I get my cables from unused NASA surplus shuttle maintenance stores that have been flown into space because it gets exposed to beneficial quantum radiation particle bombardment, then I have them professionally massaged in an oxygen free hypobaric chamber as the connectors are attached. I must say that bathing the cables in liquid nitrogen just prior to every listening session really sweetens the sound too, but sometimes my cat gets it's tongue stuck.
+cobra60six how much resistance those cables have and dipping in nitrogen gets them to do what ? what improvement you are talking about ?? care to explain
Bharat Singh well when the cat gets it's tongue stuck it can't scratch up my leather lounge or speakers, the rest I'll leave for others to explain, but it's going to be tough.
+danielwierd It actually sounds like they added some recorded nature noise. Wind/forest/waterfall/something. Sometimes you can hear birds chirping. Or maybe I'm hallucinating.
Monster Cable build quality was great. The cables going from my phono preamp to my pre-pro right now are Monster Cables I bought back in the mid-80s. They last that long.
@@batman.darthmaul I bet if you cut those old 80's cables open, you would see a significant amount of oxidized copper. Of course, oxidized copper reduces electrical conductivity and thus reduces signal quality too.
Listen to these guys and save your money. Cables are a passive component in your audio system. The "cable ends" and how they secure themselves electrically in your equipment is by far the most important parameter in cable construction. Thanks for the great video and information.
TheRudydog1 Also the cable gauge is important. If you use 0.75mm2 cable on a 500W amplifier the cable will get hot and the speaker will not play very well. You can use cheap copper cables made for electrical systems, just get the right size. And yes a good connector is fundamental as well
MrOpenGL I totally agree. The minimum gauge wire should never be smaller than #18 if kept under 32 feet per channel. #16 through #10 should never exceed 50 feet per channel although longer runs on smaller systems may work ok. Wire size 0.75mm2 would be a good choice for most systems 500 watts and lower again best with lengths 50 feet and under per channel. Remember, there is basically no "skin effect" at audio frequencies but excessive wire resistance could effect proper power transfer to the load (speakers). You should not notice any difference in sound quality between cheap and expensive cable if the same parameters are applied to both cables.
I've often thought that the "break in" nonsense, on wires and some other passive items is just the manufacturer hedging his bets that your brain will adjust and you'll think/imagine that there was an improvement. I've seen a lot of that common 12 awg wire, with the clear PVC insulation react with the copper . It gets pretty bad with the corrosion/verdigris. What's your opinion on that? Should it be replaced? I just stopped using it in my home theater when Blue Jeans cable came along. For my music rig, I used Surplus Mil-Spec Teflon Insulated Wire which works really well.
About the cryogenic thing, the science might sound a bit bizarre but I think it has some merit, I work for a copper rod and power cable manufacturer. and the grain size of copper is affected by the rate of cooling of a segment of copper. basically the longer the copper takes to cool down the more grain it has. OCC process passes solidifying copper thru liquid nitrogen to rapidly cool down the copper. The process is very expensive but it does deliver the promise of long grain copper, that is why if speaker cable manufacturer really use OCC process they charge an arm and a leg for the cable Now the most important question is if it is worth the cost. The answer is probably not. long grain copper will not affect the conductivity of the copper significantly, practically speaking the length of the grain really does not have much impact on electrical and mechanical properties of the copper used for cables. but OCC was and is still used in some electronic application.
So, if OCC copper is not worth the expense, why is it made, purchased, and used by the most knowledgeable commercial, military, and high tech electronics engineers? Oh....that's right. Because quality materials, conductor grain and purity DO make a difference in cable performance...
That is what give digital the advantage. 0's and 1's are not easily compromised. A 1 at a whisper is still a 1 at scream. LOL. In other words it is not as affected by signal strength variations. Well, that is the way it was explained to us when I was in the USAF electronics class on radar frequencies in 1965, mind you. Digital technology is not new. It was in used in the early 50's in military communications. Now we use it in automotive onboard computer systems. Automotive manufacturers use the smallest gauge wires, but with good dielectric insulations.
@@64fairlane305 not quite true. A square wave signal represented by two voltage bands, gnd and supply. 1 is depicted by the upper and 0 the lower of the square wave. So the signal in the cable is attempting to represent 1 and 0s by using a square wave. Hence a digital state unlike a AC analogue signal as in an amplifier output 20hz to 20khz sinewave.
I like the video and agree. As an engineer, numbers are important and ears are hard to trust since it is so qualitative. In the end, I have purchased Blue Jeans cables with the nice compression banana plugs. One thing I have witnessed first hand were sonic differences in some cables from two different Nordost cables and a Cardas cable I demoed. The cables did affect the sound ever so slightly, but in the end, the sound was still the same and to me not worth the money. Also, what are your thoughts on capacitance? You discussed resistance, but to me, capacitance may also have an effect as it may store and release energy/
I flushed the nearest toilet before listening to my favorite song and OH BOY, did it make a difference in quality!! Refreshing the stale water in the plumbing allowed for tighter bass and more detailed highs and more distinct mids. I sell high-end toilets that have silver flush handles, on sale now for $9,500!
Why didn't I ever think of that?! what a genius! The particle displacement created bacteria in the water is messing with my room acoustics! THANKS! - - The tale of every audiofool xD
I built a set of the cat 5 v3s and loved them. Contemplating a v1 build. Would still like to see your interconnect cable myth video and maybe a good diy shootout version too. Many thanks for all of your hard work.
i bought a spool of 10 gauge copper in plastic and some right angle banana plugs , hooked them up and never did any comparing because the sound was more than satisfactory to me . my philosophy in speaker hifi gear is treat/condition / refine the LISTENER first and then tweak the gear. Refining the subjectivity of the listener can overcome almost all external obstacles .
Nice job on your table. The list of dielectric materials is limited. If you want low capacitance in larger gauge wires look for dielectric materials with low dielectric constants. A foam dielectric is lower capacitance than solid dielectric of the same material. In addition to LCR if you have access to one, use a TDR to find the nominal impedance. I find these results differ quite a bit from manufacture to manufacture. A TDR will show not only nominal impedance but cables with high dielectric losses. This effect is the loss of higher frequencies due to the dielectric absorption. In generic audio from Penn or Beldon, they don't use non standard materials so the absorption is very low. Some high end cables with unusual dielectric have very high absorption. Teflon, Polystyrene, polypropylene, etc are fine. Cheap wire with vinyl have issues. In the presence of high humidity and moisture they break down and release Chlorine which reacts with copper producing the green slime seen in some cables used outdoors such as in old Christmas lights. At high power some of these cables actually glow like e-wire in the dark from the absorption. This is where the idea for making e-wire originated. In general for high end audio, stick with wire that uses the same dielectric materials as RF cable. The jacket can be other pretty materials to look nice.
Bradley Smith This is very true. The dielectric for "Digital" applications is designed to be low absorption, and very uniform along the length for constant cable nominal impedance. Cable rated for DMX-512 and RS-485 make excellent balanced interconnects. The main difference other than the higher spec for high speed data, is how the XLR connectors are wired. Pins 1,2, and 3 are the same between DMX and audio, however true 3 pin DMX does not have the shell of the connector connected to the cable shield. This is the reason to never swap DMX and interconnect cables. The 3 pin XLR used on most DMX equipment is not to official DMX-512 standards. The official standard specified 5 pin XLR cable so audio and data can't be mixed. Because the connector was often 10X the price the 3 pin XLR is pretty much the de-facto standard except in high end equipment. If you plan on using Data cable for interconnects, plan on wiring the connectors yourself and mark them for Audio.
A question for clarification. If it is not distortion, what is it called when you use it a long run of cable where it is too small of a gauge and you start choking the base? I hear the distortion. Is it not distortion? It’s some sort of noise being produced that is rectified when you use the proper gauge cable.
I bought a pair of cables that is going to be heated to 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit and that will make the entire cable one solid crystal of a gold/copper/lead and mercury amalgamation. It will have negative resistance and insertion found not insertion loss. The conductivity rating will be 1350%! They had to send it to the sun and just dip it into the surface for about 30 seconds. I bought it in 1998 and should see it in another 18 years give or take. Price was right also, including the rocket, rocket fuel etc etc a mear $127.5m in 1998. They are going to go great with my floor standing speakers, made of unicorn skin, hooves, horn and Yeti bones by Himalayan Sherpas at the summit of Everest 250 years ago.
I can tell from the silver vs copper cable apart. The experts said thats not possible cos they cant measure it. From blind test, I guess it right 10/10 times. Im using my stock sennhieser hd800 stock cable vs a custom made 99.999 pure silver. I can easily tell them apart within seconds of listening to my reference track! Some might essentially sound the same, but cable do effect the sound! Sometimes it is very minor and sometimes it is very notable! Point is cable do make a difference in audio!!!
I also can hear the difference between the 99.999 pure silver and a stock cable. I ended up paying that extra for it since it is purely a subjective thing and just a feeling. I cannot explain why. I suspect this is the same reason why people listen to Vinyl compared to the digital CDs?
You don't need to be an engineer to de bunk any myth with cables, you purchase the cable and you listen to it if you like it and it sounds good to you its worth every penny. I love spade connections. I sent my head to a cryo lab to have it frozen and now my speakers sound better!!! Sorry I have cables that will blow away any Home Depot wire I don't care about resistance bla bla bla ! my ears hear the difference that's all I need to know.
@@DescartesRenegade How do you know what goes on in other people's brains? Just because you can't hear a difference, doesn't mean that everybody who can is experiencing a placebo. There is definitely a difference in different cables. It's magical thinking to believe that the electrical properties of a cable have no effect on signal transmission. If the electrical properties of a cable doesn't matter, then why are we using metals like copper and silver, instead of a piece of cotton string?
Short and sweet: if the difference cannot be measured or expressed in electrical terms there is no difference. Now this does not mean people are wrong when they claim one cable sounded better than another. The capacitance or impedence added or subtracted by a given cable changes the signal the amplifier processes. However you dont need to spend $1000 to do that.
Couldn't agree more. I have expensive CD player, amp and speakers because they make an immediate and noticeable difference to sound quality. Cables, in my experience, just don't. One salesman tried to flog me the Nordost Heimdall RCA interconnect. This thing costs nearly £600 (price as at 2016; can't remember what it was when I tried it), and I can confirm it sounded very slightly different from the £35 model I eventually settled on. By 'different', I don't necessarily mean better - and certainly not better to the extent that it was worth even one sixth of the price! He tried to sell me a £500 speaker cable too. It was the last thing he ever tried to sell me, I can tell you. Bottom line: just buy decent quality cables that won't fall apart. You might be able to tell a slight difference between these and the all singing, all belching ones, but nothing like enough to justify the price. Listen with your ears, not your wallet, and for heaven's sake don't get suckered into the unabashed bullshit-fest that is the audio cable industry.
Cables cannot improve on the information fed into them, but they can, and do, affect what comes out the other end. Strikes me that some folks use speaker and interconnect cables like equalisers to tailor the sound they hear.
The comment about good cables should be indistinguishable and bad cables will make a difference is spot on. I believe that if a (speaker) cable (say) makes an appreciable difference to the sound, then it is probably upsetting the electronics by presenting an unusual load to the amp; I also believe some manufacturers deliberately do this.
I knit my own speaker cables to 10 gauge from the wool of the very rare Copperwool Albino Alpacas which are bred by monks in a little town called Distonia in the Eastern Himalayas. Before I knit the cable, it is especially induction heated to just before melting point in a sealed container of inert gas and held in this state until it ceases giving off negative electrons. This now positively charged wool is then plunged into liquid nitrogen to create a special layer of non-corroding copper to which a fine layer of shellac is applied. After the knitting process, the cables are then placed in a vacuum and coated in the finest Teflon, the ends then dipped in a Teflon solvent for 1/4 inch and the 24 Carat gold terminals are flame welded to the ends by a qualified jeweler. What about the sound, the definition, the clarity? I hear you ask. About the same as every other bit-o-wire.
I tried the Audioquest Golden Gate RCA cable and got fantastic results, Yamaha AV reciever line out to Emotiva amp, Hate the price but the results are worth it to me.
Sometimes i hook up my new energy tower speaker but i also have bookshelf speakers hooked up does that effect my sound quality or what do you recommend i do
Recently PS Audio videos creeped into my playlist and Paul over there makes the argument, "I don't understand it either but I CAN HEAR IT and all my staff can hear the audible difference! isn't that all that it matters?" This 70 years old sounds sincere! :) I think I want every pieces of audio gear sold come a laboratory blind test, "out of 100 people, how many found a difference and % accuracy" Myself am kind of fond to say Gosh, am glad I don't have golden ears, saved me ton$$$ through the years!
They'll work but my experience is that they are usually not as good shielded against interference from other near by cables or power cords that will cause white noise or a humming when the speaker is supposed to be silent.
Hi Lou Ferrigno, sorry Hugo, for wiring up the speakers inside the speaker box, is 14 guage wire ok to use or is smaller the way to go? Great informative video. Thanks.
I think it’s important to know about the works published in the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society. In a nutshell, 12 AWG or 10 AWG copper cable from a quality manufacturer like Belden for a couple bucks per foot is imperceptible from the high dollar cables.
Small correction. Cable do not cause distortion not because they are PASSIVE, but because they are LINEAR. Diode is passive, bit it in non-linear, so if you have a diode somewhere in the signal path, it can create IMD. Wires, like resistors, are VERY linear; so they can not cause distortions. Capacitors and inductors (especially on ferrite cores) can show non-linearity, so expensive cables with "magic boxes" (usually containing $5-$15 worth of off-the shelf components inside) can indeed cause distortions, especially at high levels. So by paying outrageous prices people actually buying distortions! Overall, very good presentation. Cable mafia need to be kept at bay!
Mudillo - If you want to get picky, when talking about cable characteristics, you need to specify your frequency band. A straight wire in air has an [AC] impedance, meaning it has not only resistance, but inductance and capacitance. Of course at any frequency of interest to audiophiles [maybe not extreme videophiles], it is not a concern.
Hello. I was reading a topic about power cables and I ended up observing a curiosity that maybe you can answer. The receiver and sub cables are usually 2 pins, how to know the polarity of these pins ? How marry phase of receiver with phase of power plug and neutral of receiver with neutral ? Because in cable / receiver does not come any indication the right position to connect in a plug with 2 pin. Thanks !!!!
I have a story that is almost unbelievable. I was at an audiophile store in my town.. won’t name names, but there’s only one😂😂. I was listening to two different sets of speakers and just couldn’t believe the soundstage. So I reached behind the speakers and unplugged them and it just happened that there were 2 20k Martin Logan’s also playing😂. AND THEN!!.. I was listening to the new paradigms and noticed the right speaker sounds 20-30% ish quieter than the left. The “audiophile” owner looked at me like I’m crazy. And this is after calling him out on the extra speakers being hooked up. And after further inspection of the 5k~ cables hooked up the right one was broken. It was a 3 into 1 cable and one of the 3 parts was visibly damaged. Exactly 33% quieter after examination. And after swapping the cables out to a cheap set I wanted to try the problem was solved. So this guy claiming he could hear the dif in sound Quality between cables but couldn’t hear the 33% quieter signal in the right speaker. If you can’t hear a third quieter signal you can’t hear a few percent in quality. What a joke!!! I quickly left the snake oil shop and will never go back. It’s unfortunate though. A ton of really nice speakers ... but I don’t have patience for ignorant pretentious assholes.
Great video. I have heard of people so fine attuned to audio, that say they can even hear the little Indian in a AIFF file, or very easily hear the Big Indian in a WAV file. I have a long way to go yet.
I had no previous knowledge about audio in home systems at all prior to 2011. I listened to different AudioQuest speaker wires to see if I or my friends could hear a difference to justify paying more. EVERY TIME I listened to and upgraded speaker wire, testing them by running a different wire to the other speaker and going back and forth to validate this claim, THERE WAS A DISTINCT DIFFERENCE AT EACH LEVEL OF QUALITY! I had different totally green novices do the same, without informing them of what I was doing and they were able to obviously hear the difference as well. I know that all of us aren't imagining this phenomenon. So I believe that some people ARE audiophiles and that some people AREN't audiophiles.
Measuring equipment prove many many many people wrong, and what they're actually hearing is a placebo because they're wanting to justify the price they spent on snake oil.
Very expensive cables give you "synergy" , synergy sounds great, but it can be expensive. Measuring equipment cannot measure synergy, you can only hear it with a good set of ears! I guess this is where the term "Snake oil" comes from. Basically, synergy which sounds so sweet, is "snake oil"! I am lucky enough to own two U.S. patents that generate lots and lots of different flavours of synergy for about a few dollars, so I don't have to spend allot of money on extremely fancy cables that DO give some levels of synergy, but not as much as my devices! But ok, call it snake oil... hehehe! to each his own! It's all good, for the love of music!!! I just happen to know, how to manipulate A.C. harmonics in a fancy way! ;)
What about using pure copper (class 3 cable) instead of copper coated aluminum (class 2)? Will this damage the speakers or receiver? The receivers are marked with class 2 on the back. Will this improve anything assuming 14 gauge wire?
Hi Gene, here's my setup. L/R-RF7III Center-RC-64III Rear and side surrounds are RP-600M. Driven by a Marantz SR-8015. The distance from my receiver to the front stage is less than 15 feet. The surrounds might be 60 feet. I have three questions. 1. What gauge would you suggest? 2. Are user installed banana plugs ok? 3. Do you have a preferred brand? 1.
I had an experience that made me suspect there can be audible differences - intentionally. I compared mid-level "M brand" RCA connectors, immediately hearing audible hum; I instantly remedied it by swapping to cheap Radio Shack cables. My suspicion is the M brand makes flawed lower tier stuff, in order to upsell the higher priced line, assuming the average buyer will never think to try even cheaper stuff from other brands they can sneer at as "inferior." Consumer fraud just does not have the resources to investigate every area of abuse, and the wealthy audiophile world just is not in the most-urgent category. Buyers beware, everywhere.
Honestly, i think upgraded power cables are a must. It just makes sense to get better quality cables since it is what transfers the power from the mains to the equipment.
Power cables and RCA interconnects can make a difference. But speaker wire to is a different story, well made cable is all you need. Plus thicker copper if you are doing long runs.
This is the truth behind cables. The cable itself is equally as important as the device it's plugged into. High end cables may seem like they make no difference in video or maybe slightly in sound, but it honestly depends on what equipment your plugging it into. Why do you think high end recording studios use high end cables? It honestly depends on the equipment and also the best overall cable solution would be the low end cable of a high quality brand. For instance Audio Quest Pearl HDMI cable are a great value because they are made very durable and now have 4k 2.2 and very good bandwidth. These cables are about 30 to 50 depending on length and are also a better solution for a reciever to 4k tv. As we get deeper into the 4k age and beyond these cables will make a significant difference with higher end equipment. Everything depends on the product itself. Sure you don't need high end cables for the average household, but in certain situations high end cables can serve a purpose. What if people are 4k HDR streaming through the cable? Your telling me that a Insignia cable is just as good? Overall the average consumer does not need high end cables but when everything becomes 4k and beyond watch what happens...
My cable connection wasn't very clean so I sent them to AudioWash who treated my cables to a thorough master grade wash cycle inside of an Italian hand made leather pouch using a German washing machine. They claimed that I the proteins dissolved from the leather would create a rich sound along side the stellar signal cleaning from the German washing machine! I got them back and now they sound incredible! Everything sounds so clear and rich! Only costed me $7,000...I'd say that was a good deal!
Yomka Hassan Actually, for speakers, the key is resistance... Use a large gauge conductor.. For home use, #12 gauge is usually plenty....Nothing fancy.. Just buy the basic stuff...
OK, so here is my journey in passive speaker cables. I have been maintaining a small church PA system for many years and funding has been extremely tight to non existent. At one point, the stage got moved into a corner, another story sigh. This trapped the existing (very long18 ga) house cables under the stage construction. We had poor clarity and tonality both for house and fold back, but particularly for fold back. Over the years some equipment got replaced and I tried to upgrade each time but the fold backs continued to be a huge problem for the worship team. In frustration, I took one speaker home to try it on my vintage home HiFi. Well it was bad there too, so then the only thing I could try was to use my HiFi speaker cables with it. There was a clearly audible improvement. Now, I knew these cables were nothing special but now that I had proof that cables can make a difference, I did some research including reading articles on the Audioholics site. It seems that impedance is regarded as the 1st and most major consideration and different people work to different standards and this is also influenced to some extent by specific amp and speaker combinations. Some speakers have more variance in impedance across the audio spectrum than others. So there are some unknowns for me not having access to the relevant test equipment to fully investigate these things. So I decided the most sure path was to work to a top notch standard of, cable impedance
+Maurice Orris - As an experiment, I tried removing the twisted-pair Kimber Kable (8-TC & 4-TC) from my system* (*Wadia + Carver electronics, bi-amped ribbon speakers) and installing 6-9's solid-core copper cables. Result: Over all, the solid core seemed to dull the high-frequency transients, & vocal sibilants were suppressed. Not only that but the solid-core hookup made the bass sound flabby & imprecise, lacking impact. >Dumping the solid-core and returning the KK cables to my system was a bit like leaving a cave & coming into daylight. ;)) YMMV. Az Broadcast Engineering
These guys are actually the right hand equivalent of the left hand magical thinking audiophiles. They are essentially saying 1) I have the degree, so I know best and I own reality, 2) I can predict performance using currently known and employed measurements. 3) And by extension, what measures the same, sounds the same. We heard that kind of stuff in the 60s when Julian Hirsch told us that speakers that measured the same sounded the same. That would surprise anyone who compared horn speakers with bass reflex, with sealed box speakers. It was also in the early sixties that the engineers told us that the new crop of Japanese receivers, using transistor circuits with gobs of negative feedback, and advertising .005% THD, sounded better than the classic tube designs with .5% THD. Engineers were undeterred by the argument that your ears must be the final arbiter of the sound and not the test gear. [The receivers are all on the junk heap now and Dynaco tube amps are selling for $600 in good condition, roughly 3X their retail price and are being lovingly and lavishly restored.] Engineers in the 60s hadn't learned of, or rejected, and definitely weren't using, time delay distortion, phase coherence, distinguishing between odd and even order harmonics, and many other measurements and concepts in use today. They had to be dragged kicking and screaming by audiophiles who told them their stuff sounded like s__t, to implement some of the audiophile ideas and use their ears. Music is a live event, as is a human being. We do not have at our command all the measurements that would be necessary to describe and reproduce either. Here's the overall point. Use your ears. Be skeptical, but accept possibilities. Tune your stereo like a violin. The bottom line is life-like music. Do you hear a difference and is it worth the price? Remember you are dealing with incompletely discovered phenomena. Don't worry about moonbeam audiophiles or the reactionary engineers trying to debunk them. PS These guys did get one thing right. The Kimber Kable products are superb and were reviewed very positively by AUDIOPHILES using their EARS beginning in the late 80s. Welcome aboard, engineers. Late as ever.
Funny thing. I was researching cable this morning on the Mogami cable site. They are a large commercial manufacturer of wire and cable for the professional industry. Nobody would have more incentive to disregard speculative design theory, especially since they serve 'engineers' like our friends here. Yet Mogami specifically reference "the skin effect," something laughed at by these engineers, as a cause for differences in the sound of wire. I attempted to 'copy and paste' the relevant quotes here, but You Tube won't let me do it. So, go to mogami.com/e/ and download their PDF catalog. Go to page 70. In an article on the history of Neglex 2803 and 2804 cable, Mr. Koichi Hirabayashi states that the 'skin effect' DOES affect sound and further states that it can be heard, but cannot be measured using current methods and instrumentation. For the audiophile this means that listening and comparison is the order of the day. You may run into some manufacturers that are selling jive and others who have arrived at some degree of truth. Listen and compare price/benefit. Understand that engineers practice what they were taught in school, though it may be decades old. Not all keep up with current science. They are selling their "professional" opinion and are unlikely to change for fear of appearing to waiver in decision making in the eyes of their clients.
Well, there's a whole load of hokum going on here folks, sad to say. The Mogami one is easiest to totally destroy. The idea that a company selling "specially designed" high-end cable that purports to "improve" sound quality is either unbiased or not benefitting from a little op-ed piece, without reference, substantiation or citation, about how their magic cable solves a problem that no professional audio engineer has ever had to deal with is laughable. While I've not got the mathematical chops to disagree with Hirabayashi-san's technical analysis of the impact of skin effect on audio signals - doubtless there is an imperceptible effect, as the chaps in the video acknowledge - the key question is how audible is it? As the commenters above (and, frankly, due to the cost involved) are likely to be over 40, will the change made by infinitesimal skin effect be greater than the loss of hearing due to age? No. Will they be more than a change in air humidity, temperature? No. Will they be more than more directly measurable comb-filtering due to moving your head imperceptably? No. Will they be more than the difference between thin and thick rimmed glasses? No. Will they be more than having your hair slightly longer and so infiltrating your headphone cup? No. Given all of that, it's fair game if you want to waste your money on cables that make far less difference than any one of those other, much more easily quantifiable, effects. I'd recommend spending the money on something more practical, however, like a chocolate teapot. At the end of the day guys, it's the same scam as Homeopathy. If it works for you, fine, but don't expect people that live in the world of practical and repeatable experience to start condoning what is effectively a scam. Re: the point about loudspeaker design. Of course it was audiophiles that were the only contributors to loudspeaker design, and not the vast numbers of trained professionals that used training, education and experience to refine the designs. Sigh.
Dave Berry Six paragraphs and you are apparently unable to understand or summarize the points of my message for the purpose of refuting them. That's some accomplishment. It's not worth the effort to re-summarize for you, as you won't understand. and I cannot respond to things that apparently cause your head much confusion. Re-read the original post if you care to and address the issues as stated - not the bells going off in your head.
PalJoey1957 Sorry Pal, I didn't think the majority of your post (tl:dr version: speaker and amplifier design has improved since the 1960s) needed a huge amount of summary. Given that it is largely irrelevant to the point in hand (whether or not people are making up, and falling for, theories used only to sell unnecessarily expensive cable), I don't feel the need to refute, nor am I old enough to experiencially comment on, the attitude of amplifier and speaker designers of the 1960s. I note that you have failed to address any of my points, including the specific refutation of Mogami's sales literature as a reputable source for the veracity of "special cables" claims. Of more interest would be your thoughts on the list of other possible sources of changes in audible signal, and the level of elimination of these factors that has been performed prior to your assessment of how much "difference" you can "hear". Lets perform a little thought experiment. You need a heart bypass. Do you trust the opinion of the trained, practicing heart doctor, or the opinion of a website full of heartophiles - and a number of specialist heartophile clinics that have sprung up to serve this new demand - that have the best of intentions but little practical experience in the field? *edit* As an example, go check out the cost of Van Damme cable. I've used this as first preference for cable for the 16 years or so that I've worked in audio. It is top quality and used in the most demanding situations where money is, literally, no object. Their speaker cable costs around £7 a metre. Plus top quality connectors and a decent engineer to make the cable, you're looking at £50 for a 2 to 3 metre speaker cable.
Dave Berry It's hard to see what refutation of what arguments you think you've accomplished - but you haven't achieved anything. Judging by your comments it's clear you don't understand my comments at all. 1) Music is a live dynamic event. Reproduction of that music cannot so far be quantified through measurements or reproduced by engineering and materials. 2) As decades go on and discoveries in testing and engineering are made, sound has improved, but still falls short of 'live.' 3) Therefore, the experimentally inclined still have plenty of room to discover and improve in all areas. 4) Products claiming advancements need to be judged by the human ear - fallible yes, as are human beings, but still the best measuring instrument we have. Therefore one must learn to listen critically and weigh the cost/benefit for each product. The speaker and amp story in my first comment illustrates what happens when engineers (and apparently, you) get their feet planted and feel they can explain it all. As for listing what ELSE can affect the sound in a room more than wires (and thereby attempting to dismiss the sound of cables), congratulations. You've discovered the obvious. Fingers-in-ears has the greatest effect, but have you tried earmuffs for transparency?
Great vid. When I moved house and needed longer cable I bought Chord Clearway speaker cable, only because it was screened and had banana plugs already terminated on the ends to save messing around. I think it cost me £80-100 at £10 per metre. That, in my eyes was the absolute maximum I would ever be prepared to pay and it was very expensive in my view. I don't see why people would spend more than that. I felt a bit silly the other week as I spent £45 on Atlas interconnects as I needed an extra pair. I like my local HiFi shop as the owner always tells me never to bother paying stupid money for fancy cables. Surely you just need cable that has a decent lining to block most interference, and equal lengths to keep the resistance the same? Outside of that seems to be pseudo-science to me.
@@richardgrant5105 which one? The shop I bought the cable from or the current shop that recommends not buying fancy cable? Bearing in mind I walked into the store I bought my cable from, already knowing what I wanted. Wouldn't spend that much again. Hope not to need any cable ever again really.
expensive audiophile interconnects/power cords/speaker wire exists because: 1. there is no need to do R&D, everything that can be known has been known for generations. 2.perfect every time,no matter what type of cable you build it will work every time- no reject rate. 3.massive mark up, Ive built many high end power cables and never spent more than $20, even the cheapest power cords sells for more than 10 times that amount. 4. guantenteed great review, how can a cable sound bad??when was the last time you read a bad review of a speaker/interconnect/power cable??? 5. perfect reliablity, cables run forever, no need for replacement parts or repairs. 6. no need even for manufacturing, many of these companies dont even build their own cables. 7. stores and mail order places love them,takes up very little floor space easy to move around.cheap to ship.
Thank god someone has the balls to debunk some of the issue plaguing the industry. There are some metallurgy issues with the argument but overall I agree with the focus on resistance and not skin effect.
I was getting some buzzing from my turntable after replacing the RCA cables. After checking the grounding, I decided to flip the cable around, and that seemed to fix it? Why would that fix it? I'm glad it did, but I thought cables are not directional?!?!?
Travis You simply created a lower resistance connection that mitigated the voltage drop that caused the hum/buzz.... AC current is NOT directional and neither are cables!
Enio Nery works fine. 3.5mm is a little less likely to break, but they do mostly the same job. There was a study where they used coat hangers as speaker wire. No difference between expensive cables and the coathanger.
Enio Nery Yes. Using other cables will assist with ensuring no electrical mutual inductance can be "added" from adjacent live-voltage / RF carrier ..cable runs.. (such as the so-called "oxygen free" -- yeah right "not" - cables.. which actually allow oxygen into themselves.. as soon as someone "cuts" the cable - to crimp on a connector .. irrespective .. of how quickly they then "seal" the end of the cable's insulation -- as there WILL be some slight oxygen uptake -- into those "oxygen-free" MARKETING HYPE cables - at any "time" after their original manufacturing date, and the older the cable .. the more oxygen content it will eventually uptake.). Oh for sure .. Quality (in your 2.5 mm☐ cable - may suffer if the "runs" are long - or go alongside anything capable of transferring "mutual inductance" .. But the reality of the question you have asked - is this.!!! YES .. you can use 2.5 mm☐ Electrical Cable - as all you need .. is an electrical conductor. Which - by virtue of it's normal usage .. 2.5 mm☐ Electrical cable -- actually carries (ie: electricity) very well.
With the freezing part, metals like steel CAN benefit from chill tempering depending on the circumstances. Like if you are wanting a knife to have "normal properties" (ie, not be super brittle) in a sub zero condition like an expedition to Antarctica. But the issue is, the tempering is detrimental when used in a temperate climate like where 90%of humans live. It does affect the "grain"of steel but I am unaware of its affects on copper or aluminum due to their limited ability to heat treat.
There's another check and balance that is not in this industry: engineers that do not have a serious academic conservatory-trained background in music. "Have you ever heard a bass clarinet?" Yes, I have a recording of one. "No. Have you ever played, written for, or stood 3 feet from a person playing one?" No I haven't.
voltage and dielectric in cables... perhaps an analogy will help... its like walking beween two overgrown hedges, you feel the hedges. you stretch string around the hedges and tie them back with a little tension, and you dont get struck by the hedges any longer. if you study and learn the physics you will understand the concept, and then you can accept the theory. either way you could test the cable rather than dismissing out of hand without learning the theory or testing the cables...
I don't know of any electrical engineering theory or principle that supports the idea of speaker cables getting better after the initial, say, 1000 hours of use in other words break-in period. But I heard it happen. I still wonder how that can happen.
Brilliant channel, and you are so right! All the cable-shenanigans is pure snakeoil. Just buy a cable with the diameter big enough, and you are good! Anything else is pure BS.
Higher strand counts can mean you get more density of wire into a given space and thus can have less resistance as a result. They are also more flexible and workable than say solid core cables. WE don't recommend solid core cable to be used as speaker cable.
I didnt realise you could get compression connections.. that will make a difference I guess on getting a tight and stable connection, and improve the connection surface area too.. Is that possibly beneficial?
I should have said it doesn't travel through the metal in a perfect conductor. Even in your article it says "AC resistance" is 3% at 20kHz. I wonder if you have read Prof Malcolm Hawksford's paper on this issue? "The Essex Echo 1995" in Stereophile Magazine October 1995.
I trust my engineering books and PHD professors on the subject. I've seen Mr. Hawksford's paper and not impressed. In fact, we commented on it here a long time ago: www.audioholics.com/audio-video-cables/silversmith-audio-cables-interview/silversmith-audio-cables-interview-page-2 I also designed audio communication systems, DSL front ends and RF antennas for years. Skin effect is NOT elusive, it's not mystical, and it's a NON issue at audio frequencies for speaker cables.
I could never find anything in any of the standard graduate school texts on electromagnetism and so many promises about expensive cables such as skin depth which you can calculate for audio frequencies to find how insignificant differences in resistance of the cable. Ribbon cables to try to reduce skin effect resistance gradient with respect to frequencies does not compete with low enough gauge cable. I like what you call jewelry cables but these are inexpensive and have ruby red see-through in 10 gauge and are beautiful to look at.
If my speaker cables are 9 feet in length, do you still recommend 10 AWG or would 14 AWG do the same job? The chart says 14 AWG for 8 Ohms up to 35 foot runs.
Hi guys, I am late to the game on this one. What if I am running a 12 gauge cable through the wall and have one at 27 feet with the other at 23 feet? Would this be ok or do I need to buy another spool. Hope to hear from you. Cheers!
I buy professional quality speaker cable from DJ stores. Cut the ends off and put banana connects from electronic component stores. Put them together and you have professional high quality cables real cheaps. Hint: buy a pro DJ cable a bit over twice the length you need and cut it in two. You will not believe how cheap pro DJ cables are.
The biggest problem is that these very knowledgeable experienced audiophile guys may not know about the scientific method and cognitive biases. I frequently hear "I tried it, I can *definitely* hear a difference". Yet when you ask how they know that, you never hear "we did a series of double blind trials."
@6:50 I have no clue what cryo cooling would do to copper and doubt it will be significant if any difference at all HOWEVER hardening steel is a thing and disproves whats being said. Also aparently cryocooling drillbits does make them last longer There is a good video by Applied Science testing this
Hey all, thanks for this great video Audioholics! I will definitely be checking out more of your videos and your website. You guys did an excellent excellent job covering the basics in this one and relating it back to engineering principles as well as construction, construction, construction! You can start with the most wonderful copper nature ever made and if it's poorly extruded or poorly terminated then problems will arise. Those fundamentals come into play for both Speaker Cables and for Interconnects. Both need to be analyzed for their individual merits. This video tends to blur the lines between cables with dielectrics and cables without. So more discussion on that is warranted if anyone wants to. It's not all about burning crazy manufacturers and laughing it up; although that is so fun hahaha! Because there really are some important things to look for as these guys pointed out. For example I really like that compression fittings were highlighted. Solder is not a good thing here but remember there is plenty of solder in your audio path so no worries provided it is done right. Cable fittings need to be tight and cable ends need to be maintained because copper tarnishes under exposure to our atmosphere. Oxygen free is not a myth if you care about how long the cables will last. Cryogenics is total nonsense! The other important issue is frequency response. As the Audioholics pointed out copper has a BEAUTIFUL frequency response. Provided that it is high purity, not tarnished, not damaged and it's properly terminated for starters. I agree 100% about the spade versus banana. As well as the use of smaller + multiple conductors. That being said DIY speaker cables are a little easier to toy with than DIY Interconnects :) If you agree that skin effect is barely an issue then I would like to hear more of your thoughts about the copper itself as well as the dielectrics themselves. Quality is key so the use of mil-std qualified materials is important if you want to talk about these things without having to compromise around matters related to poor product quality...
There are three things in the "audiophile" world that really get under my skin: spurious BS about vinyl, absurd claims about speaker and headphone cables, and Michael Fremer.
Question I Have been experiencing popping in my speakers I have had My receiver checked out was ok would that just bad connections at the speakers and receiver
TH-cam videos of every cable but you haven't done a video on XLR cables what's the myth on that there's so many out there would love to have your opinion on those and which one do you recommend
Audioholics like audioquest with their extreme price on XLR saying that they sound better you have blue jeans xlr Megami XLR those are some examples and if you go with those they're like and the $50 range compared to audioquest are in the 300 up to$1000 range that's what I'm talking about and which one do you recommend
Great video. I brought some expensive cables in the past. Won't anymore. I once had the sales rep at my HI-FI store tell me that a set of cables he was trying to sell me would allow me to hear the guitars player's fingerprints on the strings. LOL I just looked at him and thought, you just played yourself. Give me these cables. It's like people paying hundreds if not thousands of dollars to buy wood dollies with cutouts to keep their speaker cables off the floor.WTF How does that improve the sound?
Lol, how is hearing someone's fingerprints on the strings even possible irl? If that is actually possible by using expensive cables then you're getting artificial sounds, which is counter intuitive given that the whole point of a high end stereo system is to produce a sound as realistic as possible. If anyone claims that hearing the Beatles on their system sounds better than when they heard the Beatles live irl, then they're playing themselves.
why do we need expensive speakers from power amp to speakers connector? and why speaker cable from the connector inside the box go to crossover and from crossover to speakers is too small? my speaker cost about $4,000 so how much do I have to spend on speaker cable?thanks
You don't need expensive speaker cables unless you simply want them to look impressive and to have bragging rights. Go with low resistance cables and you will be fine per our recommendation.
Chau Huynh The better advice you can give to a customer is forget about technical sheets and about what others are saying even what is explanable or not. What is important is the audio results. Just trust your ears. Try them by yoursesf. Your own ears will be the judge. Trust them. If you are abe to choose a $4,000 speakers, you certainly compare a few of them before buying them. Then you made a choice. You choose th one that please your ears the most at that price range. So, you are able to hear differences and nuances. When you buy a hp cable, you must hear a difference and an upgrade in your sound quality. If you dont hear it. Dont buy it. But if you do. Try other ones in that same price range to make sure that you do the best buy. Also, ask to your dealer if a refound is possible (or try annother one at home) just in case that you plug them on your own system and that you dont like it. Trust your ears. only your ears.
This video was always going to be opening up a can of worms so you can't be surprised at some of the comments. Can I ask when you do measurements yourselves on these cables to get the RCL figures, how do you measure them ? The performance of the cable should be as you say based on the factors of RCL - effectively impedance, which then implies there is a frequency component to its performance. Then it should follow that were you to connect an amplifier (with a signal generator [with square wave] and powered up) with some cable to a 8 ohm speaker, then get a 2 beam oscilloscope and use beam1 probe on the cable (amp end) and beam 2 probe on the cable (speaker end) so you can look at the two wave forms. Then if you look at the difference (Subtracting one beam from the other ), you should by your argument get a straight line. Do the same experiment with other cables. Have you done this experiment ? I'd be interested to know what you find. Note this test requires no listening, no blind/double blind testing. This should go a long way in answering the question as to whether speaker cable does/does not make a difference.
A very good video for sure. I would however like to question your understanding of cryogenics as the process does make a permanent change and realignment of molecules being subjected to cryogenic temperatures. It relieves stresses and hardens metals by making it tougher and more consistent. You could compare it to graphite turning into diamonds in that the process is irreversible and a scientifically proven fact. I honestly couldn't say what it does for cables but it's common practise for springs, engine parts, guitar strings... even thermionic valves (electron tubes), but these are heavily debated. In the case of guitar strings the difference is quite astounding as you seem to get more of everything: cleaner sound, more volume, more highs and more lows, and they play like they're a gauge heavier.
I concur with Jonas, auto-x racers used cryogenic treated rotors because they last longer and don't heat up as fast. Cryogenically treating metal does permanently alter the properties. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryogenic_hardening
Good video about speaker cables. I too laughed my head off when you were discussing Cryogenic Freezing of cables, don't see the point of exposing metal cables to sub-zero temperature just to have them return to normal temperature in transit back to the owner.
LRC is a definite, but I do not agree that frequencies we cannot hear do not affect what we hear. A very high degree of amps or speakers that I've ever built or listened to that had a fairly flat frequency response beyond human hearing resulted in higher fidelity. Human hearing is a remarkable thing. And, there are truly talented listeners. For instance, I was listening to a prototype headphone amp and told the very competent designer it was clipping. (He was a student of Marshall Leach from GA Tech) He insisted it wasn't, it was already measured, etc. He also could not hear it. Sure as hell, he went back to the bench, did some more testing, and it was clipping. So, how you test is also a major contributor.
sounds like the first time he didn't measure it correctly but the 2nd time he measured the clipping you were hearing. Thus the audible results were confirmed with measurements properly conducted.
AudioholicsLIVE No, nobody heard it but me, a trained listener. Also, the "textbook" tests did not show the clipping. Nobody in the circle could hear it but me. The guy who built it was a Student of Dr. Marshall Leach, who is about as good as it gets with designing and testing audio circuits. He had to bring it to our Lab at work and devise some other means of testing to measure it. Point is, the standard bench and textbooks are not the know all to end all.
The only time direction matters is if the cable has a shield tied on one end and open on the other. Generally, I don't recommend this type of a shield. A full braided shield with coax is a much better option. When a manufacturer claims their actual conductors are directional, it's pure snake oil.
I got bored and decided to check the Ortofon website to see what high end products. I found that they sell lead wires for turntables that range from $44 to $99 freaking dollars. I figure that since they're only about 2" long, they can't have a whole lot of resistance relative to eachother. Am I correct in assuming that these products are a complete ripoff?
$44-$99 in the world of audiophiles is consider low end btw! Try look at CARDAS CLEAR speaker wires. $14000 for a pair of 8 meters long. And people are biding on it on ebay
I agree. Short 12 gauge speaker wire has worked best for me. I would much rather have long interconnects used with much shorter speaker wires than the opposite. I tried it both ways.
I have high end linn rca cables and cheap dollar store rca cables.. There's absolutely no difference in sound quality but there's a big difference in build quality.
I get my cables from unused NASA surplus shuttle maintenance stores that have been flown into space because it gets exposed to beneficial quantum radiation particle bombardment, then I have them professionally massaged in an oxygen free hypobaric chamber as the connectors are attached. I must say that bathing the cables in liquid nitrogen just prior to every listening session really sweetens the sound too, but sometimes my cat gets it's tongue stuck.
+cobra60six This is great. Mind if we use this in a video?
Audioholics Haha...sure, go ahead, glad you liked it
+cobra60six how much resistance those cables have and dipping in nitrogen gets them to do what ? what improvement you are talking about ?? care to explain
Bharat Singh well when the cat gets it's tongue stuck it can't scratch up my leather lounge or speakers, the rest I'll leave for others to explain, but it's going to be tough.
+cobra60six
hahah i thought you will cut the shit .. but you managed to pull another one. superrr
You guys are audioholics but cant even eliminate the background noise ?
***** Yep we like it. It gives a vintage feel :)
Audioholics Tape hiss? They have Dolby NR for that now you know! ;O)
+exenx2995 bro! don't feel bad if you overpaid for your cryo treatment.
+danielwierd It actually sounds like they added some recorded nature noise. Wind/forest/waterfall/something. Sometimes you can hear birds chirping. Or maybe I'm hallucinating.
If their kit picks up the birds chirping, then they have the sensitivity of their kit set up brilliantly.. Cool!
...bet he turns green when he gets angry☻
The Dylans' Burbage bet you’re an immature jerk!
@@Paxtraxx He's right, the guy looks like Lou Ferrigno
Carew Martin lol was thinkin the same🍻
lol, it's true.
@@carewser that's exactly what I saw as soon as the video started
I thought i was an ad for supplements.
Maybe your next video could be about avoiding over-priced HDMI cables. Thanks for the info.
I do like Monster Cables for speakers because of the wrap. It seems to be neoprene which is really flexible and stays that way for a long time.
Monster Cable build quality was great. The cables going from my phono preamp to my pre-pro right now are Monster Cables I bought back in the mid-80s. They last that long.
@@batman.darthmaul I bet if you cut those old 80's cables open, you would see a significant amount of oxidized copper. Of course, oxidized copper reduces electrical conductivity and thus reduces signal quality too.
ITs like they said "i dont care how we shoot this video as long as one bicep is in the shot at all times bro!!"
Insertion loss, mmmm
I like his diamond earring, too.
they would do better having a weightlifting channel maybe - something in their realm of expertise
I don't remember buying tickets to the gun show
465marko fantastic
@@tourag Hugo is an accomplished competitive bodybuilder. He's written books on it. Brilliant guy, with guns to boot! ;)
You stupid 😂
@@Unwise- The dude said his name is Igor!
Listen to these guys and save your money. Cables are a passive component in your audio system. The "cable ends" and how they secure themselves electrically in your equipment is by far the most important parameter in cable construction. Thanks for the great video and information.
TheRudydog1 Also the cable gauge is important. If you use 0.75mm2 cable on a 500W amplifier the cable will get hot and the speaker will not play very well. You can use cheap copper cables made for electrical systems, just get the right size. And yes a good connector is fundamental as well
MrOpenGL I totally agree. The minimum gauge wire should never be smaller than #18 if kept under 32 feet per channel. #16 through #10 should never exceed 50 feet per channel although longer runs on smaller systems may work ok. Wire size 0.75mm2 would be a good choice for most systems 500 watts and lower again best with lengths 50 feet and under per channel. Remember, there is basically no "skin effect" at audio frequencies but excessive wire resistance could effect proper power transfer to the load (speakers). You should not notice any difference in sound quality between cheap and expensive cable if the same parameters are applied to both cables.
I've often thought that the "break in" nonsense, on wires and some other passive items is just the manufacturer hedging his bets that your brain will adjust and you'll think/imagine that there was an improvement.
I've seen a lot of that common 12 awg wire, with the clear PVC insulation react with the copper . It gets pretty bad with the corrosion/verdigris. What's your opinion on that? Should it be replaced? I just stopped using it in my home theater when Blue Jeans cable came along.
For my music rig, I used Surplus Mil-Spec Teflon Insulated Wire which works really well.
About the cryogenic thing, the science might sound a bit bizarre but I think it has some merit, I work for a copper rod and power cable manufacturer. and the grain size of copper is affected by the rate of cooling of a segment of copper. basically the longer the copper takes to cool down the more grain it has. OCC process passes solidifying copper thru liquid nitrogen to rapidly cool down the copper. The process is very expensive but it does deliver the promise of long grain copper, that is why if speaker cable manufacturer really use OCC process they charge an arm and a leg for the cable
Now the most important question is if it is worth the cost. The answer is probably not. long grain copper will not affect the conductivity of the copper significantly, practically speaking the length of the grain really does not have much impact on electrical and mechanical properties of the copper used for cables. but OCC was and is still used in some electronic application.
So, if OCC copper is not worth the expense, why is it made, purchased, and used by the most knowledgeable commercial, military, and high tech electronics engineers?
Oh....that's right. Because quality materials, conductor grain and purity DO make a difference in cable performance...
Skin effect on conductors is a problem when the signal frequency is way higher than audio signal. Usually at radar frequencies vhf in ghz.
That is what give digital the advantage. 0's and 1's are not easily compromised. A 1 at a whisper is still a 1 at scream. LOL. In other words it is not as affected by signal strength variations. Well, that is the way it was explained to us when I was in the USAF electronics class on radar frequencies in 1965, mind you. Digital technology is not new. It was in used in the early 50's in military communications. Now we use it in automotive onboard computer systems. Automotive manufacturers use the smallest gauge wires, but with good dielectric insulations.
@@rickseneris there are no 0`s or 1`s in any cable, just an electric signal of 44khz
@@64fairlane305 not quite true. A square wave signal represented by two voltage bands, gnd and supply. 1 is depicted by the upper and 0 the lower of the square wave. So the signal in the cable is attempting to represent 1 and 0s by using a square wave. Hence a digital state unlike a AC analogue signal as in an amplifier output 20hz to 20khz sinewave.
Plus, a bundle of bare strands, all touching will mainly act as ONE conductor !
I like the video and agree. As an engineer, numbers are important and ears are hard to trust since it is so qualitative. In the end, I have purchased Blue Jeans cables with the nice compression banana plugs.
One thing I have witnessed first hand were sonic differences in some cables from two different Nordost cables and a Cardas cable I demoed. The cables did affect the sound ever so slightly, but in the end, the sound was still the same and to me not worth the money.
Also, what are your thoughts on capacitance? You discussed resistance, but to me, capacitance may also have an effect as it may store and release energy/
***** I am not following. if there is not an energy variability issue, than why would it cause amp stability problems?
I flushed the nearest toilet before listening to my favorite song and OH BOY, did it make a difference in quality!! Refreshing the stale water in the plumbing allowed for tighter bass and more detailed highs and more distinct mids. I sell high-end toilets that have silver flush handles, on sale now for $9,500!
Why didn't I ever think of that?! what a genius! The particle displacement created bacteria in the water is messing with my room acoustics! THANKS! - - The tale of every audiofool xD
aah! its the silver in the handles...great conductivity
I built a set of the cat 5 v3s and loved them. Contemplating a v1 build. Would still like to see your interconnect cable myth video and maybe a good diy shootout version too. Many thanks for all of your hard work.
i bought a spool of 10 gauge copper in plastic and some right angle banana plugs , hooked them up and never did any comparing because the sound was more than satisfactory to me .
my philosophy in speaker hifi gear is treat/condition / refine the LISTENER first and then tweak the gear.
Refining the subjectivity of the listener can overcome almost all external obstacles .
I am electronics engineer and I absolutely agree with these guys.
Same here.
Me 3
Nice job on your table. The list of dielectric materials is limited. If you want low capacitance in larger gauge wires look for dielectric materials with low dielectric constants. A foam dielectric is lower capacitance than solid dielectric of the same material.
In addition to LCR if you have access to one, use a TDR to find the nominal impedance. I find these results differ quite a bit from manufacture to manufacture. A TDR will show not only nominal impedance but cables with high dielectric losses. This effect is the loss of higher frequencies due to the dielectric absorption. In generic audio from Penn or Beldon, they don't use non standard materials so the absorption is very low. Some high end cables with unusual dielectric have very high absorption. Teflon, Polystyrene, polypropylene, etc are fine. Cheap wire with vinyl have issues. In the presence of high humidity and moisture they break down and release Chlorine which reacts with copper producing the green slime seen in some cables used outdoors such as in old Christmas lights. At high power some of these cables actually glow like e-wire in the dark from the absorption. This is where the idea for making e-wire originated.
In general for high end audio, stick with wire that uses the same dielectric materials as RF cable. The jacket can be other pretty materials to look nice.
isettech Indeed, the Belden 'digital' cables are excellent for interconnects.. Low capacitance and usually low shield resistance..
Bradley Smith This is very true. The dielectric for "Digital" applications is designed to be low absorption, and very uniform along the length for constant cable nominal impedance. Cable rated for DMX-512 and RS-485 make excellent balanced interconnects.
The main difference other than the higher spec for high speed data, is how the XLR connectors are wired. Pins 1,2, and 3 are the same between DMX and audio, however true 3 pin DMX does not have the shell of the connector connected to the cable shield. This is the reason to never swap DMX and interconnect cables. The 3 pin XLR used on most DMX equipment is not to official DMX-512 standards. The official standard specified 5 pin XLR cable so audio and data can't be mixed. Because the connector was often 10X the price the 3 pin XLR is pretty much the de-facto standard except in high end equipment.
If you plan on using Data cable for interconnects, plan on wiring the connectors yourself and mark them for Audio.
A question for clarification. If it is not distortion, what is it called when you use it a long run of cable where it is too small of a gauge and you start choking the base? I hear the distortion. Is it not distortion? It’s some sort of noise being produced that is rectified when you use the proper gauge cable.
I bought a pair of cables that is going to be heated to 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit and that will make the entire cable one solid crystal of a gold/copper/lead and mercury amalgamation. It will have negative resistance and insertion found not insertion loss. The conductivity rating will be 1350%! They had to send it to the sun and just dip it into the surface for about 30 seconds. I bought it in 1998 and should see it in another 18 years give or take. Price was right also, including the rocket, rocket fuel etc etc a mear $127.5m in 1998. They are going to go great with my floor standing speakers, made of unicorn skin, hooves, horn and Yeti bones by Himalayan Sherpas at the summit of Everest 250 years ago.
I can tell from the silver vs copper cable apart. The experts said thats not possible cos they cant measure it. From blind test, I guess it right 10/10 times. Im using my stock sennhieser hd800 stock cable vs a custom made 99.999 pure silver. I can easily tell them apart within seconds of listening to my reference track! Some might essentially sound the same, but cable do effect the sound! Sometimes it is very minor and sometimes it is very notable! Point is cable do make a difference in audio!!!
You need the sound to be level matched to be a fair test. Anything outside of that causes distortion which is easily heard.
RIGHT! They do!
I also can hear the difference between the 99.999 pure silver and a stock cable. I ended up paying that extra for it since it is purely a subjective thing and just a feeling. I cannot explain why. I suspect this is the same reason why people listen to Vinyl compared to the digital CDs?
You don't need to be an engineer to de bunk any myth with cables, you purchase the cable and you listen to it if you like it and it sounds good to you its worth every penny. I love spade connections. I sent my head to a cryo lab to have it frozen and now my speakers sound better!!! Sorry I have cables that will blow away any Home Depot wire I don't care about resistance bla bla bla ! my ears hear the difference that's all I need to know.
YUP, agree with you Bro! Let your golden ears hear the difference!
@@esotericaudiophile3884 Maybe in a few years cables will be worshippes as deities. All hail the big copper snake in the sky!
You got placebo'd
@@DescartesRenegade How do you know what goes on in other people's brains? Just because you can't hear a difference, doesn't mean that everybody who can is experiencing a placebo. There is definitely a difference in different cables. It's magical thinking to believe that the electrical properties of a cable have no effect on signal transmission. If the electrical properties of a cable doesn't matter, then why are we using metals like copper and silver, instead of a piece of cotton string?
Vlad G Scientific measurement and data. Without that, all claims are voodoo and meant to placebo you.
Short and sweet: if the difference cannot be measured or expressed in electrical terms there is no difference.
Now this does not mean people are wrong when they claim one cable sounded better than another. The capacitance or impedence added or subtracted by a given cable changes the signal the amplifier processes. However you dont need to spend $1000 to do that.
Couldn't agree more. I have expensive CD player, amp and speakers because they make an immediate and noticeable difference to sound quality. Cables, in my experience, just don't. One salesman tried to flog me the Nordost Heimdall RCA interconnect. This thing costs nearly £600 (price as at 2016; can't remember what it was when I tried it), and I can confirm it sounded very slightly different from the £35 model I eventually settled on. By 'different', I don't necessarily mean better - and certainly not better to the extent that it was worth even one sixth of the price! He tried to sell me a £500 speaker cable too. It was the last thing he ever tried to sell me, I can tell you.
Bottom line: just buy decent quality cables that won't fall apart. You might be able to tell a slight difference between these and the all singing, all belching ones, but nothing like enough to justify the price. Listen with your ears, not your wallet, and for heaven's sake don't get suckered into the unabashed bullshit-fest that is the audio cable industry.
Well said! Very sensible.
Cables cannot improve on the information fed into them, but they can, and do, affect what comes out the other end.
Strikes me that some folks use speaker and interconnect cables like equalisers to tailor the sound they hear.
The comment about good cables should be indistinguishable and bad cables will make a difference is spot on. I believe that if a (speaker) cable (say) makes an appreciable difference to the sound, then it is probably upsetting the electronics by presenting an unusual load to the amp; I also believe some manufacturers deliberately do this.
I knit my own speaker cables to 10 gauge from the wool of the very rare Copperwool Albino Alpacas which are bred by monks in a little town called Distonia in the Eastern Himalayas. Before I knit the cable, it is especially induction heated to just before melting point in a sealed container of inert gas and held in this state until it ceases giving off negative electrons. This now positively charged wool is then plunged into liquid nitrogen to create a special layer of non-corroding copper to which a fine layer of shellac is applied. After the knitting process, the cables are then placed in a vacuum and coated in the finest Teflon, the ends then dipped in a Teflon solvent for 1/4 inch and the 24 Carat gold terminals are flame welded to the ends by a qualified jeweler.
What about the sound, the definition, the clarity? I hear you ask. About the same as every other bit-o-wire.
I tried the Audioquest Golden Gate RCA cable and got fantastic results, Yamaha AV reciever line out to Emotiva amp, Hate the price but the results are worth it to me.
How much? And did Audioquest claim wild snakeoil properties of the cable 😱
Perfect. I really liked how you described the measurements of speaker cables that do matter. Helps us DIY guys what to look for in our builds. Thanks.
Sometimes i hook up my new energy tower speaker but i also have bookshelf speakers hooked up does that effect my sound quality or what do you recommend i do
Good info. Gene, do these rules also apply to Axiom Audio products? ...
Recently PS Audio videos creeped into my playlist and Paul over there makes the argument, "I don't understand it either but I CAN HEAR IT and all my staff can hear the audible difference! isn't that all that it matters?" This 70 years old sounds sincere! :) I think I want every pieces of audio gear sold come a laboratory blind test, "out of 100 people, how many found a difference and % accuracy" Myself am kind of fond to say Gosh, am glad I don't have golden ears, saved me ton$$$ through the years!
This resistance you talk of, is that what helps power get to the speaker when the sound suddenly goes up and prevents the speaker from blowing?
Can I use regular cables used for electrical installations as good speaker cables?
They'll work but my experience is that they are usually not as good shielded against interference from other near by cables or power cords that will cause white noise or a humming when the speaker is supposed to be silent.
Hi Lou Ferrigno, sorry Hugo, for wiring up the speakers inside the speaker box, is 14 guage wire ok to use or is smaller the way to go? Great informative video. Thanks.
I just got banned from a Facebook group for calling people out on cables. :(
So?
Audioquest I bet
Those company’s con out of a lot of money!
Why did Paul Klipsch put spade connectors only on his early speakers, eg 84' Cornwalls?
Should they be changed or left on vintage speakers?
You guys rock! It's nice to see knowledgeable people dispel common AV myths.
I think it’s important to know about the works published in the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society. In a nutshell, 12 AWG or 10 AWG copper cable from a quality manufacturer like Belden for a couple bucks per foot is imperceptible from the high dollar cables.
Small correction. Cable do not cause distortion not because they are PASSIVE, but because they are LINEAR. Diode is passive, bit it in non-linear, so if you have a diode somewhere in the signal path, it can create IMD. Wires, like resistors, are VERY linear; so they can not cause distortions.
Capacitors and inductors (especially on ferrite cores) can show non-linearity, so expensive cables with "magic boxes" (usually containing $5-$15 worth of off-the shelf components inside) can indeed cause distortions, especially at high levels. So by paying outrageous prices people actually buying distortions!
Overall, very good presentation. Cable mafia need to be kept at bay!
Mudillo - If you want to get picky, when talking about cable characteristics, you need to specify your frequency band. A straight wire in air has an [AC] impedance, meaning it has not only resistance, but inductance and capacitance. Of course at any frequency of interest to audiophiles [maybe not extreme videophiles], it is not a concern.
Hello. I was reading a topic about power cables and I ended up observing a curiosity that maybe you can answer.
The receiver and sub cables are usually 2 pins, how to know the polarity of these pins ? How marry phase of receiver with phase of power plug and neutral of receiver with neutral ? Because in cable / receiver does not come any indication the right position to connect in a plug with 2 pin.
Thanks !!!!
I have a story that is almost unbelievable. I was at an audiophile store in my town.. won’t name names, but there’s only one😂😂. I was listening to two different sets of speakers and just couldn’t believe the soundstage. So I reached behind the speakers and unplugged them and it just happened that there were 2 20k Martin Logan’s also playing😂. AND THEN!!.. I was listening to the new paradigms and noticed the right speaker sounds 20-30% ish quieter than the left. The “audiophile” owner looked at me like I’m crazy. And this is after calling him out on the extra speakers being hooked up. And after further inspection of the 5k~ cables hooked up the right one was broken. It was a 3 into 1 cable and one of the 3 parts was visibly damaged. Exactly 33% quieter after examination. And after swapping the cables out to a cheap set I wanted to try the problem was solved. So this guy claiming he could hear the dif in sound Quality between cables but couldn’t hear the 33% quieter signal in the right speaker. If you can’t hear a third quieter signal you can’t hear a few percent in quality. What a joke!!! I quickly left the snake oil shop and will never go back. It’s unfortunate though. A ton of really nice speakers ... but I don’t have patience for ignorant pretentious assholes.
Great video. I have heard of people so fine attuned to audio, that say they can even hear the little Indian in a AIFF file, or very easily hear the Big Indian in a WAV file. I have a long way to go yet.
My question is, how can i get a nice biceps and triceps? Do i need to carry a heavy amplifiers and speakers?
I had no previous knowledge about audio in home systems at all prior to 2011. I listened to different AudioQuest speaker wires to see if I or my friends could hear a difference to justify paying more. EVERY TIME I listened to and upgraded speaker wire, testing them by running a different wire to the other speaker and going back and forth to validate this claim, THERE WAS A DISTINCT DIFFERENCE AT EACH LEVEL OF QUALITY! I had different totally green novices do the same, without informing them of what I was doing and they were able to obviously hear the difference as well. I know that all of us aren't imagining this phenomenon. So I believe that some people ARE audiophiles and that some people AREN't audiophiles.
Agree with you!
"I know that all of us aren't imagining this phenomenon." Yes, you are.
Measuring equipment prove many many many people wrong, and what they're actually hearing is a placebo because they're wanting to justify the price they spent on snake oil.
Very expensive cables give you "synergy" , synergy sounds great, but it can be expensive. Measuring equipment cannot measure synergy, you can only hear it with a good set of ears! I guess this is where the term "Snake oil" comes from. Basically, synergy which sounds so sweet, is "snake oil"! I am lucky enough to own two U.S. patents that generate lots and lots of different flavours of synergy for about a few dollars, so I don't have to spend allot of money on extremely fancy cables that DO give some levels of synergy, but not as much as my devices! But ok, call it snake oil... hehehe! to each his own! It's all good, for the love of music!!!
I just happen to know, how to manipulate A.C. harmonics in a fancy way! ;)
@@madmax2069 people listen with ears, not with measuring equipment. If i need to prove something about audio, I prove it to MYSELF, not to a computer
What about using pure copper (class 3 cable) instead of copper coated aluminum (class 2)? Will this damage the speakers or receiver? The receivers are marked with class 2 on the back. Will this improve anything assuming 14 gauge wire?
Hi Gene, here's my setup. L/R-RF7III Center-RC-64III Rear and side surrounds are RP-600M. Driven by a Marantz SR-8015. The distance from my receiver to the front stage is less than 15 feet. The surrounds might be 60 feet. I have three questions.
1. What gauge would you suggest?
2. Are user installed banana plugs ok?
3. Do you have a preferred brand?
1.
I had an experience that made me suspect there can be audible differences - intentionally. I compared mid-level "M brand" RCA connectors, immediately hearing audible hum; I instantly remedied it by swapping to cheap Radio Shack cables. My suspicion is the M brand makes flawed lower tier stuff, in order to upsell the higher priced line, assuming the average buyer will never think to try even cheaper stuff from other brands they can sneer at as "inferior." Consumer fraud just does not have the resources to investigate every area of abuse, and the wealthy audiophile world just is not in the most-urgent category. Buyers beware, everywhere.
Honestly, i think upgraded power cables are a must. It just makes sense to get better quality cables since it is what transfers the power from the mains to the equipment.
I just wish I owned a shop near you..........
Power cables and RCA interconnects can make a difference. But speaker wire to is a different story, well made cable is all you need. Plus thicker copper if you are doing long runs.
Hi, how do you you connect the white and red colour line out from an audio cinema set to a TV ? To hear sound on the audio cinema set ?
This is the truth behind cables. The cable itself is equally as important as the device it's plugged into. High end cables may seem like they make no difference in video or maybe slightly in sound, but it honestly depends on what equipment your plugging it into. Why do you think high end recording studios use high end cables? It honestly depends on the equipment and also the best overall cable solution would be the low end cable of a high quality brand. For instance Audio Quest Pearl HDMI cable are a great value because they are made very durable and now have 4k 2.2 and very good bandwidth. These cables are about 30 to 50 depending on length and are also a better solution for a reciever to 4k tv. As we get deeper into the 4k age and beyond these cables will make a significant difference with higher end equipment. Everything depends on the product itself. Sure you don't need high end cables for the average household, but in certain situations high end cables can serve a purpose. What if people are 4k HDR streaming through the cable? Your telling me that a Insignia cable is just as good? Overall the average consumer does not need high end cables but when everything becomes 4k and beyond watch what happens...
My cable connection wasn't very clean so I sent them to AudioWash who treated my cables to a thorough master grade wash cycle inside of an Italian hand made leather pouch using a German washing machine. They claimed that I the proteins dissolved from the leather would create a rich sound along side the stellar signal cleaning from the German washing machine! I got them back and now they sound incredible! Everything sounds so clear and rich! Only costed me $7,000...I'd say that was a good deal!
So is there different between solid and stranded speaker cables and which one is better?
Yomka Hassan Actually, for speakers, the key is resistance... Use a large gauge conductor.. For home use, #12 gauge is usually plenty....Nothing fancy.. Just buy the basic stuff...
Better for what?
OK, so here is my journey in passive speaker cables. I have been maintaining a small church PA system for many years and funding has been extremely tight to non existent. At one point, the stage got moved into a corner, another story sigh. This trapped the existing (very long18 ga) house cables under the stage construction. We had poor clarity and tonality both for house and fold back, but particularly for fold back. Over the years some equipment got replaced and I tried to upgrade each time but the fold backs continued to be a huge problem for the worship team. In frustration, I took one speaker home to try it on my vintage home HiFi. Well it was bad there too, so then the only thing I could try was to use my HiFi speaker cables with it. There was a clearly audible improvement. Now, I knew these cables were nothing special but now that I had proof that cables can make a difference, I did some research including reading articles on the Audioholics site. It seems that impedance is regarded as the 1st and most major consideration and different people work to different standards and this is also influenced to some extent by specific amp and speaker combinations. Some speakers have more variance in impedance across the audio spectrum than others. So there are some unknowns for me not having access to the relevant test equipment to fully investigate these things. So I decided the most sure path was to work to a top notch standard of, cable impedance
Is a large gauge single core conductor better or no different than one of the same gauge but with many strands?
+Maurice Orris - As an experiment, I tried removing the twisted-pair Kimber Kable (8-TC & 4-TC) from my system* (*Wadia + Carver electronics, bi-amped ribbon speakers) and installing 6-9's solid-core copper cables. Result: Over all, the solid core seemed to dull the high-frequency transients, & vocal sibilants were suppressed. Not only that but the solid-core hookup made the bass sound flabby & imprecise, lacking impact.
>Dumping the solid-core and returning the KK cables to my system was a bit like leaving a cave & coming into daylight. ;))
YMMV.
Az
Broadcast Engineering
These guys are actually the right hand equivalent of the left hand magical thinking audiophiles. They are essentially saying 1) I have the degree, so I know best and I own reality, 2) I can predict performance using currently known and employed measurements. 3) And by extension, what measures the same, sounds the same. We heard that kind of stuff in the 60s when Julian Hirsch told us that speakers that measured the same sounded the same. That would surprise anyone who compared horn speakers with bass reflex, with sealed box speakers.
It was also in the early sixties that the engineers told us that the new crop of Japanese receivers, using transistor circuits with gobs of negative feedback, and advertising .005% THD, sounded better than the classic tube designs with .5% THD. Engineers were undeterred by the argument that your ears must be the final arbiter of the sound and not the test gear. [The receivers are all on the junk heap now and Dynaco tube amps are selling for $600 in good condition, roughly 3X their retail price and are being lovingly and lavishly restored.]
Engineers in the 60s hadn't learned of, or rejected, and definitely weren't using, time delay distortion, phase coherence, distinguishing between odd and even order harmonics, and many other measurements and concepts in use today. They had to be dragged kicking and screaming by audiophiles who told them their stuff sounded like s__t, to implement some of the audiophile ideas and use their ears. Music is a live event, as is a human being. We do not have at our command all the measurements that would be necessary to describe and reproduce either.
Here's the overall point. Use your ears. Be skeptical, but accept possibilities. Tune your stereo like a violin. The bottom line is life-like music. Do you hear a difference and is it worth the price? Remember you are dealing with incompletely discovered phenomena. Don't worry about moonbeam audiophiles or the reactionary engineers trying to debunk them.
PS These guys did get one thing right. The Kimber Kable products are superb and were reviewed very positively by AUDIOPHILES using their EARS beginning in the late 80s. Welcome aboard, engineers. Late as ever.
Funny thing. I was researching cable this morning on the Mogami cable site. They are a large commercial manufacturer of wire and cable for the professional industry. Nobody would have more incentive to disregard speculative design theory, especially since they serve 'engineers' like our friends here. Yet Mogami specifically reference "the skin effect," something laughed at by these engineers, as a cause for differences in the sound of wire. I attempted to 'copy and paste' the relevant quotes here, but You Tube won't let me do it. So, go to mogami.com/e/ and download their PDF catalog. Go to page 70. In an article on the history of Neglex 2803 and 2804 cable, Mr. Koichi Hirabayashi states that the 'skin effect' DOES affect sound and further states that it can be heard, but cannot be measured using current methods and instrumentation.
For the audiophile this means that listening and comparison is the order of the day. You may run into some manufacturers that are selling jive and others who have arrived at some degree of truth. Listen and compare price/benefit.
Understand that engineers practice what they were taught in school, though it may be decades old. Not all keep up with current science. They are selling their "professional" opinion and are unlikely to change for fear of appearing to waiver in decision making in the eyes of their clients.
Well, there's a whole load of hokum going on here folks, sad to say. The Mogami one is easiest to totally destroy.
The idea that a company selling "specially designed" high-end cable that purports to "improve" sound quality is either unbiased or not benefitting from a little op-ed piece, without reference, substantiation or citation, about how their magic cable solves a problem that no professional audio engineer has ever had to deal with is laughable. While I've not got the mathematical chops to disagree with Hirabayashi-san's technical analysis of the impact of skin effect on audio signals - doubtless there is an imperceptible effect, as the chaps in the video acknowledge - the key question is how audible is it?
As the commenters above (and, frankly, due to the cost involved) are likely to be over 40, will the change made by infinitesimal skin effect be greater than the loss of hearing due to age? No. Will they be more than a change in air humidity, temperature? No. Will they be more than more directly measurable comb-filtering due to moving your head imperceptably? No. Will they be more than the difference between thin and thick rimmed glasses? No. Will they be more than having your hair slightly longer and so infiltrating your headphone cup? No.
Given all of that, it's fair game if you want to waste your money on cables that make far less difference than any one of those other, much more easily quantifiable, effects. I'd recommend spending the money on something more practical, however, like a chocolate teapot.
At the end of the day guys, it's the same scam as Homeopathy. If it works for you, fine, but don't expect people that live in the world of practical and repeatable experience to start condoning what is effectively a scam.
Re: the point about loudspeaker design. Of course it was audiophiles that were the only contributors to loudspeaker design, and not the vast numbers of trained professionals that used training, education and experience to refine the designs. Sigh.
Dave Berry
Six paragraphs and you are apparently unable to understand or summarize the points of my message for the purpose of refuting them. That's some accomplishment. It's not worth the effort to re-summarize for you, as you won't understand. and I cannot respond to things that apparently cause your head much confusion. Re-read the original post if you care to and address the issues as stated - not the bells going off in your head.
PalJoey1957
Sorry Pal, I didn't think the majority of your post (tl:dr version: speaker and amplifier design has improved since the 1960s) needed a huge amount of summary. Given that it is largely irrelevant to the point in hand (whether or not people are making up, and falling for, theories used only to sell unnecessarily expensive cable), I don't feel the need to refute, nor am I old enough to experiencially comment on, the attitude of amplifier and speaker designers of the 1960s.
I note that you have failed to address any of my points, including the specific refutation of Mogami's sales literature as a reputable source for the veracity of "special cables" claims. Of more interest would be your thoughts on the list of other possible sources of changes in audible signal, and the level of elimination of these factors that has been performed prior to your assessment of how much "difference" you can "hear".
Lets perform a little thought experiment. You need a heart bypass. Do you trust the opinion of the trained, practicing heart doctor, or the opinion of a website full of heartophiles - and a number of specialist heartophile clinics that have sprung up to serve this new demand - that have the best of intentions but little practical experience in the field?
*edit*
As an example, go check out the cost of Van Damme cable. I've used this as first preference for cable for the 16 years or so that I've worked in audio. It is top quality and used in the most demanding situations where money is, literally, no object. Their speaker cable costs around £7 a metre. Plus top quality connectors and a decent engineer to make the cable, you're looking at £50 for a 2 to 3 metre speaker cable.
Dave Berry
It's hard to see what refutation of what arguments you think you've accomplished - but you haven't achieved anything. Judging by your comments it's clear you don't understand my comments at all.
1) Music is a live dynamic event. Reproduction of that music cannot so far be quantified through measurements or reproduced by engineering and materials.
2) As decades go on and discoveries in testing and engineering are made, sound has improved, but still falls short of 'live.'
3) Therefore, the experimentally inclined still have plenty of room to discover and improve in all areas.
4) Products claiming advancements need to be judged by the human ear - fallible yes, as are human beings, but still the best measuring instrument we have. Therefore one must learn to listen critically and weigh the cost/benefit for each product.
The speaker and amp story in my first comment illustrates what happens when engineers (and apparently, you) get their feet planted and feel they can explain it all. As for listing what ELSE can affect the sound in a room more than wires (and thereby attempting to dismiss the sound of cables), congratulations. You've discovered the obvious. Fingers-in-ears has the greatest effect, but have you tried earmuffs for transparency?
I also want to mention directional cable's. Another high end selling point
Great vid. When I moved house and needed longer cable I bought Chord Clearway speaker cable, only because it was screened and had banana plugs already terminated on the ends to save messing around. I think it cost me £80-100 at £10 per metre. That, in my eyes was the absolute maximum I would ever be prepared to pay and it was very expensive in my view. I don't see why people would spend more than that. I felt a bit silly the other week as I spent £45 on Atlas interconnects as I needed an extra pair.
I like my local HiFi shop as the owner always tells me never to bother paying stupid money for fancy cables. Surely you just need cable that has a decent lining to block most interference, and equal lengths to keep the resistance the same? Outside of that seems to be pseudo-science to me.
Had your shop got glass doors ? (That is, they saw you coming...........)
@@richardgrant5105 which one? The shop I bought the cable from or the current shop that recommends not buying fancy cable?
Bearing in mind I walked into the store I bought my cable from, already knowing what I wanted. Wouldn't spend that much again. Hope not to need any cable ever again really.
expensive audiophile interconnects/power cords/speaker wire exists because:
1. there is no need to do R&D, everything that can be known has been known for generations.
2.perfect every time,no matter what type of cable you build it will work every time- no reject rate.
3.massive mark up, Ive built many high end power cables and never spent more than $20, even the cheapest power cords sells for more than 10 times that amount.
4. guantenteed great review, how can a cable sound bad??when was the last time you read a bad review of a speaker/interconnect/power cable???
5. perfect reliablity, cables run forever, no need for replacement parts or repairs.
6. no need even for manufacturing, many of these companies dont even build their own cables.
7. stores and mail order places love them,takes up very little floor space easy to move around.cheap to ship.
Thank god someone has the balls to debunk some of the issue plaguing the industry. There are some metallurgy issues with the argument but overall I agree with the focus on resistance and not skin effect.
I was getting some buzzing from my turntable after replacing the RCA cables. After checking the grounding, I decided to flip the cable around, and that seemed to fix it? Why would that fix it? I'm glad it did, but I thought cables are not directional?!?!?
Travis You simply created a lower resistance connection that mitigated the voltage drop that caused the hum/buzz.... AC current is NOT directional and neither are cables!
Awesome video.
Do you have a video specifically dealing with interconnect myths?
can i use 2.5 mm electrical cable for my speakers?
Enio Nery works fine. 3.5mm is a little less likely to break, but they do mostly the same job. There was a study where they used coat hangers as speaker wire. No difference between expensive cables and the coathanger.
Enio Nery Yes.
Using other cables will assist with ensuring no electrical mutual inductance can be "added" from adjacent live-voltage / RF carrier ..cable runs.. (such as the so-called "oxygen free" -- yeah right "not" - cables.. which actually allow oxygen into themselves.. as soon as someone "cuts" the cable - to crimp on a connector .. irrespective .. of how quickly they then "seal" the end of the cable's insulation -- as there WILL be some slight oxygen uptake -- into those "oxygen-free" MARKETING HYPE cables - at any "time" after their original manufacturing date, and the older the cable .. the more oxygen content it will eventually uptake.).
Oh for sure ..
Quality (in your 2.5 mm☐ cable - may suffer if the "runs" are long - or go alongside anything capable of transferring "mutual inductance" ..
But the reality of the question you have asked - is this.!!!
YES .. you can use 2.5 mm☐ Electrical Cable - as all you need .. is an electrical conductor.
Which - by virtue of it's normal usage .. 2.5 mm☐ Electrical cable -- actually carries (ie: electricity) very well.
With the freezing part, metals like steel CAN benefit from chill tempering depending on the circumstances. Like if you are wanting a knife to have "normal properties" (ie, not be super brittle) in a sub zero condition like an expedition to Antarctica. But the issue is, the tempering is detrimental when used in a temperate climate like where 90%of humans live.
It does affect the "grain"of steel but I am unaware of its affects on copper or aluminum due to their limited ability to heat treat.
I nuk my cables in my microwave with one ordinary baked potato in the middle. When the potato is done, the cables are ready to play music.
There's another check and balance that is not in this industry: engineers that do not have a serious academic conservatory-trained background in music. "Have you ever heard a bass clarinet?" Yes, I have a recording of one. "No. Have you ever played, written for, or stood 3 feet from a person playing one?" No I haven't.
voltage and dielectric in cables... perhaps an analogy will help... its like walking beween two overgrown hedges, you feel the hedges. you stretch string around the hedges and tie them back with a little tension, and you dont get struck by the hedges any longer. if you study and learn the physics you will understand the concept, and then you can accept the theory. either way you could test the cable rather than dismissing out of hand without learning the theory or testing the cables...
This is a community service... thank You. Please do more
I don't know of any electrical engineering theory or principle that supports the idea of speaker cables getting better after the initial, say, 1000 hours of use in other words break-in period. But I heard it happen. I still wonder how that can happen.
Brilliant channel, and you are so right!
All the cable-shenanigans is pure snakeoil.
Just buy a cable with the diameter big enough, and you are good!
Anything else is pure BS.
how does the amount of copper strands come into play??..does that help lessen the resistance or just in the flexibility of the cable??
Higher strand counts can mean you get more density of wire into a given space and thus can have less resistance as a result. They are also more flexible and workable than say solid core cables. WE don't recommend solid core cable to be used as speaker cable.
AudioholicsLIVE Good point.
Besides insertion loss there is a damping factor of an amp that matters and affected by cable resistance even more.
I didnt realise you could get compression connections.. that will make a difference I guess on getting a tight and stable connection, and improve the connection surface area too.. Is that possibly beneficial?
I should have said it doesn't travel through the metal in a perfect conductor. Even in your article it says "AC resistance" is 3% at 20kHz. I wonder if you have read Prof Malcolm Hawksford's paper on this issue? "The Essex Echo 1995" in Stereophile Magazine October 1995.
I trust my engineering books and PHD professors on the subject. I've seen Mr. Hawksford's paper and not impressed. In fact, we commented on it here a long time ago:
www.audioholics.com/audio-video-cables/silversmith-audio-cables-interview/silversmith-audio-cables-interview-page-2
I also designed audio communication systems, DSL front ends and RF antennas for years. Skin effect is NOT elusive, it's not mystical, and it's a NON issue at audio frequencies for speaker cables.
Ok you have your experts, I have mine.
ericpdollard.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/electromagneticinductionanditspropagation.pdf
I could never find anything in any of the standard graduate school texts on electromagnetism and so many promises about expensive cables such as skin depth which you can calculate for audio frequencies to find how insignificant differences in resistance of the cable. Ribbon cables to try to reduce skin effect resistance gradient with respect to frequencies does not compete with low enough gauge cable.
I like what you call jewelry cables but these are inexpensive and have ruby red see-through in 10 gauge and are beautiful to look at.
If my speaker cables are 9 feet in length, do you still recommend 10 AWG or would 14 AWG do the same job? The chart says 14 AWG for 8 Ohms up to 35 foot runs.
14AWG is fine but I use 10AWG regardless of length for piece of mind.
Hi guys, I am late to the game on this one. What if I am running a 12 gauge cable through the wall and have one at 27 feet with the other at 23 feet? Would this be ok or do I need to buy another spool. Hope to hear from you. Cheers!
I buy professional quality speaker cable from DJ stores. Cut the ends off and put banana connects from electronic component stores. Put them together and you have professional high quality cables real cheaps. Hint: buy a pro DJ cable a bit over twice the length you need and cut it in two. You will not believe how cheap pro DJ cables are.
The biggest problem is that these very knowledgeable experienced audiophile guys may not know about the scientific method and cognitive biases. I frequently hear "I tried it, I can *definitely* hear a difference". Yet when you ask how they know that, you never hear "we did a series of double blind trials."
And thank you to our sponsors at Kimber..... $800 (short run) cable....
@6:50
I have no clue what cryo cooling would do to copper and doubt it will be significant if any difference at all
HOWEVER
hardening steel is a thing and disproves whats being said.
Also aparently cryocooling drillbits does make them last longer
There is a good video by Applied Science testing this
Hey all, thanks for this great video Audioholics! I will definitely be checking out more of your videos and your website. You guys did an excellent excellent job covering the basics in this one and relating it back to engineering principles as well as construction, construction, construction! You can start with the most wonderful copper nature ever made and if it's poorly extruded or poorly terminated then problems will arise. Those fundamentals come into play for both Speaker Cables and for Interconnects. Both need to be analyzed for their individual merits. This video tends to blur the lines between cables with dielectrics and cables without. So more discussion on that is warranted if anyone wants to. It's not all about burning crazy manufacturers and laughing it up; although that is so fun hahaha! Because there really are some important things to look for as these guys pointed out. For example I really like that compression fittings were highlighted. Solder is not a good thing here but remember there is plenty of solder in your audio path so no worries provided it is done right. Cable fittings need to be tight and cable ends need to be maintained because copper tarnishes under exposure to our atmosphere. Oxygen free is not a myth if you care about how long the cables will last. Cryogenics is total nonsense! The other important issue is frequency response. As the Audioholics pointed out copper has a BEAUTIFUL frequency response. Provided that it is high purity, not tarnished, not damaged and it's properly terminated for starters. I agree 100% about the spade versus banana. As well as the use of smaller + multiple conductors. That being said DIY speaker cables are a little easier to toy with than DIY Interconnects :) If you agree that skin effect is barely an issue then I would like to hear more of your thoughts about the copper itself as well as the dielectrics themselves. Quality is key so the use of mil-std qualified materials is important if you want to talk about these things without having to compromise around matters related to poor product quality...
Can you tell us more about the hiss on this video?
Supervrek there's no hiss here. Must be your cables.
hahahaha
There are three things in the "audiophile" world that really get under my skin: spurious BS about vinyl, absurd claims about speaker and headphone cables, and Michael Fremer.
Falcrist also kimber cable are a rip off
Question I Have been experiencing popping in my speakers I have had My receiver checked out was ok would that just bad connections at the speakers and receiver
Hugo isn't just the vice president of marketing for AudioHolics. He can also crush a watermelon between his biceps.
TH-cam videos of every cable but you haven't done a video on XLR cables what's the myth on that there's so many out there would love to have your opinion on those and which one do you recommend
Generally XLRs aren't surrounded by as much snake oil. If you provide some examples, I will take a look.
Audioholics like audioquest with their extreme price on XLR saying that they sound better you have blue jeans xlr Megami XLR those are some examples and if you go with those they're like and the $50 range compared to audioquest are in the 300 up to$1000 range that's what I'm talking about and which one do you recommend
Great video. I brought some expensive cables in the past. Won't anymore. I once had the sales rep at my HI-FI store tell me that a set of cables he was trying to sell me would allow me to hear the guitars player's fingerprints on the strings. LOL I just looked at him and thought, you just played yourself. Give me these cables. It's like people paying hundreds if not thousands of dollars to buy wood dollies with cutouts to keep their speaker cables off the floor.WTF How does that improve the sound?
Lol, how is hearing someone's fingerprints on the strings even possible irl? If that is actually possible by using expensive cables then you're getting artificial sounds, which is counter intuitive given that the whole point of a high end stereo system is to produce a sound as realistic as possible. If anyone claims that hearing the Beatles on their system sounds better than when they heard the Beatles live irl, then they're playing themselves.
why do we need expensive speakers from power amp to speakers connector? and why speaker cable from the connector inside the box go to crossover and from crossover to speakers is too small? my speaker cost about $4,000 so how much do I have to spend on speaker cable?thanks
You don't need expensive speaker cables unless you simply want them to look impressive and to have bragging rights. Go with low resistance cables and you will be fine per our recommendation.
AudioholicsLIVE No Audiophile that buys high end speakers is going to use cable sold buy the foot.
Chau Huynh The better advice you can give to a customer is forget about technical sheets and about what others are saying even what is explanable or not. What is important is the audio results. Just trust your ears. Try them by yoursesf. Your own ears will be the judge. Trust them. If you are abe to choose a $4,000 speakers, you certainly compare a few of them before buying them. Then you made a choice. You choose th one that please your ears the most at that price range. So, you are able to hear differences and nuances. When you buy a hp cable, you must hear a difference and an upgrade in your sound quality. If you dont hear it. Dont buy it. But if you do. Try other ones in that same price range to make sure that you do the best buy. Also, ask to your dealer if a refound is possible (or try annother one at home) just in case that you plug them on your own system and that you dont like it. Trust your ears. only your ears.
This video was always going to be opening up a can of worms so you can't be surprised at some of the comments. Can I ask when you do measurements yourselves on these cables to get the RCL figures, how do you measure them ? The performance of the cable should be as you say based on the factors of RCL - effectively impedance, which then implies there is a frequency component to its performance. Then it should follow that were you to connect an amplifier (with a signal generator [with square wave] and powered up) with some cable to a 8 ohm speaker, then get a 2 beam oscilloscope and use beam1 probe on the cable (amp end) and beam 2 probe on the cable (speaker end) so you can look at the two wave forms. Then if you look at the difference (Subtracting one beam from the other ), you should by your argument get a straight line. Do the same experiment with other cables. Have you done this experiment ? I'd be interested to know what you find. Note this test requires no listening, no blind/double blind testing. This should go a long way in answering the question as to whether speaker cable does/does not make a difference.
I am looking for the closest cable to HDMI 2.1. looking for the best cable for the money any suggestions thanks!
A very good video for sure. I would however like to question your understanding of cryogenics as the process does make a permanent change and realignment of molecules being subjected to cryogenic temperatures. It relieves stresses and hardens metals by making it tougher and more consistent. You could compare it to graphite turning into diamonds in that the process is irreversible and a scientifically proven fact. I honestly couldn't say what it does for cables but it's common practise for springs, engine parts, guitar strings... even thermionic valves (electron tubes), but these are heavily debated. In the case of guitar strings the difference is quite astounding as you seem to get more of everything: cleaner sound, more volume, more highs and more lows, and they play like they're a gauge heavier.
I concur with Jonas, auto-x racers used cryogenic treated rotors because they last longer and don't heat up as fast. Cryogenically treating metal does permanently alter the properties.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryogenic_hardening
Do audio cables heat up?
I can watch this video over and over.. I miss Hugo
I miss him too :(
Hi, i want to replace my old cables with new ones, the length of cable is 2 x 4 meters impendance 8 ohms. What awg would you recommend? Tnx
www.audioholics.com/audio-video-cables/speaker-wire-gauge
Looks like it's 16 AWG for you.
Good video about speaker cables.
I too laughed my head off when you were discussing Cryogenic Freezing of cables, don't see the point of exposing metal cables to sub-zero temperature just to have them return to normal temperature in transit back to the owner.
LRC is a definite, but I do not agree that frequencies we cannot hear do not affect what we hear. A very high degree of amps or speakers that I've ever built or listened to that had a fairly flat frequency response beyond human hearing resulted in higher fidelity. Human hearing is a remarkable thing. And, there are truly talented listeners. For instance, I was listening to a prototype headphone amp and told the very competent designer it was clipping. (He was a student of Marshall Leach from GA Tech) He insisted it wasn't, it was already measured, etc. He also could not hear it. Sure as hell, he went back to the bench, did some more testing, and it was clipping. So, how you test is also a major contributor.
sounds like the first time he didn't measure it correctly but the 2nd time he measured the clipping you were hearing. Thus the audible results were confirmed with measurements properly conducted.
AudioholicsLIVE No, nobody heard it but me, a trained listener. Also, the "textbook" tests did not show the clipping. Nobody in the circle could hear it but me. The guy who built it was a Student of Dr. Marshall Leach, who is about as good as it gets with designing and testing audio circuits. He had to bring it to our Lab at work and devise some other means of testing to measure it. Point is, the standard bench and textbooks are not the know all to end all.
I hope you are not telling too many people about the things 'you hear.' :-)
RF Woods
Hi guys! What about directional cables? These are cables that have an arrow on them to show you which way the signal should flow.
The only time direction matters is if the cable has a shield tied on one end and open on the other. Generally, I don't recommend this type of a shield. A full braided shield with coax is a much better option. When a manufacturer claims their actual conductors are directional, it's pure snake oil.
I got bored and decided to check the Ortofon website to see what high end products. I found that they sell lead wires for turntables that range from $44 to $99 freaking dollars. I figure that since they're only about 2" long, they can't have a whole lot of resistance relative to eachother. Am I correct in assuming that these products are a complete ripoff?
$44-$99 in the world of audiophiles is consider low end btw! Try look at CARDAS CLEAR speaker wires. $14000 for a pair of 8 meters long. And people are biding on it on ebay
I agree. Short 12 gauge speaker wire has worked best for me. I would much rather have long interconnects used with much shorter speaker wires than the opposite. I tried it both ways.
Thanks for non biased reviews
Great info
I have high end linn rca cables and cheap dollar store rca cables.. There's absolutely no difference in sound quality but there's a big difference in build quality.