Glad that someone is demonstrating the facts about cables as an antidote to the esoteric nonsense that is so often spread. At audio frequencies it's unlikely there's going to be a measurable difference between cables, and if you can't measure it then you can't hear it. That said, I've taken apart a few of those cheap phono cables and found they aren't even using screened cable inside, it's just a twin core. That's not ideal and could allow more noise to couple in, although whether even that is audible is another question.
Nice video again. I love those BNC, RCA & BARREL connectors with the green colour screw terminal for easy connection but only problem is many manufacturers use iron Instead of copper in the conductors which rust after some time
I made a circuit to measure resistance between two electrodes in a moist wall by using an AC drive to avoid electrolysis. Worked fine on breadboard but when I attached a foot long cable I got all wrong measurements. It was the capacitance of the twisted cable I had used to connect the electrodes. Making it work up to ten yards was... interesting.
My take away is that as long as I don't randomly chuck a 100k resistor on the end of my cables connections I should be absolutely fine with practically any dang cable
Well, of course as long as you have a low source impedance. He put the resistor there just to demonstrate how output impedance of the source affect the signal in the next chain (device) along with the cable's parasitics
5:10 The nice thing about (passive) guitar pickup design is that they all have a resonant peak (many dBs in amplitude, the coil itself is a resonant "tank" circuit (inductance and capacitance, so many wire!), so the effective loading (amp cable (some picofarads), potentiometer and some filters (more capacitors)) flatten out that nasty mid/high frequency peak. That's why single coils and humbuckers pickups use different potentiometer in the passive volume/tone circuit (more load on singlecoils (250k pot) and less on humbuckers (500k typical, as the capacitance and resistance of those are bigger, so the peak is lower in frequency and amplitude) If you conect directly (without any potentiometer or passive control circuit) a guitar to an amplifier, the sound will be unpleasantly bright 😅
It is English, but some electrical physics of inductance, capacitance, and impedance and transmission line theory is required to grasp the concepts. Yes the material has per-requesite knowledge to understand the video.
There are turntables with built in phono stages. Plug and play, if you will. No idea what the quality is though. But, the reason very expensive turntables don't have built in phono stages is because the buyer wants to choose a specific phonostage.
Hello... I have a problem with the amplifier... When I jack his power cable in the wall outlet and I touch the Amp anywhere on its housing its giving me a feeling like I'm touching low electricity or something CAN ANYONE TELL ME WHAT I SHOULD SEARCH FOR ON NET ? Because I don't know what IS Happening... WHAT IS THIS ?
This is the reason guitar cables are never long. Without an active pickup, the impedance of many guitar pickups is 50K Ohms. A short cable and active DI is essential for direct in on a pro audio console, even if i has a high impedance input for aux in. This is one reason long mic or line level snakes are specified at 200 to 600 ohms. The nominal impedance of a typical XLR microphone cable is near 65 ohms. To reduce the long cable loss, the transition to digital consoles and digital stage boxes, place the console analog input on stage, so there are no longer 100 to 200 foot analog cables out to FOH (Front of House) and back.to monitor amps on stage and main speakers. For the complex impedance of speakers and the impact on damping, it is very common to use powered speakers so the wire between the amp and speaker is very short, typically less than 2 feet. Line level audio to the powered speaker si driven with a low impedance source typically less than 200 ohms. Often it is 32 ohms. The shorter cable between a digital stage box and the powered speakers improves the sound considerably. To fix the last mile issue, more modern systems use AES2 / AVB to the powered speakers or amplifiers as a digital instead of an analog signal. This eliminates cable distortion, noise pickup, and problems with ground loops.
i have a strange thing happening , im on Behringer B2031A monitors . Active studio monitors . I used mostly Audio interfaces with Balanced connections , but lately i hooked up a TV , and i needed Audio from HDMI , so i got HDMI splitter , that now acts as DAC and has unbalanced outputs , so i went for Valve Preamp , it was working fine on passive Edifier speakers , but strange thing i bring back monitors , and for some reason left side goes lot quitter , i turn off the speaker and turn it back on , fixes it .. I should mention one cable is longer , but i changed the outputs from the preamp and the problem went to the other speaker . So its not due to unbalanced cables of different length . Doe anyone have any idea . Strange thing did not happen on Passive speakers , but its essentially the same thing . First time i don't know what's going on .
Active monitors have a lot of internal safety circuits (to prevent overloads int the power/amp. section), mainly some kind of compressor/limiter. Maybe some strange high frequency oscillations? The tubes may be reacting badly with the DAC (usually, digital equipment introduces a lot of HF interference into analog equipment, the ones that handle this well are usually high-end side) Rule things out, try the tube preamp with another analog audio source, see what happens with the monitors. Then take the tube preamp out of the equation (use another preamp) and see what happens
Dear John, have you tried testing for emi in a similar setup? I was surprised how easily it was to see the spikes and the THD+N increase with leads placed in proximity to such sources. Wish I had a bunch of fancy interconnects to compare with those reasonably priced.
Hello John. Is it possible to make something like crossover for the speaker using output filter of the class d amplifier? If its possible, can you do video about it?
There is a class d amplifier in india having an opamp mosfet driver mosfets also some ics for ocp. It is very popular but i think it is not durable .Waiting for its review .
Okay... but no sensible designer is going to put 100k in series with an output. As you said ... typically a hundred or so ohms. I have cheap RCA cables here that will pass a 1mhz square wave without issues.
100 pF is NOT a lot of capacitance! I, too, am of the opinion that a cable does NOT affect tone. Unless the cable is faulty. It's like "tonewoods," which does NOT affect the tone on an electric guitar. An acoustic guitar, certainly! After all, with an acoustic guitar, ALL the tone comes from the wood...duh, because it's an acoustic guitar. The cables you're using are not what I would use as a guitar cable, those are basically Radio Shack cables for interfacing a cam-corder to a computer. Most guitar cables are fine.
His point is that if the connection is high impedance ( for example 100 kiloohm ) then 100pf can have a significant effect on audio signals. Some devices such as guitar pickups or phono cartridges can have high impedance in which case cable capacitance matters.
Amazing how many people don’t trust your ears, for audio. People don’t trust their eyes, for politics. Oh well, it’s ok to miss out on some things. BTW, the one thing always left out is the inductance that occurs by just passing current through wire. 🍿
I really like this practical reminder that everything in the circuit behaves like a resistor, an inductor, and a capacitor.
Awesome, John. Always enjoying your intuitive video's.
I've heard these things discussed many times but it helps to see real examples on the graph. Thanks for the demonstratin!
I would like to see a video comparing crosstalk or interference from other cables while using inexpensive cables to those of higher quality.
Glad that someone is demonstrating the facts about cables as an antidote to the esoteric nonsense that is so often spread. At audio frequencies it's unlikely there's going to be a measurable difference between cables, and if you can't measure it then you can't hear it.
That said, I've taken apart a few of those cheap phono cables and found they aren't even using screened cable inside, it's just a twin core. That's not ideal and could allow more noise to couple in, although whether even that is audible is another question.
Nice video again. I love those BNC, RCA & BARREL connectors with the green colour screw terminal for easy connection but only problem is many manufacturers use iron Instead of copper in the conductors which rust after some time
I made a circuit to measure resistance between two electrodes in a moist wall by using an AC drive to avoid electrolysis.
Worked fine on breadboard but when I attached a foot long cable I got all wrong measurements. It was the capacitance of the twisted cable I had used to connect the electrodes.
Making it work up to ten yards was... interesting.
Very helpful demonstration, thank you for posting this video
Also worth mentioning is that output cable can become input cable, like speakers cable for instance. Thanks, interesting video.
My take away is that as long as I don't randomly chuck a 100k resistor on the end of my cables connections I should be absolutely fine with practically any dang cable
Well, of course as long as you have a low source impedance.
He put the resistor there just to demonstrate how output impedance of the source affect the signal in the next chain (device) along with the cable's parasitics
5:10 The nice thing about (passive) guitar pickup design is that they all have a resonant peak (many dBs in amplitude, the coil itself is a resonant "tank" circuit (inductance and capacitance, so many wire!), so the effective loading (amp cable (some picofarads), potentiometer and some filters (more capacitors)) flatten out that nasty mid/high frequency peak. That's why single coils and humbuckers pickups use different potentiometer in the passive volume/tone circuit (more load on singlecoils (250k pot) and less on humbuckers (500k typical, as the capacitance and resistance of those are bigger, so the peak is lower in frequency and amplitude)
If you conect directly (without any potentiometer or passive control circuit) a guitar to an amplifier, the sound will be unpleasantly bright 😅
Excellent demo!
It is English, but some electrical physics of inductance, capacitance, and impedance and transmission line theory is required to grasp the concepts. Yes the material has per-requesite knowledge to understand the video.
6:00 So, why aren’t there pre-amps built into turntables (especially the expensive ones)?
There are turntables with built in phono stages. Plug and play, if you will. No idea what the quality is though. But, the reason very expensive turntables don't have built in phono stages is because the buyer wants to choose a specific phonostage.
@@bobisyouruncle1 That makes sense. Tx!
Hello...
I have a problem with the amplifier... When I jack his power cable in the wall outlet and I touch the Amp anywhere on its housing its giving me a feeling like I'm touching low electricity or something
CAN ANYONE TELL ME WHAT I SHOULD SEARCH FOR ON NET ? Because I don't know what IS Happening... WHAT IS THIS ?
This is the reason guitar cables are never long. Without an active pickup, the impedance of many guitar pickups is 50K Ohms. A short cable and active DI is essential for direct in on a pro audio console, even if i has a high impedance input for aux in.
This is one reason long mic or line level snakes are specified at 200 to 600 ohms. The nominal impedance of a typical XLR microphone cable is near 65 ohms. To reduce the long cable loss, the transition to digital consoles and digital stage boxes, place the console analog input on stage, so there are no longer 100 to 200 foot analog cables out to FOH (Front of House) and back.to monitor amps on stage and main speakers.
For the complex impedance of speakers and the impact on damping, it is very common to use powered speakers so the wire between the amp and speaker is very short, typically less than 2 feet.
Line level audio to the powered speaker si driven with a low impedance source typically less than 200 ohms. Often it is 32 ohms. The shorter cable between a digital stage box and the powered speakers improves the sound considerably.
To fix the last mile issue, more modern systems use AES2 / AVB to the powered speakers or amplifiers as a digital instead of an analog signal. This eliminates cable distortion, noise pickup, and problems with ground loops.
i have a strange thing happening , im on Behringer B2031A monitors . Active studio monitors . I used mostly Audio interfaces with Balanced connections , but lately i hooked up a TV , and i needed Audio from HDMI , so i got HDMI splitter , that now acts as DAC and has unbalanced outputs , so i went for Valve Preamp , it was working fine on passive Edifier speakers , but strange thing i bring back monitors , and for some reason left side goes lot quitter , i turn off the speaker and turn it back on , fixes it .. I should mention one cable is longer , but i changed the outputs from the preamp and the problem went to the other speaker . So its not due to unbalanced cables of different length . Doe anyone have any idea . Strange thing did not happen on Passive speakers , but its essentially the same thing . First time i don't know what's going on .
Active monitors have a lot of internal safety circuits (to prevent overloads int the power/amp. section), mainly some kind of compressor/limiter. Maybe some strange high frequency oscillations? The tubes may be reacting badly with the DAC (usually, digital equipment introduces a lot of HF interference into analog equipment, the ones that handle this well are usually high-end side)
Rule things out, try the tube preamp with another analog audio source, see what happens with the monitors. Then take the tube preamp out of the equation (use another preamp) and see what happens
Dear John, have you tried testing for emi in a similar setup? I was surprised how easily it was to see the spikes and the THD+N increase with leads placed in proximity to such sources. Wish I had a bunch of fancy interconnects to compare with those reasonably priced.
Hello John. Is it possible to make something like crossover for the speaker using output filter of the class d amplifier? If its possible, can you do video about it?
Hey john why don't you make a amplifier with single ended transformer output from direct mains
ok, so how do i find out what my output impedance is? Is it as simple as putting a meter on the RCA sockets?
Take some measurements with loaded and unloaded output. I will need to make a video to explain this process.
@@JohnAudioTech That would be great, Thank You!!!
The real question is: did you use your RS battery card to replace the 9v in that Tandy pocket calculator? We need to know
You have to spend time listening to different cables in your 2channel rig. You will hear the difference from brand to brand.
There is a class d amplifier in india having an opamp mosfet driver mosfets also some ics for ocp. It is very popular but i think it is not durable .Waiting for its review .
Yabba-dabba-do
Okay... but no sensible designer is going to put 100k in series with an output.
As you said ... typically a hundred or so ohms.
I have cheap RCA cables here that will pass a 1mhz square wave without issues.
100 pF is NOT a lot of capacitance!
I, too, am of the opinion that a cable does NOT affect tone. Unless the cable is faulty.
It's like "tonewoods," which does NOT affect the tone on an electric guitar.
An acoustic guitar, certainly! After all, with an acoustic guitar, ALL the tone comes from the wood...duh, because it's an acoustic guitar.
The cables you're using are not what I would use as a guitar cable, those are basically Radio Shack cables for interfacing a cam-corder to a computer.
Most guitar cables are fine.
His point is that if the connection is high impedance ( for example 100 kiloohm ) then 100pf can have a significant effect on audio signals. Some devices such as guitar pickups or phono cartridges can have high impedance in which case cable capacitance matters.
Amazing how many people don’t trust your ears, for audio. People don’t trust their eyes, for politics. Oh well, it’s ok to miss out on some things. BTW, the one thing always left out is the inductance that occurs by just passing current through wire. 🍿
Yes, but age do you ears bad to.
-5dB at 20kHz, that's ok for audio anyway...