Speaker cables, you DO get what you pay for!

kylew said:
I think the point is that it's about inter connects. Though you are right. If a component has 'cheap' wiring inside it, why would adding an expensive cable make improvements?

It's like making a 10 lane motorway that bottle necks in to a single 40mph lane for 10 miles at the beginning and end. One car goes in and one car goes out at a time.

Weird analogy, most probably wrong, but oh well :p
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Nope you're quite right. I had to replace the binding post on a KEF speaker, lets just say the speaker cable I had that cost £2.25/m was rather better than the stuff used inside the speaker!
 
I did wonder how long it would take for this thread to fall into the usual "of course it can't make a difference, blah blah".
It's as though some people believe that some buyers like to spend dosh on stuff that achieves absolutely bugger all.

More importantly, also makes me wonder whether the person stating that it's all nuts has actually spent any time at all listening to it.
 
haha a lively topic at last, i like it :D and quite good timing for me personally as i am currently testing out various interconnects with my gear.

so far i've yet to find any interconnects under £50/m that really colour the sound, in fact you could say they all sound pretty much identical. my gear isn't super high end but £1600 worth of lively floorstanders and more or less the same price in amps should be able to flesh out distinctive differences in cables if it was there.

i can switch between cables on the fly as my DAC has 2 outs so it's as easy as hitting the button on my amp remote - doing this through memory is a complete waste of time imo.
 
Mr_Sukebe said:
It's as though some people believe that some buyers like to spend dosh on stuff that achieves absolutely bugger all.
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I think the point most are getting at is the buyers only percieve such differences due to placebo, not that they actively and consciously want to buy things that achieve nothing.
 
Mr_Sukebe said:
I did wonder how long it would take for this thread to fall into the usual "of course it can't make a difference, blah blah".
It's as though some people believe that some buyers like to spend dosh on stuff that achieves absolutely bugger all.

More importantly, also makes me wonder whether the person stating that it's all nuts has actually spent any time at all listening to it.
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pot kettle black springs to mind. again.



now, speaker cable DOES make a difference. it does, its that simple. however what is painfully frustrating to read are posts from yourself and other members consistantly dismissing the idea that if you can hear it, you can measure it. cables aren't a black art, and some are more suitable than others for a particular setup, you'd be a fool to think otherwise. but why then, if people are so confident in this concept/idea/drivel....whatever you want to call it, are they not prepared to put their cards on the table and actually bloody prove it?

you dont get the 'same old dross' from people saying 'well actually, you can prove it if that were the case. you get the same old dross from people saying 'well i know better, so nerr. oh and you must be using an alba cd player and a goodmans amp and speakers'.

try a little harder!


and the end of the day, it boils down to this simple concept: getting the best for what you're prepared to spend. why are people so dead against questioning the laws of the almighty audiophiles? maybe people are too scared of what they'll find. or worse.......maybe its a class thing. you know, i own ATC speakers so i must be considerably richer (and better) than yaaaaoouu?

kylew said:
If the cable is thick enough as not to impede the signal, then how does the cable itself alter the signal that is running through it?

If you had 3 cables running treble, middle and, bass signals and one was impeded which resulted in the signal being affected, I would understand a 'change' in sound, but while it's running as one signal through the output to the cable, to the speaker, how is anything but the whole sound lost due to impedance?
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here's the thing, it's not just about handling current and voltage. the capacitance and resistance and entire electrical nature of the cable also comes in to play, more so the longer the leads or. I'm going to link to a Rod Elliot article again: http://sound.westhost.com/cables-p2.htm#spkr-leads

Difficult Loads
While it is true that reasonable quality twin cables (figure eight or zip cord) are adequate for nominal 8 ohm loads over short distances, there are a number of popular loudspeakers that are anything but nominal at high frequencies.

Two that a reader advised me about are the AR11 and the Quad ESL (old model). Both of these drop below 2 ohms in the treble frequencies. The AR bottoming out at 5kHz and the Quad at 18Khz (although anything from 15kHz to 18kHz is common). The dips are fairly sharp and so the load impedance is highly capacitive on the way down and inductive on the way up. The frequencies are high enough to not worry good amplifiers but what about the response at these dip frequencies?

Twin wire cables all have significant inductance which increases in proportion to length. With 10 amp rated twin flex over only 5 metres the response was down by 2.5 dB into one Quad ESL at 18 Khz, and 3.5 dB into the other speaker which had 8 metres. This was audible and unacceptable.
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~3db down with 5 meters of cable? try knocking the treble back 3db on your amp....can you hear it?

Summary
Essentially, the main offenders in speaker leads are resistance and inductance. Of these, inductance is the hardest to minimise, and although usually small, it may still cause problems with some loads (see update, below). Many construction methods have been used, from multiple CAT-5 data cables, with the wires interconnected (usually all the coloured leads are deemed the +ve conductor, and all the white wires - the "mates" - are used as the negative). Because of the tight twist, the inductance is minimised, but at the expense of capacitance. In some cases, the capacitance may be high enough to cause instability in the amplifier, which not only does awful things to the sound, but can damage the amp.

Another popular method of minimising inductance is to use a pair of coaxial leads (e.g.75 Ohm TV/video coax or similar). The inner conductor of one and the outer conductor of the other are joined to make the +ve lead, and vice-versa for the negative. A good quality coax has a relatively low capacitance, and by interconnecting in this way, inductance is also reduced by a very worthwhile margin.

It is widely held that with difficult loudspeaker loads - as presented by many modern speaker systems with complex crossover networks - that reducing inductance can be very beneficial. This is especially true where the crossover causes significant drops in impedance at some frequencies. This also places unusually high demands on the amplifier - one of the reasons that some amplifiers just don't "cut it" with some speakers.

These problems can be reduced or even eliminated entirely by biamping or triamping [3], allowing the use of good quality but not extravagant speaker leads.

Resistance, which is easy to eliminate, reduces the damping factor and wastes power. With even reasonably robust leads, this should not be an issue
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do the leads make a difference?

yes they certainly do.
 
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This has to be one of the most tedious things to discuss - every side of the argument has already been aired over 9000 times in the past :(
 
A quick and good tip for anyone feeling that their speaker cables just don't cut it any more........ Clean the bare ends and the terminals to remove any oxidation/gunk that has accumulated. Same goes for interconnects.

As for whether more expensive cables make a difference........ thats up to you to decide for yourself. I notice less difference now than I used too, part of the aging process is narrowing of the audible range.... but for me yes they do make a difference.
 
Not going to quote your whole post James but well said :) I was going to post similar articles but they'd probably be dismissed ignored by the people who should really read them...
 
james.miller said:
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All that says to me, is what I thought anyway. I never said they don't make a difference, I said providing the cable is sufficient, there will be no difference above and beyond.

That's what I gathered from that quote. They didn't mention anything about increased sound quality that people talk about.

We know there are differences with analogue cables, but it's only when the cable is inadequate.

I've tested cheap cables to expensive ones, can't tell the difference.

The worst thing though is people going on about image quality differences between HDMI cables. Or how gold plated tos-link cables produce superior sound quality.
 
Wow, pretty intense debate!

People always say they've tested this and tested that but have they actually sat comfortably and bunged on their favourite (and most musical) album?

Right this moment I'm playing Jack Johnson's In Between Dreams album, I know this album's sound colour almost inside out having have played it more times than an insomniac will try to count sheep while attempting to sleep and it certainly has a different sound to it, it's not in your face obvious but little details just pop out in a sustained manner - the striking of the guitar strings the way they pip pip pip pip is more present and the overall ambiance is more wider than I recall from the previous cables.

It's just more lively than before, I don't know how better to describe it other than that.
 
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That's what I gathered from that quote. They didn't mention anything about increased sound quality that people talk about.
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define sound quality. a drop in treble is an affect on sound quality. if standard cables are fine, but others produce a 3db drop in treble is that not a negative effect on sound quality?

We know there are differences with analogue cables, but it's only when the cable is inadequate..
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then define inadequate? if you're getting unwanted artifact then surely the cable is inadiquate? its what people define and adiquate and inadiquate that is at question :)

kylew said:
The worst thing though is people going on about image quality differences between HDMI cables. Or how gold plated tos-link cables produce superior sound quality.
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oh i totally agree, but we are talking about analogue waveforms traveling along a few meters of cable that are directly influenced by outside varibles - optical cables and hdmi's are not affected in the same way, not by a long shot.
 
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mrk said:
Wow, pretty intense debate!

People always say they've tested this and tested that but have they actually sat comfortably and bunged on their favourite (and most musical) album?

Right this moment I'm playing Jack Johnson's In Between Dreams album, I know this album's sound colour almost inside out having have played it more times than an insomniac will try to count sheep while attempting to sleep and it certainly has a different sound to it, it's not in your face obvious but little details just pop out in a sustained manner - the striking of the guitar strings the way they pip pip pip pip is more present and the overall ambiance is more wider than I recall from the previous cables.

It's just more lively than before, I don't know how better to describe it other than that.
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Out of interest, have you tried ABX testing on foobar? It's not at all related to speaker cables, but an ABX test of lossless vs. lossy is often a very good way to check your perceptions vs. reality. Even at 128kb/s people find it a lot more difficult than they think - give it a go sometime :)
 
I hate these discussions haha, always make me paranoid I'm not getting the best out of my equipment! I'm literally in the process of moving at the moment, and have never used expensive cabling; I've just bought a 100m reel of 1.5mm 189strand copper cabling, which cost me £25, which is far more justifiable to me than spending £100 on the same amount of gale manufactured similar thickness cabling from Richer Sounds.

As long as the cabling is of decent quality, and isn't oxidising all over the shop, it should be fine for my needs, my AV amp is only rated upto 130w per channel (although a review I read stated that could be up to as much as 200w), and the distances aren't going to be long, I'm 'only' using £500 speakers.

My beliefs are, albeit untested (as I dont have the money to spend £2-5p/m on cable), that 1.5/2.5mm copper cabling should be enough for lengths under 20m, if you're not using kit costing thousands. If I was going to spend £1000+ on a pair of speakers, I'd pickup some Van Damme Blue 2.5mm for £2.50 per meter, but for the cost difference, and at this sort of length, I honestly don't believe it should make a difference, as there shouldn't be noticable resistance/interference on a cable of that length and thickness, and I personally don't believe the cable will be of much greater quality/purity, that said the Van Damme will likely have better shielding.

If anyone feels Im letting my system down, feel free to tell me!
 
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All you have to do is listen! Both interconnect and speaker cables can and do make a difference.

I've heard this demonstrated on several occasions at Hi-Fi shows, in dealers shops and with home dems.

Whether the improvements are worth the cost or not is another story, but i've just invested a fair bit of money in recabling my system based on home dems!
 
james.miller said:
you know, i own ATC speakers so i must be considerably richer (and better) than yaaaaoouu?
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Get out you lower class scum, and go flip some burgers :p:D

(coming from an ATC owner)






I do love these debates, as some people get a lot of reading material to look through whereas those battling each side just carry on battling. I'm still firmly on the fence, but do have one foot on each side and am certainly not adverse to testing it out. But like I have said before, I'm not willing to spend money just to test out cables, but would gladly try it with someone elses setup if they wanted to try it out and had the kit already.
 
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