Do Fancy Audio Cables Make a Difference? (video)

[respice finem]

The awareness of the stick's existence is the part that spares its frequent use.
A uni and a forum are no different here again. Keep up the good job.

 

[Deleted member 2944]

Fortunately, needing to whip out my large stick around here is seldom needed. Most of the regulars do an excellent job of keeping things on track, so in that sense it is very much a self-moderated forum. Considering ASR is coming up on 20k members, it runs pretty smoothly for the most part.

The job of a forum moderator is to keep threads on topic....not carry a stick. If you keep threads on topic all that other stuff will take care of itself.
I'm surprised how many forum (and not just audio) moderators don't understand this basic concept.

Dave.

 

[BDWoody]

The job of a forum moderator is to keep threads on topic....not carry a stick. If you keep threads on topic all that other stuff will take care of itself.
I'm surprised how many forum (and not just audio) moderators don't understand this basic concept.

Dave.

That's not the job of the Moderator here. Thread drift is part of the fun.

I'm surprised that you think I'm a housekeeper or babysitter. Housekeeping here and there is fine, but I'm here to keep it from getting bloody...

If you want to have a different job description for a moderator, start your own forum.

 

[Deleted member 2944]

That's not the job of the Moderator here. Thread drift is part of the fun.

I'm surprised that you think I'm a housekeeper. Housekeeping here and there is fine, but I'm here to keep it from getting bloody...

If you want to have a different job description for a moderator, start your own forum.

Drift might be "fun" but it's not appropriate for newbie folks trying to navigate a particular topic. When a thread starts with an appropriate audio query but ten pages later is talking about the difference between a Porsche and Ferrari, that's a problem.

A "housekeeper" (your word, not mine) is pretty much exactly what the primary job of a forum moderator is. I'm surprised you don't understand this yet.

Regarding my own forum. I actually have three of them. One of them is even an audio forum.

Dave.

 

[BDWoody]

Drift might be "fun" but it's not appropriate for newbie folks trying to navigate a particular topic. When a thread starts with an appropriate audio query but ten pages later is talking about the difference between a Porsche and Ferrari, that's a problem.

A "housekeeper" (your word, not mine) is pretty much exactly what the primary job of a forum moderator is. I'm surprised you don't understand this yet.

Regarding my own forum. I actually have three of them. One of them is even an audio forum.

Dave.

I'm sorry to disappoint you Dave. You are welcome to spend more time there.

In the mean time, I hope our newbie folks make it

 

[RichB]

It is much more cost effective to components with differential balanced inputs. Balanced cables work well and don't need exotic back stories.

- Rich

 

[Frank Dernie]

@amirm Did our English friend (Max T.) ever sent you his über expensive (Isolda) speaker cables for you to test, as he promised he would do after he done his video ?

FWIW Max is Australian

 

[Bow_Wazoo]

For me as a full-time electronics engineer, and Hifi freak, there are understandable reasons to buy a 300€ cable, or a 3000€ CD player:

Cool design, a polished 10mm stainless steel case, or a freaky idea behind it.

Who wants to indulge in the imagination of his brain, that's ok for me.

Who avoids a blind test DSD vs. Mp3,
will get to know my unbridled tongue.

At the same time, the one who pursues his hobby with reason is down with me....

 

[Labjr]

Guitar pickups are in the range of 10kohm in source resistance and have a high inductance. You can be certain that different cables (capacitances, lengths, geometries) have an audible influence.

Source resistances for audio are much, much, much lower and not inductive so with the voltages, capacitances, inductances, lengths and resistances involved none of the latter can (nor do as can easily be demonstrated with nulling music) have an audible (but small measurable) influence on the sound. Similar to cables connected to MM cartridges (which also is a magnetic sensor).

So I can fully understand people with studio/instrument/speaker/screens or have a snesor measurement background (especially in industrial or HF background) have experiences with cables performing different and then assume this is also applicable to interlink cables of short length in audio. That doesn't mean cables do 'the same' under vastly different circumstances.

Phono cartridges and most guitar pickups are passive and have very low output. So very different than a line level source.

 

[TweekinTubez]

As others have stated it’s probably a waste of Amir’s time to put any more effort into cable analysis, but I would love to compare the entry level Audioquest cables (which are still over $100 each retail) versus the high end ones that retail for over $1000.

Then compare those results to a midrange $60 cable like BJC.


My very limited understanding is that audioquest purposefully engineers their entry level cables to sound like crap. I don’t know if that true, but how else do they justify having something like 10 tiers of speaker cables when it’s trivial to swap the cables out for comparison?

Has there ever been a teardown to find out what is being done to distort the signal in the lower end cable?

 

[Frank Dernie]

My very limited understanding is that audioquest purposefully engineers their entry level cables to sound like crap. I don’t know if that true, but how else do they justify having something like 10 tiers of speaker cables when it’s trivial to swap the cables out for comparison?

Perhaps they rely on the person doing the demo to slightly increase the volume with each increment in price.
IIRC somebody recorded a demo at a show where this was being done.
A tiny increase in level sounds more like extra clarity than louder.

 

[TweekinTubez]

Perhaps they rely on the person doing the demo to slightly increase the volume with each increment in price.
IIRC somebody recorded a demo at a show where this was being done.
A tiny increase in level sounds more like extra clarity than louder.

It’s so stupidly simple that it’s probably the case

 

[ta240]

......My very limited understanding is that audioquest purposefully engineers their entry level cables to sound like crap. I don’t know if that true, but how else do they justify having something like 10 tiers of speaker cables when it’s trivial to swap the cables out for comparison?

Has there ever been a teardown to find out what is being done to distort the signal in the lower end cable?

When I was young and dumb... okay not that young... I bought two of their evergreen interconnects. I still don't know why but I'd get a faint popping sound every couple minutes out of the amp with either of them. Other cables didn't do it but there was something the DAC or Amp didn't like about those cables. I tried them on two different setups with the same result and threw them away.

It would seem pretty easy to make some of the cables higher in capacitance or inductance to affect the sound.

But even easier is to just let people imagine each level is better and describe them like fine wines

 

[respice finem]

Perhaps they rely on the person doing the demo to slightly increase the volume with each increment in price...

This. "Prior art" by many an amp or turntable/CD player seller for the last 20 years. As far as low-frequency analog "audio range" cables go, it would IMHO be technically really difficult to make a standard RCA or even more so, speaker cable "sound" like anything.

With digital / high frequency, high bandwidth it's not that simple any more, but just for digital audio, it's more or less signal or no signal @output. With cables (like HDMI) causing problems, video trouble comes first (bandwidth). A special case are some dodgy toslink-optical, but this is becoming more and more "legacy" anyway.

 

[wsmith]

Ah, the face of the reviewer. Videos are great!

Besides reviewing whatever keeps the site going, you should definitely do more of whatever is on your mind like this.

If you want a little friendly from a video pro, I'd say the audio is good but there's a little reverb. After a while could lead to a little listener fatigue for some. A body Mike or overhead shotgun close would help. Body mic can sound off axis when turning whereas a head mic won't

 

[wsmith]

I'm learning a lot hanging around here, BTW. Thanks! The videos are great. Please continue more debunking and other general edu. vids as you desire.

 

[amirm]

If you want a little friendly from a video pro, I'd say the audio is good but there's a little reverb. After a while could lead to a little listener fatigue for some. A body Mike or overhead shotgun close would help. Body mic can sound off axis when turning whereas a head mic won't

Thanks for the feedback. The mic is off-camera and just out of view. The benefit of that over a body mic is that I don't have to do anything to start recording. The issue with the audio on this and earlier videos were some processing which I disabled. And I increased the volume. It sounds pretty good now.

 

[Gene DellaSala]

Hi Amir, I tried to post this on your Youtube channel but it says "Comment failed to post" so I will post it here:

Amir, good to see you on Youtube. We should definitely collab on this cable nonsense. AQ is one of the biggest snake oil vendors in the business. Their battery bias is just one example of many for the brand.

See: https://www.audioholics.com/audio-v...n-audio-cable-vendor-is-selling-you-snake-oil

 

[Human Bass]

Something that is easy to measure and there are real difference between cables is the shielding and noise. The whole test of putting an ac psu next to the cable could be easily done with rca and xlr

 

[RichB]

Something that is easy to measure and there are real difference between cables is the shielding and noise. The whole test of putting an ac psu next to the cable could be easily done with rca and xlr

This is this demo:

The Importance of Star-Quad Microphone Cable - Benchmark Media Systems

- Rich