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Belden ICONOCLAST XLR Cable Review

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Grooved

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Also i know in order to eliminate transcient delay in cable, many big, expensive studio had dedicated syncronize cable to maku sure it's accurate, which I also don't see in this experiment.

Sync is only needed when you use several ADC and DAC. Here, it's one interface having both ADC and DAC and both synced on the same internal clock

When nulling to check a DAC-ADC loopback, you can get something like that:
DW.PNG


The three peaks (where there are the most difference between original and the recording after DAC-ADC conversions) are exactly where there is lots of cymbals, so more linked to high frequencies than anything.
The thing is I can repeat it with any cable used between the DAC and ADC and the results are exactly the same, using a cheap cable cut and re-soldered or a high-end cable
The only difference in results can only come from using different devices, not different cables
 
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voodooless

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Basically transcient response definition is Here, it's not entirely the length, material, drift velocity alone, but also temperature, gauge size, and capacitance.
Let’s see here, courtesy of @Rja4000:
Direct loop back (short XLR cable):
index.php

Vs through 30m of Cat5e + adapters:
index.php


Good luck spotting any difference in “transients”. The wiggle you see here is from the DAC, not the cables.

Reference:

 

DonH56

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So? I don't see why does it contradict my transient response claim? The point is they are variable, and I don't think it's 60-80 but can be as low as 20-60.

Cause "The drift velocity is known to be primarily dependent on the applied voltage and another property on which it depends is the molecular structure of the wire and hence the material of the conductor. Slight temperature dependence is also observed."

That's why they said it doesn't matter if you use a coat hanger for speaker cable, as long as it's appropriate gauge, material and length.

Not for interconnect which is low power and will be EQ and boost about 10-1000 times afterward.
Perfect. Using your high-level knowledge of physics please calculate the effects of a cable's properties on transients to demonstrate time-smearing (propagation dispersion) effects among audio-bandwidth signals in an interconnect. Be sure to include the effects of drift velocity for an example signal. You might also consider more macro effects like dielectric absorption, surface roughness, skin effect, and so forth. And don't forget distributed RLCG terms. If you need a standard metric, group delay over frequency for the cable should show any potential for time-domain transient errors. For a cable, any RG-59 cable variant is representative of an audio interconnect.
 
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DSJR

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Honestly here, our minds play all manner of tricks on us. In an A-B direct comparison, if we 'see' what's being compared, we 'hear' a difference, if one is ever-so-slightly louder than the other (half a dB or less), the louder one will usually win in a direct comparison. Listening to a few tracks at a time and then swapping over will also present 'differences' that really aren't there, purely by the act of changing over (one chap 'compared' speaker cables at a client's house and said client 'heard' all manner of 'improvements' with the 'new cable.' Turned out that no change AT ALL was made and the client had been fooled, for good or ill. lastly, do a direct A-B and get the levels pretty much identical and no peeking (so effectively blindfolded) and these so-called audiophile 'differences' miraculously disappear!!! I've done it, so my zeal is perhaps akin to a reformed smoker and similar ex-addicts of one sort or another. What I'm saying here has been repeated over and over and furthermore, our hearing mechanism and knowledge of 'sound' and how it's propagated is very well known with proven written peer reviewed confirmation internationally. Only our psychology and how individuals interpret what we hear or think we hear is more difficult to determine. I've been fooled too many times and now my ears are sh*te (tested so), I can't possibly trust them these days. I doubt many so called 'audiophiles' ever have their hearing measured and checked and of course our brains can make up for some loss, if not all... (I have a severe BBC Dip all of my own without the speakers or headphones adding to it :( )

I bought an Amazon Basics RCA cable, it's brilliant at the job and good quality internals was confirmed in a thread here. I feel bad using it because it's TOO CHEAP!!!!! Had I been working in the store and a rep brought one in, dressed up to the nines and retailing for £500 or so, I'd not have flinched at all!!!

You won't believe me Mr Leeking2005 at all until you've had your mind fooled this way, but try to keep an open mind on it as I'm one of very many who've been through all this 'stuff' over the years...

P.S. Sure in ceertain circumstances, differences can clearly be heard and that's why intense testing is done to find out WHY we can hear it. This is where genuine advances have occured in our understanding - and how other psychological factors rather than actuall differences instead have been determined.
 
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leeking2005

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Sync is only needed when you use several ADC and DAC. Here, it's one interface having both ADC and DAC and both synced on the same internal clock

When nulling to check a DAC-ADC loopback, you can get something like that:
View attachment 207584

The three peaks (where there are the most difference between original and the recording after DAC-ADC conversions) are exactly where there is lots of cymbals, so more linked to high frequencies than anything.
The thing is I can repeat it with any cable used between the DAC and ADC and the results are exactly the same, using a cheap cable cut and re-soldered or a high-end cable
The only difference in results can only come from using different devices, not different cables

My bad, I actually thought it used to sync the analog signal with the class d amplifier's PWM clock in modern amplifier.

Guess they still don't had a way to eliminate the transcient response in analog processing yet, probably. :)
 

DonH56

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Dunning-Kruger levels are unusually high today.
Too much to drink? Might explain why "transcient" rather than "transient"...
 

DSJR

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How high do you think 20kHz is @leeking2005 ?

Sure all this may matter at GHz frequencies and maybe tiny differences at MHz frequencies might play havoc with a badly designed 'audiophile amp.' As I understand it, most good amps have an hf bandwith of a hundred or two hundred kHz before rolling off and properly done, any phase response in an amp, let alone speaker at hf, will totally swamp anything a cable is supposed to do I believe.
 

Geert

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Well, i really don't want to hijack or answering this kind of unconstructive question.

It's actually categorising everything you don't understand or like as unconstructive that's unconstructive behaviour.

In lay man term, a frequency response is sound energy vs frequency, transcient response is trascient speed versus frequency.

Since you seem to be a young person I'm going to cut you some slack and finish with the advice to switch your attitude from educating this community to learning from it.
 

BDWoody

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leeking2005

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Perfect. Using your high-level knowledge of physics please calculate the effects of a cable's properties on transients to demonstrate time-smearing (propagation dispersion) effects among audio-bandwidth signals in an interconnect. Be sure to include the effects of drift velocity for an example signal. You might also consider more macro effects like dielectric absorption, surface roughness, skin effect, and so forth. And don't forget distributed RLCG terms. If you need a standard metric, group delay over frequency for the cable should show any potential for time-domain transient errors. For a cable, any RG-59 cable variant is representative of an audio interconnect.
Or you could just use a high resolution DAC+good enough studio monitor to test it cheaply, like I do.

Thanks to your information I've google a bit on drift velocity, now i knew exactly why connect L-2s2s and TC core 20/0.012 serially create compressor effects. I knew what was compressor effect, it's a transcient response alteration that compress and release signal accordingly, just didn't related two things together.

Should have followed the old hifi rules book and use a y splitter to connect those two pair of cables parallelly instead of connect a bigger gauge solid copper to smaller gauge TC core cable in serial position. (Was thinking of utilize the high pass filter but it change the eris 3.5 signature)

But it's my design and although a little bit artificial coloured, it do retain the old vintage warm in low and middle and tight crytal clear in high. Just need to know why :)

Honestly here, our minds play all manner of tricks on us. In an A-B direct comparison, if we 'see' what's being compared, we 'hear' a difference, if one is ever-so-slightly louder than the other (half a dB or less), the louder one will usually win in a direct comparison. Listening to a few tracks at a time and then swapping over will also present 'differences' that really aren't there, purely by the act of changing over (one chap 'compared' speaker cables at a client's house and said client 'heard' all manner of 'improvements' with the 'new cable.' Turned out that no change AT ALL was made and the clienbt had been fooled, for good or ill. lastly, do a direct A-B and get the levels pretty much identical and no peeking (so effectively blindfolded) and these so-called audiophile 'differences' miraculously disappear!!! I've done it, so my zeal is perhaps akin to a reformed smoker and similar ex-addicts of one sort or another. What I'm saying here has been repeated over and over and furthermore, our hearing mechanism and knowledge of 'sound' and how it's propogated is very well known with proven written peer reviewed confirmation internationally. Only our psychology and how individuals interpret what we hear or think we hear is more difficult to determine. I've been fooled too many times now and now my ears are sh*te (tested so), I can't possibly trust them now. I doubt many so called 'audiophiles' ever have their hearing measured and checked and of course our brains can make up for some loss, if not all...

I bought an Amazon Basics RCA cable, it's brilliant at the job and good quality internals was confirmed in a thread here. I feel bad using it because it's TOO CHEAP!!!!! Had I been working in the store and a rep brought one in, dressed up to the nones and retailing for £500 or so, I'd not have flinched at all!!!

You won't believe me Mr Leeking2005 at all until you've had your mind fooled this way, but try to keep an open mind on it as I'm one of very many who've been through all this 'stuff' over the years...

P.S. Sure in ceertain circumstances, differences can clearly be heard and that's why intense testing is done to find out WHY we can hear it. This is where genuine advances have occured in our understanding - and how other psychological factors rather than actuall differences instead have been determined.

Not with transcient response, just like frequency response it's kind unmistakable to a trained ear, unless you had very low resolution DAC (lower than 192kHz )or you didn't utilised "near-field" studio monitor (use it to fill the room etc) properly. I mean, that's what they're designed for right?

When you hear a music you knew very well ( any source utilsed every frequency), you will noticed how close or how far the drummer, guitar solo agaisnt the vocal... That's the clear frequency response image if you know what's their acoustic range. Ofcourse your case might be they only listen to middle frequency piece like pop song or bass heavy song. I admit not everyone can do this but fairly common if you listen to very complex musics over a decades or two.

As for transcient response, it actually nothing to do with loudness but the time and spatial accuracy of frequency transitioning (aka muddiness in human perceiving range). Like the vinyl vs cd, tin vs gold vs copper vs silver vs their combination.

Slower transcient response can be create by proper material( tin or gold ) with specific gauge, they kinda add a unique warm thick body to bass and middle, but muddy and mellow signature to high timbre harmony (also depending on gauge size and strands count). Faster transicent response (Copper, silver) had thinner low and mid (with specified gauge and strands count), but they had crytal clear and "exciting" high and timber. Combination of alloy like the TC core is a good trade off cause some frequency had more "skin effect" than other and even had minor reverb.

If you still not understand just think about it's microphone/speaker diaphragm, lower diameter and thickness had faster transcient responses, but might overshoot, and vice versa.

Physic is that simple actually, cause everything followed a few simple law. Don't overthink it. just order a proper size 2 meter cheap TC core cable that existed for few decades and you will understand.
 

DSJR

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Oh dear, oh dear dear dear..... I think many of us have suitable 'studio monitors' and some of us also mix for a living?

I tried, keeping it simple and practical and maybe there's a slight language barrier too? Transient response can be measured though and as a parting shot, much of what we call 'reverb' isn't actually that far down on the music I feel, so nowhere near what standard red-book digital can do if stretched a bit.

Any dac lower than 192khz is 'very low resolution?' Yet 16/44 is fine for direct comparisons with the master recording in my experience (this before my ears took a nosedive).

Way above my pay grade so best I butt out and let real experts do some teaching here ;)
 

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Not with transcient response, just like frequency response it's kind unmistakable to a trained ear, unless you had very low resolution DAC (lower than 192kHz )or you didn't utilised "near-field" studio monitor (use it to fill the room etc) properly.

Low resolution DAC?

This is getting too silly now, so I'm going to give you a break from this thread, and hope that you spend some time reading.
 

Grooved

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My bad, I actually thought it used to sync the analog signal with the class d amplifier's PWM clock in modern amplifier.

Guess they still don't had a way to eliminate the transcient response in analog processing yet, probably. :)

We are talking about the XLR cable, if you need another cable for sync, or a device to correct anything, it shows you that it's the clock or the device that is improving the signal, and not the cable, or you won't need anything more than your miraculous cable ;)
 

DonH56

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Googled drift velocity? Clearly throwing around terms with no real understanding of their meaning and application. Let alone how the actual physics works to differentiate among tin, copper, gold, and silver conductors at audio frequencies.

I suppose I'll have to get by with my low-res Trinnov DACs and cheapo Revel Salon2 speakers...

Personally, at this point I think we are being trolled. Again. Not sure why some people get a kick out of it.
 

voodooless

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Or you could just use a high resolution DAC+good enough studio monitor to test it cheaply, like I do.
I thought physics was simple? Why not do the math and present some actual proof?
Physic is that simple actually, cause everything followed a few simple law.
It’s also (almost) for free! Get some paper and a pencil and start scribbling!
Don't overthink it. just order a proper size 2 meter cheap TC core cable that existed for few decades and you will understand.
How is buying a cable physics?
 
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