Do Premium Headphone Cables Make an Audible Difference? Norne Audio Cable Review (video)

[egellings]

I think the strong and false marketing of audio cables for headphones is successful because 99% of people don't look at the teardowns of their headphones and amplifiers.
In the first image shows the teardown of the HIFIMAN HE400se planar magnetic headphones. A simple, small section copper cable soldered by hand connects the 3.5 mm jack to the driver.
In the second image shows the teardown of the TOPPING DX5 II amplifier. Tiny copper tracks connect the balanced 4.4 mm jack, soldered by hand onto the motherboard.
Knowing this, how can you think that a headphone cable as thick as a finger and made of copper, silver, gold, diamond, uranium, etc. can improve the sound in any way? More teardowns for everyone and less marketing.

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I suspect that if one is a true believer in cables' various audible effects on sound quality once a cable has adequate R,L & C parameters to get the job done, that person will not be able to understand any technical explanation that shows that there is no audible difference at all, although test instrumentation may be able to measure differences in their RLC characteristics. So if you believe able A sounds better than cable B, then enjoy cable A. So long as you see cable A in operation while listening, for you, and for you alone, the sound will go through your belief filter and be modified by that filter to your liking. A rude awakening happens if unbeknownst to you someone swaps out your favorite cable with an adequate cheap substitute. You keep rhapsodizing about the sound even though a cheapie interconnect has been substituted for your true love behind your back. The gnashing of the teeth, the beating of the breast, and the clutching of the pearls starts after you discover what was done. Pedestrian RG58-U gits 'er done for me!

 

[milosz]

Any kind of cable will have a certain amount of resistance and also reactance (caused by combined effects of capacitance and inductance on AC current) - but for the most part at audio frequencies and in audio frequency cases where the driving source impedance is low and the load impedance is also fairly low - as is the case with headphone amps and headphone drivers- normal wire will not have enough resistance or reactance to have any impact on signals at audio frequencies. HOWEVER you can engineer extra reactance into a cable by various means such that the cable will start to reduce the level of either bass or treble range signals. You can also put some kind of electrical network in line with the cable, as I've seen done with some speakers cables. But then you have created a TONE CONTROL and not a cable designed to deliver signal transparently.

Electrostatic headphones are somewhat different as they are essentially capacitors themselves and it seems that using cables with the lowest possible capacitive reactance does keep the cable from interacting in the circuit, so low-capacitance cabling is usually used for electrostatic headphones. This does not require precious metals, just judicious conductor and insulation design.

 

[egellings]

Any kind of cable will have a certain amount of resistance and also reactance (caused by combined effects of capacitance and inductance on AC current) - but for the most part at audio frequencies and in audio frequency cases where the driving source impedance is low and the load impedance is also fairly low - as is the case with headphone amps and headphone drivers- normal wire will not have enough resistance or reactance to have any impact on signals at audio frequencies. HOWEVER you can engineer extra reactance into a cable by various means such that the cable will start to reduce the level of either bass or treble range signals. You can also put some kind of electrical network in line with the cable, as I've seen done with some speakers cables. But then you have created a TONE CONTROL and not a cable designed to deliver signal transparently.

Electrostatic headphones are somewhat different as they are essentially capacitors themselves and it seems that using cables with the lowest possible capacitive reactance does keep the cable from interacting in the circuit, so low-capacitance cabling is usually used for electrostatic headphones. This does not require precious metals, just judicious conductor and insulation design.

Agree; there's no magic involved, just engineering.

 

[Palladium]

I think the strong and false marketing of audio cables for headphones is successful because 99% of people don't look at the teardowns of their headphones and amplifiers.
In the first image shows the teardown of the HIFIMAN HE400se planar magnetic headphones. A simple, small section copper cable soldered by hand connects the 3.5 mm jack to the driver.
In the second image shows the teardown of the TOPPING DX5 II amplifier. Tiny copper tracks connect the balanced 4.4 mm jack, soldered by hand onto the motherboard.
Knowing this, how can you think that a headphone cable as thick as a finger and made of copper, silver, gold, diamond, uranium, etc. can improve the sound in any way? More teardowns for everyone and less marketing.

The diameter of the wire leads that goes into the voice coils of my TW030WA09/10 tweeters are tiny (very visible by shining a high powered flashlight at the dome), yet the entire unit is still rated at 60W continuous and 750W peak.

 

[solderdude]

so,silver 92.5% way better sounds vs copper cable?

Giving the cable maker the benefit of the doubt let's assume the silver wire is the same size as typical copper headphone cables, the silver cable will be 0.0955 ohms vs. 0.10 ohms for copper. This is less than 0.1 dB difference in sound level.

I have measured some headphone cables that have a resistance up to almost 2Ω (usually the coiled ones).
Most cables remain below 0.5Ω or so.

This is problematic when 3-wire headphone cables are used with low impedance headphones and is audible (depends on the recording) as a difference in stereo imaging.
When not considering this...
When a 0.5Ω cable would have been made from pure silver in the same diameter and length the resistance would be 0.478Ω.
When we consider a low impedance headphone, say 12Ω, the difference in attenuation would be 0.015dB (which arguably is less than 0.1dB).
Suppose we use a 300Ω headphone the difference in level = 0.006dB...

Still ... when silver cable sounds 92.5% better to most users, but not because of the conductor material nor isolator(s)/sheathing, but because they can clearly hear it and we consider 92.5% 'better' = 5.7dB 'better' so arguably audible.
Obviously this is determined subjectively so the 92.5% could easily any arbitrary number one wants to give it.

 

[egellings]

The diameter of the wire leads that goes into the voice coils of my TW030WA09/10 tweeters are tiny (very visible by shining a high powered flashlight at the dome), yet the entire unit is still rated at 60W continuous and 750W peak.

A 60 to 750 watt tweeter? Yikes! There goes my hearing and any wine or other type of glass in the house.

 

[solderdude]

The diameter of the wire leads that goes into the voice coils of my TW030WA09/10 tweeters are tiny (very visible by shining a high powered flashlight at the dome), yet the entire unit is still rated at 60W continuous and 750W peak.

Except... the tweeter cannot handle 60W. It would burn out pretty fast smoking and giving light signals when you were to apply a continuous 60W sine wave at say ... 10kHz.
(the thin wires .... remember). The trick is in the test signal.

What the spec says is that when a 60W IEC-shaped pink noise signal is applied and the prescribed high-pass filter is used that total (pink noise spectrum) power so the bulk of the power is NOT going in the tweeter can be endured for 100hrs without burning the voice coil.
The actual power going into the tweeter is just a fraction of that total 'power'.

The 750 Watt rating is determined using the same pink-noise signal:
Short Term Power Handling – 60 times alternating between signal for one second and
pause for 1 min. Total test time one hour. (IEC 268-5, cl 18.1)

Ofcourse this has nothing to do with headphone cables.