[Bullseye]

I have to agree with these two sentences. 
 
Quote:

beeman very well could win passive-aggressive poster of the year.
 
 
Gu Sensei, I very much enjoyed reading your post # 694.  It is a truly insightful post about this hobby.

 

[kwkarth]

Quote:

cable material is always going to matter when carrying a direct current, but only as distance of transmission increases and will only become noticeable over many miles. That said
I believe there are a couple good reasons to switch cables, SQ is NOT one of them. Comfort, durability, length, and microphonics are all fantastic reasons to switch cables. My biggest argument here is for the Ultimate Ears custom cables. The westone braided cable is a great upgrade for any UE headphone just because it is a much more supple, lightweight, well-made, less tangle prone wire, and it does GREATLY decrease microphonics. The >$100 null audio options seem terribly overpriced too me.

Direct current?  

  Time to rethink your theory.
 

 

[Minazki]

If the cable isn't too expensive and it looks cool I'd buy it. Just too bad that it's so hard to change cable for my grados

I hate that garden hose, isn't really that portable.

 

[Skoobs]

i was using a LOD made out of scrap copper wire and parts that i bought on here (and was advertised as such)
 
i bought it because i figured it wouldnt make a difference.
 
then, when that one broke, i brought home some scrap military-grade, aerospace-grade silver plated, shielded wire and made my own. 
 
and left my headphones on for about a week =)
 
 
 
however, i think a law of diminishing returns kicks in fairly early with conductors. as long as its decent cable, it will be audibly indistinguishable from $200/ft fancy cryo platinum plated gold conductor or whatever people are buying nowadays.
 
you can get silver plated fairly high quality copper for CHEAP. what i would pay the most for would be durability, anyway. ever since i started making my own interconnects, all my music sounds better, and my cables are more durable.
 
but for pete's sake. dont spend all that money unless you arent confident you can make a durable enough cable yourself. the sonic differences are nonexistant.

 

[kwkarth]

Quote:

i was using a LOD made out of scrap copper wire and parts that i bought on here (and was advertised as such)
 
i bought it because i figured it wouldnt make a difference.
 
then, when that one broke, i brought home some scrap military-grade, aerospace-grade silver plated, shielded wire and made my own. 
 
and left my headphones on for about a week =)
 
 
 
however, i think a law of diminishing returns kicks in fairly early with conductors. as long as its decent cable, it will be audibly indistinguishable from $200/ft fancy cryo platinum plated gold conductor or whatever people are buying nowadays.
 
you can get silver plated fairly high quality copper for CHEAP. what i would pay the most for would be durability, anyway. ever since i started making my own interconnects, all my music sounds better, and my cables are more durable.
 
but for pete's sake. dont spend all that money unless you arent confident you can make a durable enough cable yourself. the sonic differences are nonexistant.

Thank you for your opinion.

 

[Skoobs]

ive seen a lot of headphones that come with thin, shoddy looking 90 AWG wire. i am certain that replacing this wire with something of decent quality with some girth would do something with sound quality.

 

[maverickronin]

90 AWG would be about .0002425mm in diameter.  Impressive you could measure that. 

 

[Skoobs]

i have good eyes =)
 
anyone ever seen the wire inside a pair of super-fi 5 EB? im not sure if all the models share the same wire, but that stuff looks like a joke haha

 

[Prog Rock Man]

An interesting article on the impact of resistance, cable cross section diameter and impact on SQ
 
http://www.aes.org/sections/pnw/pnwrecaps/2000/lampen/
 
The lower the resistance the better.

 

[Skoobs]

exactly. and the itty bitty wires i see in headphones have a relatively high resistance... no?

 

[jTizMLG]

a $30 cable is better then a $3 cable but a $30 cable is equivalent to a $300 cable.

 

[Landis]

Quote:

a $30 cable is better then a $3 cable but a $30 is equivalent to a $300 cable.

I will agree with this.
 
Working for a company that makes and sells a lot of cables, I find that a lot of times those dirt cheap cables just don't properly do what they're supposed to. For example, we sell a cheapo HDMI cable which for some reason has come back to us dozens of time with the customer claiming their picture is in black and white and they buy a slightly better made cable and no complaints. I recall going from a generic bottom of the barrel RCA cable one time to a Monster RCA cable I scored for cheap and the sound was much more clear.
 
I don't believe that a fancy cable will give you a magnificent performance increase, but I do believe a decent well made cable is worth investing in... Just don't look further than $30.

 

[Prog Rock Man]

The most important part of a cable is how well it connects to the plug and how well the plug fits into the socket. But for some reason the actual wire gets the most attention. That is probably down to not being able to see the actual connections, so psychoacoustics does not come into play. A shiny plug and nice wire is more important to achieving better sound, apparently.

 

[Bullseye]

 
That's like saying a pinch of this is better than a bunch of that.
 
Using prices as an argument is generalizing too much, because when you say $xx what are you referring to: To the components value, market value, street price, including R&D or not?
 
Using what prog rock man said, if the connection to the plug is well done in both cases and the gauge is approximately the same, given the same usage both will perform identically, however the one costing less might break faster than the other. 
 
Quote:

a $30 cable is better then a $3 cable but a $30 cable is equivalent to a $300 cable.

Maybe when you say better you mean they have better durability, good flexibility, good finish... 
 
 
 
 
...or maybe not 

 

[Prog Rock Man]

Quote:

 
That's like saying a pinch of this is better than a bunch of that.
 
Using prices as an argument is generalizing too much, because when you say $xx what are you referring to: To the components value, market value, street price, including R&D or not?
 
Using what prog rock man said, if the connection to the plug is well done in both cases and the gauge is approximately the same, given the same usage both will perform identically, however the one costing less might break faster than the other. 
 

Maybe when you say better you mean they have better durability, good flexibility, good finish... 
 
 
 
 
...or maybe not 

Though chances are that the cheaper cable will be the pro-audio one and not the audiophile one. The pro-audio cable is designed to be repeatedly plugged in and out, run across studio or stage floors and you will find that they tend to have very tough and flexible covers. Audiophile cables, cost more and are designed to be plugged in once and left, or else finger muck up the nice shiny phono or the fancy sheathing starts to come away.