AudioQuest Wind High-end Cable Review

[jtwrace]

https://forum.psaudio.com/t/audioquest-wind-high-end-cable-review/19789

PSA loves their AQ cables now

 

[Mindcool]

When you believed in the cable, did it sound better/different?

Curious because I recall “hearing“ subtle differences between cables many years ago myself.

At the time, yes. I wonder if the mains noise level @amirm detected would be audible and contribute to more bass(?). With a healthy dose of reality check after some time I could not distinguish any difference between AQ Wind and the Van damme star quad cable for 15$. Beside the obvious price difference the star quad cable is also not suspectible to breaks: the AQ Wind is super stiff!

 

[Panelhead]

The Hitachi cable is a very good cable.
Good advertising for it. Put it up on A’gon as tested better than AQ Wind. Asking price 3,000.00.
Used to have an issue between a dac and computer. The dac would misbehave when volume controller was adjusted. It was FireWire cable related.
Found Mil-Spec FW cables almost eliminated it. Bought an AQ FW cable, 30.00 Forest to try. Worse than the generic camera cables. Cut it open and was poorly built. Last AQ cable.
A firmware update fixed issue.

 

[MediumRare]

I buy my "airy" cables on Aliexpress and they fit nicely. I imagine I have $500 cables and I'm happy
View attachment 89813

These looks really great. Wondering, does the choke actually do something?

 

[Tks]

At the time, yes. I wonder if the mains noise level @amirm detected would be audible and contribute to more bass(?). With a healthy dose of reality check after some time I could not distinguish any difference between AQ Wind and the Van damme star quad cable for 15$. Beside the obvious price difference the star quad cable is also not suspectible to breaks: the AQ Wind is super stiff!

AND you get it in Starquad configuration which is great, unlike AQ where you get - who knows what.

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EDIT: Anyone out there wanna send Amir one of these to test next?

EDIT 2: Sorry wrong cable, I mean't one of these, they're so rare, a real one doesn't exist - only renders until someone orders a pair once.

 

[3125b]

Gotta love Audioquest, they bring a certain sense of humor to the table.

 

[Jinjuku]

FAQ. There's always a double meaning.

 

[andreasmaaan]

At the time, yes. I wonder if the mains noise level @amirm detected would be audible and contribute to more bass(?).

Not possible methinks. The threshold of hearing in that part of the spectrum is orders of magnitude lower than the level of mains noise on that cable would be relative to a signal reproduced at any real-world (i.e. not causing permanent hearing loss) SPL.

 

[A800]

AND you get it in Starquad configuration which is great, unlike AQ where you get - who knows what.

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EDIT: Anyone out there wanna send Amir one of these to test next?

EDIT 2: Sorry wrong cable, I mean't one of these, they're so rare, a real one doesn't exist - only renders until someone orders a pair once.

Additional 2x 0.5m for $10.800 american USD each.
Not bad.
No mention of gauge though.

 

[garbulky]

Wow! I think bringing the transformer by the wire was when it got this review in to greatness territory. You think it's because the DBS is picking up the interference? Having said that, you have proven
1. this wire measures different ( )
2. It does make a difference for listening as long as you buy the compatible dogs and patio door with it.

 

[Billy Budapest]

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.

There is a market for 1960’s-era vacuum tube circuitry TV’s, too. Some people swear they have better video quality than modern screens.

 

[AudioSceptic]

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.

Really? Not even any van den Hul? <https://www.vandenhul.com> It would be weird if they were unavailable in their home country.

 

[pavuol]

If anyone interested, inside the DBS pack are six 12V batteries, and the battery life in a pack = shelf life of batteries, so it is very efficient and green improvement!

 

[beagleman]

If anyone interested, inside the DBS pack are six 12V batteries, and the battery life in a pack = shelf life of batteries, so it is very efficient and green improvement!
View attachment 89835

Where does one find 12 volt batteries in AA size? And 27 amps??? Unless I am not seeing it is .27 Amp

 

[AudioSceptic]

This is a review and detailed measurements of the AudioQuest Wind RCA "PSS Silver" cable. The sample I have was kindly donated by a member and costs US $2,300 in the 1 meter configuration. No, that is not a typo. It is over two thousand dollars for a pair.

The cable comes in a rather cheap carrying case. 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?

The cable itself has the look of "high-end" cables:

View attachment 89759

As you see it also has their "DBS" (Dielectric Bias System) which puts a static DC voltage along one wire in the cable. I have tested the DBS to have no effect in my previous Audioquest Victoria Cable review. I will take another shot at it here in a different way.

Usually these cables have a death grip on the RCA connectors but not these. They would hold on but softly and no more than any generic cable. Given their heavy weight though, I wish there was more holding power. You can see part of the reason for this is the super thin outer RCA ring:

View attachment 89761

Back to the weight, the inclusion of the DBS battery pack makes these cantilever even more. Be sure to have super sturdy RCA connectors on your gear before you use these. Or else, invest extra in cable lifters because you physically need them here.

AudioQuest Wind Audio Measurements
These cables can go three different ways: do nothing, do something good, or make things worse. Let's start with our usual dashboard to see if we can get quick indication of any of these options. But first, let's test our setup with a generic 1 meter cable I got for free in a DVD player I think some 20 years ago. It is a single cable (i.e. not stereo pair) like the Wind:

View attachment 89762

Bless my $28,000 Audio Precision APx555 for generating such a clean signal and ability to measure it just the same. Combined noise and distortion are below -121 dB at 2 volts output. The spectrum of distortion and noise goes down to whopping -160 dB courtesy of signal processing (FFT process gain). The only thing visible at this low level is mains AC leakage to the tune of -145 dB.

Now let's switch to Audioquest Wind with the same setup:

View attachment 89763

Overall numbers remain the same but I see that the mains leakage has gone up 7 to 8 dB. And now we see its third harmonic at 180 Hz as well which we did not see before. Put a pin in this for now and we will come back to it.

To go after testing impact of DBS, I thought I reverse the cable. Whatever it is about, should get totally screwed up since the battery is supposed to be at one end of the cable:

View attachment 89764

Not a thing changes. We are going to depth of noise and distortion analysis that is so many orders of magnitude lower than our hearing that it is not funny. Yet there is no effect whatsoever. Clearly the DBS circuit is doing nothing here as the "designers" say it does.

One of the most audible thing in audio is frequency response. You don't need golden ears to hear differences when frequency response changes. Often give a free pass to people using such cables and hearing differences that there must have been filters in them that changed the frequency response. So let's measure that with super high precision and high bandwidth:

View attachment 89765

I usually run this test with ± 5 dB vertical axis. Here, I have gone to ±1 dB and there is still no difference between no cable, 1 meter generic cable and Audioquest Wind. Bandwidth of the test is also expanded to 200 kHz and yet there is still no difference.

Now let's measure the noise that exists in the system with the cable hooked up but nothing driving it:
View attachment 89766

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. Note that there is no electrical connection between the transformer and the cable. The transformer is simply being held by the cable to allow coupling into the cable. This is what happened:

View attachment 89767

Wow! The generic cable in blue picked up a bit more noise but look at the AudioQuest Wind in solid red. It is picking up huge amount of mains noise relative to our generic cable! Stunning how high-end cables are sold with the impression that they reduce noise and such and yet this cable is clearly much more susceptible to interference than free cable.

What is amazing about this is a bullet in the product feature list from AudioQuest:

View attachment 89769

It is easy to accomplish 100% shield coverage? So why do we not have it here? And what noise dissipation?

AudioQuest Wind Cable Listening Test
I hooked up my RME ADI-2 FS DAC V2 to a Topping A90 high-performance headphone amplifier alternatively using the Audioquest Wind and Generic able. The output of the A90 drove my Ether CX headphone. I could not detect a difference between the two in this limited testing. 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.

Conclusions
You know, it is one thing to sell a cable for a lot more money that does nothing extra. It is entirely another matter when the cable actually screws up the signal much worse than a free cable as the AudioQuest Wind seems to be doing here. Whether it is the outer RCA connector that is not gripping properly, the construction of the cable, or both, clearly the basic job of doing no harm is not followed. A bit of measuring like I did would have shown problems like this to them. But of course they did not bother. They imagined a bunch of problems, created imagined solutions to them, and started to sell the product with unverified claims as I quoted.

So please folks, I don't care which audio camp you are in. Ask manufacturers to demonstrate what the benefits they advertise. They say they lower noise? Ask them to show before and after measurements. We know how to measure noise. If we don't, how do they know they reduced noise at all?

Anyway, of course I cannot recommend the AudioQuest Wind cable in any form or fashion.

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As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.

The garden is struggling to keep producing despite the near freezing cold snap. Picked a few oversized Kohlrabi. Second year I have planted them but have had no chance to even taste them!
View attachment 89771

The cucumbers are mostly from the greenhouse. As is the last bit of Basil from one of the pots which we put in our salad last night. Have a dozen or so more which have their last harvest now. They were great all summer. Produced a ton which we froze as pesto. You cut the tops off and they shoot up three new branches!

Could use some kind donations as always: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/

So this thing doesn't even have an adequate coax braid/shield? Unforgiveable! Any chance you could pull back the shroud from one of the plugs to see what's actually under the fancy covering? It would also show us the quality of the soldering.

 

[A800]

Where does one find 12 volt batteries in AA size? And 27 amps??? Unless I am not seeing it is .27 Amp

27A is the type.

 

[AudioSceptic]

I was expecting something like I have:

View attachment 89775

Yes, that is what you would expect. I'm sure we've all got a few of those.

 

[AudioSceptic]

27A is the type.

If it really is 12 V, it would have to contain a stack of button cells.

 

[MakeMineVinyl]

If anyone interested, inside the DBS pack are six 12V batteries, and the battery life in a pack = shelf life of batteries, so it is very efficient and green improvement!
View attachment 89835

I dunno, that battery clip looks pretty non-audiophile cheap to me - something I could (and did) buy at RadioShack for some cheapo project! Surely one would expect more for all that money.

 

[A800]

If it really is 12 V, it would have to contain a stack of button cells.

I think so.
But no idea.