I was curious about this as well, I've just tried my Andromeda's OG with a cheap 3-5 USD copper cable from Aliexpress (I had to use a tool to make the connector round so you can imagine the quality hahah) vs the original which I believe is silver plated and should be of decent quality.
I used my Soncoz QXD1 --> Balanced Cable --> AAA 789 --> SE Gain 1
Not a better song than Hotel California Live on MTV 1994 to test.
My mindset was that cables don't make a difference, but it was so
obvious:
- Very noticeable was the volume. it was lower on the cheap cable
- When trying to match the volume with the cheap cable everything bacame harsh and the shaker you can hear mostly on the right channel, just lost all its nuances and texture.
So yes, cables change the sound.. but I don't have a better cable than the andromedas came with to compare. My guess is that the impedance with the cheap copper cable changes, which explains the volume drop and sensitive IEMs like the Andromedas catch that very easily. I'm not sure up to which point the sound improves, my guess if volume is the same then it might not be any difference.
The moral of the story, I'll be more careful buying cheap cables next time.
I'll try to check some day what the OP did with the cheap IEMS I have (KZ).. it could be that the cable are holding them back a lot... I'm getting Ziigaat Odyssey OG soon which has the same cable I belive of some of my cheap IEMS. Will report back!
1st may I salute you, for your candid contribution here.
On the Internet, especially on "science" oriented forums, when you say you can hear differences in cables, as I have done, because it is true, I can hear these differences, there is a whole constituency that will argue with us, that we must be "hearing things", or it is placebo, etc, etc.
1st time I posted this observation, on another thread in AudioScienceReview, many months ago, after I swapped cables on my ARTTI T10, for the 1st time, and I heard the difference immediately, I was "shut down" by many comments. At the time, I also was a bit perplexed, cos in the professional audio world, as long as a cable meets certain minimum criteria, typically - just buy a good cable from a good brand, and no need to spend on snake oil, it works. Same with power cables. In that world I never believed in cables making any significant difference, at least not at the level of the kind of work I do.
If I was Beyonce or Taylor Swift's mixing engineer or mastering engineer, I may pay more attention to getting "better" audio cables, (but definitely not more esoteric power cables), such as interconnects for line level connections, and also premium brand microphone cables, if I was responsible for recording their vocals. So in that world, a decent well made cable, is all one needs, and it is easy to find such cables, that do not cost much money, not a problem.
In the professional audio world, same thing with headphones, we never bother about "balanced" headphones, truth be told, they do not exist in that world, practically all the headphone amplifiers I have ever used in either a hobby scenario or as a professional audio engineer, are "unbalanced". Here I speak of the typical Over Ear Headphones, such as a Sennheiser HD600/650, AKG K702, and the like. These products are typically supplied with decent cables by the manufacturer, and one really does not get into changing headphone cables, unless they are damaged, or cosmetically shabby looking. So that was where I was coming from, I never swapped headphone cables, and if I did, it would be for a similar cable, or an identical replacement from the manufacturer. I am aware that in the HiFi world, there is a lot of that going on - esoteric headphone cables, but that was something I did not believe in, and never engaged in - swapping cables for a sound improvement.
That was my premise - cables do not make a difference, cos I had no cause to think they did, once a cable met a certain quality threshold, in composition and manufacturing quality control, and in that world, if a cable is faulty, you hear it and know it is a fault, and either repair the cable, or just swap it out for a good one. Or use a cable tester, to test for continuity. So a cable is either good, or faulty. There was no comparing cables based on any foolishness such as frequency response. Once it was OFC(Oxygen Free Copper) cable, from a trusted good manufacturer, which almost ALL cables in that industry have been, for so many years in that industry, that was good enough.
Where science meets art and biology (i.e what we are hearing), is that we are now dealing with the IEM world, which has no clear standards. The vendors of IEM cables, including the stock cables bundled with IEMs, have very little to say about the qualities that qualify their cables as sufficient or otherwise. This is the elephant in the room, that unfortunately unless one has been down that path, and actually listened for one's own self, to different IEM cables, it does not dawn, and I can forgive those who say it should not make a difference, cos most likely they have never swapped cables on IEMs, and therefore never heard what some of us have heard - a difference, a marked difference sometimes, a repeatable consistent difference that is like night and day, within 2 seconds of listening, max 5 seconds of changing the cable, it is obvious, you are hearing a different sound.
Because unlike the more highly developed world of Hi-Fi, and Professional Audio, IEMs, and IEM cables have NO STANDARDS. None whatsoever. There is Not a single definition, of what a good IEM cable should be, never seen one written anywhere. The Electrical Engineering Societies, do not seem to have identified this market as one where they need to establish standards, and if they have established any, I am certainly NOT aware of this, and sure that most others are not aware of these. Above all the manufacturers are NOT aware of any such standards, cos their product marketing info, is all over the place. Each IEM cable vendor s highlighting whatever they consider important - colour of cable, made of silver, gold, palladium, graphene, or whatever exotic materials they can convince you may have an impact on the audio, and how many cores it has, and threads within a core, what kind of insulator it is wrapped in, the colour. It is rare for any of these cables to be advertised with criteria that may have an impact, such as resistance. Some do mention resistance, of their cables, but this is very rare. But I have never read or seen any other published properties, such as inductance or capacitance of an IEM cable - NEVER, not once, not a single time.
This is the fundamental reason we may have such a huge difference of opinions, in the IEM cable space, there are no standards, and most people who may be involved in IEM cables, it has probably NOT dawned on them also, that there are no standards. Every cable manufacturer does whatever they like, has no reason to conform to anything, and can make any kind of flowery snake oil claims about their cable, with absolutely no need of a proof.
So we the guinea pigs, who have now observed - hey we have a problem here, are the one's carrying the can. We are the ones hearing that something is obviously wrong or different as we change cables, and have no clue why, and the moment you speak up about this, someone who has not done a similar swap of cables, on your specific IEM make/model, and has not been in your shoes, shuts you down, as if you have been imagining things.
Here is what I am 100% sure of. Anyone with a reasonable hearing ability, I do not consider my hearing to be exceptional, or above any other human beings, will immediately hear the same difference, if they listened to exactly the same gear on which I swap these cables. So somewhere in my audio chain, something is causing this change.
There are some standards, by the way, the connectors on both ends of the IEM cable, that is the only set of common standards. Between those connectors, you can put whatever you like. A shoe lace - if that will conduct electricity. !!
Initially I thought, maybe it was a difference between the balanced and unbalanced outputs of my headphone amp. But now that I've normalised most of my cabling to balanced, and can compare cables on each of the headphone outputs, and in some cases I have modular cables, so I can swap exactly the same cable to a different headphone output, to eliminate that issue as a potential contributor to the variance. At this time I have only a small number of different cables, different in composition such as the type of conductor (copper, silver plated copper), and there are variances that I can see, in the thickness of the cable. In some cases the manufacturer provides some specs of the conductor, and from this I have done estimates of the resistance.
There is a correlation that I hear, when I swap through, a similar set of cables, with the same type of conductor. e.g All the silver plated cables I own. The lower the estimated resistance of the cable, the clearer the audio, the better dynamics, and audibility of frequencies at the extremes, such as sub bass and high frequencies, the more relaxed, natural, engaging, wide stereo and depth (aka layering - the ability to perceive in the audio things sounding near or coming from a distant point in virtual space - as it is in real life)
At the very least, this seems to be consistent for silver plated copper cables. And that in itself is an observation breakthrough. Discovering this consistent trend, and it is audible. Very easily audible. prior to now, I just knew I heard a difference, thinner cables sounding somewhat brighter (i.e lacking in bass), but now I can tie this to an electrical property - resistance, which reduces as the cable becomes thicker. Why is it so? I do not know, I am not a physicist, and do not have to be. The sun has been rising in the East and setting in the West for aeons, and the reason it does so, and the fact that the earth goes round the sun and not the other way round, took a very long time to be discovered. It was an observation every one could see. It did not need science to explain it,. It just needed people to accept that this was a well known fact, every day the sun has the same observed behaviour (with seasonal changes).
Why it is so - I do not know. But my better cables, typically more expensive, which I can see are physically chunkier, and in most cases for the better sounding IEM cables, the manufacturers have provided enough information for me to estimate their resistance, there is a correlation. Lower resistance - better audio. I am not a scientist, those who want double blind tests, are welcome to do so. At least they have something to start with, vary resistance of the cable, and listen.
When I could not get an explanation, from anyone else, hard as I tried to so do, I've thankfully, and most relieved, now done my own "experiments" which are repeatable, with ease, and I am sure of this, cables with estimated lower resistance, sound better. At least that is progress. Please note, this is with regard to the IEM cable world, where there are no standards for the electrical properties of cables, i.e there are no minimum expected thresholds, for such electrical properties. Anyone can put any string and anything together and call it an IEM cable. My point is, I have been able to identify something in that Wild Wild West, that makes a difference, and this is responsible for what I have heard. Lower resistance, more clarity, better audio. Why this is so, I leave to the physicists to explain.
Hopefully if one of them reads my anecdotes, they can also do these experiments, and at least I have provided some plausible cause and effect, from what I have heard, and they can investigate and develop this further.
I'll end by saying, I think at some point in time, the IEM cable business will evolve to have some well established minimum standards, such as a maximum acceptable resistance (or resistance per meter), and this can be the start of SANITY, in that business, and really improve the listening experience of those who use IEMs. I submit that at this point in time, most IEM users, are most likely guinea pigs of inadequate cables, especially the stock cables, and are therefore NOT getting the maximum benefit from their IEMs. What you do not know, does not hurt you, so many are blissfully ignorant, of the full potential of their IEM, which can be achieved by getting a better cable. But how does one define a better cable? One factor clearly seems to be via lower resistance, from my own limited experience and experiments.
From my experiments, I would suggest a maximum resistance of 0.2 Ohms, and ideally a maximum resistance of 0.14 Ohms. This is based on my own estimates of the resistance of my silver plated copper cables.(calculated from information provided by the manufacturer)
