From time to time people asks for replacement / shorter cable recommendations. I have myself one of the typical recommended, the kabeldirect one, and not unhappy with it. Some people report barely detectable audio quality loss with compared with original philips cable. I can't frankly confirm. If there is something is very, very mild, at least to my ears, too old to notice. Never did a really serious side to side comparison trying to get a definitive diagnostic: I am sure that at the end I would finally get the conclusion I preferred to believe.
But I saw an offer for this Vandesail cable in my country's amazon; here is the link for global amazon, but I think you'll find it on all local sites:
https://www.amazon.com/VANDESAIL%C2%AE-Auxiliary-Connectors-Headphones-iPhones/dp/B0146B0K3U
the price, in offer, was the same or somewhat lower than the kabeldirect, and I liked how it looked and the lenght (1.2m vs 1.5m -there are other shortest and longest lenghts available, anyway). Without offer the price difference is not much significant, anyway.
So I took the plunge and ordered it.
Received it two days ago, and with it in hands I am surprised. It is even better than it looks in photos. The connectors and especially the cable itself are very sturdy and solid, high quality. The kabeldirect looks tiny and cheaper in comparison (and is itself good quality when compared with most others).
The cable is really thick, it looks like a guitar cable. Immune to tangles, zero microphonics, but flexible and amenable as the best. The connectos are full metal and golded. You can unscrew them and check soldering quality and cable inners. Really convenient. And I would say that even beautiful (even if I would prefer gray / silver to match X2 tones).
Sound wise, with only few hours of listening, I would say it sound at least as good as the kabeldirect (but as I said before, can't tell issues with that one anyway). If I had to bet, I think it should sound at least as good as the original cable, if not best (at the end, it is shorter and very well built and shielded).
I thought I would share this with people here. Highly recommended. And anyone other test it, I would like to hear what you think. Especially if someone hears any sound difference.
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Update after a week:
After more hours of listening I have to retract. I am pretty sure that there is something wrong with the sound.
I am generally pretty skeptic about most of the cable talk. I think that for such short lengths, sound differences between any minimally decent quality cable would be beyond human perception. Perhaps measurable with instruments, but no audible to normal human ears. I tend to attribute most impressions about subtle differences on airiness, bass control or soundstage to placebo effect, people hearing what they expect to hear from something in which they usually have invested hard money.
As I liked very much the physical appareance and build of the cable, I also was pretty favorably prejudiced to like what I hear from it. In fact I did not expect any difference, I was not scrutinizing and critically listening for any subtle change. But the more and more I listened, I felt there was something wrong. At the end I had to compare with the original philips cable, listening to the same songs a couple of times to compare.
And I had to accept that with this cable there is a subtle strange effect: I would say that all the sound is there, but positioning is blurred. While with the original philips cable there are many instruments and sounds that I can effortlessly and precisely position in space where they come from, from right to left, with this cable I lose this positioning and I can't discern much more than if it comes mostly from the left or right side. In general I would not exactly call it a loss of soundstage, perhaps it sounds as wide as before, but sound sources don't look so precisely in a concrete point, more like being diffused over part of the soundstage.
In that context, it is difficult to say if there is also a loss of detail in the sounds themselves or other distortions. I would say that bass look like increased but less spatially defined, coming from everywhere when with the original cable you can often locate bass components coming from different places in space.
The effect was apparent enough to notice it even without looking for it. It made music simply less enjoyable, so much I have abandoned the cable and turned again to the original philips cable, even if I have to deal with around 2 meters of cable excess.
Considering that I really wanted to like and use this cable, I don't think the issue is only in my mind, a kind of reverse placebo effect. It is most likely something it could be measured with the appropriate instruments and knowledge. But I don't have either. I would really like to understand what can cause it, from engineering perspective.
Forget about the recommendation.
Another business is to judge if the kabeldirect I have suffers from similar issues. I have not performed a controlled parallel test like with this one. In any case, if there is something it is not nearly as apparent. While the issue with this one was pretty noticeable with only a few hours of use, so as to force me to investigate, I have used the kabeldirect for many hours without feeling this urge to identify what is wrong. I have sometimes felt that there could be some loss of spark or definition respect from what I remembered from the same songs, but nothing so unmistakable, and it could all be in my head. In any case both cables sound very similar, if not the same. So I would not recommend against them, at least not yet.
But for the moment I would advise to stick with the original cable unless the length really annoys you too much. Have yet to find a cable that sounds better, and I'm not sure of having yet found any other unmistakably as good.
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Final Update:
At the end I have returned them, thanks to the excellent Amazon return policy. Being sure I would not use them again, it made no sense to keep them even if they were not expensive. For the moment happy again with stock cable; even the Kabeldirect are left on the drawer.
