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Gold plating on cables and other questions to help a beginner!

post #1 of 4
12/29/10 at 9:09am
Thread Starter 

Hey all,

I'm still relatively new to head-fi and I'm slowly upgrading my setup. I still use my Philips HP1000 the most (wonderfully comfortable with great soundstage) and it comes with what I think is a fairly high quality cable. Meaning that it's fairly thick and covered in tough rubber as well as being detachable. Over the years the gold plating/coating on the 1/4" plug side has started to fade and I've even noticed a scratch or two on it.

 

My question is does the gold coating do anything at all for the plug? Should I consider recabling? Are there differences in using 3.5mm, 1/4" and larger plugs? And what are the benefits of recabling because I've seen costs as high as a decent pair of cans.


Edited by Madpierrot - 12/29/10 at 9:12am
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post #2 of 4
12/29/10 at 9:13am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Madpierrot View Post

Hey all,

I'm still relatively new to head-fi and I'm slowly upgrading my setup. I still use my Philips HP1000 the most (wonderfully comfortable with great soundstage) and it comes with what I think is a fairly high quality cable. Meaning that it's fairly thick and covered in tough rubber as well as being detachable. Over the years the gold plating/coating on the 1/4" plug side has started to fade and I've even noticed a scratch or two on it.

 

My question is does the gold coating do anything at all for the plug? Should I consider recabling? And what are the benefits of recabling because I've seen costs as high as a decent pair of cans.



I wouldn't worry about the gold plating on the plug, happens to everyone's headphones eventually, IMO, a recabling isn't needed, expecially for the prices they can go for

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post #3 of 4
12/29/10 at 10:26am
Thread Starter 

Thanks for the reply. What are the benefits of recabling in general? I've read that for the Ultrasone HFI-780 the ALO cable/mod can transform it into sounding like the the Edition 9 which I believe are 5x the price.

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post #4 of 4
12/29/10 at 10:41am

 

If you dare to believe in the quality of cables ( Don't believe to loud or you'll get us all in trouble ) the point is to do as little damage to the signal as possible.  Great sounding cables don't have to be expensive but like all things in life, it depends on how much you want to pay.

 

Gold is used because it doesn't corrode easily, not because of its sonic properties.  So if it rubs off, no biggie. And there is no sonic difference between the larger 1/4 inch plug and the smaller 1/8 inch one.

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