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Audioquest GO-4 Speaker Cable Review

Rate this cable:

  • 1. Waste of money (piggy bank panther)

    Votes: 276 97.2%
  • 2. Not terrible (postman panther)

    Votes: 3 1.1%
  • 3. Fine (happy panther)

    Votes: 2 0.7%
  • 4. Great (golfing panther)

    Votes: 3 1.1%

  • Total voters
    284

fpitas

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Want to Believe.jpg

Audiophiles may feel free to copy and paste.
 

welsh

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Tat's fair enough and like i have stated i'm a real skeptic when it comes to speaker cables. But let's take this scenario. if some cables were somehow able to produce better imaging or soundstage, would that be measurable?

BTW I'm not trolling, i'm open minded and willing to listen and be proven wrong
‘Imaging’ and ‘soundstage’ are determined by the source recording (CD, vinyl etc) and are realised (for better or worse) by transducers (speakers and headphones, and in the case of the former, the room). Nothing in between - DACs, amplifiers, cables - should not have any effect upon ’imaging’ and ‘soundstage’.
 
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fpitas

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If the amplifier is sensitive to the cables connected to it, then the amplifier has a problem. Of course, if your cable puts several nanofarads of C across the amp's terminals, then YMMV.
I'll continue that subject; even in that case, the "right" solution is to RF terminate the cable. That however only costs about $1, and won't impress any of your friends (unless they're geeky engineers).

 

kaopad999

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What is amazing is how much money these companies make selling nothing... far more than I do when I do real work and make real products. That is the sad reality here...

‘Imaging’ and ‘soundstage’ are determined by the source recording (CD, vinyl etc) and are realised (for better or worse) by transducers (speakers and headphones, and in the case of the former, the room). Nothing in between - DACs, amplifiers, cables - should have any effect upon ’imaging’ and ‘soundstage’.
yes i understand it comes from the recordings
however in my exprience some amplifiers will help to produce better imaging and soundsatge
 

BDWoody

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Watch out, they are probably not monkeys after all...

et_steven-spielberg_top10films_space-travelers.jpg

Well, I've got my resident Flerken to keep me safe, but unfortunately he has a taste for audio cables from time to time. The nicely textured headphone cables are a favorite, with USB cables coming in a close scond.

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egellings

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I'll continue that subject; even in that case, the "right" solution is to RF terminate the cable. That however only costs about $1, and won't impress any of your friends (unless they're geeky engineers).

Characteristic impedance is of no consequence in a living room length of analog audio cable, speaker or small signal. So long as R, L & C of the cable are reasonable for the intended application, there will be no problem with the cable. Reason is that such a cable is vastly shorter than the wavelength of the analog audio signal it carries, so both ends of the cable are at the same voltage at the same time, always, ignoring the small drop due to R, L & C, which at audio will be tiny in a well-designed cable.
 

fpitas

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Characteristic impedance is of no consequence in a living room length of analog audio cable, speaker or small signal. So long as R, L & C of the cable are reasonable for the intended application, there will be no problem with the cable. Reason is that such a cable is vastly shorter than the wavelength of the analog audio signal it carries, so both ends of the cable are at the same voltage at the same time, always, ignoring the small drop due to R, L & C, which at audio will be tiny in a well-designed cable.
Did you even read the article?

The interactions are well into RF. If you have an amp with modern output transistors used as followers, those will care about frequencies as high as 50 - 100MHz.
 

egellings

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I would worry about RFI if I lived in a high RFI environment. Since I don't, for me it's a non-issue. If you are stuck in a high RFI environment, then just about anything electronic will be affected by it. I once lived near an antenna farm that had several large radio & TV broadcast towers on E. Capitol Drive in Milwaukee, WI, USA. I was simply unable to prevent RFI interference in my audio setup, having asked a few RF people what I could do about it. I moved. I had both vacuum tube and BJT power amplifiers, and the tube ones were slightly less affected by the radiation.
 

fpitas

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I would worry about RFI if I lived in a high RFI environment. Since I don't, for me it's a non-issue. If you are stuck in a high RFI environment, then just about anything electronic will be affected by it. I once lived near an antenna farm that had several large radio & TV broadcast towers on E. Capitol Drive in Milwaukee, WI, USA. I was simply unable to prevent RFI interference in my audio setup, having asked a few RF people what I could do about it. I moved. I had both vacuum tube and BJT power amplifiers, and the tube ones were slightly less affected by the radiation.
It's not RFI. It's the effect on the amp loop gain, which extends to RF because it's a feedback amp and has to meet the Bode criterion for stability. If you expect full feedback at 20kHz, the unity gain point is in the MHz. And as I said, followers are in a world of their own.
 

welsh

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yes i understand it comes from the recordings
however in my exprience some amplifiers will help to produce better imaging and soundsatge
Show me some amplifier schematics, and mark on the diagrams just where ‘imaging’ and ‘soundstage’ are produced. As long as channel separation is decent, there is no effect.
 

G|force

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I swapped out the weak batteries on my Fraudioquest cables during the Plandemic lockdown and nothing changed! Fraud? j/k

38139331-0BEB-4923-8D40-DE94D332C2A8.jpeg
 

Sal1950

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however in my exprience some amplifiers will help to produce better imaging and soundsatge
They can only effect imaging / soundstaging in negative ways.
If they have issues with channel balance, frequency response, or other performance parameters not being within normal operating range between the L & R channels, then sure there can be a problem there. They should be considered broken. But these things can all be easily measured, there's no magic dust inside the walls of a DAC, preamp, or power amplifier, they are all solved engineering problems for the last 3 or 4 decades. ;)
 

kaopad999

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They can only effect imaging / soundstaging in negative ways.
If they have issues with channel balance, frequency response, or other performance parameters not being within normal operating range between the L & R channels, then sure there can be a problem there. They should be considered broken. But these things can all be easily measured, there's no magic dust inside the walls of a DAC, preamp, or power amplifier, they are all solved engineering problems for the last 3 or 4 decades. ;)
Right, so if amp A performs better than amp B then effectively amp A could, or maybe should produce a better soundstage. Which is what i have most likely heard between various amps.
Thanks for clarifying
 

Beave

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Right, so if amp A performs better than amp B then effectively amp A could, or maybe should produce a better soundstage. Which is what i have most likely heard between various amps.
Thanks for clarifying

Performs better in what ways, exactly?

I think you read into his comments exactly what you wanted to see, not what was actually written.
 
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