Cables again! Can one be made with user adjustments?

[Happy Camper]

Inductance, impedance, capacitance, resistance, filtering, etc. Every cable maker has its own mix of these measurements. This is a simpleton's question on the issue. Can a circuit or circuits be designed to alter a bare wire's properties to tweak to the components needs?

 

[883dave]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Happy Camper /img/forum/go_quote.gif Inductance, impedance, capacitance, resistance, filtering, etc. Every cable maker has its own mix of these measurements. This is a simpleton's question on the issue. Can a circuit or circuits be designed to alter a bare wire's properties to tweak to the components needs?

Check out MIT cables

"The V3.2 Proline also features new switchable impedance networks allowing the end user to select between low (5-50kO), medium (40-100kO), or high (over 90kO) impedance with a simple flick of a switch"

 

[UseName]

I don't understand the question... if you add components to the circuit, it changes the properties of the circuit, not the wire itself.

However you can add components to a wire, and the resulting circuit can perform the same job as the wire with different properties.

For example, if you have a wire that is has 1 Ohm of resistance and double it up with an identical wire the resulting resistance will be will be 0.5ohms.

 

[Riboge]

Various cable companies do this deliberately. 883dave mentioned MIT, the only one I know with straightforward adjustment knobs on their network box. Transparent audio uses their version of a network box. There are others. Also, Synergistic uses active shielding to enhance performance with two different devices one can connect to the shield for different results, the regular one and the new Enigma which is far more elaborate and effective.

Many savvy equipment dealers use different cables to 'tune' components and systems because different ones enhances or decrease various qualities and frequency ranges. I recently had this vividly demonstrated to me by one of the best who says he uses this all the time to get the results he wants.

 

[Happy Camper]

Thanks guys for the leads. I am not knowledgable to the industry and was wondering about attempts to do this. I will follow up with your leads.

 

[setmenu]

Tone controls will do the same job.




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[stevenkelby]

Quote:

Originally Posted by setmenu /img/forum/go_quote.gif Tone controls will do the same job. .

Tone controls should only affect frequency response. There is more to how a system sounds than frequency response.

 

[setmenu]

Quote:

Originally Posted by stevenkelby /img/forum/go_quote.gif Tone controls should only affect frequency response. There is more to how a system sounds than frequency response.

I would agree that designing audio systems that enable the listener to 'suspend disbelief' is a subtle blend of engineering and subjective preference, and there is more to it than crude frequency response curve, thds etc.
But, gentle manipulation of the peaks and troughs of the response can have a great deal of effect on ones perception of soundstage , separation etc.
As I am sure you will agree.

We are not lab instruments taken measurements when we listen, we are after an emotional experience, so it is hardly surprising people can get a bit muddled as to what they think they are hearing.

If people are happy tuning their systems with cable fine,been there done that.
Not entirely sure whether i always believe my ears though.
I have also messed with passive filter networks where measurable value changes have been made.
But then again if the changes are very small , can also be sceptical with that too.

Funny old business hi fi.

.

 

[nick_charles]

Quote:

Originally Posted by stevenkelby /img/forum/go_quote.gif Tone controls should only affect frequency response. There is more to how a system sounds than frequency response.

This is true, however I would think that changes in the frequency response would be easier to spot than changes in distortion and noise, the levels of which are vanishingly low in most components these days anyway.

A cable may also affect group delay so that some higher frequencies may arrive later than others but from what I have read on engineering sites these delays are pretty small , in the nanosecond (10 ^ -9 seconds) range even for 10ft runs of speaker cable, apart from a few exotic speaker cables that can introduce up to 70ns delay but these do have highly measurable high frequency roll-offs, when you get to 50ft runs you are still typically only in the 100 - 200 ns range ( 2 x 10 ^ -7 seconds) , for a 3 ft interconnect however they would be miniscule unless you engineered the cable to deliberately introduce such an effect with some added circuitry.

Are such differences audible, probably not, Blauert and Laws in an AES journal paper (1978) determined the threshold of audibilty of group delay to be around 2ms at 8K and about 1ms at 2K, i.e a lot more than you are likely to get in any normal wire interconnect.

The only problem with equalizers is that the effect is relatively crude, unless you pony up for a parametric equalizer you are adjusting a center frequency and a great deal either side.

 

[stevenkelby]

All good points.

Most of us are flying blind in the dark anyway with no idea what we are actually hearing in our systems in terms of freq. response, phase, delay etc, etc. Knowing where you are is the first step to moving forward. Easier said than done, especially with 'phones.