The purpose of a cable.

[sastusbulbas]

May as well resurrect this post and ask!

WHY will cable manufacturers not provide conclusive evidence on claims?

One of the biggest irritations within forums is cable debates, where evidence against is readily supplied but cable manufacturers seem to crawl into the woodwork.

[StanleyB]

I was the technical manager for a company that was heavily involved with cable manufacturing for about 12 years. I had to design audio, video, SCART, sat, etc. type of cables. With video cables you have some parameters to work from, and SCART cables also have an official specification. DVI and HDMI cables do as well. Audio cables are however an open minefield. The impedance of the equipment connected at either end of an audio cable can create some weird audible results since there are no universal standards for audio impedance matching. So one cable can sound wonderful in one set up, but totally awful in another.

[Spectral Morn]

Not Frustrating.

This is a hot one, on some forums the equivolent of pouring petrol on a fire. Not here it would seem.

cabling is one issue that so far we can't get away with out. Even one box set ups need cables to the speakers.

When I first got into audio about 19 years ago, either I was innocent in mind or perhaps open minded but I could hear that cables made a difference to the sound. In my ignorance, I was unaware of the possible reasons for this. Unlike now, but I still have an open mind. Lets face it taking a pile of cables home to try is a lot easier than other bits of kit. However fitting some of the ridiculous creations out there to your kit is another matter. Cables that look like things you would find used for tying up ships to the plain strange. Any one remember Coogan Hall a hollow copper pipe, with an outer screen that didn't touch the cable(pipe except at the plugs). It was a good cable but unless you fitted it very carefully it would crack. I always wondered about the effect on the pipe when you bent it. Did that change the sound. Same goes for any cable does bending and shaping change how it sounds ?

I have tried many cables over the years and up until recently had never been able to subcribe to the one brand cable loom. However having a chat with someone in the cable business a possible answer to this came up. The answer is consistency. Many cable companies who claim to make cables don't( unless fitting plugs can be called making). Many seek out and try cables, select them, label them and claim to make them. Even within a range say model x the interconnect and speaker cable are not the same cable even though that claim is made. Just dip into the RS catalogue/range made(which is huge). I am by the way not saying all cables are picked out of the ones RS make (there are other sources of cables out there). Now I don't have a problem with this. If time and trial is put into listening and selecting fine but the price should bear that out. To ask to much is a bloody cheek. Now if you make it or at the very least make/design and ask someone else to make it then you can claim to make cables. There are very few out there who do this, very few( you would be shocked about who does and doesn't. Legal reasons prevent me from saying. But you know who you are. SHAME ON YOU).

So when I have tried cables in the past I have ended up with make X for linking source, make Z for speaker cable and so on. Only in the last few months have I found an exception to that with Atlas Marvos. Atls make Marvos from the same cable so the range of cables are consistent, through out. This goes for all their cables that I have tried. They design and have their cables made for them. No catalogue use here. So thats one issue that needs to be known, are the cable material used consistent within a range, my experience would suggest no, except in a few cases.

The other issues of length of material, type of material(silver, copper etc), type of plugs, Resistance and capacitance all make a difference to sound and vary with products in your system, as they too have these issues relating to them. This makes group tests a bit of a waste of time, as you will mostly get varying results with the same cables but different kit used and if you use one make of kit and many cables. This is a bit like group tests with speakers. Same room used will affect the results. Some speakers work better in some rooms rather than others.

How a cable will work in your set up, will depend on your kit. You will just have to try it and see how it sounds. Is it wrong to use cables as a tone control. Well that will depend on you and how badly mismatched your kit is.
If you have a well balanced system then cabling should be a bit easier to select. I have only rarely heard cables that can completely destroy the sound of a system and work with only a small range of kit. Most have a basic sound and are not as dramatic. But dramatic ones do exist. So the post one above is not wrong, just I haven't come across this to the same extent.

Most of us will select cables to match a sound preference or we will go with what is hot at the moment( sometimes without trying, very foolish). We all know what the hot 3 are Nordost, Chord and Kimber. I feel that you should consider cables at the very least in a similar way to picking the rest of your system when you are buying a complete new set up. If you are playing with cables as upgrades then you will have to just suck it and see and be prepared to be surprised at what works and what does not. But it is important to remember that many changes are just that and not improvements. The sound improvements cables can make is quite often subtle. Though not always, Ureka moments do exist. One thing you should also bear in mind is have the cables been run in fully. I know this is an issue too but most if not all cables benefit from running in IMHE. Also even if used they may also need a period of settling in (this is different to run in)-I don't understand that one but it can happen. Any suggestions as to why. Current needed to get the material loosened up to allow easier signal flow, perhaps ? Maybe thats BS, just an idea.

Above all have an open mind.

Regards D S D L

[Steve Toy]

What a superb post! Thorough and candid is what we need.

[doodoos]

Firstly I am a cable believer - they do make a difference that I can hear, especially mains cables. What I am unsure of is whether the differences relate mostly to the cable material/construction or to the quality of termination. No doubt it's a bit of both but I suspect termination is of greater consequence. So when I have time I will audition the Naim powerline which seems to use bog standard cable but high quality termination. As I don't use Naim equipment it should be interesting.

[niklasthedolphin]

Cables do not do the signal any favours.
They all add a little damage to the sound in each their way.

The purpose of choosing cables is not to find a cable that colours the music in the right way to suit one's taste, the purpose is to choose cables that do as little damage to the signals as possible.

I think HiFi nerds who loves music either are into that the sound reaching their ears should have the flavour and colour of their choise or they are into that music has to be as close to the original Analog Reference as possible.

Those belonging to the first category chose cables as tone controls and for the colour.

I belong to the second category where the Nirvana is to listen to reproduced music sounding as close to the Analog Reference as possible.

I try to eliminate the influence from the cables by using multicabling on my loudspeaker.

Each construction princip of a cable has it's own character of influence on the music and damage to the signal.

It works like a serial filter.

So when you attatch more cables in parallel you eliminate the filter effect as long as the character of the influence and damage from each of the parallel coupled cables are different.
They will be if the construction princip of the cables are different.

Construction pricips can be e.g.:
Flat cable
Single core
Multicore
Plaited or twisted cables
Material of choise like copper or silver etc

Another way to eliminate damage and influence is to temperature regulate the cables.
The lower temperature the less significance and influence from the cables.

You can also shield cables to prevent hum and radiated noise.

So far this goes for interconnects and for loudspeaker cables.

When it comes to power cables, the more quality is build into the power supply of a unit, the less influence a special selected power cable will have.

Make sure, though, that cables of each their nature (power, interconnect, loudspeaker, antenna, groundings, shields) do not meet, cross or run aside more than absolutely unavoidable.
Shields and Grounds CAN have determinant purposes and effect from being wounded around or following a selected other cable.

When it comes to pricing of cables, I know people let themselves cheat to hilarious point.

The proportion of influence on the end product of sound meating our ears are not reflected in the price range of cables.

Roughly speaking:

Transducers are those components with most importance for the character and quality of the sound.
Transducers are those places in you gear where electronic signals are transformed to acoustic (Loudspeakers) or where magnetism, acoustic or mechanical movement are transformed to electronic signals (Tape heads - microphones - cartridges).

The listening inviroment/room can have somewhere between 1/2 and 1/5 of the influence of the transducers.

Sources can have up to 1/5 of the influence of tranducers.

Amplifying units has around 1/10 influence compared to transducer.

Digital Sources or digital amplifiers have around 1/50 (and that will unfortunately be to the worse).

Signal and loudspeaker cables 1/100 of tranducers (again to the worse. No cables does sound any good).

Power conditioners, specialy manufactured power cables has less than 1/500 influence compared to transducer and will have most influence on gear with badly made power supply circuits and on set-ups with hum, grounding probs and "radiated noise".

Working tweaks will get in somewhere between the lot depending on the character.

So I wonder what goes on when cables are seen at prices like £ 10.000,- to be matched with cartridges at the price tag of maybe £500-1.000,- ??

I do not believe in cables.
I am convinced and I know they do affect the sound...................a bit.

"dolph"

[Spectral Morn]

With cable design everything makes a difference. It only stands to reason that if you have a very high quality conductor that putting a cheap plug on it will detract from the overall result. I heard this once when a local cable maker asked if he could use the shop I worked in to do some staff training. He has a basic cable and the same cable with wbt plugs. We played the music with both cables and the Wbt terminated cable was quite a bit better. This was before Next Gen plugs came out, so it was the old fave Wbt plug(locking one). It is good that some companies will allow this kind of option within a range. The difference in cost between the cables was £30, not much for the sound improvement.

Now will a good plug make a poor cable better than a dearer cable with a cheap plug, I suspect not much. I think the main problem with cables is that unlike say room acoustics very little is understood really about the various interactions
and issues. I know a lot of companies say they do and some make wild claims but in reality this subject needs a lot of research and it would have to cover every possible variable before any sort of base line standard model could be put forward. Has any one done this and with every product thats out there/or if not actual products then the kind of measurements that you can encounter?

Regards D S D L

[Spectral Morn]

I am not sure how to read your marking for what influences the reproduction.
However, I do agree that sources that use mechanical aspects in their technology have to be very well designed. However almost all products have some aspect in their design. The items you list mostly work on the basis of using vibration as part of their technology. Cartridges, Microphones etc these are very prone to vibrational impact and need good acoustic isolation to be applied. Feedback is a major issue. Never place a Turntable in a corner behind a speaker or opposite a speaker as this can be an issue. The cart acts as a microphone. Valves can also do this too.

One area I would disagree with you if I am reading your statistics right is the room. In my experience the single factor that has the biggest influence on an audio system is the room acoustics. If this is wrong for the system then it does not matter how good or how dear it is. It will sound amazing in the right room and awful in the wrong room.

Cabling and its design can be the thing that makes the difference but more often than not, it is just a chance thing that the cabling you try matches the conditions your kit creates. I will give you a non-cable example. I recently got a Audiovalve rkv head phone amp,the distributor suggested I should get the impedance matcher. I did not as I did not think it was something I needed. How wrong was I. The different headphones I had all sounded wrong and not as good as before. It was perhaps chance that these headphone happened to match the Head phone amps I was using. When I got the impedance matcher and set it to suit my Grado GR1000 suddenly I could hear what I had paid for. I think something similar happens with cabling. We know its a factor with turntables, carts and step up transformers as well as how those all link to the phono stage and just because the signals are smaller in this than in source items or amps or speakers, I don't think we should dismiss the impact we can hear with cabling in the rest of the system. Its maybe the case that we know less about this than we do other areas in audio.

I am also not sure of the wisdom of being quite so varied in your mix of cabling material for use in one cable but I must confess that I am not a maker of cables so have not tried what you suggest. I suppose if you kept a similar design through out the applications you might have a consistency, I spoke about earlier. Any makers of cables want to comment on this?

Regards D S D L

[niklasthedolphin]

I am not sure how to read your marking for what influences the reproduction.
However, I do agree that sources that use mechanical aspects in there technology have to be very well designed. However almost all products have some aspect in there design. The items you list mostly work on the basis of using vibration as part of their technology. Cartridges, Microphones etc these are very prone to vibrational impact and need could acoustic isolation to be applied.

One area I would disagree with you if I am reading your statistics right is the room. In my experience the single factor that has the biggest influence on an audio system is the room acoustics. If this is wrong for the system then it does not matter how good or how dear it is. It will sound amazing in the right room and awful in the wrong room.

Cabling and its design can be the thing that makes the difference but more often than not, it is just a chance thing that the cabling you try matches the conditions your kit creates. I will give you a non-cable example. I recently got a Audiovalve rkv head phone amp,the distributor suggested I should get the impedance matcher. I did not as I did not think it was something I needed. How wrong was I. The different headphones I had all sounded wrong and not as good as before. It was perhaps chance that these headphone happened to match the Head phone amps I was using. When I got the impedance matcher and set it to suit my Grado GR1000 suddenly I could hear what I had paid for. I think something similar happens with cabling. We know its a factor with turntables, carts and step up transformers as well as how those all link to the phono stage and just because the signals are smaller in this than in source items or amps or speakers, I don't think we should dismiss the impact we can hear with cabling in the rest of the system. It maybe the case that we know less about this than we do other areas in audio.


Regards D Louth

Cables for the cartridge in your arm on the TT has great influence due to the tiny and vulnerable signals running there.

Do you change all your cabling inside amps, cd machines and FM tuners to match your external cable choises?

BTW.: A tranducer is a converter from e.g. acoustic to electrical impuls or from magnetism to electrical impuls or from electrical impulses to acoustic or from mechanical movements to electrical impulses etc.
It's also a tranducer in use when you get ultrasound treatment at the physiotherapist. It is converting from electrical impulses to ultrasound.

"dolph"

[Spectral Morn]

It is part of my overall post that all these things can have an effect on how cables sound. In an ideal, world yes the inside signal cables should be the same as the external ones(were possible. The problem with this is due to costs very few manufactures of kit will do this. In away this is a pity. Quite often the type and quality of cabling is not mentioned or thought about when it should.

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.

An audio system is a chain everything linked together and cabling is part of that factor, inside and without. Has anyone tried what Dolph asks about and if so what was the result ? Using the same cable inside and out ?

I read what you are saying about Transducers and of course they are important. My point was that they are prone to external influence and that can be added to the signal they are making. sorry if I did not make that clear.

I suppose your room is a sort of transducer too? It can take a mechanical signal(vibration) and depending on the frequency amplify the vibration, increasing the energy in the room. This will depend on how well your room is made and what type of materials are in it. Certainly years ago in my first system I tuned the system to the room and both worked together almost like a musical instrument.

Regards D S D L