[John Willett]

Quote:

It should indeed be a standard feature, especially for expensive headphones. I mean, look at the Beyerdynamic T5p for instance. It's one of the most expensive "portable" headphones around and it has such thin non-removable cables. This alone is enough reason for me not to buy them. Not gonna want to send my expensive headphones away just because I accidently damaged the cable. And why doesn't the T1 have removable cables? It's nuts. I guess they want to keep production costs as low as possible.

 
It does also depend on the construction of the cables.
 
I know of extremely thin cable that is absolutely unbreakable.
 
If you mix Kevlar in with the copper you can have a very very tough cable - especially if there is more Kevlar than copper.
 
Sennheiser do an extremely thin, just 1mm in diameter, cable for their tiny tie microphone for stage use.  There was a story (and I saw the pictures) of a case where a microphone cable caught in the costume of another actor on stage.  It was so bad that it completely ripped the plastic outer sheath of the cable and left it flapping - BUT - the cable itself did not break and the microphone continued to work perfectly!
 

 

[DVDRey]

 
Quote:

It does also depend on the construction of the cables.
 
I know of extremely thin cable that is absolutely unbreakable.
 
If you mix Kevlar in with the copper you can have a very very tough cable - especially if there is more Kevlar than copper.

 
the problem isn't always the cable but the most fragile part of the construction: the earcups or jack solder.

 

 

[Achmedisdead]

One of my biggest pet peeves is trying to find headphones that don't have a 3 meter long cable on them. I would vastly prefer a short initial cable with an additional extension, or the ability to swap in a short version for portable use.

 

[ShooTa]

removable cables are really only worth it for portable sets - anything in the upper echelons is to pander to the cable guys - aka more money than hearing/.. i mean sense
 

 

[borizm]

Cables have a huge impact on headphones sound signature and general quality of the sound. Manufacturers probably play with it to get the signature what they want, and probably attached cable is less problematic to them in production and during the warranty period (I have bad bad memories with detachable Kevlar cable of Sennheiser HD565) also causing hadphones to be less tunable, forcing to buy newer, better one.
 
More painful to me is that most of the modern headphones cables contain only 3 wires (common signal return), and are asymmerical, which has tremendous significance.
 
In my Philips SHP9000 and Beyerdynamic DTX900 I have installed RCA sockets, but in many other there is not as much place in caps to do this, so it's better to connect to each caps a little longer than 1 ft (30 cm) cable and terminate both loose side of them with single 4-pin/5-pin/6-pin (but not 3-pin) mini XLR connectror, creating triangle shape, but without solid attached cable extension, which could be connected and swapped to one or another having different quality, length, and terminating connector.
 
AKG K702 has 3-pin mini XLR socket build-in - it's only 3-pin, what means that we have to deal with not so good common wire for both drivers, and we unable to connect K702 to fully balaced amp.
 
I'm going to apply to my headphones "no cable approach" - I mean to install mini XLR like I've mentioned above, and to create mini DAC with buildin balanced class A amp so small to be attached to this mini XLR without any cable extension - almost directly to the headphones.

 

[Taowolf51]

Kinda wish my Denons had this, would be nice to have a shorter cable (but be able to swap it for the stock longer one).

 

[John Willett]

Quote:

Cables have a huge impact on headphones sound signature and general quality of the sound.

Really?
 
Pretty well all the double-blind cable tests done by professionals show no difference at all.
 
 

 

[obobskivich]

borizm,
Audio-Technica produced a pair of headphones like that a few years ago, I believe it was called the ATH-D1000. Quite interesting device overall. No idea if you can find them to purchase anymore. 
 
Regarding removable cables on other headphones, it doesn't seem to bother me that much; I'd rather see single-entry solutions on more products though. 
 
 

 

[borizm]

Quote:

Really?
 
Pretty well all the double-blind cable tests done by professionals show no difference at all.
 
 

Really? Even using not top-notch Philips SHP9000 with very cheap source (modified Sound Blaster USB with SigmaTel STAC9460 and TDA1308 amp) I can easily see the difference.
 
Of course, there is a way to minimalize the significance of the cables - all what is needed is to drive headphones by the current - like in vintage era (from quite high voltage amp through resistor which doing something like V/I conversion) - but in this case dumping factor will suffer a lot, and half of modern headphones will kill us with the bass and to much uncontrolled fades of sounds.
 
I have done many test, but still not so much to catch all of the corellations.
Could you qoute the sources of this revelation? Honestly, I've heard this before
You can easly check it yourself - buy an extension male-jack<->female-jack cable and connect your headphones by this.
 

 

[PETEREK]

Quote:

There's not a huge benefit to it really, I suppose it makes things easier if you mistreat your headphones and the cable breaks, but in 99% cases you'll never have to remove it anyway.

It would be a pretty big benefit to me. I use my DT770 Pro-80 for work and keep them in a carrying pouch (for now), I dont really like wrapping my cable around my headphones, it looks sloppy. I have a pair of Kicker HP541 that come with a detachable cable and I really liked that about them. I could unplug the cable from my headphones, quickly wrap the cable around 3 fingers and make a knot to keep it tidy, stick both the headphones and cable into my pouch and go to break.
   
  Also, there have been about a handful of times when I've been walking and the cable caught onto the corner of a table or something and instead of my headphones being ripped off of my head and onto the floor, the cable was just pulled out of my headphones. This is the biggest plus for having a detachable cable.

 

[hifimanrookie]

There's not a huge benefit to it really, I suppose it makes things easier if you mistreat your headphones and the cable breaks, but in 99% cases you'll never have to remove it anyway.

The only real benefit of detachable cables is that u can upgrade th cable to one that fits ur soundsignature better..like for instance..my hifiman he500 came with a silvercable making it bright and a bit bass lean....i changed if for my occ coppercable i had from my he300..and to my ears the sound became so much more fuller and velvetly..more how i liked it..if the cables were fixed i had to open up the phone with all the risks doing that..now its disconnect(very carefully!) and connect (even more carefully) the small (who came up with those..by the way) connectors to the phone..and done..normally u only change cables once in a lifetime of a headphone (in my case anyway)..so thats how i feel about detachable cables..wait..u have one big disavantage..if u keep on connecting-disconnecting them at a certain point the connectors get faulty..but hey..how many times u disconnect ur cable..? I only do it three times..once with buying, one upgrade cable and then selling the phone for another..

 

[hifimanrookie]

Edited..was double post..i hate this ipad! :mad:

 

[leng jai]

One of my main gripes with my T1s is that they don't have a detachable cable.

 

[Timmyw]

I too have the T1s, and I can tell you there's another benefit to detachable cables. 
 
You can just replace the cable if something goes wrong with it, instead of having to send it in to the shop (for over 2 months) for them to fix it. Like I had to do very recently. 
 
Detachable cables should be standard on all expensive headphones.

 

[leng jai]

Exactly. My plug is slightly bent so I wouldn't mind getting a new cable but I'm not going to send it in just for that. Being in the outback makes it worse as well.