Special cables don't improve audio... Or do they?

[NiHaoMike]

As many know, I have always been a disbeliever of fancy Monster Cables and similar, making the statement that a fancy cable cannot possibly make a noticeable audio quality improvement over a generic but decent cable. Every once in a great while, there would be a sale on some fancy audio or video cable that makes it cost about the same as a more ordinary cable. I did buy some, but they merely worked just as well as generic cables, not better.

Recently, an intern arrived at work and it became my task to teach her how to solder. At the same time, I needed an audio wiring harness made for a personal project (compact gaming/media center PC) I was doing. So rather than try to cobble up some "practice" setup for her to solder, I brought the unfinished harness to work - it just needed a little soldering. I had no difficulty getting her started and after a few minutes, all the connections were soldered. I checked everything with a multimeter and gave her the thumbs up.

When I got home and continued working on my personal project, I of course had to install and test the harness. I played a random MP3 (which I later found out was a horrible 128kbps) and it sounded like garbage. I cleaned the connections with no change. Before concluding that she must have made a cold solder joint that was adding distortion, I decided to try a FLAC file. Then the most magical thing happened - despite the signal coming from a $45 motherboard, it sounded unusually clear and high quality. So good, in fact, that it rivaled the audio quality of my main PC with a (at the time) $400 motherboard. (Which I only paid about $200 for due to an employee discount, but that's another story...) In both cases, I was using a $50 (original price, discounted to $20) pair of Klipsch headphones for testing.

At that point, I was a little confused. The intern still needed a little more practice, so I decided to have her make another audio harness for my main PC. Today, I installed it and loaded up a few FLACs. To say that the sound was amazing would be an understatement! She must have some magic charm that extracts every bit of performance out of a piece of audio electronics. The best part is that she actually enjoys doing it! Now I have a new best friend and a new appreciation for HD audio. I'm sure the audio quality improvement is due to psychological reasons and thus no spectrum analyzer or scope would be able to pick it up, but who cares? It just sounds awesome!

Maybe I should have her solder up a simple tube amp next? Some 0.5mm pitch HVICs would be way too advanced for her at this stage...

[Halcyon]

The short answer is no. However there are some absolute rubbish cables out there which I would BARELY classify as cables, disregard those completely.

I won't get into the nitty gritty as this subject has been covered a million times both on this forum and on the internet by people who know a hell of a lot more about audio and electronics than I do.

Those $200 "special" cables are an absolute con. Some half decent cable at a 10th of the cost would do just as well.

Personally, I use balanced audio outs from my PC's external DAC to my speakers however I'm not suggesting everyone needs to go out any buy proper studio monitors for everyday listening. As a general rule, I also never touch MP3 files if I can avoid it. Everything I own is either in WAV or FLAC.

[Towger]

There are various saying about women soldering.

[T3sl4co1l]

What does it matter what she looks like?

What does it matter what the solder joint looks like?

As many know, I have always been a disbeliever of fancy Monster Cables and similar,


<snip text that contradicts opening statement>

Justifying an irrational opinion with unrelated externalities speaks more towards your own mental prejudices and neuroses than anything about the subject itself. 

Tim

[SeanB]

Crap sounding cable is easy, it just has to have a high resistance break ( not open, but likely over 1k) at the input on either the signal or the screen, to make a low pass filter with the cable capacitance. Use a too thin wire that breaks strands and which then makes cable resistance go high does the same. Or poor plastic sheathing that is conductive or even worse piezoelectric or which has significant dielectric absorption, and then you have losses and non linear capacitance in the cable.

As to soldering ability, many assembly houses used to hire women over men, as they are better at tasks that require dexterity.

[KJDS]

As to soldering ability, many assembly houses used to hire women over men, as they are better at tasks that require dexterity.

Generally, they are better at tasks that require both dexterity and repetition. Most blokes get bored after the first dozen, and after the first hundred are no longer paying much attention.

[m100]

I could make a comment on this but I'm not as if I did I'd probably get banned   

[nitro2k01]

Hmm, the original post reads very much as if Mike is having a crush... 

[Mechanical Menace]

There's a difference between decent cables and special "secret Tesla quantum powered all natural" cables, lol.

Given how good on board audio has been for around a decade on even low end MoBos sound cards are also a rip off¹, except for maybe input cards for recording setups.

¹Though I'll admit their... benefits are generally more of the "not even a dog with supercanine hearing could tell the difference in quality" type rather than the pseudoscience stuff most audiophool products spout.

[John Coloccia]

Like most things, the answer to cables sounding better or worse is "it depends".  If all cables are the same, ask yourself why you use balanced audio for long runs but coax for plugging into a guitar.  Before you can define which cable parameters are important and which aren't, you need to identify the application.  How important is capacitance?  Resistance?  Shielding?  Depends what you're doing.  In some cases, extremely important, and in others no so.

[electr_peter]

Hmm, the original post reads very much as if Mike is having a crush... 

Strange things happen - sounds sound nicer, weather is nicer, etc.

[John Coloccia]

If she decides to show some initiative and joins EEVBlog, I think this is kind of a creepy thread for her to run into. 

[NiHaoMike]

The cable is special because my best friend made it. Moreover, I actually got to see it being assembled. It's not like those expensive cables where you just have to take their word that they're special. Maybe that's why I don't get any particular enjoyment out of them - they are like White Van scams to me.

Rest assured, she is just a friend.

[Someone]

Rest assured, she is just a friend.

You didn't seem to get the point, what she looks like is irrelevant, her gender irrelevant, you were proud and have something of value, but the other parts are unprofessional and likely breaching your employers privacy (if not also ethics/conduct) policy.

[NiHaoMike]

OK, I'll remove the link to the video and make the story "anonymous". But I'm sure that if I didn't include the link, somebody would have asked.

[tggzzz]

Never ever forget that placebos really do work even when you know they are placebos. http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/placebos-work-even-when-you-know-10-12-23/

I suspect that the effect is even more pronounced when the subject has chosen and paid for the medicine (or equipment) - since finding "no change" is tantamount to someone calling their own judgement into question.

[SteveyG]

Given how good on board audio has been for around a decade on even low end MoBos sound cards are also a rip off¹, except for maybe input cards for recording setups

I'm still yet to hear onboard sound that I'd class as 'good'. External DACs are almost always audibly better.

[coppice]

Given how good on board audio has been for around a decade on even low end MoBos sound cards are also a rip off¹, except for maybe input cards for recording setups

I'm still yet to hear onboard sound that I'd class as 'good'. External DACs are almost always audibly better.

Its not usually the DACs. Its the output amps. Try several high quality headphones plugged into most motherboards or notebooks, and the results are all over the place. Some badly gurgle, because the headphone is clearly making the amp go unstable. Another headphone might sound fine plugged into the same socket.

[Monittosan]

mite have to get my GF to start soldering some audio cables and an Amp  hell i guess some boobs could even help sell some of my test gear 

[RickBrant]

There are such things as very bad cables. (Using #24 magnet wire for a 3 meter speaker run would be an example.)

There are also such things as "audiophile" cables that are deliberately designed with excess capacitance (for example), so as to color the sound. "See, it really does sound different!" (Yeah, so would a treble control permanently set to about 11 o'clock.)

But assuming a minimal level of competent design, it is just not that tough to get 20 kHz or less at line level or speaker level from a low-impedance output down a few meters of cable without distortion in the typical home environment. If you live "downrange" from a powerful radio station, you may want particularly well-shielded cables.  Phono cartridge output does have to be handled with low-capacitance cables because of the cartridge characteristics.

Roger Russel's speaker cable page: http://www.roger-russell.com/wire/wire.htm
An excellent article, not really about cable, but see the "Simplifying a complex problem" section: http://www.rane.com/note126.html
"Audio myths workshop" - not just about cable, but very relevant to placebo effect:

n.b.: Some cases of "I changed cables and it got better!" are real; they're attributable to long-standing phono (Cinch) plug connections. As these are not gas-tight and are generally the second worst class of connectors ever used for audio (the worst are of course 6.5 mm phone connectors, with their 3.5mm offspring the worst of the worst) they can and do develop corrosion at the contact points. Change cables (or even unplug, clean contacts, and replug) and yeah, it'll get better. Not because of the cable, though!

[Mechanical Menace]

Its not usually the DACs. Its the output amps. Try several high quality headphones plugged into most motherboards or notebooks, and the results are all over the place. Some badly gurgle, because the headphone is clearly making the amp go unstable. Another headphone might sound fine plugged into the same socket.

Ah, I am in my own small way an audiophool and with PCs, consoles and the like always have them connected up to external amps or active speakers. I bet it's much easier and cheaper to make the PCs output amps work happily at line level than the all over the place characteristics of headphones so I'm guessing that's why I haven't noticed a difference.

[Sigmoid]

This post sounds like a creepypasta... 

[SL4P]

I'm also a complete disbeliever in cable hocus-pocus...  BUT.
Some gear and cables -are- simply incompatible - due to poor design and mismatched application.

The price of the cable, or having gold connectors won't have any fundamental effect... (it can help)"
Others have identified poor quality parts, assembly and resistance of the leads as common issues, but capacitance is probably more often the culprit in critical application of cables between any two devices!

Resistance will usually manifest as a variation in the signal amplitude, while the others may introduce noise add other undesirables.

Stray capacitance and variations will introduce non-linear artefacts across frequencies, humidity and proximity to other equipment!  Resistance variation will make it worse.

Also consider these artefacts may be outside the ability if your physical senses - and cause problems in the equipment which are not audible or visible - causing high frequency oscillation, excess power draw and other nasties!

...and that's all I have to say about that.

Dig deeper.

[RickBrant]

Yeah, let's dig deeper.

The price of the cable, or having gold connectors won't have any fundamental effect... (it can help)"

Gold plated connectors can actually cause a problem if they're mated with something else. Gold plating is soft. Enough insertions and removals and the gold can wear away, leaving the base metal, which usually corrodes quickly.

Others have identified poor quality parts, assembly and resistance of the leads as common issues, but capacitance is probably more often the culprit in critical application of cables between any two devices!

Resistance will usually manifest as a variation in the signal amplitude, while the others may introduce noise add other undesirables.

Stray capacitance and variations will introduce non-linear artefacts across frequencies, humidity and proximity to other equipment!  Resistance variation will make it worse.

Resistance: For line-level connections, you are working into a load impedance of typically 10,000 ohms. Even if your cable had 10 ohms' resistance (absurdly high), the effect would be inaudible.

As for capacitance, you would have to have absurdly high cable C, combined with unusually high output impedance of the driving device, to have a noticeable effect.

Let's run an example. In my office I have a 50-foot run between my audio rack and the mixer that's at the computer desk. (it could have been 12 feet, but I wanted it to run around the walls instead of across the floor.) It's Belden 8761, a fairly conventional and very commonly used shielded twisted pair, running from balanced output and balanced input. Belden shows this stuff to be 47 pf/ft in that configuration. This is actually on the high side as home audio cable goes, but twisted-pair does double the capacitance.

The output impedance of the mixer that's driving the cable is 120 ohms, and that's pretty similar to good home audio gear; a lot of high-end stuff has output impedance down in the tens of ohms (lower drive impedance = better).

The 3 dB rolloff point with 50 feet of 47 pf/ft cable driven by 120 ohms, is above 500 kHz. Yes, five hundred kilohertz.

(The formula is: f = 1 / (2 x pi x Z(output) x C(cable)). See the Rane Audio article I linked above, section "cable as a low-pass filter")

This is a 6 dB/octave rolloff, so its effect in the audio band should be completely negligible.

I think I can live with that. If we were dealing with, say, 600 ohms drive impedance (which used to be common) and much longer cable (which certainly isn't common), that would be different, and we'd want to look at low-capacitance cables and lower-impedance drive circuits. Or a "current drive" configuration that avoids these problems completely.

I hope this puts the audible effect of cables into some real-world context.

The ugly reality, of course, is that some of the "high end" cables are deliberately designed with absurdly high capacitance so as to exacerbate this effect. So yes, they really do sound different, as well as measure different. And any engineer would reject them as "broken as designed". And they charge premium prices for them!

[John Coloccia]

As for capacitance, you would have to have absurdly high cable C, combined with unusually high output impedance of the driving device, to have a noticeable effect.

Which is exactly the case for your typical guitar/bass.  In a 10 or 20 foot cable, there is very audible difference between a super low 15pf/ft cable and a 50pf/ft cable.  Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean the low capacitance cable sounds better.  The instrument cables I make use cable that is a bit under 40pf/ft.  For your typical 10' to 15' cable, that sounds about "normal" to me, and what I expect to hear.  Much more, it sounds muddy, and much less, doesn't sound right either.

See, the thing is that there's always a nugget of truth (usually, anyway) in audiophool logic, but it's usually misapplied or over generalized.  We can have a similar discussion about the "sound" of various op-amps.  Do different op-amps sound different?  Well, of course they do, IF you're using them in a way that they can sound different, and I can prattle on for hours about that.