"A British Audiophile" compares audio interconnects

[Halcyon]

Yes, I know. The whole audiophool thing has been done to death, but I still can't help but shake my head at these people who can trick themselves into hearing differences that don't exist.



He compared cables and was apparently able to hear a difference in "where instruments were located", how "woolly" the bass sounded. He was also able to determine that some of the cables had more "presence" and could determine the "leading edge of the notes" better on some cables. I could go on. Apparently interconnect cables play the role of "filters" in an audio system.

What's interesting is that there seems to be a distinct lack of negative comments or criticism calling out his bullshit... could he perhaps be deleting comments that aren't favourable?

Secondly, surprise surprise, the most expensive cable (which he apparently paid £800 for) scored the highest in his tests and the cheapest performed "worst", but he claims that "he couldn't care less if the cheaper cables sound better" (of course, we all know the cheaper cables never come out on top in these kinds of biased and unscientific tests, so he's safe there. Money well spent!)

 

[MazeFrame]

In theory, a cable could be made to have higher resistance after a set point (skin effect).

Would be nice if someone with access to a 20Hz to 20kHz LCR meter got his hands on one of these cables, just to see what the numbers say.

[bd139]

These things always remind me of my father who was a "wine expert". Or that was until he didn't realise a bottle was thoroughly corked, drank half of it and got everyone else to taste how good it was. Then everyone knew he was talking bollocks to obtain intellectual status.

In this scenario I would love to see coat speaker replaced with coat hangers wrapped in sticky tape which is what I had to use for my first HiFi set up. When I bought some proper cables I couldn't tell the difference at all.

Perhaps I should start selling audio grade coat hangers 🤔

[SeanB]

Well, I picked up some of the braided PTFE cables, and am using them, suitably undone, as test leads, as they do have a reasonable amount of copper in them. Not too flexible, but fine for power supply use.

Did use the Van Del Hul as interconnects, but they are no different to the others, except they are much better shielded than the original cheap came with cables, which came as about 5 strands of possibly wire for inner, and 3 strands of almost metal as braid, not even foil wrapped. Just had to resolder the dry joints on them, they rely on solder to provide mechanical support and contact for the inner core.

[xrunner]

Same BS different day. They bias themselves towards the appearance and price. The best looking and most expensive will win. The tests need to be blind comparisons. I'd pick a roll of Radio Shack wire and build it up with pretty coverings and say it costs $12,000. It would win hands-down.

[MrMobodies]

What's interesting is that there seems to be a distinct lack of negative comments or criticism calling out his bullshit... could he perhaps be deleting comments that aren't favourable?

... When he feels like it.

We'll see how mine will do:

MrMobodies 14:39 23/08/21
Can you demonstrate these differences or results through an oscilloscope and also tear the cables down to show us what's inside and measure stuff? I'd only be believe it when I see it.

MrMobodies  14:41 23/08/21
I'd like to see you get yourself a hearing test and show us that you have superior hearing in these sorts of things.

[xrunner]

Me too -

Where are the objective measurements of the cable responses? The cables pass audio frequencies, so where is the comparison of the input and output audio spectrum? Cable resistance measurements? Quality of wire-to-connector joints? It's also best to do these subjective listening tests by doing a blind test and having a helper connect each cable so you cannot be biased by the look and price of each one.

[themadhippy]

Apparently interconnect cables play the role of "filters" in an audio system

A perfectly  valid ,and correct claim as every cable will have a  measurable inductance,capacitance  and resistance value. These might combine to make a  filter that only cuts the signal above 472Mhz by 0.000000000000000032dB with a 0.0000000005dB slope,but its still a filter.

[mc172]

Erm, the cables in the video are not speaker cables, they're phono interconnects.

[MrMobodies]

I was looking briefly at some of his videos, not his words and he shows some stuff:

Iota VX SA3 & PA3 review
youtube.com/watch?v=UTrYCGtSWY0


Construct your own Audiophile Power Cable from £15 (no soldering)
youtube.com/watch?v=gfVYfC6tmcc


Shame he resorted to audiophoolery.

[madires]

Classic cognitive dissonance. The higher the price, the better the sound.

[BBBbbb]

Classic cognitive dissonance. The higher the price, the better the sound.

If I paid 800 GBP for a piece of cable I'd be going around saying that it sounds the best.
Better that than admitting I'm an absolute idiot... 

[bd139]

Lets see how long this takes to disappear.

[magic]

Oh noes that's hate speech

BTW, some audiophile cables are absolutely real
I remember reading about an optical cable which was supposed to remove harmful interference and whatnot by galvanic isolation. It just so happened that their optoisolators proved to have terrible frequency response too, when somebody set out to investigate the thing closely.

[MrMobodies]

Looking at his speakers sarcasm: I see he puts the fireplace in place of the television and the television above the fireplace.



It's like the speakers surrounds the fireplace.

I would find the flames of that fireplace rather distracting and notice it more than the television.

[CJay]

Sneaky bugger, replies to every positive comment giving the commenter their little dopamine hit, reinforcing the sycophancy and ignores or deletes the negatives/non praise comments.

[bd139]

You can fuck that up easily by replying to his positive comments. That wrecks the entire thread

[AVGresponding]

I was looking briefly at some of his videos, not his words and he shows some stuff:

Iota VX SA3 & PA3 review
youtube.com/watch?v=UTrYCGtSWY0


Construct your own Audiophile Power Cable from £15 (no soldering)
youtube.com/watch?v=gfVYfC6tmcc


Shame he resorted to audiophoolery.

What a fucking clown. No fire insurance for him!

You do NOT use SY cable in a BS1363 plug-top, because there is neither space nor provision for safely connecting the braid to earth, which effectively leaves it as a floating conductor, which is a big no-no.

SY should only be used with IEC 60309 (commando) or similarly rated industrial type plugs and couplers.

[themadhippy]

You do NOT use SY cable in a BS1363 plug-top, because there is neither space nor provision for safely connecting the braid to earth, which effectively leaves it as a floating conductor, which is a big no-no.

Remember this is audiofoolary so the screen is only connected at one end to stop noise being transferred,the connection from braid to earth will be made on the other end of the cable

[madires]

Looking at his speakers sarcasm: I see he puts the fireplace in place of the television and the television above the fireplace.



It's like the speakers surrounds the fireplace.

I would find the flames of that fireplace rather distracting and notice it more than the television.

Based on the size of the speakers their frequency response should start at about 35 Hz.

[helius]

Remember this is audiofoolary so the screen is only connected at one end to stop noise being transferred,the connection from braid to earth will be made on the other end of the cable

It's certainly "foolary" to blindly repeat practices from one area (balanced circuits) to another (power), cargo-cult style, with no understanding of the reasoning behind either. Hum loops are a direct result of the lowest-impedance path to ground not being the shortest path. There is no "noise being transferred" by a power cable that can be fixed by doubling its effective ground path length!

In theory, a cable could be made to have higher resistance after a set point (skin effect).

The skin effect is one of those bits of jargon that audio-scammers throw around to mystify and confuse. It has no relevance to audio applications because it happens at microwave frequencies.

Would be nice if someone with access to a 20Hz to 20kHz LCR meter got his hands on one of these cables, just to see what the numbers say.

Do "20Hz to 20kHz LCR meters" exist? A few minutes with the LC equations will show you that the size of components resonating at those frequencies are quite rare and unusual... Of course it's not the case if you add R. LCR meters generally measure at line frequency (50/60 Hz), twice line (100/120 Hz), 1kHz and maybe 10kHz. If you want to measure impedance through the audio band you need to use a bridge with external input from a signal generator.

He compared cables and was apparently able to hear a difference in "where instruments were located", how "woolly" the bass sounded. He was also able to determine that some of the cables had more "presence" and could determine the "leading edge of the notes" better on some cables. I could go on. Apparently interconnect cables play the role of "filters" in an audio system.

Those are all differences that exist in sound reproduction, but not from cables. I guess it's comforting to believe that you can fix these problems by buying a cable, rather than doing something real like treating the room with acoustic material (which would ruin his perfect Edwardian decor).

Based on the size of the speakers their frequency response should start at about 35 Hz.

The sad thing about "debunking audiophools" is how much ignorance is on display by the debunkers. Acoustic suspension speakers do not need to be large.

[langwadt]

Remember this is audiofoolary so the screen is only connected at one end to stop noise being transferred,the connection from braid to earth will be made on the other end of the cable

It's certainly "foolary" to blindly repeat practices from one area (balanced circuits) to another (power), cargo-cult style, with no understanding of the reasoning behind either. Hum loops are a direct result of the lowest-impedance path to ground not being the shortest path. There is no "noise being transferred" by a power cable that can be fixed by doubling its effective ground path length!

In theory, a cable could be made to have higher resistance after a set point (skin effect).

The skin effect is one of those bits of jargon that audio-scammers throw around to mystify and confuse. It has no relevance to audio applications because it happens at microwave frequencies.

skin effect happens at all frequencies, the skin depth at 20kHz is about 0.45mm, at 50Hz about 9mm
whether it has any relevance is another matter

[madires]

Based on the size of the speakers their frequency response should start at about 35 Hz.

The sad thing about "debunking audiophools" is how much ignorance is on display by the debunkers. Acoustic suspension speakers do not need to be large.

Please check a few datasheets of similar sized acoustic suspension speakers.

[MrMobodies]

Got this reply in the alert box:

entity279 replied: "It's really not about you believing or not. Not even a little bit There's really so few cable comparisons around so obviously they can't please everyone. For people like you, interested in this ..."
3 hours ago

Looks like it was edited to this:

entity279 3 hours ago
It's really not about you believing or not. Not even a little bit
There's really so few cable comparisons around so obviously they can't please everyone.

Transcript quotes:

16:34 there's some interesting results here these cables do not sound the same and for reasons I can't explain I don't think an adequate explanation exists when it comes to science I take a slightly philosophical approach our auditory system and the neurology of our brain have developed over eons...

17:41 Don't forget to check me out on Patreon where I offer some Patreon only videos and some consultancy services

So he offers consultancy services for things he can't explain and believes that an adequate explanation doesn't exist and that's why I don't believe it.

Youtube transcript:

Code: [Select]

0:06 hello everybody welcome to a british audiophile for those of you who don't
know me already my name is Taran a little while ago i asked the company
here in the uk called designer cable to send me out some pro audio interconnects
you know the type that you find in studios all around the world
and the reason is that when i'm generally asked by people who are
getting into this hobby as to what interconnects or speaker cables they
should go for i always recommend going for a decent pro audio cable

00:32 so i've got three of those cables here as well as two of my audio file brands
and i want to answer two fundamental questions can i hear a difference
between these interconnects and if i can is it worth paying the many multiples
more for the audiophile brands i have to declare right from the beginning i don't
have a horse in this race i couldn't care less whether the cheaper pro audio
cables sound better than the audiophile cables or vice versa in fact if anything
if the cheaper ones sound better i'll probably have a little bit of a smug
smile on my face at the end of this video

01:05 so let's get started and have a look at what i have here
first up is the Vandam Xke Star quad that retails for 45 pounds for a stereo
pair on the designer cable website for just over 50 pounds you can get the
belden 8402 and for a similar price you can get the Mo gaming Negflex 2534
my Van Der Hull the first will set you back the best part of 200 pounds and if
you're feeling flush for the best part of 800 pounds you can get the Chord
Company signature i did a video on cables when i started

01:42 this channel over a year ago so i'm not going to go over that all again but I
think it is important to summarize the key characteristics of the cable so you
know what to look out for and by far the most important
characteristic is dc resistance all three of these pro audio cables have
very low dc resistance below 100 ohms for a kilometer that's a kilometer not a
meter and audiophile brands don't generally publish full specs which is shocking
really and just adds to this speculation of snake oil
but as far as my crude measurement device my multimeter could tell there
was no discernible resistance from the Cord company signature cable so it's
below obviously 0.1 of an ohm for a meter so it's likely to be in line with
these but there was quite a significant resistance on the Van Der Waal that
affect the dc resistance other than poor quality termination is the type of
conductor and the thickness of that conductor.

02:43 Now i don't know the thickness of these conductors because they're not
specified but all three of these pro audio cables have a thickness between 25 gauge
and 20 gauge remember as the number goes down the thickness actually increases
and all three of these are also pure copper construction with the exception of the
Van Damme that has a few silver plated strands in there.

03:02 silver has a slightly better conductivity than copper the van de hul the first is quite
unusual because that's actually a carbon conductor and that might be the reason why the
resistance is higher and the cord company signature has strands which are
all silver plated if you're looking at copper cables there are differences in
the grade of copper that can be used now all of the cables here with the
exception of the Van Der Hall the first which uses carbon are oxygen free copper
that's fairly ubiquitous it has an impurity level of about two to three
hundred parts per million and the next grade of copper that you
might want to look out for is [B]linear [b]crystal[/b] oxygen free copper that's a
process that was patented by hitachi in the 1970s and it involved annealing
which is reheating the copper after it's extruded it drops the impurity level
down to about 20 or 30 parts per million and the highest grade of copper is occ
ono continuous cast copper and that has one continuous [b]crystal boundary[/b]
which basically means that there's no impurities at all [b]now this is where objectivists
will be jumping up and down and claiming snake oil[/b] because there's nothing to suggest
that if you go beyond the oxygen-free copper that it makes any
difference certainly doesn't show up in the measured performance a decent
interconnect should have vanishingly low levels of capacitance and inductance if
you have too much of it it will cause high frequency roll off all three of
these pro audio cables have very low capacitance and inductance.

04:33 I can't confirm it for the Vanderholt and the Chord because they don't publish their
specs and you should think of capacitance inductance as forms of stored energy
within the cable that you don't want capacitance being stored energy within
the electrical field and inductance being stored energy with the associated
magnetic field you can't have one without the other there are three factors that affect the
actual amount of capacitance and inductance you have within a cable the
insulator that wraps around the conductor is known as the dielectric its
job is to separate out the charges and it affects the speed at which the signal
passes down the cable itself something known as the velocity of propagation
which is expressed as a percentage of the speed of light the ideal dielectric
would be a vacuum which has a dielectric constant of one and a velocity of propagation
of close to 100 air comes fairly close as well but neither of those are practical if you're
looking at cheap cables you tend to find pvc used as a dielectric that has a
dielectric constant of 5 and a velocity propagation of around 50 percent the
three pro audio cables here use the next grade that's commonly found which is
polyethylene pe and the Chord Signature uses the next grade up that's commonly found
which is ptfe also be referred to as teflon that has a dielectric constant of around 2
and a velocity of propagation of around 70 there are aerated versions of that where
they try and inject a little bit more air into the density of the ptfe and
they can get dielectric constants down to about 1.4 and a velocity of propagation of
around 80 percent.

06:12 I couldn't confirm what dielectric was used in the Van Der Waal again there's nothing to
suggest that these fancy dielectrics produce results that are audible when it comes to the
measured performance of a cable the geometry of the cable has an effect on the capacitance
and inductance of the cable as well that's how many conductors you have how they're spaced
apart and how they're arranged the Van Damme and the Mogami both have a star quad configuration
which is actually quite beneficial if you're using a balanced interconnect because of its noise
rejection properties the Van De Hul is a coaxial cable design the belden and the Chord Signature
use two conductor pairs the third thing that's worth mentioning here is whether the cables are
shielded or not shielding is generally considered beneficial when it comes to interconnects
because it can reduce the amount of rf and emi external noise that's picked up by the cable
although that can be debated to some extent in any case shielding also does add capacitance and
that shouldn't really be an issue over the cable lengths that we're talking about here all the
cables here are shielded with the exception of the Van De Hul the first this is an earlier version
of the cable that was unshielded terminations at the end of your cables are also important you
want good quality connectors with enough contact pressure there isn't then your dc resistance
goes up also if they're soldered as are these pro audio cables you want that connection to be done
properly as well otherwise that's an opportunity to induce noise all of these pro audio cables came
already terminated with switchcraft connectors which are good quality and audio grade solder but if
you want to do it yourself you can save yourself about 20 pounds and buy the individual parts from
designer cable the van to hold the first and the Chord Company Signature are solderless terminations
because they believe why introduce another metal in the signal part if you don't have to for those
objectivists out there there was a blind test performed during this evaluation.


08:14 I didn't do it myself for reasons I'll explain in a moment but i was able to get my wife to sit down for about an
hour and a half and i played one track repeatedly Flamenco Sketches by Miles Davis it's one of her favorites i just
basically got her to listen to that track for 15-20 minutes and then I switched the cables sometimes I'd pretend to
switch the cables and I didn't actually switch them I made sure that I wasn't in eye shot and I just asked her to
tell me which cable she preferred and whether she noticed a change every time without fail she noticed a change and
she picked out the cable out the two that she preferred so take from that what you like. u

08:53 Unfortunately I couldn't get her to do the same for me for two reasons she's very loving and very supportive.
I can barely get her to pick up the right remote control for the tv leave alone here to switch cables at the back
of my amplifier and the other reason was that I repeated these tests over two weeks again and again so that I could
have some kind of reliability as to what was going on and there wasn't someone here that I could rely on to do that
if you're going to evaluate cable where the differences can be quite subtle I have some advice for you in fact it's
generally good advice if you're evaluating any hi-fi gear don't try and evaluate five cables like i did at the same
time i'm not doing this again it took forever just pick out two cables and also avoid the temptation to do quick a b
switching that's where you listen to a cable for three or four minutes and then switch over to the other our short-term
auditory memory isn't reliable enough.

09:46 It's a bit like buying houses the first time you go and visit you notice general
stuff the second time you go and visit you notice much more specific stuff and that's how it works when we're listening
as well first time you'll hear that track you'll hear the general stuff and even if you change nothing the second time
you play the same track you'll hear more so listen for at least 15 20 minutes before you switch and pick demo material
that you know well that is well recorded you don't want to learn what's on the track you need to know what's on there
and pick tracks that basically demo different aspects of the music so pick something for good bass extension or good
top end extension or good male vocals or good female vocals you get the general picture repeat the test over a number
of days because there's a lot of factors that affect how we hear things including our mood how tired we are how much
background lighting there is how much background noise there is believe it or not how much electrical noise there is
coming through the mains as well can have an effect so you need to repeat over a number of days so you can get some
reliable results just before I start looking at the evaluation results let's talk about the system that i use to form
the test itself most of which I happen to own myself but not all of it my Aurelik Aries Mini Streamer that's powered by
an external [b]mciu linear power supply that was then fed into the Denafruits Pontiff Stack[/b] that recently came in
for a review and that in turn was fed into my exposure.

11:14 21 pre and 18 super monoblocks that's still the most resolving amplifier that i've come across since I started reviewing
on this channel they then fed my Prac Response 1SC speakers which are also very resolving supplemented by my Rel Strata 3
subwoofer enough chit chat time to look at the results I evaluated the cables in 14 different categories the kind of stuff
that all efrs typically tend to consider certainly the kind of stuff that i tend to consider and I scored the cables in each
category from one to five one being abysmal five being excellent so the maximum score that any cable could get was 70.

11:56 So let me share with you my results i've got them here on a notepad and I'll post something up on the screen so that you can
actually have a look at what i'm looking at down here so let's get started let's start with sound stage the Van Dam had the
narrowest sound stage it was pretty much between the speakers the Vanda Hull and the Mogami extended it a little bit more left
and right and the cord and the belden were the only two cables that gave you a bit of soundstage depth all the cables had
reasonable imaging you could make out where the instruments were located but there was a touch of vagary except for the Mogami
which was a little bit more rock solid the Vanderhall, had the williest bass, the chord and the Belden fader quite a bit better
but it's really the Magami in the Van Damme where you could follow phonetic bass rhythms bass speed sometimes comes at the
expense of base weight and that was the case here with the Megami and the Van Damme the chord and the Beldum have a bit more oomph
but it was the Vanderhull that hit the hardest in terms of base extension I couldn't tell the cables apart.

12:54 So I gave them a three across the board a lot of audiophiles look for that warm rich sound which primarily comes from the lower mid
range and that's what the Beldum and the Vanderhull have the Mogami and van dam sit on the leaner side with a cord somewhere in the
middle if you crave a little bit of excitement it's usually the upper mid range that's responsible between a thousand and five thousand
hertz all the cables did well here but it's the chord the magami in the Van Damme that had a little bit more presence that area can also
be responsible for a bright and harsh sound if gone unchecked and the mogami and Van Damme fell down a bit here they are a little bit bright
sounding the ability to pick out leading edges of notes probably differentiated the cables more than anything else the Van Der hall fell
down a little bit here the Belden less so the cord and the Van Damme did a very good job the leading edges of notes on the Mogami were
crystal clear the Van Damme had the thinner sound in the mid-range this is also referred to sometimes as the body and the release of a note
the megami fared a little bit better but not much and it was the Van Der Hall the Chord and the belgium that gave you the most tonal richness
many audiophiles love to hear the decay of instruments the Van Der Hall and the belden suffer in this area they're full sounding cables but
lack a little bit of clarity in this regard the van damme does a little bit better it's really the Megami and the Chord that give you a black
enough background for those decays to really shine through if you're looking for that airy quality on top.

14:20 You'll be happy with the Megami and the Van Damme the Chord and the Beldum in comparison are a little bit more recessed it's the Vander Gull
that rolls things off the most there's no point having that high end extension if sibilance isn't well controlled otherwise that's quality can
get quite annoying the most rolled off cables here have less to do so they fare fairly well but the Megami and the van damme do a reasonable
job if tonal accuracy matters to you it certainly matters to me because I listen to a lot of acoustic instruments vanderholt is the most warm
sounding cable and colors the sound the most on that side of the spectrum that's why it gets a two the beldum's still warm but less so and the Chord
is the most neutral sounding cable and that's why it gets a four the Megami in comparison is distinctly leaner but it's the Van Damme that colors the
sound the most on the other side of the spectrum and that's why that gets a two for those of you who are interested in the results from my subjective
listening tests the Van Damme came in last place in fourth place was the Van Der Hull with 42 points there was joint second place for the mogami and
the beldum even though they have very different sound characteristics and the chord signature came out on top with 50 points I didn't know what to
expect but there's some interesting results here these cables do not sound the same and for reasons I can't explain I don't think an adequate explanation
exists when it comes to science I take a slightly philosophical approach our auditory system and the neurology of our brain have developed over eons.

15:48 There might be all kinds of subtle windows and doors to our perception that we haven't uncovered yet that seems quite likely we know a lot about our
auditory system there's an awful lot that we don't know as well and i'm not alone industry insiders designers will regularly tell you they switch out
components and they measure the same but sound different there either is a massive conspiracy going on or they're all incompetent and then there's the
electron itself the fundamental particle that's responsible for all of this we think of it as a tiny subatomic particle with a negative charge because
that's how it's generally observed apart from when it isn't when you get into the realm of quantum mechanics it's described as a wave because it exhibits
the behavior of a wave something called wave particle duality which sits at the heart of quantum mechanics and if you think that's science voodoo well
that's the reason why you're sitting here being able to observe me now a lot of our technology is based on our understanding of quantum mechanics so if
we don't know the actual nature of electron itself I think it's a little bit arrogant to assume that we've got everything figured out my advice for those
of you getting start in this hobby remains the same.

16:57 Don't go and spend a whole load of money on audiophile cables when there's decent pro audio cables like this that exist you've got to think of cables like
a filter on your system and spending more money doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to prefer the sound you might not like the filtering effect that
that cable is having on your system for those of you who've got bright sounding systems that you want to tone down a little bit i'd go for something like
this belden 8402 and for those of you who have dull sounding systems that you want to liven up a bit well that's when you'd opt for something like this
Mogami Negflex 2534 audiophiles out there that got highly resolving systems that are chasing the last bit of performance don't worry about what the naysayers
say by all means you should be investigating the audiophile cable brands.

17:41 Well that's it from me for today all that remains for me to say is if you like this video please hit that like button please share it if you like what
i'm doing with this channel and you haven't subscribed already please consider subscribing and don't forget to check me out on Patreon where I offer some
Patreon only videos and some consultancy services but for today for now a british audio file signing off.


Found this objective comment down the list and yes there don't seem to be many:

Jim Brown 1 day ago
The standard line of BS.
Why is it that NO-ONE has come up with a way to quantify,
or even half-way measure these differences, EVER.
That's because they don't exist,

[SL4P]

The thing that bothers me, is that his ‘premium’ cables must be adding artefacts to the signal, because I’ve only ever used Belden and Canare cables when wiring up high-end studios.