AudioQuest Wind High-end Cable Review

[sweetchaos]

I hope this makes it to the google front page, so fewer people will be fooled.

 

[Zensō]

Companies like Audioquest making blatantly false claims about products with absolutely no value should be held legally accountable.

 

[win]

It is even directional for bloody sake!

On floating ground shields, you are supposed to tie the ground shield to the end with lower impedance, I believe.

in all seriousness, why would you spend this much money on an rca cable anyway? What business do rca connectors have on high end gear?

Besides the vastly better noise rejection, xlr benefits from a hotter signal, increasing the SNR for free.

 

[amirm]

in all seriousness, why would you spend this much money on an rca cable anyway? What business do rca connectors have on high end gear?

People hook them in, listen far more attentively, hear more detail because of that, but attribute it to the cable. That difference will be significant. Of course it will wear off as the investigation is over and the audiophile chases the next tweak....

 

[EchoChamber]

Sure. Here is a shot of it:
View attachment 89773

Zooming in, I was surprised that it is made in Japan, Hitachi cable!

View attachment 89774

It is even directional for bloody sake!

I wonder if it came with one of my high-end Sony DVD or SACD players of the time. It certainly has been a durable cable and I often use for S/PDIF connections.

These look really nice! Wow! As good as pro audio cables it seams...

Amir, please indulge us and also test the really cheap ones... The ones that have both signal conductors glued together with the molded plastic connectors.

 

[xykreinov]

Mind you, there was more air when listening to the Wind. But then my wife who was in the kitchen informed me that the dogs had left the patio door open and whether I was OK if she closed it. Once she did, the air factor disappeared.

This part made me grin like an idiot in public

 

[amirm]

Amir, please indulge us and also test the really cheap ones... The ones that have both signal conductors glued together with the molded plastic connectors.

Sure.

 

[renaudrenaud]

Believe it or not, this Wind cable was used in the ISS to track air leak. Aerospace grade.

 

[deniall83]

Not a surprising result I suppose but still enjoyable watching the performance crash and burn. I've always thought the build quality of AQ was laughable for the price. My Blue Jeans cables are built FAR better than this junk.

 

[xykreinov]

View attachment 89773

Zooming in, I was surprised that it is made in Japan, Hitachi cable!

View attachment 89774

Hitachi- makers of some of the best dinosaurian CRTs, and finest golfing-panther tier generic RCA cables :^)

 

[Prutser]

The problem with AudioQuest in my Country, this is the only high end cable brand you can get in most Dutch hifi shops, physical or online. They have a so called monopoly in the Netherlands (IMHO). So even if you beleve high end cables make a difference AudioQuest is the only one available. Good thing we have Amazone these days.

 

[bigjacko]

The problem with AudioQuest in my Country, this is the only high end cable brand you can get in most Dutch hifi shops, physical or online. They have a so called monopoly in the Netherlands. So even if you beleve high end cables make a difference AudioQuest is the only one available. Good thing we have Amazone these days.

You can start your own high end hifi cable shop, count me in if you make money.

 

[Tks]

The sample I have was kindly donated by a member and costs US $2,300 in the 1 meter configuration.

What a kind and nice person. Leaving his old ignorant ways behind by donating the cost of this cable he could have gotten back by selling it, instead giving it to you to dissect properly. Thank you very kind person, not many folks out there willing to leave their old ways with a gesture like this.

We see that the AudioQuest Wind (red) clearly has higher mains noise. So I thought of a way to test susceptibility to mains noise by taking an AC transformer (from a desktop DAC), plugging it in and then holding it next to the cable.

See, this is why I really dislike lots of these botique companies that don't have a heavy reliance on validation. I always think they're so down the luxury design route, that they also ignore basics of utility in the first place (you know like those AMP and DAC makers with idiotic internals, zero certifications, and just overall questionable design to begin with). Companies like AudioQuest have so much hubris, they can't even be bothered properly constructing cables, and ALWAYS have to do it in a sort of way that breaks all conventions of normalcy (like why does the end-housing have to cover over the RCA ring? Just nonsense).

But to be honest, this company isn't even filled with just plainly morons, I actually think they're blatantly aware con artists. And not passively either, but actively. This isn't the first time they've put out garbage masked as something supposedly one would assume "no expense spared".

They can't be assed adhering to basic standards (which is fine if you exceed them, but not in the opposite direction they do), and luxurious flourish that actually doesn't even make sense from a usability standpoint. Heavy as heck cables where I gotta watch out and hope my RCA connectors can widthstand the weight? Why the heck would I want that as even a moment's consideration? If this was XLR, I'd somewhat understand, I don't need this in my RCA connectors. The entire category of "luxurios RCA" doesn't even make sense for me personally. It's like seeing folks do mods to their Honda Civic to the degree the mods cost more than the car itself. Why not bite the bullet, get a sports/hyper car, and mod as much as you can after that, you're still going to get a better looking car at the end of the day..

Bossman, you said it perfectly:

What is that about? Are you going to carry this to your friend's house to show off? Or store the cable in it until the right romantic moment to pop it out to use with your system?

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I can't express how much this company tilts me.. I honestly take them to be knowing participants in something that ought be criminalized, or at least forced to drop their false advertising, and substantiate it scientifically to current existing metrics (no one is saying they have to go above and beyond that, but stop this constant lying, or claims they can never substantiate). It's like the US counterpart to Devialet or something..

 

[Chrispy]

The problem with AudioQuest in my Country, this is the only high end cable brand you can get in most Dutch hifi shops, physical or online. They have a so called monopoly in the Netherlands. So even if you beleve high end cables make a difference AudioQuest is the only one available. Good thing we have Amazone these days.

What about Van Den Hul?

 

[infinitesymphony]

At first I was going to joke that it was nice of them to throw in a free audiophile-grade cable, but it looks like there's actually a fanbase for Hitachi LC-OFC cables. The LC-OFC (linear crystal oxygen free copper) process was patented by Hitachi:

"So the story goes... 1975, Hitachi developed their own method for reducing grain or crystal boundaries. LC-OFC is Hitachi's patented process and their exclusive product. After extrusion, the copper wire is re-heated, or annealed, which reduces impurities between the crystal boundaries as the copper crystal grows and leads to a longer grain length. A typical crystal (or grain) in a 1mm diameter LC-OFC conductor is 130 mm long."

https://theaudiostandard.net/thread/1117/lc-ofc
https://patents.google.com/patent/US4582545

So you actually have a rare and desirable free cable.

 

[phoenixdogfan]

I look at these kind of cable companies as being the ur-GoFundMe campaigns, only they pass out colorful wire as a thank you gift for your contributions.

Wonder if they would work in place of beads in NOLA for Mardi Gras. "Hey girls..."

 

[Prutser]

What about Van Den Hul?

Sure if you look around you can buy other brands, but the obvious shops in the Netherlands only seem to have AudioQuest..

 

[win]

View attachment 89782

Hitachi- makers of some of the best dinosaurian CRTs, and finest golfing-panther tier generic RCA cables :^)

Believe it or not, there is still a market for good crt TVs. They are pure analog, which matters for frame perfect inputs on vintage, analog video output games.

 

[Prutser]

You can start your own high end hifi cable shop, count me in if you make money.

Sorry i am a so called prutser like we say in Dutch. I will probably go chapter 11 very quickly.

 

[Blumlein 88]

At first I was going to joke that it was nice of them to throw in a free audiophile-grade cable, but it looks like there's actually a fanbase for Hitachi LC-OFC cables. The LC-OFC (linear crystal oxygen free copper) process was patented by Hitachi:

"So the story goes... 1975, Hitachi developed their own method for reducing grain or crystal boundaries. LC-OFC is Hitachi's patented process and their exclusive product. After extrusion, the copper wire is re-heated, or annealed, which reduces impurities between the crystal boundaries as the copper crystal grows and leads to a longer grain length. A typical crystal (or grain) in a 1mm diameter LC-OFC conductor is 130 mm long."

https://theaudiostandard.net/thread/1117/lc-ofc
https://patents.google.com/patent/US4582545

So you actually have a rare and desirable free cable.

People will see Amir is up to his old tricks again. Trying to effect the reputation of a AQ by throwing in a ringer. A super special cable from yore while pretending it was some throw away just left hanging around.

He needs to test the cable Ray posted a picture of or maybe some coax RG6 interconnect.