5m HDMI lead - worth spending a little more than the cheapest?

kylew said:
Cables don't make a difference as long as they're of sufficient specification, whether that be digital or analogue. With cables "quality" only goes backwards in terms of image or sound, not forwards as these people have you believe. As long as the cable is properly made, the image or sound quality will be exactly the same on a "cheap" one as it would on an expensive whether it's analogue or digital.
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We will have too agree to disagree on this one, I do honestly believe and can hear a definete difference in the sound between cheap in box cables and better quality £20 cables.
 
TONY said:
We will have too agree to disagree on this one, I do honestly believe and can hear a definete difference in the sound between cheap in box cables and better quality £20 cables.
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If the cables in the box are negatively affecting the sound then they will be unfit for purpose rather than it being an indication that the £20 cables are improving the sound quality over "normal".

People can't tell the difference between "high end" speaker cable and unfolded coathangers with terminals soldered to the end of them and used as speaker cables. It's all about the gauge of the wire used.
 
kylew said:
If the cables in the box are negatively affecting the sound then they will be unfit for purpose rather than it being an indication that the £20 cables are improving the sound quality over "normal".

People can't tell the difference between "high end" speaker cable and unfolded coathangers with terminals soldered to the end of them and used as speaker cables. It's all about the gauge of the wire used.
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So your saying that a steel coat hanger can transmit an electrical audio signal as well as a copper cable, what have you been smoking?
 
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With the right gear it is perfectly possible to hear the difference between analogue interconnects, power cables and supports. If anyone doubts this then I'll be happy to lay on a demonstration.

HDMI cables also exhibit differences when tested. This can be seen in the Eye Diagrams. Cables with better construction have a larger mask margin. However, on short cables this doesn't matter much. As long as the mask margin is just big enough for the signal to pass unscathed then a low quality cable is just as effective as a better made one.

A002_4809-N.jpg


The same is true of timing jitter, cable capacitance and inductance, and intra-pair skew and inter-pair skew which all act to reduce the mask margin and limit the cables bandwidth. 1080p60 doesn't come anywhere near pushing the limits of Category II (High Speed) HDMI cables as long as they are made to spec, so with short cables there's enough leeway to allow for sloppy manufacturing and poor tolerance control without signal constriction becoming a problem.

However, the cable is only one component in the signal chain. The source and sink device have their parts to play too.

Modern electronics devices are rarely over-engineered. "Just good enough" is the common mantra. Well, if the same mantra is applied to HDMI circuits then we start to see bottlenecks in performance. As long as there's still sufficient mask margin in the signal chain then this isn't a problem. But what happen when products age and component start to degrade?

Those of us who are readers here regularly see posts about the capacitors in Samsung and LG TV power supplies. All consumer electronics degrade over time. That's why they eventually fail. The same is true of HDMI circuits, so does it hurt to spend just a couple of quid more than the cheapest on cables for something made better as a little extra insurance?

Oh, and the comparison between USB cables and HDMI cables really doesn't hold water: The data rates involved are hugely different. USB devices buffer data, HDMI devices don't. USB handles bursts of information and is backed up with error correction. HDMI is a continuous data stream without error correction. USB has only a single channel of data to contend with, HDMI has 4, so USB doesn't have inter-pair skew issues to deal with.

The specific comparison is made with USB printing. Well, if your printer could run at the speed of the data firing through a HDMI cable then instead of churning out 1 page every three seconds you'd get 1000 pages.
 
lucid said:
With the right gear it is perfectly possible to hear the difference between analogue interconnects, power cables and supports. If anyone doubts this then I'll be happy to lay on a demonstration.
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Prove it. Send the results to JREF, claim your $1m.

I'm tired of hi-fi "experts" making the same claims over and over again for years without any evidence whatsoever other than "oh, it's obvious if you've got the right equipment". A demonstration proves nothing.

Time and time again, when this stuff is put to the test, no-one manages to prove anything, and instead blame the test. If you want to keep on claiming that magic cables, supports etc. make a difference then you need to offer some proof otherwise you will just be called out time and time again.
 
oli collett said:
Prove it. Send the results to JREF, claim your $1m.

I'm tired of hi-fi "experts" making the same claims over and over again for years without any evidence whatsoever other than "oh, it's obvious if you've got the right equipment". A demonstration proves nothing.

Time and time again, when this stuff is put to the test, no-one manages to prove anything, and instead blame the test. If you want to keep on claiming that magic cables, supports etc. make a difference then you need to offer some proof otherwise you will just be called out time and time again.
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Come up. Be the tester. :D
 
It's IMPOSSIBLE to get minor differences in colours, sharpness, clarity etc if the data ends up getting messed up over HDMI. If a few 1's and 0's are interpreted wrong, you will instantly know, one of two things will happen.

1. Black sparklies over the image as it tries to give you an image of sorts( can happen with long cable runs )
2. TV will say "No Signal".

For data corruption to end up giving you reduce sharpeness the odds would be a gazillion to 1 :). Theres no ghosting, no better colours, no sharpness differ.

Think of it this way, get an image, open a hex editor and mess with a few values. I just did it below and this is what I got.

You don't see slight colour difference
You don't see reduced sharpness
You don't see better blacks

You do see one ****** up image.

boxsn.jpg
 
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Johnnytoxic said:
Your not understanding that it's IMPOSSIBLE to get minor differences in colours, sharpness, clarity etc if the data ends up getting messed up over HDMI. If a few 1's and 0's are missing, the whole image will suffer and you will instantly know, one of two things will happen.

Sparklies everywhere over the image ( can happen with long cable runs )
TV will say "No Signal".

Both are instantly noticeable. This is it, no ghosting, no better colours, no extra sharpness.
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Johnnytoxic, would you like to point out the section in my post where I am supposed to have said someone will see "differences in colours, sharpness, clarity"

I wait with baited breath...............................
 
kylew said:
If the cables in the box are negatively affecting the sound then they will be unfit for purpose rather than it being an indication that the £20 cables are improving the sound quality over "normal".

People can't tell the difference between "high end" speaker cable and unfolded coathangers with terminals soldered to the end of them and used as speaker cables. It's all about the gauge of the wire used.
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you cant lump analogue interconnects in with HDMI leads and SPdif-carrying coax cable. It isn't simply just about the cable being sufficiently thick, either. What about inductance and capacitance? they plays a quite a crucial roll in analogue equipment yet you haven't mentioned that? You can say the cable needs to be fit for purpose and yes, it does, but that could mean anything and it doesnt only relate to build-quality. It doesnt prove that there are no differences in cables carrying analogue waveforms, either. In fact it's quite the opposite - the cable ideally needs to be built for the application.

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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2.5db down using 5m cable - I can assure you, people can tell the difference between (perfectly well-built) speaker cables with particular gear. It's not enough to say coat hangers are as good as anything else - that's just something you've heard somebody else say. Try it yourself, you might be surprised.
 
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lucid said:
Johnnytoxic, would you like to point out the section in my post where I am supposed to have said someone will see "differences in colours, sharpness, clarity"

I wait with baited breath...............................
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brains not in gear. I've ammended :)
 
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Haggisman said:
...really?



...really?

Ok then ;)

Do you get richer and deeper colours on your printer using a £50 USB cable over the £2 one that came with the printer? :p
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have you not seen the audiophile USB cables? £300+ or the £500 ethernet cables!

i guess you could argue that a poor USB cable with interference could just take longer to send the data where audiograde cant just lag on image/sound

personally with HDMI i would go for a named cheap cable. i use 2 QEDs in my system (£50 each) and they are no better than the cheaper ones i got from Game or free with virgin boxes. i guess its all snake oil unless you have stupidly priced top end kit

as long as you get a decent signal they should all be fine. this isnt speaker cable or analogue cables where you can hear a difference, its 010101 etc. maybe spend more on longer runs

if you want 3d you do need a 1.4 capable cable but i think many 1.3 will work too...
 
realBabelfish said:
personally with HDMI i would go for a named cheap cable. i use 2 QEDs in my system (£50 each) and they are no better than the cheaper ones i got from Game or free with virgin boxes. i guess its all snake oil unless you have stupidly priced top end kit
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Why, what happens if you have "stupidly priced top end kit"? Won't a £5 HDMI cable still work perfectly?
 
kylew said:
Are you sure it's not a case of "I know I'm joking based on your response"? :p
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after wasting cash on 2x£50 QED cables i will not waste it any more (i started HC with analogue so i have spent money on good analogue cables in the past). i got caught up in the moment when i purchased my speakers and BDP.

if i suddenly won £millions£ i would upgrade my HC and most likely try one of the silly priced cables just to see, if you are rich its not a big issue. thats what i meant.
 
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