Cable Believers -- Price/quality tipping points? - Page 2

How bout locking vs non-locking connectors?

My preference is non locking purely so that I can tell if the connector fit is a good one or not. I would be worried that 'locking' could give the impression of a good contact without that actually being the case.

I have locking but don't lock them. If I was going to leave my rig alone, then Hell yes.

http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f22/re...connects-8908/

I have a couple of Oehlbach cables (cinch and toslink). It made a difference already between a 30 Euro and a 60 Euro toslink. The same with the cinch cables. I have 40 Euro and 170 Euro cinch. The sound is different, but the differences are barely audible. It starts to show as a package: filtered power supply, good cinch, good speaker cables. Each part does a little, only combined its night and day.

Personally, I make sure that I can return these kind of purchases if I shouldn't like them. Its too easy to sink a lot of money...

People be careful on this topic of CABLES. The anti-CABLE police will be arriving shortly to tell you your insane for buying better cables. The PLACEBO people, you've been warned.

You are not insane buying a better cable. You are insane buying a very expensive cable when a much cheaper one will do the same thing.

I know someone who bought £6 ICs out of a computer shop, swapped them with his £65 ICs and he could not tell the difference. A look at the specs of the £6 cable found that it was made in the same way as the far more expensive cable. But the expensive one is advertised to 'audiophiles'. That is the problem for audiophiles, trying to weed out the hype.

But be in no doubt that buying a better cable will improve your system.

$100 from most cable companies will not get you much if any improvement over stuff from Radioshack. The first lesson to learn about cables is that the amount of money spent has absolutely no correlation to performance gained. As others have already said, there are fantastic cables out there that cost very little, and some hyper expensive ones (MIT) that are lousy.

If $100 is all you have to spend, your best option is going to be one of the companies that sells direct on the internet. All of the big companies like AQ or Cardas that sell through dealers have at least a 5-to-1 retail price to build cost ratio, and a cable that costs them $20 or less to make just isn't going to be much better than a stock cable. You can only do so much with $20.

Signal Cable and RS Cables both sell interconnects direct for around $100 that will destroy anything you can get from the big names at that price, and for entry to mid-level systems, that's really all you need. AQ Sky or Nordost Valhalla won't make a difference if you have $1500 speakers.

If on the other hand you have say, $5000 speakers, then you probably should consider spending more, maybe in the $500-800 range. $100-300 isn't going to be a big change, I think you need to go to at least $500 to see a noticeable jump.

If you have $10,000 speakers, make the next step to interconnects in the $1000-2000 range, and if your speakers are $20K+, then start looking at flagship cables.

One more thing. When it comes to expensive cables, buying used is one of the smartest things you can do. Used cables often go for 1/2 or 1/3 of their original price, and as long as they've been well cared for, are basically indistinguishable from something fresh out of the box.

Yeah, how dare we talk about cables in the cable forum. If only someone could come in and start spouting that I need a machine to tell me if I can hear something or not, that I'm an idiot, etc. That would just make my day.

I'm having a hard time getting this to jibe with what you said previous to that:

The first lesson to learn about cables is that the amount of money spent has absolutely no correlation to performance gained.



se

Absolutely agreed with the above. You can spend a lot and get crap, or spend a little and get quality. There is no standard price guide for determining how much a cable sells for. If you really knew how little most cable makers spend on parts cost and labor you'd keep a tighter leash on your wallet. But there are a few honorable guys who have a very reasonable parts cost/labor-to-selling price ratio.

i think there are a lot of good cables in the $100-400 range. i stick with reputable brands that have good resale value. can never really get burnt that way.

What I meant is, all $100 cables are not created equal. $100, or $500, or $2000 is not necessarily going to provide a big performance upgrade across the board from all companies. The Signal Silver Resolution cables are fantastic performers for not much over $100. I'm a big fan of Synergistic Research and Purist Audio Design, but I wouldn't bother with a $100 cable from either company.

When you get above $600 though, Synergistic or Purist cables start to make sense. There are other companies though were $600 still doesn't get you much. To really get the benefit of Siltech cable for example you need to spend at least $1000.

The point I was making is that spending $500 or $1000 is not a waste, you just need to find the right cable that delivers maximum performance for what you want to spend. At the very top end of the scale, prices are all over the place and its up to the buyer to decide whether a cable is worth the money or not. Tesla Apex is $3000 which is a lot of money to spend on an interconnect, but in my opinion its very competitive with Stealth Indra which is $6000, and Purist Canorus which is $8000. Is Apex a bargain? Is Canorus a rip off? Not necessarily. It's all down to what they can do for your particular system.

So your comment was with regard to the various offerings from a particular company?

Otherwise, it seems as if you're saying there is some correlation to performance gained between a $100 cable and a much more expensive cable in general (i.e. not necessarily one from the same company).

se

Technically speaking, in a cable, there are only a few parameters that actually affect the quality of sound.

Resistance - entirely based off length, thickness of the conductor and what material the conductor is made up of (steel, copper, silver) - silver coating may not have much of a difference if the coat is thin, since most of the cross section would still be copper

Inductance - again, pretty much only depends on thickness, material and length. At long lengths, coiling up the cable can increase inductance, which is bad

Capacitance - Depends on the material of the insulator, the thickness of the insulator and the areas of each conductor which makes contact with the insulator.

Shielding - for unbalanced cables the ground is also the shield.. thicker/more complex shielding usually doesn't matter, since it is effectively a faraday cage. Balanced cable usually has a shield around both conductors, and the shield is not connected to the audio path


Simply put, if i was shopping for cables, or making cables, i would prefer those with a thicker conductor and thicker insulation material. Good connectors is also a must. I would like to experiment with making cables out of RG58 or similar coax cable
edit: i would also go with coax cable as it is already designed for high bandwidths, and should distort even less at audio frequencies


Don't forget, that inside a lot of amps they don't use super fancy cabling, often just solid copper hookup wire.