The great cable debate.....

[Rescue1]

I brought ths old post back to show a little bit more of Monsters BS... **broken link removed** ....They have these things at circuit city for $4 dollars a tin.. :shock: ...nothing special,just another bs product... :?

 

[Dr.EM]

I'll say this on the subject. There is definately a difference between those cheap interconnect cables and this one:

**broken link removed**

Thats probably the most I would spend. This cable has lower noise than the cheaper ones, presumably because of it having a better shield. How much lower? Quite a bit. Would you notice it? Unlikely. I used headphones and had one channel of my mixer with a cheap cable on the input, and put the volume up to the "do at your own risk setting", there was some fairly audible noise there. I did the same with the Cambridge audio, and report significantly lower noise levels. Like I say though, with music going down it, the noise would be overpowered massively. The expensive cable is more likely to last too btw in harsh situations, being plugged and unplegged, pulled etc.

 

[audioguru]

I used expensive but cheap RCA cables from RadioShack (you know what I mean) for a project at work. I could have got the same junk at the Dollar Store for much less cost, but the Dollar Store doesn't take my company's credit card.
They worked OK because they were short, were plugged-in only 1 time and were driven by a low impedance.

I wanted to use some extra cables to solder to volume controls. so I started to cut the RCA plugs off but they easily pulled right off. Their "shield" was only a few strands of very fine wire in a bit of a spiral.
Absolute garbage! :lol:

 

[Oznog]

The ones who will argue that those expensive cables are indeed better are known as "golden-eared audiophiles", folks who will make the claim that they can hear the difference between zip cord speaker wires, house wiring speaker wires, RG-59/U speaker wires and the exotic wires that can cost hundreds of dollars, sometimes getting into the low thousands of dollars, believe it or not. They can also hear the difference between tin-plated RCA connectors and gold-plated RCA connectors. If their hearing is so danged refined, why don't they use "N" connectors or better yet, GR-574 connectors for their audio?

Well, I suppose it's better than hearing the message the CIA broadcasts into your skull throught the satellites. Either way, your dating options are limited.

 

[Oznog]

"MusiCaps enable sensitive audio circuits to achieve their ultimate level of performance ... individually machine-tolled and the leads are carefully hand-soldered using lead-free silver-bearing solder .... the leads are stranded, teflon insulated, silver-plated copper ... "

A 0.1µF, 400v cap costs $7.79

At least that's a bit harder to disprove, because caps have some nonlinear behavior and there are endless variations in type. You'd need a THD analyzer to investigate it.

Cables just have such a simple task at these frequencies. None have anywhere near a resistance significant to distort a signal. None have insulator leakage significant enough to lower the signal. Shielding- not exactly rocket science either. Now speaker cables should be sizable for sizable currents, but they hardly need to be gold to do the job. Resistance is a measurable quantity, not something you have to feel, and all the glossy ads and flowery language will not make their ohms of resistance any different than anyone else's ohms.

The gold cables are pretty and that's the start and end of it. These guys judge you based on how pretty it is and the prestige of the brand names you buy for it.

If these guys really cared, why aren't they using digital? I saw the home entertainment center's optical TOSLINK cables- like $20+ per. Why?? Digital is nice but there's no reason to go optical here!

I was at Fry's awhile back and a guy asked the salesperson about black vs normal recordable CDs. The guy told him black ones sound clearer. Apparently nobody told him they're digital and either work perfectly or skip horribly with nothing in between.

I guess electronics guys are offended by the establishment of a pseudoscience in our backyard. We do seem to take it personally, don't we?

 

[audioguru]

Those "audiophiles" are a joke with their expensive cables and caps. Many of them can't even hear the difference between AM and FM. :lol: :lol:

 

[_3iMaJ]

With a function generator and an o-scope you can do a few tests to "prove" to yourself that there is no difference.

I remember having this exact same arguement with my uncle several years ago. I knew there wasn't a difference, but I couldn't explain why. Well since then I've learned more and now I can explain to you why it makes no difference.

He argued that the "varying amplitudes" are what the better cables adjust to faster. Well if you look at the frequency response of that cable, and remember some simple math, you'll see that a simple piece of wire will adjust to "varying amplitudes" just fine. Simply perform a transient step response (or impulse response) to prove it to yourself. Or look at the frequency response, the goal is to have no amplitude change from 20 - 20khz, so that there isn't amplitude distortion.

Some argue that the "skin effect" of a wire also has a significant difference. The idea of skin effect is that at higher frequencies currents travel near the surface of the wire (on the skin) increasing the overall resistance of the wire (a good way to think about it is practically the diameter of the wire has decreased at higher frequencies). Now, since audio is merely 20 - 20 khz, this isn't something that merits worry.

Basically, it makes no "reasonable" difference to justify spending a ton more money.