Hot: audiofile quality custom made cables ON THE CHEAP!

[mikeford]

Monster cable, to my ear at least sounds worse as the price increases, ie the simple twisted pair cables, 201 or something like that seemed fine, but the stuff with 3 sizes of wire inside I didn't like.

Sorry no Naim, I use a cheap Phillips CD carousel, sp/dif coax to the original Sony external DAC a DAS702es which I modified a long time ago, Shalco switched attenuators in a passive preamp, Quad 606, and Quad ESL 63 which I reworked also a long time ago, plus an Enigma dipole panel subwoofer. Wires are about half homemade and half various brands of twisted pair like monster, and AR.

ABX complaints boil down to a couple of pretty lame arguments; ABX is too stressfull, or your ABX stuff messes up the sound. Both are pretty wimpy in practice too, ie subjective with no facts.

 

[Kostya17]

Originally posted by: schwinn8...As for the comment posted above saying that once everything goes to digital we won't have this argument any more, I only wish this were the case. I keep hearing "audiophiles" say that the digital interconnect needs to be even better than analog to preserve the signal. I even hear that optical vs. coax digital has a difference. Of course, whenever I ask for an explanation, I don't get one! The way I see it is if the receiving device can see the digital signal without having any issues, the stream is clean enough, and hence there is no need for "digital" interconnects. Anyone care to explain otherwise?

Here's the "explanation": Text This guy is talking about clock generator upgrade. Scroll down until you get to "STOP THE PRESSES! Audiocom?s Superclock II is a Winner!" Ok, let's assume the stock CLKGen is crap and the upgrade is much much better...Really? Well, I was trying to believe him until he mentioned about "breaking-in". WTF? The whole purpose of clock generator is to provide stable clock signal, cold or warmed-up, brand-new or heavily used. If the music changes after breaking-in, then one of the following is really happening:
1) The new CLKGen is simply junk--it has way too much drift
2) The guy hears the difference because he wants to

Please note that nowhere on this page you can see any technical info on this gadget (i.e. fundamental frequency, sidebands, temperature stability, time stability)... To me it sounds like "this snake oil will really help your cold...just take it with aspirin twice-a-day..."

The "reviews" like the one I linked above clearly show that most of the debates on digital vs. analog or "overpriced" vs. "terribly overpriced" is pure B$. I don't mind people paying several grand for a piece of copper; however, there is a law against false advertisement and I don't enjoy watching/listening to all this circus. C?mon, people are getting scammed--it?s not funny. Those snake-oil salesmen are walking right on the edge with their "STOP THE PRESSES! We've Winner!" slogans.

 

[amnesiac]

Originally posted by: Kostya17

Originally posted by: schwinn8...As for the comment posted above saying that once everything goes to digital we won't have this argument any more, I only wish this were the case. I keep hearing "audiophiles" say that the digital interconnect needs to be even better than analog to preserve the signal. I even hear that optical vs. coax digital has a difference. Of course, whenever I ask for an explanation, I don't get one! The way I see it is if the receiving device can see the digital signal without having any issues, the stream is clean enough, and hence there is no need for "digital" interconnects. Anyone care to explain otherwise?

Here's the "explanation": Text This guy is talking about clock generator upgrade. Scroll down until you get to "STOP THE PRESSES! Audiocom?s Superclock II is a Winner!" Ok, let's assume the stock CLKGen is crap and the upgrade is much much better...Really? Well, I was trying to believe him until he mentioned about "breaking-in". WTF? The whole purpose of clock generator is to provide stable clock signal, cold or warmed-up, brand-new or heavily used. If the music changes after breaking-in, then one of the following is really happening:
1) The new CLKGen is simply junk--it has way too much drift
2) The guy hears the difference because he wants to

Please note that nowhere on this page you can see any technical info on this gadget (i.e. fundamental frequency, sidebands, temperature stability, time stability)... To me it sounds like "this snake oil will really help your cold...just take it with aspirin twice-a-day..."

The "reviews" like the one I linked above clearly show that most of the debates on digital vs. analog or "overpriced" vs. "terribly overpriced" is pure B$. I don't mind people paying several grand for a piece of copper; however, there is a law against false advertisement and I don't enjoy watching/listening to all this circus. C?mon, people are getting scammed--it?s not funny. Those snake-oil salesmen are walking right on the edge with their "STOP THE PRESSES! We've Winner!" slogans.

95% of any equipment made for, marketed to, and purchased by audiophiles is A) overpriced, B) snake oil, C) completely subject to the "golden ear syndrome." This includes everything from multi thousand dollar modifications to hundred dollar chunks of metal (aka "dampeners") to the debate of Coax vs. Optical.

I upgraded my speaker cable from standard 14 gauge zip cord to twisted pair 11ga Canare Star Quad with heavy duty banana plugs just for sh!ts and giggles a couple weeks ago. Do I notice a difference in the sonics? Not in the slightest. Was the "upgrade" worth it? Yes, because I have speaker cables that look like they cost $200 or more, but only took $60 and 2 hours to make.

As stated before several times in this thread, most systems willl do fine with mid-grade interconnects. The ones offered by the OP are high grade but at a VERY VERY VERY reasonable price.

Now, as for the audio interconnects, I'd say most of it won't offer much, if any, improvement over, say Acoustic Research cables from best buy, or Radio Shack Gold cables.

The video cables are a different story. WIth video, irrefutable differences can be measured with equipment, test patterns, and the naked eye. You don't have "golden eye" videophiles wandering around saying how their $2000 bronze statuette of Osiris positioned laterally at 47 degrees north-northwest makes their picture better. Are these Canare/Belden cables overkill for most setups? Certainly. Are they worth it? Yes, because they cost only slightly more than a good set of store-bought cables, and much less than Monster, and you can be assured you have cables that exceed the HDTV standard by several orders of magnitude.

 

[Salvador]

Sorry no Naim, I use a cheap Phillips CD carousel, sp/dif coax to the original Sony external DAC a DAS702es which I modified a long time ago, Shalco switched attenuators in a passive preamp, Quad 606, and Quad ESL 63 which I reworked also a long time ago, plus an Enigma dipole panel subwoofer. Wires are about half homemade and half various brands of twisted pair like monster, and AR.

I asked because I have a local dealer that is a Naim and Quad "Bus seat" ESL nut. He's really into that pace and rhythm thing, which I still have a hard time getting a grip on. He too believes that there is no difference in cables, so he uses Naim cables on all his gear. I tried them and they only seem to sound good with Naim electronics. I bought my ProAc's from this dealer, but don't listen to much else of what he has to say.

A cd carousel? What a lousy transport. I do know that transports make a difference in sound quality. You must be half deaf, so I don't think cables will make a difference for you.

Sal

 

[GoSharks]

Originally posted by: amnesiac

The video cables are a different story. WIth video, irrefutable differences can be measured with equipment, test patterns, and the naked eye. You don't have "golden eye" videophiles wandering around saying how their $2000 bronze statuette of Osiris positioned laterally at 47 degrees north-northwest makes their picture better. Are these Canare/Belden cables overkill for most setups? Certainly. Are they worth it? Yes, because they cost only slightly more than a good set of store-bought cables, and much less than Monster, and you can be assured you have cables that exceed the HDTV standard by several orders of magnitude.

how the hell can you bash audio cables and tout video cables in the same freaking post? video isnt all that different from audio...

 

[SweetSweetLeroyBrown]

if the same DAC is used, why is carousel worse than single player?

 

[mikeford]

By "Bus seat" I assume you mean the Quad ESL 57 (named because it was designed in 1957). One of the more knowledgeable audio friends of mine a decade or so ago said screw it, dumped all his lasted greatest gear, and bought a pair of ESL 57 speakers, a pair of MacIntosh MC60 tube amps, a passive preamp with switched attenuators and a outboard tube phono section, a modified Phillips I think 950 CD player, and I think a Linn turntable. He remains happy as a clam, and I agree with him that no finer midrange speaker exists than the ESL57. His system isn't whizbang by current standards, but if you can't enjoy music on it, you can't enjoy music on anything.

"What a lousy transport" Don't get all jittery on me, but I don't buy much if any of the fancy transport argument.

DEAF? Why would deaf make a difference, since its BLIND testing that you fear so much. As long as I can see expensive cables I know it sounds better don't I?

Carousel vs Single player, in order to make the correct output waveform the DAC has to output the correct voltage at a VERY precise time, error is called jitter or phase error, and without getting too techy lets just say it isn't REAL easy to get the timing accurate enough not to be a substantial source of error and distortion in the digital to analog conversion. Whether or not the errors are large enough to hear is somethng people argue about. Carousel or other transport that sends its data via sp/dif to a external dac has a problem a single player doesn't, the DAC part can't tell the transport to adjust its speed and the single player can. This means the external DAC has to "track" the data rate of the transport and recover timing data from the sp/dif input stream, which is hard to do. The single player can use the most accurate crystal clock etc which is cheap and easy to do, and just adjust the speed of the spinning CD to follow the master clock rate.

BTW most true video guys laugh their butts off at videophiles, who half the time don't even have grey scale or black levels properly set, regardless of any fancy cables.

 

[Apex]

Originally posted by: GOSHARKS

Originally posted by: amnesiac

The video cables are a different story. WIth video, irrefutable differences can be measured with equipment, test patterns, and the naked eye. You don't have "golden eye" videophiles wandering around saying how their $2000 bronze statuette of Osiris positioned laterally at 47 degrees north-northwest makes their picture better. Are these Canare/Belden cables overkill for most setups? Certainly. Are they worth it? Yes, because they cost only slightly more than a good set of store-bought cables, and much less than Monster, and you can be assured you have cables that exceed the HDTV standard by several orders of magnitude.

how the hell can you bash audio cables and tout video cables in the same freaking post? video isnt all that different from audio...

Actually it is quite different.

Take for instance DVI cabling. When we're running any sort of lengths, we start having serious problems with poor cabling. These are very very obvious problems we're talking about too. 1400x1050 at 60hz is difficult to do over 30' or so. 1920x1200 is almost impossible with copper cabling over those lengths. You'll see LOTS of random pixels of colors that shoot across the screen, especially with a black screen or darker colors. Very obvious defects.

With video, often it doesn't take an expert to notice these things.

 

[schwinn8]

Originally posted by: GOSHARKS
how the hell can you bash audio cables and tout video cables in the same freaking post? video isnt all that different from audio...

I believe audio is carried on the RCA cables as a simple analog waveform, hence about 20kHz maximum (typical). Video on the other hand has much more data to carry and typically runs in on a 1+MHz carrier frequency (if I am not mistaken). So, the video signal has more data to corrupt, and more noise sensitivity, and more sensitivity to cables with high resistance and/or capacitance. Hence, a better cable is important for video, and easily detectable... whereas in audio it may not be.

 

[GoSharks]

but it doesnt mean that a better cable will not help audio as well...

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: Gibzilla
Highend cables are the biggest scam since bottled water.

For ME, as long as cable are in right gauge and have sufficent shielding, It's all good.

LOL. I recall sometime, in a galaxy far, far away, I was cruising the newsgroup rec.audio.high-end and then, as now, people were arguing the merits of cabling. Someone got tired of all the round-n-round arguments and posted a fake "discussion" on salt. Yup, NaCl. In this fake "discussion" the fake posters were arguing over the taste difference from common table salt, iodized salt, "lab grade pure NaCl" and so forth. It was really funny.

Just as funny as bottled water. C'mon guys, "purified" water is just H2O, whether it be in a $.82 gallon supermarket jug or a $1.25 Aquafina bottle.

I'm with Gibzilla. The right guage is needed especially for speaker wire because the stuff has to carry the current without catching on fire. Sufficient shielding is also a good thing to have. Beyond that, snake oil. Doubly so for digital interconnects. A zero is a zero, and a one is a one. No changing that no matter how expensive the cable is. Now, insufficient shielding can cause a zero to become a one and vice versa. That means the cable is faulty or unshielded, not that the cable wasn't expensive enough.

My personal feelings are that since I give myself a limited budget for audio gear I have to choose wisely, and the wise choice is to spend more on the speakers since they physically create the sound. I can pretty much guarantee that a $495 pair of speakers with $5 worth of wiring would sound better than a $250 pair of speakers with $250 worth of speaker wiring. Same thing with interconnects. A $250 receiver with $250 interconnects, or $5 interconnects and $495 worth of amplifier/preamp?

But, like what's-her-name said, "if it makes you happy..."

Me? I'm happy with $250 worth of strippers on my lap.

 

[mikeford]

I'm tempted to comment on more, but will restrain myself.

Water
Anybody else watch the Penn and Teller show BullSh!t? (cable, maybe hbo or cinemax). The program on water was hilarious, they open a "water bar" fill all the bottles in the back from a garden hose, but give them fancy foreign names, like Aqua de Coolo (butt water), and charge $3 to $5 a bottle. OTOH pure water doesn't taste right, I like Evian, and best tap water I ever tasted was from a bathroom sink in an old building we used to rent.

Wire
The problem is that in consumer level electronics the basic design of the RCA connectors and input and output circuits is about as poor as it can be and still function at all. Single ended, common ground, high impedance, and low contact pressure are all weak areas that a decent interconnnect wire needs to address. I look for two basic things beyond general quality in a interconnect wire, something that increases the force on the contact area, but doesn't damage the connection on the equipment or make it very tough to get on and off, and a twisted pair layout with a shield grounded only on one end (no current in the shield).

Video and various funky wires
As the signal frequency goes up all sorts of new issues pop up, plus again a lot of blame goes on poor, just barely good enough to work input and output circuits in consumer goods. One big issue is that coax wire acts like a capacitor, and the longer the cable is the higher the current required to get the same voltage levels. Take a output circuit designed for a 3 ft cable, and big surprize it has trouble with anything more than double or triple that. Don't blame the copper though, digital cable and gigabit networking run just fine over copper, its the input and output circuit that is to blame.

 

[Sanjoelo]

Originally posted by: mikeford
I'm tempted to comment on more, but will restrain myself.

Water
Anybody else watch the Penn and Teller show BullSh!t? (cable, maybe hbo or cinemax). The program on water was hilarious, they open a "water bar" fill all the bottles in the back from a garden hose, but give them fancy foreign names, like Aqua de Coolo (butt water), and charge $3 to $5 a bottle. OTOH pure water doesn't taste right, I like Evian, and best tap water I ever tasted was from a bathroom sink in an old building we used to rent.

Wire
The problem is that in consumer level electronics the basic design of the RCA connectors and input and output circuits is about as poor as it can be and still function at all. Single ended, common ground, high impedance, and low contact pressure are all weak areas that a decent interconnnect wire needs to address. I look for two basic things beyond general quality in a interconnect wire, something that increases the force on the contact area, but doesn't damage the connection on the equipment or make it very tough to get on and off, and a twisted pair layout with a shield grounded only on one end (no current in the shield).

Video and various funky wires
As the signal frequency goes up all sorts of new issues pop up, plus again a lot of blame goes on poor, just barely good enough to work input and output circuits in consumer goods. One big issue is that coax wire acts like a capacitor, and the longer the cable is the higher the current required to get the same voltage levels. Take a output circuit designed for a 3 ft cable, and big surprize it has trouble with anything more than double or triple that. Don't blame the copper though, digital cable and gigabit networking run just fine over copper, its the input and output circuit that is to blame.

Just a quick thanks to mikeford (and others) for bringing some sanity and fact to the thread. I think the point is that there is a difference between el-cheapo department store cables (or the ones they throw in with most consumer level electronics) and "acceptable" cables. Those cables are worth replacing with some well shielded, well constructed interconnects with an acceptably gauged cable constructed of good copper. These cables can be had from various sources at very acceptable prices.

As for you people who believe that $200-$2000 cables improve your "audiophile" experience--enjoy your "deeper, tighter bass", "more defined presence" and "crisp, soaring highs".

We are all seething with envy. The laughter is only because we're deranged, as we know we're missing out on something that only a -true- audiophile's ears could detect.

<cough>marketingstooge<cough>

 

[rs]

Wow, some pretty long winded posts... guess I'll add mine 🙂

I am an audiophile but more importantly a music lover. Before burning out on it, I spent 20 years in the high-end audio industry, most of it as a trainer/teacher. My system includes components that most people would consider to be way "over the top," but to some audiophiles it's low-end. (Audio Research tube preamp, New York Audio Labs Moscode tube amp, Linn Sondek turntable, Wadia D/A converter, etc.) My two cents (equivalent to 50 dollars if sold by a high-end audio store)...

1) The difference between an audiophile and a music lover, in my opinion, is that an music lover listens to music and an audiophile to equipment. Many audiophiles spend more time listening to the "air around the cymbals" (how well they are reproduced) than to the way the drummer is playing them. They're so busy tweaking their equipment and comparing tiny nuances that the music becomes secondary. They're missing the whole point. If the music moves you on the equipment that you have, then enjoy the music, even if it's playing on a boombox. On the other hand, it's worth the experience of listening to a state-of-the-art system once to see what you're missing. It's like driving a Porsche once in your life even if you own a Chevy. You may or may not decide that the experience is worth the extra money (or even have the extra money), but at least you've had the experience.

2) High-end audio reaches a point of diminishing returns. Again, using the car analogy, a particular $40k car may go twice as fast as a $20k car, but a $200k car will not go 10 times as fast. (Okay, I'm simplifying, but you get the point.) There are some people who will spend boatloads of money to eek out that extra 2%. More power to them, if they can afford it and that's how they want to spend their money. If you hear he difference, and feel that it's worth the investment, then enjoy it. If not, spend your money on something else.

3) Specs can't accurately measure musicality. Again, a car analogy. Both a Rolls Royce and a Ferrari are exceptional cars, but they couldn't be more different. Each does things far better than a Ford Escort, but in different ways. Many of these cannot be measured. How do you translate the "feel" of these two cars into specs? Even if you could measure every possible spec how would you determine which particular combination was best for everybody? High-end audio is the same way. Also, there are ways of cheating on specs. The way the most common audio specs are measured have little bearing on how the component performs in the "real world" playing "real music." Mass-market audio manufacturers often design components to look good on a spec sheet, whereas some high end products "measure" worse but sound better because the engineers worried more about how they sounded playing music on speakers than how they measured playing pink noise into a resistor.

4) A lot of it comes down to how well the particular components in your system, and the room acoustics, work together. I've heard systems that were comprised of exceptional components that each sounded great in their own right, but sounded really bad together. On the same note, a double blind test proves only that a certain combination of equipment sounded better to a certain group of people playing certain music in a certain room.

5) Even then, if trying to judge what sounds better by listening (either by double-blind test or informally), what is your point of reference? Unless you know how that recording sounded in the recording studio when the engineer mixed it down (using electronics and speakers that themselves imprinted their own sound), then how can you judge what component sounds closer to "the real thing?" Unless you happen to have the actual artist in the room playing live next to you, it's all a "best guess" anyway.

6) So you can't go by specs. You can't go by double-blind testing. And you may or may not notice a difference from listening. So how do you know what's best for you? It's easy. Remember my firs point. It's all about enjoying the music (or movie), not the equipment. If what you have brings you "into" the music - involves you - then it's right for you.

 

[ValsalvaYourHeartOut]

Originally posted by: rs

For the most part, I agree with what you wrote.

5) Even then, if trying to judge what sounds better by listening (either by double-blind test or informally), what is your point of reference? Unless you know how that recording sounded in the recording studio when the engineer mixed it down (using electronics and speakers that themselves imprinted their own sound), then how can you judge what component sounds closer to "the real thing?" Unless you happen to have the actual artist in the room playing live next to you, it's all a "best guess" anyway.

6) So you can't go by specs. You can't go by double-blind testing. And you may or may not notice a difference from listening. So how do you know what's best for you? It's easy. Remember my firs point. It's all about enjoying the music (or movie), not the equipment. If what you have brings you "into" the music - involves you - then it's right for you.

I think you kind of miss the point of blind-testing...the purpose of BLINDING the listener is so that he is not subject to the placebo effect. People who expect to hear something better tend to do so, regardless of any actual differences. When we talk about speaker cables, the big concern is that people tend to hear remarkable differences when they think a higher quality cable has been swapped in...and this is very-well documented. However, if we BLIND the person, and see if he can tell which cable is which, then we can say with certainty that he noticed improvements that were NOT related to the placebo effect...on the other hand, if he suddenly can't tell the difference between the two cables when he doesn't know which is which, then we tend to believe there really are no differences discernable to this listener.

Consider the experiment:
a) stereo system with cheap speaker cable
b) SAME stereo system with expensive Monster Cable swapped in...and that's the only difference.

If you take a group of people and they can't identify which is system A and which is system B repeatedly, and with an accuracy beyond that expected by guessing alone, then we tend to believe that people are not able to tell the difference between Monster Cable and cheap cable. What if we look at numerous published experiments like this...involving many different people each time...and involving different exotic speaker cables each time..and NONE OF THEM demonstrate that people can tell cables apart...THEN we measure expensive vs. cheap cables and discover that the differences in the measurable parameters known to affect sound quality (e.g. freq vs. amplitude, phase, inductance, capacticance, resistance, etc.) and find no significant differences between many expensive cables and cheap ones... You look at ALL OF THIS EVIDENCE and you draw a conclusion. NO DIFFERENCE.

Valsalva