidden lol.
I'm now trying a combination of one end from the amp having silver-plated copper connectors + silver braided shielding over Teflon (a Marantz, so that I lift high freq definition), and gold-plated copper connectors to the speakers (affordable ELAC's Uni-Fi 2.0, which already have a good definition in high frequencies, whereas the gold plating "could" lessen any harshness) ; the cores are pure Oxygen free copper (I could've gone with the Japanese pure copper which is about twice the price, but I don't think it would make a huge difference given the gear that I'm using)... Anyway, I'm just having fun experimenting with this, I'll see if it's relevant in the end.