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AudioQuest Victoria Audio Cable with DBS Review

Harmonie

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It's a standard 180 degree 5 pin DIN.

Horrible, just horrible things. On every tape deck, open reel, cassette and most tape loops on integrated and preamplifiers through the 1970s. Low level, high noise, poor channel separation and horrible. Just horrible. Try soldering 4 tiny wires and a shield in a nasty housing held together with nothing except melting pins in plastic and you'd be as bitter as I am toward DINs. RCA plugs may be old and simple, but they are a joy to work with!

Then you have the variations, the ones used by Quad on their 34/405-2 etc. And the nasty turntable tonearm "DINs" that were basically whatever they decided- Grace, Empire, Pioneer whoever. Collars, no-collars, long pins, short pins, changes in geometry, screw-in etc.

DIN standard plugs of all types are utterly putrid. There's not a single one I like. For contrast, take the BNC or the Belling-Lee, glorious connectors. The 1/4" phone connector. The Cannon XLR. The PL-259 or the Banana (4mm). All great and none of them DIN related. I would chuck out anything DIN to be honest.

I bet you the Speakon is US designed is it?

You are right, it's a PITA to solder these. You can't see it, but you may see the screw of the Din connector that I used for the motor connection to the IR box of my DIY passive preamp :rolleyes:
 

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AudioSceptic

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It's a standard 180 degree 5 pin DIN.

Horrible, just horrible things. On every tape deck, open reel, cassette and most tape loops on integrated and preamplifiers through the 1970s. Low level, high noise, poor channel separation and horrible. Just horrible. Try soldering 4 tiny wires and a shield in a nasty housing held together with nothing except melting pins in plastic and you'd be as bitter as I am toward DINs. RCA plugs may be old and simple, but they are a joy to work with!

Then you have the variations, the ones used by Quad on their 34/405-2 etc. And the nasty turntable tonearm "DINs" that were basically whatever they decided- Grace, Empire, Pioneer whoever. Collars, no-collars, long pins, short pins, changes in geometry, screw-in etc.

DIN standard plugs of all types are utterly putrid. There's not a single one I like. For contrast, take the BNC or the Belling-Lee, glorious connectors. The 1/4" phone connector. The Cannon XLR. The PL-259 or the Banana (4mm). All great and none of them DIN related. I would chuck out anything DIN to be honest.

I bet you the Speakon is US designed is it?
Yes, horrible, and the DIN speaker connectors were totally inadequate for the job, Tiny pins, all of them, and an obvious nightmare to solder (I've never done it myself). The big fault with RCA is that the signal connects before ground; seems an odd omission, but then I suppose it's the price for simplicity (or even crudeness!). I wish BNC had been the standard instead. Belling-Lee works well even when cheaply made, and did you notice the Yanks call this a "PAL" connector for some unfathomable reason?

Speakon seems to be a Neutrik innovation. I always assumed Neutrik was American but it turns out they are a Liechtenstein company, founded by an ex-AKG engineer. In the UK, we now have the BFA connector. I never understood why the speaker end of 4 mm/banana connections isn't reversed, with the male pin on the speaker and the female socket on the cable, to make accidental shorts impossible, like any other electrical connector. Perhaps that would have made spades and screw terminals too difficult to incorporate?
 

Harmonie

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Yes, horrible, and the DIN speaker connectors were totally inadequate for the job, Tiny pins, all of them, and an obvious nightmare to solder (I've never done it myself).


I never understood why the speaker end of 4 mm/banana connections isn't reversed, with the male pin on the speaker and the female socket on the cable, to make accidental shorts impossible, like any other electrical connector. Perhaps that would have made spades and screw terminals too difficult to incorporate?

I believe that such male banana pin sticking out from a speaker wouldn't be great (protuberance) .
But on such banana female, you have always the option to tighten cables with spades ;)
 

Nango

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I love this kind of review, debunking "science fiction" stories.

Edit: to be fair most SF stories contain more truth than highend audio company claims.:facepalm:
I love this kind of demythifying reviews much better than 2 DAC fighting for 1dB more SINAD at levels north of 120dB. Again a case for the FBI.
 

AudioSceptic

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I believe that such male banana pin sticking out from a speaker wouldn't be great (protuberance) .
But on such banana female, you have always the option to tighten cables with spades ;)
Obviously the pins would be in a receptacle or socket, so nothing sticks out. After all, the banana speaker sockets/terminals we now have also stick out, and are always in some sort of receptacle (but often still protrude).
 

Robbo99999

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Don’t forget this isn’t even close to their most expensive offerings, their flagship is $15,000 for 3m!
https://www.thecableco.com/cables/interconnects/wel-signature-interconnect-pair.html

Nordost has one that is ~$20,000 for the same length:
https://blinkhighend.com/shop/cable...t-reference-odin-supreme-analog-interconnect/
I actually find it nice to see that Nordost gives the actual cable specs and don’t make any wild claims that ignores science.
Yeah, that's sick on lots of levels!
 

Nango

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I never understood why the speaker end of 4 mm/banana connections isn't reversed, with the male pin on the speaker and the female socket on the cable, to make accidental shorts impossible, like any other electrical connector.
Bananas are forbidden in the EU for that reason. You won't find any in EU.
 
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jtwrace

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Maybe use $50 of that could be used as a donation to support ASR...

Yep, he mentioned it twice ;)


 

AudioSceptic

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Bananas are forbidden in the EU for that reason. You won't find any in EU.
Was that always the case or a recent change? In the UK we seemed to be unsure for a long time whether to go with Euro or US standards, and I think the arrival of Japanese gear in the 60s and 70s probably made US connectors a de facto standard.
 

scooter

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I'd say inserting those batteries in series summing 72 DCV is pretty dangerous :rolleyes:
 

Nango

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Was that always the case or a recent change? In the UK we seemed to be unsure for a long time whether to go with Euro or US standards, and I think the arrival of Japanese gear in the 60s and 70s probably made US connectors a de facto standard.
Since ages, from the beginning, I guess.
 

JeffS7444

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While I'm not thrilled by the ongoing success of products which serve only to separate the gullible from their cash, part of me also admires how there's good money to be made by just keeping one's mouth shut and selling people stuff they want to believe in, and I for one would like to get onboard that gravy train.

At least in the US of A, the marketplace is rife with this sort of stuff: Herbal/natural remedies, dietary supplements, "functional foods" rich in taurine, omega 3 fatty acids, fiber (sometimes in the form of purified wood pulp), even bottles of attractively colored water containing vitamins. And as long they don't cause obvious harm or make clearly false claims, they're tolerated, probably in no small part because these industries provide jobs, they fill store shelves with product that the public seems to want, and these companies pay taxes. Think about that next time you take a multivitamin tablet!

For what it's worth, I have encountered one "herbal" cold remedy which did indeed appear to work like magic: It was a gel which one squirted up one's nostrils. And there in the list of innocuous ingredients such as polyvinyl alcohol (inert goo with the consistency of snot) and various herbal extracts was zinc! The latter brought it to the attention of the Food and Drug Administration, and because use of zinc in one's sinuses was not FDA-approved, the product was pulled from store shelves, though not before a few people sued the company claiming the product had caused them to lose their sense of smell - oops.
 

Jinjuku

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Why are there indicator lights on this cable? I asked Bill Lowe this question on WBF years ago.

You should be able to hear when the batteries are running low or out of charge! You shouldn't need an indicator light.
 

GXAlan

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Why are there indicator lights on this cable? I asked Bill Lowe this question on WBF years ago.

You should be able to hear when the batteries are running low or out of charge! You shouldn't need an indicator light.

Exactly. The old JBL charge coupled crossovers had a 9V battery and no light. But they moved toward using diodes since the first few seconds of music will be enough to charge and bias the capacitors in the intended way.
 
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