Battle of RCA Cables: Mogami, Amazon, Monoprice

[Steve Dallas]

Anyone have recommendations?

I love Blue Jeans cables but what I got from them was much too long and stiff for this job. Cables take up as much room as the stack on my desk.

Check out World's Best Cables on Amazon. They let you choose your construction to a point, and sell various usable lengths for reasonable outlay.

I use several of their cables in my systems due to being exactly the right length. Elsewhere, I use Mediabridge and Amazon Basics cables.

It fact, when I built my house 3 years ago, I used Amazon Basics and Mediabridge cables and speaker wire throughout in all the low voltage applications. No regrets on that decision.

 

[Barrelhouse Solly]

I'm a Monoprice fan. Sometimes the build quality on their cheapest cables is not too great but I've never had a problem with them. I generally "splurge" on the medium priced ones. My use case is plug them in and leave them alone so I'm not putting mechanical stress on them. In the '80s when high end speaker wire first came on the consumer market one of the hi-fi magazines did a double blind test comparing high end speaker wire with 14 gauge zip cord. They used cable lengths comparable to an ordinary home installation. The golden ear panel couldn't detect any difference. Since then I haven't paid much attention to speaker wire.

 

[gvl]

I was reading through the review in anticipation of the listening impressions section but there was none, what a disappointment!

 

[mhardy6647]

I also want to make my own analog audio cables. Is it difficult and is it hard to make them sound as well as ready-made ones? Any ideas?

Easy-peasy as long as one has a decent soldering iron or soldering station and chooses easy to work with terminations (plugs). Some are more friendly than others for those of us with fat fingers

 

[Χ Ξ Σ]

I have bought a pair of RCA cables from World Best Cables on Amazon and retuned them because the polarity was inverted compared to any of my balanced cables. Is it common for RCA cables to have inverted polarity?

 

[mhardy6647]

Oooooh, that tube (HP amp?) is pretty! Love that wood. Did you make that?

No. I certainly could have, but the result when I make one is not pretty.
Read all about it, if you wish, at...

The JE Labs/ Angela SE 2A3 amp done my way

I've been talking about this project for a long time, and I imagine it will be a good while before it's actually done, but I think I've finally got all the parts together. Here's a test fit of components. I had the transformer end bells and the aluminum plate sandblasted and painted. The...

audiokarma.org

It is a slight modification of Joseph Esmilla's well known (in the SE DHT hobby world) "Simple 45/2A3" amp, which is very much by the book.

JE Labs Simple 45/2A3

jelabsarch.blogspot.com

 

[mhardy6647]

I was reading through the review in anticipation of the listening impressions section but there was none, what a disappointment!

I've listened to cables for hours on end, and they haven't made a danged sound.

 

[Robbo99999]

@amirm , would it be interesting/useful to test mechanical switch boxes (for RCA) in the same way as you have done here? I use a really cheap mechanical switch box to flip my speakers between different inputs and have always wondered if there was much impact, I don't think it's audible but measurements would help put it in perspective.

 

[Blumlein 88]

I have bought a pair of RCA cables from World Best Cables on Amazon and retuned them because the polarity was inverted compared to any of my balanced cables. Is it common for RCA cables to have inverted polarity?

Something is wrong here. The rca cable can't change polarity and still work. Maybe your xlrs are wired wrong as that can happen.

 

[jhaider]

one of their most used cable like the W2534 ships for 3$/meter, pair it with a pair of Neutrik Profi RCA and you're good to go, you have the best cable money can buy.

Those Neutrik ProFi RCA plugs are very expensive by my standards for cables (>$20 per pair usually) but they really are the best. The shields are spring loaded so they always make first contact. I don’t always use them (solder-only; my go for RCAs made in situ are to are Canare coax Canare hex crimp ends because I hate soldering) but Redco assembles cables at fair pricing in the US if you already know the lengths you want.

 

[audio2design]

There should be current/voltage going over/trough the shield to see how good the cable rejects conducted EMI. (like from an inevitable ground loop)

A simple resistance test will tell you everything you need to know, but then again, you can fix ground loops. $10 of copper braid between two screws on the equipment will be much cheaper than a cable upgrade. Of course, that $10 is $40 now .... copper is nuts.

 

[jbrown]

I would be interested to see a crosstalk test to show if any of the cables are better at isolating noise or induced voltage from the audio signal on the neighboring cable.

 

[audio2design]

The only relevant test of RCA single ended cables is to send an interference current through the shield and measure the added voltage to the useful signal. Measurement of distortion is absolutely pointless, cables have no distortion.

One of the possible test circuits is this one. Peaks are proportional to shield/ground return inductance, settled level to shield resistance. That's all we need.


and some results

Not sure this is making total sense. The shield will often be connected on only one end, so essentially you are just measuring the overall inductance of the cable, not anything specific to ground/shield?? As you are using a 50 ohm source, and the cable won't be, you would have reflection in that settling I would expect.

 

[audio2design]

Here to save everyone time:

• You didn't test any cables made of Teflon
• Did you try changing the direction of the cable?
• You didn't test electrostatic susceptibility
• There is a "ton" of RF out there, and you didn't do anything to simulate that
• This says nothing about what would happen in a real situation with vibrations
• Looped into and out of the same equipment, it is not real world

I am sure I missed at least 10 excuses

- Out of boredom, and to shut someone up, I calculated the potential impact of dielectric absorption on a cable assuming a 10K source and 47K load using typical capacitance for a 6 foot interconnect. For polypropylene, I think I was 180-200db down, sort of worst case. Teflon would be lower. Don't ask me to recreate the equations but you are welcome.

- A friend calculated the potential for distortion from inductive and capacitive non linearity, and estimated 200-250db down

- A placed a cheap RCA cable I have directly in front of the drivers on a 3 way (all in line) and almost touching playing loud. I loaded it with 2K ohms. With a 50KHz bandwidth microvolt meter, I measured a few microvolts. Even I was surprised it was so low. Then again, MM phono catridges work, so ....

- There are cheaper ways to fix ground loops

- 100% mesh and foil shield can be found on $10 cables, double shields for not a lot more. There goes that RF and electrostatic argument


Of course, some of these brands seem to go out of their way to make really dumb and expensive cables.

 

[pma]

Not sure this is making total sense. The shield will often be connected on only one end, so essentially you are just measuring the overall inductance of the cable, not anything specific to ground/shield?? As you are using a 50 ohm source, and the cable won't be, you would have reflection in that settling I would expect.

I am not sure that you get it. Generator V1 forces the square wave through R1 resistor to shield of the X2 cable. The current is V1/(R1 + Z(shield)). Voltage drop on the cable shield alone is measured in CH1 channel (blue trace). CH2 channel (red trace) then measures voltage seen at the X2 cable end, including induced voltage. X1 is unimportant and so is R1, it only serves to force current into X2 shield. The method effectively finds sensitivity of single-ended link cables to ground (shield) currents, both LF and HF.

 

[audio2design]

I am not sure that you get it. Generator V1 forces the square wave through R1 resistor to shield of the X2 cable. The current is V1/(R1 + Z(shield)). Voltage drop on the cable shield alone is measured in CH1 channel (blue trace). CH2 channel (red trace) then measures voltage seen at the X2 cable end, including induced voltage. X1 is unimportant and so is R1, it only serves to force current into X2 shield. The method effectively finds sensitivity of single-ended link cables to ground (shield) currents, both LF and HF.

If you are only forcing current through the shield, then you are measuring free space inductance of the shield which I am not sure what purpose that serves. I think I got what you were doing, I am just not sure it is a practical measurement.

 

[Sal1950]

Stay away from Monoprice lest you demonstrate lower sensibility than I have in such matters!

Great piece there Amir, good to look at this cable business with some solid objectivity from time to time.
But then my poor Monoprice Premium's get their heads chopped off cause you don't like the way they look & feel? These aren't women my friend, they're HiFi cables, best heard but not felt or seen. LOL

I do judge RCA's mostly on the connector and how it feels-fits in it's jack. I've had some cables that the leaf's of the outer connector were so thin and weak they would hardly hold the plug in. You can use needle nose to tension them but after first insertion they're loose again. I've also had a couple that were so difficult to insert or remove I was very afraid of damage to the jack or pc board it was soldered to. Personally I've found the Mono's the "just right" connector of my experience..

The only audible issue I've ever had with a RCA cable was with Kimber PBJ's back in the 1980s. I bought a few for my system when they were all the rage with the audiophol print media of the day, the low priced giant killer for SQ they claimed. Well, for me the unshielded design proved unusable, they induced a major hum into my system. Most likely caused by radiation from the big transformers on my open chassis VTL tube monoblocks but I had no problem with any standard shielded cable. The good news is I thru them in a box for 30+ years and one day put them on ebay auction. Sold em for way more than I paid.

My Marantz pre/pro has all XLR balanced outs but my Adcom amps are only RCA in. I have been considering a change to XLR-RCA cables for the piece of mind from the locking connectors at the preamp. But needing needing 10 pair for my multich rig is a bit costly. One of these days.

 

[maty]

Benchmark Studio&Stage™ StarQuad XLR Cable for Analog Audio

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[Lambda]

A simple resistance test will tell you everything you need to know, but then again, you can fix ground loops. $10 of copper braid between two screws on the equipment will be much cheaper than a cable upgrade. Of course, that $10 is $40 now .... copper is nuts

With an other Cooper link you might reduce the ground loop Voltage but doing so you also decrees the loop impedance.
There is a reason cables are "coaxial" so the the magnetic field(s) center of ground and signal are perfectly aligned and cancel out since (ideally) current the ground conductor is exactly the same as current on the signal wire and therefore there feeds cancel out.

By this canceling out the impedance is kept low therefore no voltage loss but more impotently less voltage can be picket up from external magnetic fields.

Now if You add a extra ground wire there is multiple paths for ground currents to flow and you loos this balance and cancellation effect
Basically you build a ground loop.
You may build a small area loop with very low voltage differential so it might be fine.

But simple Resistance is not doing it Common mode impedance vs. frequency and differential mode impedance vs. frequency is the interesting parameter.
And cables with ferrite cores can have higher differential mode impedance especially at higher frequency.

They are no snake oil they actually help with reel world problems if for example a PC is involved and putting lots of HF noise on the "ground"

 

[maty]

Star quad, the best geometry to build audio and power cables​

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