[maarek99]

I did some cable testing a while back. The results were astonishing. I used my 0404 as the source. Loopback testing using rmaa 5.1 for measurements. Here's what I discovered:

1. Standard 0404 breakout + 5 meter radioshack ic.

http://hmcindie.pp.fi/movies/rmaa/RM...rd%20cable.htm

2. Standard 0404 breakout + 0.6 meter Van den Hul "The Name" ic

http://hmcindie.pp.fi/movies/rmaa/RM...0den%20hul.htm

As you can see, no differences at all. But when I put the headphile breakout on the 0404 (blacksilver) I saw some dramatic changes:

3. Headphile breakout

http://hmcindie.pp.fi/movies/rmaa/RM...0headphile.htm

I mean, what the hell? Headphile gives consistently worse results than either the standard breakout box with a 5 meter radioshack cable or the 0.6 meter van den hul. The noise goes up, imd goes up and stereo crosstalk goes up. And by a pretty large amount too! These tests were made several times and they always looked the same.

Weird. On listening tests the headphile seemed lacking bass but adding extra treble energy eventhough the frequency response looks the same as with all the other cables.

What's going on?

 

[fewtch]

Strange... one almost has to suspect the Headphile of having some kind of inline electronic components that change the sound... unless there's a *severe* shielding problem or other similar issue, I don't see what else could be causing those results. Do you see anywhere a couple coils or capacitors could be hidden?

P.S. as far as the listening part goes, it's totally subjective and sort of unrelated to the RMAA results IMO.

 

[JaZZ]

It looks a bit like a hum problem. The noise has its maximum at 50 Hz (AC mains current frequency!?) and other peaks at integer multiples of 50 Hz, so that's my guess. Could be due to a relatively high resistance of the ground connection, e.g., but hard to diagnose.

 

[Cthulhu]

The funny thing here is I seriously doubt that level of difference is in anyway audiable.

 

[Wodgy]

It's all caused by increased noise. The Headphile cable is not as well shielded, not properly shielded, or not shielded at all.

The crosstalk numbers are bogus. RMAA is not a very accurate tool sometimes; here it is confusing noise with crosstalk.

 

[maarek99]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cthulhu The funny thing here is I seriously doubt that level of difference is in anyway audiable.

No it's not. But the differences were consistant so I kinda wondered.

 

[K2Grey]

Is it really caused by the Headphile cable not being shielded, though? I didn't think the Radioshack IC would be shielded either.

 

[MikeW]

radioshack "Gold series" cables are all shielded.