Why pick on cables ? - Page 23  

 

Most properly (and reasonably priced) cables should "sound" very similar because they are, by all practical purposes, flat in the audio frequency range. Extending the frequency range of such cables might be useful for high speed communications, but unnecessary for audio frequency range applications.

 

It is quite possible to add all sorts of load coils and stuff to a cable to behave as some odd fixed filter. This would require some extra components... and expense. Obviously this does not result in a theoretically and practically "invisible" cable.

 

Smoothing all sorts of tremble peaks with cable is a difficult task. Different headphones and gear would have tremble peaks and nulls in different frequencies, and most cables have no means to detect and fix these issues.

 

A cable that rolls off at the high frequencies effectively smooths out things in the time domain, and makes things less bright. But it takes away things that it should not smooth out also. You would definitively hear these issues.

Edited by ultrabike - 1/31/13 at 1:50pm

Thanks Ultrabike. Some food for thought :) 

 

This is not a go at none believers in cable technology. Only I believe I'm hearing a very pleasing difference between an expensive cable and a very cheap one. Theres no way I'd pay the normal price for a high end cable. Not a chance, I don't believe the difference substantiates this. But If I'm believing what I'm hearing in my modest rig, then I can sure understand why some do pay out for those very little differences.

 

Stuffing a little bit of cotton ball in your ears would smooth out the peaks about the same as using a cable that isn't efficient enough to be audibly transparent.

As long as it's good quality cotton.

 

I recommend Audioquest Platinum Puff.

 

Edited by LugBug1 - 1/31/13 at 2:59pm

 

It would be interesting to see if the cable actually is acting as a low pass filter. 

Do you have the ability to do a simple loop-back recording? Audacity and a regular soundcard with analog input would suffice.

Personally, I thonk the cable is designed to create expectation bias. "Smoother" is one of the typical descriptions of placebo sound. It's right up there with "wider soundstage" and "detailed".

Edited by bigshot - 1/31/13 at 8:26pm

And people wonder why silver cables are clear yet bright, copper cables are warm, and gold cables are lush... color, anyone? 

 

In one of the cable forums, someone suggested silver cables be used in the summer (because they sound cool) and copper in the winter (warm). I seriously couldn't understand whether it was a joke or not.

When I think of silver cables I think of snakes, which makes me think of slytherin, which makes me think of cold, dead, bad guys. So silver cables sound cold!

 

Unless you live in Australia. But you also need to make sure your cables are twisted counterclockwise, or it will play your music upside down.

Ha!

I also suggested using copper plated silver for fall, and silver plated copper for spring. Add to that the twist combinations.

 

No mystery there. Every cable has series inductance and shunt capacitance which makes every cable a low pass filter. Though it's trivially easy to make a cable that won't roll off anything to speak of in the audio band.

 

se

 

Exactly, and I think it would be interesting to find out if Van den Huul succeeded at this trivial task.

Depending on the source impedance it could actually be difficult to make a cable that rolls off in band at all. If the source z is a few ohms you'd need well over .1uf to do anything at 20Khz without deliberately adding some R or L in series. A low Z load just makes it a little harder to do. A cable that effects an audible reaponse change would have easily measured electrical properties. There have been cables made with intentionally high series L and R and shunt C.