Need help picking the best DIY interconnect cable for less than $50 - Page 2

I can't directly compare silver dragon headphone cable to silver plated copper, but (i think) a lot of people around here use teflon coated SPC from the seller navships on eBay.  Good prices, good stock, a variety of sizes.  Personally I have found his cable to be brighter sounding and more detailed than standard copper and have made ipod lod's and recabled K81DJ's with it.  I'm sold  on it at least.  Of course, describing audio is pretty subjective...

Quote:

Originally Posted by slowpogo 

 

I shouldn't have even posted anything. All I will comment on, is the part about "objective data" making one biased.

 

It gives you a preexisting expectation. You've got "data" that tells you beforehand what you should expect to hear - namely, nothing, no difference. So why would you hear anything, even if it were there? You possess a conviction, even passion, from analyzing your "objective data," and passion and conviction are not neutral or unbiased.

Ah, but that wouldn't be considered as objective data, would it now?

This is why surveys are done double blind, so that your conviction cannot influence the output, either directly or indirectly through the behaviour of the tester.

This article seems pretty sound to me:

http://www.tweak-fi.com/apps/blog/show/5031063-is-there-really-an-audible-difference-between-cables-

Your mention of double-blind tests made me remember it. If this article is to be believed, many such tests that end up being ammo for the skeptics, are not conducted very well. For example, in one major study, people were asked to distinguish between audio components using $25 Sony headphones. That's just dumb. As the article points out, the premise of such a study - trying to determine if higher-cost audio components really sound better - should automatically predicate the use of reference-level headphones. If the skeptics are right, then the quality of headphone doesn't matter anyway, so the nicer headphones cannot possibly bias the results.  If the skeptics are wrong, the good headphones are only helping the test to be more accurate.  So it shouldn't bother anyone to use them.

This is just one example, and I'm not really trying to prolong a debate..just saying, it's complicated. Any time EITHER side of the debate seems to score a point, if you look closer, it's not so cut and dry.

I am a skeptic but I accept that I will never be able to convince those who have outlaid their money on expensive interconnects.

As Dr John Bridges said in 1587 "a foole and his money is soone parted"

There is a middle ground, I think, which I may fall into. I think those who spend hundreds or thousands on their cables are suckers. But I'm willing to spend a little more for silver wire, or high purity copper, as well as quality connectors, because I think it makes a difference. The cable running from my DAC to amp is one I made myself - it cost about $50 total, and I'll probably keep it forever. It sounds great and is worth every penny IMO. But, disregarding extra length, I think spending more than that will yield rapidly diminishing returns. (Except possibly for Eichmann connectors, which I haven't heard, but many think they sound better and there is supposedly evidence to support why their construction would maintain better signal integrity.)

I'm sure the super cheap Belden cable recommended above sounds fine. And I doubt my cable sounds 5x better (or whatever the cost ratio is), but I do believe it will sound noticeably better. Whether it's enough to justify the extra cost is a personal matter.

Since this topic is going in a pretty civil manner, I have a question. Some people say premium power cables are a waste of money, because the power has traveled through so many miles of old cable before it reaches your house, so how could the last few feet (your nice cable) make any difference? This seems like a logically flawed argument to me. The water in my home has traveled through many miles of old pipe before it reaches my house. But once it does, some of it travels through a new medium - a filtration system - and it ends up tasting better. Taste is just as subjective as sound quality, and few would argue with me that the filtration makes the taste better.  I also have aerators on my faucets, which further change the behavior of the water.

I know few direct comparisons can be drawn between water and electricity.  But the idea that the ratio of an initial condition, to a new condition, is directly proportional to each condition's influence - the idea that a lot of something first will necessarily trump a little of something second - is not logical. It's false in a way similar to the "gambler's fallacy" that I am not skilled enough with logic to articulate.

The middle ground is to avoid the ultra cheap cables & connectors - I mean the $2 type. The Belden cable mentioned when used with good rca connectors eg, neutrik will make a cable as good as any cable out there. But don't fall for the hype about Eichman and such.

As far as "premium" power cables go your argument about filtration makes some sence in that a power filter is good to get rid of power spikes etc, but this has nothing to do with so called premium cables. Most quality amps etc use quality transformers and all power transformes use copper wire - 100's of meters of it. There are some, very expensive, moving coil transformers using silver or silver plated wire but, in all my years in electronics I have never heard of a power transformer with silver plated wiren nor have I never seen a silver plated printed circuit board - they are all copper!

Silver is a better conductor then copper but only marginally so. Gold however is actually a worse conductor then copper.