[Rex81]

So I was doing a little work on my HD565 last night and had them all disassembled. I was looking at the bare driver and noticed it was fed by the tiniest wires I have ever seen, not much thicker than a human hair.

I'm sure there's a reasonable answer for this, but it just seems strange to me that people get these finger thick 2" interconnect cables costing $50 or more, spend hundreds on the headphone cable itself, and it all terminates at the business end with microscopic cables.

I understand that with more power comes better volume and dynamics, and that with more and higher quality wire comes more power. I also understand that your audio setup is only as good as your weakest link. Wouldn't the weak link (if there was one) then be the cables going into the driver, designed by Sennheiser themselves? And wouldn't that mean that all the other uprgraded wires don't matter?

Please note that I have little experience in recabling, am not an audiophile, and I'm just wondering out of curiosity.

Thanks in advance for clearing this up for me.

 

[HippieTom]

Im wondering too.
There are also thin (looks cheapo)cables in Cdp, dac, amp, PC, you name it. Are those also weak links?

 

[daglesj]

I guess its the sum of the parts.

Its just a case of making something work to its best potential. At the end of it, if it sounds good to you thats all that matters. Mission accomplished.

You can take having a few meters of the most esoteric, pure and expensive copper cable between your amp and speakers but you use a (in comparison) clump of brass/copper/gold plate of unknown origin in a banana plug to hook it up.

By the way that cable was probably originally specced up by Boeing or such like for a few cents a meter. Very few (if any) hifi firms design and make their own cables. Its a big big industrial job.

 

[moogoob]

I'm convinced it's all about your system looking cool.

Don't those milky-white Jena interconnects look awesome?

EDIT: I am a bit of a hypocrite, perhaps, with my Kimber GQ-Mini CU connecting my Micro Stack together, but then again I bought it cause it looked cool, and nicely made cable certainly couldn't hurt.

 

[Uncle Erik]

Quote:

Originally Posted by moogoob /img/forum/go_quote.gif I'm convinced it's all about your system looking cool. Don't those milky-white Jena interconnects look awesome? EDIT: I am a bit of a hypocrite, perhaps, with my Kimber GQ-Mini CU connecting my Micro Stack together, but then again I bought it cause it looked cool, and nicely made cable certainly couldn't hurt.

Much of audio is fashion and jewelry.

Don't make the mistake of thinking that a Rolex with diamonds keeps better time than a stainless model.

 

[krmathis]

Unresponsive forum...

 

[krmathis]

Because not all cables are made of hair thin copper!

..there are variations on conductor material (silver, copper, ...), solder, insulation, connectors, and more. Which all have an impact on the end result.

 

[csroc]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Uncle Erik /img/forum/go_quote.gif Much of audio is fashion and jewelry. Don't make the mistake of thinking that a Rolex with diamonds keeps better time than a stainless model.

Good answer

 

[JaZZ]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rex81 /img/forum/go_quote.gif So I was doing a little work on my HD565 last night and had them all disassembled. I was looking at the bare driver and noticed it was fed by the tiniest wires I have ever seen, not much thicker than a human hair. I'm sure there's a reasonable answer for this, but it just seems strange to me that people get these finger thick 2" interconnect cables costing $50 or more, spend hundreds on the headphone cable itself, and it all terminates at the business end with microscopic cables. I understand that with more power comes better volume and dynamics, and that with more and higher quality wire comes more power. I also understand that your audio setup is only as good as your weakest link. Wouldn't the weak link (if there was one) then be the cables going into the driver, designed by Sennheiser themselves? And wouldn't that mean that all the other upgraded wires don't matter?

The «hair-thin wires» are likely the same wire as the one on the voice-coil. Speaker- and headphone-driver voice-coils have to be lightweight -- that's no suprise --, so the wire has to be thin to achieve a usable impedance, such as 8 ohm (speakers) or 32-300 ohm (headphones).

Now speaker and headphone cables should have as low a resistance as possible, that's why they usually are rather massive. -- You see, there's a fundamental difference in the electrical requirements: Resistance in the cables should be low, whereas resistance in the voice-coil doesn't matter -- in terms of the electrical damping factor. In fact: The higher the voice-coil resistance/impedance, the higher the damping factor with a given speaker/headphone cable.

Of course this isn't the only aspect when it comes to «cable sound»; but it shows the fundamentally different function of load and cable. That said, nobody yet has found out what exactly causes the sonic differences among cables (or he/she doesn't make it public, resp.) -- so speculations are nothing but that. Personally I trust my ears.
.

 

[csroc]

Quote:

Originally Posted by JaZZ /img/forum/go_quote.gif Of course this isn't the only aspect when it comes to «cable sound»; but it shows the fundamentally different function of load and cable. That said, nobody yet has found out what exactly causes the sonic differences among cables (or he/she doesn't make it public, resp.) -- so speculations are nothing but that. Personally I trust my ears. .

Beyond that, objective attempts to prove cables are sonically different to a human listener fail.

 

[jilgiljongiljing]

I'd go with the looks cooler part. But I am kinda in the middle, I'd like to think that it makes a difference, atleast to some extent, but at the same time dont believe in insanely priced cables, if you ask me I'd say Blue Jeans cables are about as high up the price point as I would go for cables, I honestly believe their cables give you the best possible without compromises. Whether they do make a clear difference or not is not what I am concerned about, I just want peace of mind that the cable cannot be the weak link.

Maybe it has something to do with cable lengths. The cable you see connecting to the driver is what a few inches long? If you can get a better signal upto that point, wouldnt the signal reaching the driver be better in the end? Dunno that much about headphone cables though, I thought the Dowin cable looked awesome with the HD650, I sort of felt the bass was a bit tighter, but then that could very well be placebo.

I can definitely tell you however that the Blue Jeans speaker cables made a difference over Nexxtech cables I bought from Bestbuy.

 

[nick_charles]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jilgiljongiljing /img/forum/go_quote.gif Maybe it has something to do with cable lengths.

Longer cables of the same material and construction do generally mean more signal loss as the capacitance increases.

However when I tested a couple of 3' lengths and a 6' length of the exact same cable (AR Perfromance Series) the differences in signal loss were tiny. In fact the differences were not only tiny but paradoxical.

1: Six foot cable (-9.363db)
2: $1.99 female/female Connector and 2 x 3' cables ( - 9.368db)
3: AR-3-2 - 3' cable no 2 (-9.370db)
4: Nile Audio AXP-1 Switch Box and 2 x 3' cables ( -9.375)
5: AR-3-1 - 3' cable no 1 (-9.383db)

Each combination tested 10 times.

I can only conclude that the random differences in my test procedure were much bigger than any actual difference in cables , since the differences never exceeded 0.028db I can only conclude that the cable differences were significantly below this level.

Would I even worry about 0.028db attenuation? frankly no.

 

[moogoob]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Uncle Erik /img/forum/go_quote.gif Much of audio is fashion and jewelry. Don't make the mistake of thinking that a Rolex with diamonds keeps better time than a stainless model.

Quoted for truth.

Purchased 'cause braided cables look really cool.

I really, really have to learn to make my own.

 

[mmwwhats]

I look at this way: the wire from the amp output all the way to the drivers are like a bunch of resistors in series. If you were to remove any of these resistors and replace them with lower resistance ones, you'd decrease the resistance of the entire series. When you have hair thin wire from the output to the driver and you replace any portion of that wire with a thicker wire, the overall resistance should decrease. So, replacing 10ft. of headphone wire with better wire can improve the resistance of the overall length. Additionally that wire can be shielded or braided to reject noise. Now, whether the listener hears a difference or not is another story...

 

[Slackboy72]

Quote:

Originally Posted by nick_charles /img/forum/go_quote.gif Longer cables of the same material and construction do generally mean more signal loss as the capacitance increases.

It should be noted that when wireless systems came into widespread use at live concerts guitar players were less than impressed.
Essentially they were replacing 20' or 30' cables with 2 x 1' cables with a wireless transmitter/reciever link in between. The extra length of the old cables was essentially acting as a filter. They soon learnt that by keeping the 1' link to the transmitter but rplacing the 1' from the reciever to the amp with their old 20' cable they could get their old sound back. In fact one guitar maker (Paul Reed Smith I think) built a circuit into his first production guitars to emulate the extra cable. It was essentially adding capacitance and resistance to the signal path.

I strongly suspect that fancy cables are doing the same. They may sound more pleasing to the ear but don't kid yousrself that they are somehow providing a better signal path.