Willhelm_Scream
Member
- Joined
- Aug 25, 2019
- Messages
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I have always felt that expensive cables were a waste and that differences between headphone cables were small too for anyone to notice unless you were an audiophile or had the "golden ears". Unless you have a cheap or poorly made cable.
However, my thinking was altered a while ago. I use a DAP by Sony called the NW-ZX300. It has balanced headphone output and I was told that the balanced output was a lot "better". I bought a KK cable (4.4mm to 2 X 3.5mm) for under $100.00. I used the low gain setting and even volume matched I preferred it over the SE output. For some reason a few months later I bought a Sukira cable for about $165.00. The Sukira is stiff and a pain in the butt, but when compared back and forth, it does sound noticably better. I know this is not scientific, but I was surprised at the audible difference.
I will still NEVER buy a $500.00 cable, but there are definitely differences, however slight.
I always assumed there would be no difference between cables, but I'll admit I have never tested it. It just seems counterintuitive to me. Out of all the audiophile myths I actually think it is much more likely that tube amps add "pleasant distortion" than the idea that expensive cables sound better (I'm pretty much agnostic on this one until I actually test it). I find it hard to test things though, because it is so difficult to volume match. The other day I decided to compare the DAC in an old cheap android phone to the dac in my topping. I'm almost positive the dac in the topping sounds way better, but I still don't want to draw any conclusions, because I couldn't match the volumes. The phone required me to put the thx on the third gain setting to be able to hear it right, so in order to compare them I had to flip that switch and turn the nob up every time, and I still wasn't sure if I reached the exact volume.