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Is ICONOCLAST cable a "better" cable?

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Cuniberti

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To make something perfectly clear, people do hear a difference. But this is not because it actually sounds different, but because their brains are fooling them.
An A/B/X blind test is a way to sort that out. Maybe I will but the cable and send it to ASR and let him take a listen. Someone who can hear a difference if there is one, me not so much.
 

HiFidFan

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A new forum account plugin a youtube channel / product with a clickbait-y topic title; not suspicious at all.
</sarcasm>

My first thought when I saw this thread was 'somebody needs some views/subscribers'. But I'm cynical.

Hey, interviewing someone about contentious subjects is nothing new. Personally, I have an open mind, and am willing to listen to pretty much anything.
 

amirm

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I had watched this video and his much longer one clocking near 3 hours on SF Audiophile society. I used 2X speed to get through it faster. :) He basically has some hypothesis of what would be good for sound and then aims to create such a cable. I don't think he will survive in this market. High-end customers who buy such cables have an allergy to any spec driven design and at any rate, this cable is too cheap for them to accept as being good. Our camp of course has no patience for it.
 

jtwrace

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My first thought when I saw this thread was 'somebody needs some views/subscribers'. But I'm cynical.

Hey, interviewing someone about contentious subjects is nothing new. Personally, I have an open mind, and am willing to listen to pretty much anything.
Are you accusing me of setting up another account? Cables are contentious, if anyone actually listens to this interview I'd like for them to draw the conclusion that I feel as though comes from it.
 

HiFidFan

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Are you accusing me of setting up another account? Cables are contentious, if anyone actually listens to this interview I'd like for them to draw the conclusion that I feel as though comes from it.

No, I am not accusing you of anything.

My reaction was to the click bait type of post title
 
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Cuniberti

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No, I am not accusing you of anything.

My reaction was to the click bait type of post title
That's understandable. I'm John Cuniberti a professional recording/mastering engineer with 40 years of experience. I'm always looking for ways to improve my system in both my studio and at home. I appreciate Amir's contributions to the subject so much I donated both money and products for testing. I hope that helps.
 

egellings

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45pF per foot seems a bit high to me for a small signal cable. My cheapies measure about 30pF per foot.
 
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Cuniberti

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45pF per foot seems a bit high to me for a small signal cable. My cheapies measure about 30pF per foot.
He explains in the video that to get the phase right you need to adjust the LCR a bit. It's not about getting the best LCR, it's about phase. It's all in the video but no one here is going to watch it so now I need to explain but it's getting tiresome and I may delete it by the end of the day.
 

egellings

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If 3 or 4 feet of audio shield cable in a home system is driven by a modern lo Zo preamp or other source, there should be too little phase shift to worry about. In studios with hundreds of feet of cable, or with complex non audio signals then it becomes an issue.
 
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Cuniberti

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I had watched this video and his much longer one clocking near 3 hours on SF Audiophile society. I used 2X speed to get through it faster. :) He basically has some hypothesis of what would be good for sound and then aims to create such a cable. I don't think he will survive in this market. High-end customers who buy such cables have an allergy to any spec driven design and at any rate, this cable is too cheap for them to accept as being good. Our camp of course has no patience for it.
Amen, that's what I was thinking. You should have the Morrow cables I sent tomorrow. First time posting here, an interesting crowd.
 
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Cuniberti

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If 3 or 4 feet of audio shield cable in a home system is driven by a modern lo Zo preamp or other source, there should be too little phase shift to worry about. In studios with hundreds of feet of cable, or with complex non audio signals then it becomes an issue.
Speaker cable - not interconnects
 

DonH56

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Have not read all of this so apologies in advance if not relevant. I have also not watched the opening video.

45 pF/ft seems about right for an XLR cable especially if star-quad topology.

There are gobs of threads here and elsewhere discussing the impact cable LCR has upon the signal. Phase shift is coupled with the LCR parameters, you can't really separate them. The issue comes down to how much is in the audio band and how much is acceptable. For interconnects, bandwidths for typical consumer and pro audio gear studio interconnects is in the MHz range, so phase shift in the audio band is insignificant. Especially when laid on top of the immense amount of phase shift introduced by microphones, various mixer/preamplifier/processing/filter stages, amplifiers, and monitors (speakers).

Phase shift alone is not a problem; any time you have a cable length longer than zero (0) and non-superconducting you add some phase shift to the signal. How the phase slope (group delay) changes over frequency is more important. Non-linear phase shift leads to non-constant group delay, meaning not all frequencies are delayed the same, and then you get smearing in the time domain. This is a real problem in my day job dealing with GHz signals; not so much in audio, or rather it is a problem mainly with analog signal processing (filters and such) and not with the cables themselves.

A system with 100-ohm preamp output impedance driving 100' of cable with say 45 pF/ft and 40 m-Ohm/ft (e.g. Mogami W2893) driving a 20 k-Ohm load (next stage in the chain) will have about 300 kHz bandwidth and about 3.4 degrees of phase shift at 20 kHz (solid magnitude, dashed phase).
1616010270038.png


If instead this is a speaker cable, the output and load impedances are much lower. If we use 100 m-Ohm amplifier output (pretty high these days, a damping factor of about 80) and a 10-ohm speaker (higher speaker impedance = more shift) with 16-gauge cable (~4 m-Ohm/ft so about 0.4 ohms for 100') and sticking with 45 pF/ft then the bandwidth is well over 10 MHz and phase shift at 20 kHz is essentially 0 across the 100-foot cable:
1616010641229.png


Interaction with the speaker's impedance will affect this result since the speaker is not a purely resistive load, nor is the amplifier's output impedance, but in practice the amplifier's output impedance and speaker's impedance is far more important than phase shift in the wire.

At least IME/IMO - Don
 
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Cuniberti

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Have not read all of this so apologies in advance if not relevant. I have also not watched the opening video.

45 pF/ft seems about right for an XLR cable especially if star-quad topology.

There are gobs of threads here and elsewhere discussing the impact cable LCR has upon the signal. Phase shift is coupled with the LCR parameters, you can't really separate them. The issue comes down to how much is in the audio band and how much is acceptable. For interconnects, bandwidths for typical consumer and pro audio gear studio interconnects is in the MHz range, so phase shift in the audio band is insignificant. Especially when laid on top of the immense amount of phase shift introduced by microphones, various mixer/preamplifier/processing/filter stages, amplifiers, and monitors (speakers).

Phase shift alone is not a problem; any time you have a cable length longer than zero (0) and non-superconducting you add some phase shift to the signal. How the phase slope (group delay) changes over frequency is more important. Non-linear phase shift leads to non-constant group delay, meaning not all frequencies are delayed the same, and then you get smearing in the time domain. This is a real problem in my day jon dealing with GHz signals; not so much in audio, or rather it is a problem mainly with analog signal processing (filters and such) and not with the cables themselves.

A system with 100-ohm preamp output impedance driving 100' of cable with say 45 pF/ft and 40 m-Ohm/ft (e.g. Mogami W2893) driving a 20 k-Ohm load (next stage in the chain) will have about 300 kHz bandwidth and about 3.4 degrees of phase shift at 20 kHz (solid magnitude, dashed phase).
View attachment 118741

If instead this is a speaker cable, the output and load impedances are much lower. If we use 100 m-Ohm amplifier output (pretty high these days, a damping factor of about 80) and a 10-ohm speaker (higher speaker impedance = more shift) with 16-gauge cable (~4 m-Ohm/ft so about 0.4 ohms for 100') and sticking with 45 pF/ft then the bandwidth is well over 10 MHz and phase shift at 20 kHz is essentially 0 across the 100-foot cable:
View attachment 118742

Interaction with the speaker's impedance will affect this result since the speaker is not a purely resistive load, nor is the amplifier's output impedance, but in practice the amplifier's output impedance and speaker's impedance is more important than phase shift in the wire.

At least IME/IMO - Don
Thank you, this is the kind of comment that makes it worthwhile to post here. Trolly dismiss, not so much.
 

Chrispy

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Just looks silly expensive, trying to horn in on the market of the cable charlatans?
 
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