The purpose of a cable.

[The Grand Wazoo]

From The Grave

[MartinT]

I don't use them as tone controls. If my system sounds bright or lacking in bass drive I prefer to fix the problem at source rather than mask it (along with lots of musical info) with a coloured sounding cable.

I think that summed it up quite nicely. Get everything in the system performing to optimum FIRST. Then, and only then, fine tune with cables to taste. There is no right cable, just different flavours of tonality/colouration.

[DSJR]

I think Mr Toy did fix his (audio) problems at source - he bought some Tannoy Turnberry's Much better than the shriekers he used before, although I noticed from pics that he'd turned the tweeter up a notch from "flat," unless I'm very much mistaken (probably am, so apologies Steve in advance )

[Rare Bird]

How many peole bother to find out what cabling is used in the speakers they use. If they do, do they then use the same cable to hook the speakers to their amp. A lot of the time no they do not. By doing this you add another variable.

Hi Neil
Very good point..I built my last system around the simple Kimber Kable wire.
All my equipment was internally rewired using Kimber 'TCSS' signal wire, power supplies with Kimber 'TCX'..Internal speaker wiring also Kimber 'TCX' external speaker cable Kimber '4TC & 8TC'..Basically the same wire from head to toe..Something i must get arround doing again..

Edit: oops forgot to mention the Kimber 'PSB-J' i used for interconnects

[MartinT]

Nice, Andr'e, you can do very much worse than cable your entire system with Kimber. Very reliable and tonally matched throughout their range.

[Barry]

This subject would normally be “red rag to a bull for me”, however such is the reasonableness of the OP and the carefully considered and worded replies that I thought I would chip in with my own thoughts and opinions.

Now as most members might know I am a cable sceptic and possibly a member of that most despised of groups: objectivists. So as not to upset or offend any trade members who are cable retailers, I’ll choose my words carefully.

First of all, I don’t believe cables have any intrinsic sound of their own. If changes in sound are perceived, then this is entirely down to how the cable interacts with the equipment between which it connects, and how well it screens or shields the delicate musical signals, with all the subtle information contain within them, from corruption by external electrical interference (from whatever source). Even having accepted that the interaction can have acoustic effects, unless your system is quite unusual, these effects will be small. Lets examine this in more detail.

One can quite reasonably say that any audio cable can be characterised by LCR measurements (pace Frank). That is, the construction and quality of the materials used will be effectively summarised by these measurements. The resistance of the conductors used and that of the insulation used as well as any dielectric loss will be represented by R. Likewise the geometry of the interconnect will represented by both L and C. Shielding efficacy is a little more difficult to quantify and depends on both the construction of the shield and of the material from which it is made. Strictly speaking it is quantified by a parameter called the surface transfer impedance that can be both calculated and measured. Measurements at the interfering frequencies expected (those radiated by switched-mode power supplies as well as AM broadcasts), are almost impossible to make owing to the long wavelengths involved, but I will come to this later.

Simply considering the LCR values, for virtually all cables these are sufficiently good so that unless the interconnect is made of the most peculiar of materials or has a strange geometry, or it is used in an unusual system, there should be virtually no difference between sensibly designed interconnects. I’ll provide a few illustrative figures.

Any sensible length interconnect ought to have a loop resistance of no more than 0.2Ω, which in the extreme case of connecting between say a source with an output impedance of 10Ω and the following item with an input impedance of 1KΩ, the ohmic loss would be less than 0.1dB. Whilst some solid-state gear can have output impedances even lower, it is rare for any item to have an input impedance as low as 1KΩ, so my example is extreme and pessimistic. Valve designs have a much higher operating impedance so the ohmic loss is even less.

We can dismiss inductance as any sensibly designed interconnect will have a loop inductance that is no more than a fraction of a μH per metre. Even at 60KHz (to allow all those harmonics that give a note its timbre to pass through), the reactance will only be about 0.1Ω. So what of the all-important capacitance (and unfortunately, usually the only parameter an interconnect manufacturer will quote)? Well again for a typical construction (including both the geometry and materials used) most interconnects will have values around 100pF per metre. Now this capacitance creates a low pass filter with the output impedance of the source to which it connects, but even if the source impedance was as high as 5KΩ (which it might be with some vintage valve gear) a 1 metre cable having a shunt capacitance of 100pF would create a low pass filter having a 3dB roll-off point at 318KHz. So unless you are using an interconnect with very high capacitance per unit length or very long lengths (and if the latter you ought to be using balanced line interconnections anyway) and you are using it to connect between an unusual combination of a source having high output impedance (possibly a valve design) with a following item having an unusually low input impedance (such as some solid state designs: the Electrocompaniet “2 Channel Amplifier” comes to mind) you will not have any problems.

OK, so we’ve got the LCRs out of the way, what of the shielding efficiency; in my opinion the only real way an interconnect can have any effect on the audio signal? As I mentioned a parameter that quantifies this (though not completely) is the surface transfer impedance. This is difficult to measure but at the long wavelengths we are considering is, for a solid shield, for all intents and purposes the same as the DC resistance of the shield. Now the operative word here is ‘solid’, that is one where the braiding has a very high optical coverage – no loose weave, as used on the old VHF television systems, and not lapped shields used on the cheapest of interconnects (unless they are supplemented by a semi-conducting sheath underneath the lapping). This why a lot of modern interconnects used for satellite TV as well as many audio interconnects use a foil shield, or an aluminised Mylar layer with a drain wire. But even with a reasonable single layer braided shield having a DC resistance of 0.1Ω/metre and using the lowest impedance systems the shielding efficiency will be ~95dB. This again is pessimistic and will largely determined by the quality of the connectors used – despair all you who use the execrable ‘bullet plugs’. But to put this into perspective, unless you live near a radio transmitter, an airport using a powerful air traffic radar, or insist on leaving your mobile phone (switched on) on or near your cables, you should have little to worry about. There is one other aspect of cable construction that can have an effect on shielding efficacy, and the only mechanism that can make a cable directional, that of so-called semi-balanced construction. If using cables having this form of construction, because the shield is connected to the outer conductor of the connector only at one end of the interconnect, it is important that this is at the point of lowest electrical impedance as regards the RF interference. This will not necessarily be at the source.

So what of “designer cables” with their construction and post-manufacture conditioning? Do we choose silver or copper, or anything in between? Well silver has only an 8.6% improvement over copper regarding its conductivity and a ratio of 0.99999999 regarding magnetic permeability. Whilst this will make a very small change to the (much misunderstood concept of conductor skin depth, and a parameter much enjoyed by certain interconnect manufacturers), unless you use cables whose thickness or diameter is greater than 0.5mm don’t worry. ‘Quadrifilar’ plaiting; use of Litz wire; stranded conductors using strands having diameter ratios equal to the Golden Section, are all construction techniques offered by some interconnect manufactures. Whilst these techniques can be of some use at RF frequencies, I cannot believe they are of any benefit at audio frequencies – and being difficult to implement will make the construction costs expensive.

Turning to the insulators used, well it can be argued that nothing is better than air (apart from a vacuum), but all modern thermosetting polymers used have very good dielectric properties (reasonable relative permittivity and very low dielectric loss).

I cannot comment on the efficacy of cryo-cooling, or of the benefits of using LC-OFC or even UP-OCC copper, as I’m not a metallurgist. My understanding of cryo-cooling is it might be similar to annealing and of some benefit, but I do wonder if the understandable advantages of long copper grain lengths and the consequent reduction of grain boundaries and ‘current hopping’ offered by the other casting techniques, will be largely lost once the conductor is handled.

Anyway to bring this polemic to some sort of conclusion, I would say that whilst repeatable differences between interconnects can be heard, any sensibly designed, well made cable using good quality connectors will display minimal changes. If you find changing an interconnect completely changes the character of your system, then I would say that either there is something very odd about the interconnect itself, or you have an unusual (and/or unbalanced) system. I can well believe that cable differences can be heard, but if significant, I would humbly suggest that finding a cable that sounds “good” is ‘papering over the cracks’ and suggests that there is something more fundamentally wrong with your system.

So having got this off my chest (and I haven’t yet touched on mains cables or speaker cables) and lest you think I’m an insufferable objectivist who only listens to square waves and test tones – I’m off to listen to music, which after all is what it’s all about!

[Reid Malenfant]

Fantastic post Barry I tend to agree that as long as sensible cabling is used to connect audio components together that carries audio then there shouldn't be very much difference between them. That doesn't mean that there may be slight differences though.

Where i find bigger differences is in cables carrying digital signals

However i'm not going there as that isn't what the OP was about

[Tim]

Great read Barry, thanks for taking the time

[MCRU]

Neve seen such long posts concerning such a minefield of a topic before, and 2 posters banned early on as well!

The proof of the pudding is in the eating, now more than ever cable sellers are everywhere and it is a very competitive market, I rely on my skills built up over 10+ years on giving the customers the best cable for his given budget be it £30 or £1000, I consider myself an audiophile and am a cable addict, I would be even if I did not sell them but I am able to mix and match on a weekly basis and am still looking for cable solutions for my system. Cables especially mains are more important now than ever with all those pesky i-phones and wi-fi, RFI is everywhere!
Even though I am loathe to admit it Kimber PBJ is superb when used as a dc cable, it made a real difference to my new squeezbox PSU, its good the the AOS is a cable friendly forum, long may it remain so.

[Macca]

As always an excellent and well reasoned post from Barry.

My contribution is purely subjective. I have a box full of RCA phono streo interconnects aquired over the years. By far my favourite is a .5 m set of Audioquest Turqouise. No matter what kit I am using (and there has been a fair few changes over the years) I come back to this one. Why? Because it is the only one that I don't 'hear' in the sound.

A while back I was using all Linn amplification and Linn cables. A mate (who was using the supplied patch cords on his rig) asked me if improving his interconnects would improve his sound. So, saying nothing, I lent him six quality interconnects including the AQ Turq.

A month or so later I caught up with him. And what? After trying all the cables and with zero input from me, which one had he settled on?

Yep, you got it.