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Sonic detail
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For anyone who enjoys hi-fi journalism of the oxygen-free copper
school, there are some classic examples in the Doors pages of today's
Sunday Times (hidden away, as usual, in the obscurity of the sports
section), in a digest of a buyer's guide to AV cables from What Hi-Fi?
magazine.
Among these items, quoted by the ST in all seriousness, are a
one-metre cable (ukp49.95) for connecting sources such as a DVD player
to your surround-sound amplifier -- a "great value" cable which
"reveals fine sonic detail and subtle atmospherics in movie
soundtracks. Silver-plated copper prevents interference caused by
nearby cables or devices from degrading the sound."
For connecting your telly to the wall socket, there's a ukp35 cable
of which we are told: "With two layers of shielding, this classy QED
reflects 40 times more 'digital noise' than a freebie RF cable. You
will enjoy sharper pictures and less ghosting."
And there's a ukp75 mains cable which... no, I can't bear it....
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The only high quality cable I ever bothered to buy was high quality
speaker cable. That is the only part of the system where I reckon the
type of cable can make a significant difference and actually it does
make a big difference.
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And they are relatively cheap. You just need enough copper to get good
results. So a cable designed to carry lots of current will do.
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That doesn't prove anything (though I use similar cable for my
short-ish runs).
The speaker and the speaker cable (together with the amplifier's
circuit) form a potential divider.
So you need to get the impedance (resistance, if you like) in the cable
sufficiently low so that it is a small fraction of the impedance of the
speaker at all audio frequencies. Many 8 ohm speakers have an impedance
that ranges between 6-16 ohms across the audio frequency range. If the
impedance of the speaker cable isn't small in comparison, then the
frequency response of the system will vary, with response dips at
frequencies where the speaker has low impedance, and response peaks at
frequencies where the speaker has high impedance.
A "cable designed to carry lots of current" will by definition have a
(comparatively) low resistance, and minimise this problem.
This is relevant, no matter how quietly you play your music!
Cheers,
David.
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gr, hwh
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Yes originally somebody at college (back in the mid 1980s) said that he
used electric cooker cable as speaker wire. I tried it and it did make
my hi-fi sound significantly better.
Then a few years later when I bought a better pair of speakers, that
came with proper hi-fi speaker cable. I'm not sure whether that worked
better than the cooker cable, but it did work well. Eventually I needed
some longer lengths of speaker cable, so went to a hi-fi shop to get
some. They suggested some stuff that they were selling for £2.30/meter.
I figured that to buy the length I needed would cost about £35, which is
actually not a huge sum of money on top of the £200 I spent on the
speakers themselves. So I thought if made sense to spend that little bit
more, to get the best out of my speakers.
I never actually bothered to connect my good speakers with cooker cable,
to compare the results. However they do sound good with the high quality
stuff, and it didn't cost a fortune, so I've just stuck with that.
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You missed out on marketing that cooker cable as:
low heigh, solid core, parallel aligned, maximum diameter, iron free
copper, ultimate grade speaker cable.
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You forgot low inductance.
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Sorry.
Also forgot to add: The single strand removes the sonic cross-talk which
occurs between the fractionally different lengths and curves in traditional,
and cheap (*), multistranded cores.
* implying inferior
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Maybe next they'll try and BS that audio frequency cables make use of the
skin effect, so need a better quality around the the core of the cable!
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:-)
I use H43 coax as interlink cable. I got 100 meters of it for about 70
pounds. Sold some of it to friends. It sounds almost the same as coax
sold in hi-fi stores for silly money.
gr, hwh
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Richard E.
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Even for speakers, cables that are "sufficiently good that they make no
change to the sound of the system" need not be expensive.
There is no magic. It's just physics.
Cheers,
David.
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As for high quality cable just for a power supply, I would also find
that laughable.
When it comes to things like phono cables, for carrying sound or video
sources, I'm not sure. Perhaps better shielding might make a difference,
assuming here was some interference to shield out in the first place.
Silver coatings on the cable I doubt would make a difference, as
presumably we are feeding signals to a connection that has an impedance
of 10s or 100s of ohms, so I seriously doubt that a difference of a tiny
fraction of an ohm in the cables or the connectors is going to have a
noticeable effect.
Then again, if there are people with more money than sense, they will
probably spend lots of money on these things, just because they are 'the
best'.
Richard E.
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