Audio cabling. What a rip.

[Brad Johnson]

Getting ready to install the new stereo in the truck.  My last purchase was cabling.  Great Ceasar's Ghost but what people will pay for (and fight over) just because it has a snappy look and a few important-sounding words in the desription.

Case and point...

The amp calls for 4 awg power wire.  Called a few stereo shops around for prices.  Nothing lower than $3 per foot, and one was asking $5!  They all gave me some line about special braiding that increased dynamic tension and lowered losses or something equally esoteric.  They were all over the "oxygen free copper" thing and how the extra insulation would keep interference down and allow the amp to function at its full capacity (this is power wire, mind you, not signal cabling).  I hit some of the car audio forums and can only shake my head.  It amazes me some of these people can even remember to breathe. 

Pfft.  I may have been born at night, but not LAST night.  I'm not about to fall for that kind of crap so I ran down to Lubbock Welding Supply.  They have all the 4 awg braided I could ever want, and priced at $1.21 per foot.

Brad

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

Tell an audiophile his uber expensive cabling isn't much more than glorified lamp cord and you'll have a fight on your hands.

[RevDisk]

Tell an audiophile his uber expensive cabling isn't much more than glorified lamp cord and you'll have a fight on your hands.

Same with any loyal Monster Cables customer.  I had a buddy that was one.  He didn't believe me.  Until I bought a generic cable and a Monster cable, cut them up and showed him.

[PTK]

I generally just get the electrical wire I need for my car from Home Depot or Kenyon Noble. It's the same stuff, essentially.

[Brad Johnson]

Tell an audiophile his uber expensive cabling isn't much more than glorified lamp cord and you'll have a fight on your hands.

No kiddin'.  Hit the audio forums and watch the sharks begin to circle whenever some poor soul makes the mistake of asking.

Brad

[Jimmy Dean]

there are some differances in wire types, but unless your trying to transmit a signal well over 100 feet, the only real things that matter are gauge and shielding.  (you're not going to effectively transmit a high voltage high current signal in a 20 gauge wire,  and a low voltage low amperage will not benefit by using a 12 gauge wire.     And for milli-amp signals and frequency signals, you need something shielded.    

Basically, for car audio,  yeah, no need for the uber expensive hi tech stuff, for your uses, properly shielded/grounded 16 gauge wire is properly shielded/grounded 16 gauge wire.....

[mellestad]

Heh, audiophiles.

I love the fact that you can get someone to pay a thousand percent markup on a cable that sends a *digital* signal "better" than a cheaper cable.  Marketing for audiophile equipment is like the lowest level of hell for sales doublespeak and consumer gullibility.

[Gewehr98]

I probably don't have the "golden ears" of the most ardent audiophiles, but I do believe proper cabling is essential to go between high-dollar components and high-dollar speakers.  Zip cord salvaged from old floor lamps need not apply.

Neither does Monster Cable.  There's plenty of low-ohm, oxygen-free copper speaker wire with properly-terminated connectors out there at reasonable prices.

[Brad Johnson]

but I do believe proper cabling is essential to go between high-dollar components and high-dollar speakers.  Zip cord salvaged from old floor lamps need not apply.

Oh, no, we have one in our midst!  (backs away slowly...)

Brad

[RevDisk]

Oh, no, we have one in our midst!  (backs away slowly...)

Don't make eye contact, just keep moving back slowly...  No. Sudden. Movements.

[Gewehr98]

Hey, if you can come up with a good length of the proper AWG wire, with corrosion-free connectors, knock yourself out.  It can come from the neighbor's Lincoln Electric Welder, as far as I'm concerned.  It just makes no sense to me to have a couple thou worth of amplifiers, a couple thou worth of speakers, and then run it through cables that actually show resistance on a VOM.  

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

4-wire what?

 

[Brad Johnson]

Actually I could use some 4 pair 100% shielded to make the line-level cables.  Would be nice to have them all in a single run vs a couple of pairs or four singles.

Brad

[AZRedhawk44]

Heh, audiophiles.

I love the fact that you can get someone to pay a thousand percent markup on a cable that sends a *digital* signal "better" than a cheaper cable.  Marketing for audiophile equipment is like the lowest level of hell for sales doublespeak and consumer gullibility.

 

Yup.

My dad's an audiophile.  Most of his stuff is analog, but there's a few digital connections in there, now.

What always cracks me up is when he puts a record on his turn-table and plays it.  The pop/hiss coming off the thing drowns out the trebles much more than any supposed "loss" from conversion to digital CD format ever would.

[Gewehr98]

Then something's wrong with his records. 

[Ron]

I've heard the difference between high end cables and the typical cables that come with (some) equipment.

Whether that difference is worth the extra expense is a personal call.

It isn't that much different than buying a highly accurate firearm and shooting the cheapest junk ammo you can find. You will never realize the potential of the firearm.

What sense does it make spending thousands on audio equipment then cheaping out on the cables thereby never experiencing the fullest potential of the system?

In the audio world the quality of the recordings and level of production is critical to experiencing the most out of a system also IMHO.              

In a vehicle the differences would be negligible. Cars are not the best acoustic environments to create an accurate transparent soundstage.

[Brad Johnson]

What sense does it make spending thousands on audio equipment then cheaping out on the cables thereby never experiencing the fullest potential of the system?

Depends.  Buying something expensive because it actually works and actually makes a difference is not the same thing as buying something expensive because it's... expensive.

In the majority of cases what little diff there is between high end cabling and zip cord is only measurable in a lab.  The actual difference in sound quality is less than the THD of the amp driving the system or the physical limitations of the speakers themselves.  But that doesn't stop people from paying hundreds of dollars for cabling just because they feel like uber-expensive cables are the only way to "experience the full quality of the system".  It's especially funny when someone (as stated above) will claim they can hear a pronounced difference in sound quality after they switched to Mondo Ultra Best Virgin Woven Phase Force Quantum Thermonuclear connections on a digitally linked system.

Brad

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

Achieving the "fullest potential of the system" does not require expensive cables.  It simply requires wiring and connectors with sufficiently low impedance.  Maybe a bit of shielding, too, depending on the app, but usually not.  

Ohms are ohms, farads are farads, henries are henries.  They don't care what the price tag said.  It's your money though, so waste it as you will.  

[Gewehr98]

Not trying to sound all snotty and whatnot, but the more expensive audio equipment I own stays in my grubby little mitts because it does sound better than the average Sony/Kenwood/Pioneer/Bose lines of consumer electronics. I shopped around and auditioned all the stuff in my audio rack before settling on those pieces that tickled my fancy, price be damned. You couldn't pay me to own Bose again, and that's after I mated a set of Bose speakers to my $1,200 JoLida tube amp just for giggles.  I doubt there was more muddiness present during the worst of Katrina's fury in New Orleans, honestly.

Ron's analogy of trying to get sub-MOA groups out of a 40X while shooting steel-cased Wolf .308 is spot-on.  A new Corvette just won't do as well running on standard-grade pump gas, either.  Sure, it'll go down the road, but that's about it.  

I'm not saying you gotta buy Monster Cable that's a full 1/2" in braided copper diameter w/superconducting refrigeration per each channel.  In fact, you'll never hear me tell you that.  

Don't hamstring good equipment by going cheap on the interconnects between components, either - at least for home audio.  Cars, not so much, because they're a horrible environment to begin with.  

My interconnects are from these guys:

http://www.ultralinkcables.com/#/products/compare/AUDIO%20CABLES/

My speaker wires are from big spools found at Lowes, Home Depot, etc.  The amplifier end connectors are gold GE banana plugs. I do use the Monster speaker connectors, a whopping $9.95 per set of 4 at Home Depot.   

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

Those people spending a hundred dollars per foot on exotic pure silver cryo-treated magnetically relieved Stereophile Product Of The Year interconnects would be aghast at the quality of the magnet wire used in the transformers inside their $5,000 tube preamp, or the inductors hiding in the bowels of their $10,000 speakers.

When you can give me a perfect gain device (or a perfect transformer, capacitor, diode, heck, even just a really good resistor), then I'll start to care about the wires.  Until then, basic good connectors and low impedance wire are more than sufficient for this particular task.

But whatevs.  It's not my money.  And some of those fancy interconnects do look pretty cool.

[never_retreat]

If you need decent audio cables at a good price look for the Hosa brand. Its a common brand in studios and recording setups. Good stuff and not that expensive. You can find them on the web or I get them at a musicians supply type place near me.

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

Cool avatar pic

[rcnixon]

Snerk!  One of my old bosses is in the "High-End Audio Hall of Fame".  His name is A. Stewart Hegeman.  I still have a pair of his model 1A speakers that I built as part of a production run in his shop.  He designed the Harmon Kardon Citation I power amp, one of the finest designs ever.  He taught me a great deal about audio.

You will never see double-blind testing done for any "high-end" audio equipment, especially the cabling.  It would show up the bullsh*t for what it is.  Use a wire that is adequate for the current and voltage demands required and you're good.  Use stranded wire and good soldered connections.  Clean off the flux when you're done.  I work and play with AC into the gigahertz range and at some astonishing power levels and I've never seen a fidelity problem with wiring, again, as long as it is adequate for the power demands.

If a piece of wire is pure Cu, where would the O2 be?  If it was in copper oxide, it's not copper!  Another favorite of mine are the oblong cross-section strands.  The skin effect is almost non-existant at audio frequencies so having as much of the wire strand in contact with its mates in the bundle is advantagious.

Power ratings amuse me as well.  I (and Ohm's law) fail to see how a unit that draws 250 watts from the power supply (125v @ 2A) could possibly supply 500 watts to the load, especially since an amp is, at best, about 50% efficient.

Enough ranting for tonight.

Russ

[Ron]

Achieving the "fullest potential of the system" does not require expensive cables.  It simply requires wiring and connectors with sufficiently low impedance.  Maybe a bit of shielding, too, depending on the app, but usually not.  

Ohms are ohms, farads are farads, henries are henries.  They don't care what the price tag said.  It's your money though, so waste it as you will.  

QFT but having said that I have heard a definitive performance increase going from cheap OEM supplied interconnects to higher quality interconnects on mid/high end equipment. The differences in the construction between the two and differences in resistance? Who knows...

[zahc]

Ron's analogy of trying to get sub-MOA groups out of a 40X while shooting steel-cased Wolf .308 is spot-on.

No it's actually not a good analogy, because cables don't matter, and ammo does. That would be a good analogy for using high-quality recordings in your stereo system, something that actually does matter.

QFT but having said that I have heard a definitive performance increase going from cheap OEM supplied interconnects to higher quality interconnects

I don't doubt that you heard a difference but I know that there was no change in the output of the system caused by the cables. I don't even doubt that the "magic rock" devices can make a system sound better. But there's no way that they change the output.