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#1
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Audio Interconnects
Have been looking at some really good interconnects for my system;
MF KW550 Amp, DM25 transport and dac and Keff reference 205 system - Need RCA and XLR - speaker cables are Chord signiture Looked at Van De Hul, Chord and some stuff on Russ Andrews. Any opinions? Lot of stuff about Nordost but the money is quite significant. It seems that silver is the best so would be looking at that , but not sure about the science. PS also found some people call Pure Reference but no heard of them Thanks StevieT |
#2
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Audio Interconnects
On Feb 9, 7:33=A0pm, wrote:
snip It seems that silver is the best so would be looking at that , but not sure about the science. Why would that be the case. Studios use copper cables all of the time for recording. If copper works well for recording why wouldn't it work well for playback which is less demanding? Competently made interconnects need not be expensive. Even the throwaway cables that come with some audio equipment are likely to be indistinguishable from more expensive cables under blind testing although they may well be less reliable. |
#3
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Audio Interconnects
On Feb 9, 7:33=A0pm, wrote:
but not sure about the science. I'll say. The science is that these things are all interchangeable commodities, and none is better, worse, or different than whatever you are using right now=97even if you are using unwound coathangers. bob |
#4
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Audio Interconnects
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#5
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Audio Interconnects
wrote in message
Have been looking at some really good interconnects for my system; MF KW550 Amp, DM25 transport and dac and Keff reference 205 system - Need RCA and XLR - speaker cables are Chord signiture Looked at Van De Hul, Chord and some stuff on Russ Andrews. Any opinions? Fancy cables are audio jewelry - all looks and generally no sonic benifit at all. Lot of stuff about Nordost but the money is quite significant. From a sound quality standpoint, the money would be a loss. It seems that silver is the best so would be looking at that , but not sure about the science. The science says that good sounding interconnects are easy to make, and inexpensive to obtain. |
#6
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Audio Interconnects
On Feb 9, 4:33=A0pm, wrote:
Have been looking at some really good interconnects for my system; MF KW550 Amp, DM25 transport and dac and Keff reference 205 system - Need RCA and XLR - speaker cables are Chord signiture I use Monoprice XLR cables. Build quality seems very good. I haven't tried their RCA cables. http://www.monoprice.com/products/se...lr&x=3D0&y=3D0 Dave Cook |
#7
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Audio Interconnects
On Tue, 9 Feb 2010 20:28:42 -0800, Dave Cook wrote
(in article ): On Feb 9, 4:33=A0pm, wrote: Have been looking at some really good interconnects for my system; MF KW550 Amp, DM25 transport and dac and Keff reference 205 system - Need RCA and XLR - speaker cables are Chord signiture I use Monoprice XLR cables. Build quality seems very good. I haven't tried their RCA cables. http://www.monoprice.com/products/se...lr&x=3D0&y=3D0 Dave Cook Yes, I've used these people. Their RCA/RCA stereo interconnects are cheap, well made and reliable. You cannot ask for much more than that. (well you can ask for quasi-balanced, which I prefer from a low noise standpoint, and which these aren't, but otherwise...). |
#9
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Audio Interconnects
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#10
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Audio Interconnects
On Wed, 10 Feb 2010 16:20:28 -0800, Robert Peirce wrote
(in article ): In article , wrote: Have been looking at some really good interconnects for my system; Frankly, for anything up to a meter I have never heard a difference. I'm not sure electrically you could unless the cable has some really weird topology. By weird topology, it would almost have to be that external capacitors, resistors and inductors would have to be added to the cable to PURPOSELY make filters which would alter the frequency response of the interconnect. Simply a 1 meter length of coax with RCA connectors on each end can not possibly have enough reactance at any audio frequency to affect the sound in any audible way. The longer the run the more likely you may encounter resistance, capacitance and reluctance issues, but it would take a really long run. I've been away from this too long to do the calculations. Maybe somebody else has it handy. Capacitive reactance (X sub C) = 1/(2 Pi Fc) where F = the highest frequency in the pass band, and c = the capacitance in Farads. Inductive reactance (X sub L) = 2 Pi Fl where l = the inductance in Henrys. Z (Impedance) = The square root of (R squared Times (Xl squared - Xc squared)) Where R = Total DC resistance in Ohms, Xl = Inductive reactance in Ohms and Xc - capacitive reactance in Ohms In a case where Xl is than Xc. If Xc is than Xl, the formula becomes: Z = The square root of (R squared Times (Xc squared - Xl squared)) If you use typical coaxial cable specs for C and L/foot, then at 20,000 Hz (or even 50,000 Hz) the impedance is miniscule and attenuation is not enough to make any difference whatsoever in the audio band for normal interconnect runs. Now you get to 20 ft and more and it is measurable, but only as a loss at extremely high frequencies and not likely audible. Extreme cases could effect a very slight "dulling" of the highest frequencies that most adults can hear, but no other effects. The bottom line is that if you can hear, using controlled double-blind testing, any difference between two interconnects or speaker cables it's because one of the manufacturers has purposely designed the cable to attenuate (that is, take away from) some portion of the audio spectrum and this is NOT anything that one should want. |
#11
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Audio Interconnects
On Wed, 10 Feb 2010 21:52:56 -0800, ScottW wrote
(in article ): On Feb 9, 7:03=A0pm, Audio Empire wrote: On Tue, 9 Feb 2010 16:33:01 -0800, wrote (in article ): Have been looking at some really good interconnects for my system; MF KW550 Amp, DM25 transport and dac and Keff reference 205 system - Need RCA and XLR - speaker cables are Chord signiture Looked at Van De Hul, Chord and some stuff on Russ Andrews. Any opinions? Lot of stuff about Nordost but the money is quite significant. It seems that silver is the best so would be looking at that , but not sure about the science. PS also found some people call Pure Reference but no heard of them Thanks StevieT The science is simple: wire is wire at audio frequencies. A piece of coat-hanger or a pair of =A0$4000/meter Nordost Valhalla interconnects, t= hey both will sound identical. Cable is audio jewelry; IOW, bling, and nothin= g else. Do the math. It will tell you all need to know about the three components of any conductor: DC resistance/foot, capacitive reactance and inductive reactance. The effect of these components on an audio signal (D= C - 50KHz) over any practical length? Negligible, unimportant, a non-event. DC resistance in the ground path is a source of hum. I strapped all the chasis together in my system in a star configuration and I believe it made for a subtle improvement even though I had no audible hum at the listening position. I too use star configuration grounding. I do it this way: My preamp is the central ground point. I use only quasi-balanced interconnects between components. That's where the shield carries no current and is only tied to the return "barrel" of the RCA connector at one end. Inside the shield are two conductors: one is the hot and goes to the RCA's pin on both ends and the other goes to the barrel on both ends. These two conductors are hot and return and shield is just a static shield. By making sure that all shield ends terminate at the pre-amp, irrespective of whether the cable is being used as an input or an output. This means that I have extended the common chassis ground out the entire length of all shielded interconnects. It definitely results in a "blacker" background to the music. This is worth studying. http://www.jensen-transformers.com/an/an004.pdf "The 99 dB figure can be improved further by lowering the shield resistance of the 5 foot cable which uses a foil shielded cable with #24 gauge drain wire (25 mohm per foot). Cable using a #18 gauge equivalent braided copper shield (6.5 mohm per foot) will lower hum level by 5 dB from 99 dB to 104 dB." ScottW |
#12
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Audio Interconnects
Dick Pierce wrote:
Frank wrote: I agree about speaker cables but ... "bad" audio low signal cables do exist and have high capacity. Try putting 2 or 4 nF across your rca connector terminals and hear the difference please. Let's see. 2 to 4 nF of capacitance... Well, assume the load impedance presented at the receiving end of the chain is, oh, 10 kOhms, and assume the sending end of the chain has a source of, let's say, 1 kOhms, the result is an additional 0.23 dB down at 10 kHz with 4 nF shunt capacitance. The response would be 3 dB down at about 43 kHz. Maybe you'd hear it, maybe not. Likely not. Now, I'd bet you could hear it if you hung a 1000 uF cap across the RCA jack as well. So what? It's hard to find coaxial cable with more than about 50 pF/ft of shunt capacitance. That means to achieve a 4nF shunt capacitance , you'd need, let's see, 4nF/50pf/ft ... That's a piece of interconnect cable 80 feet long. With more typical figures in the, oh 25 pF/ft realm, that's a 160 ft long interconnect. The notion that a 4 nF shunt capacitance is at all a reasonable test for demonstrating cable effects is, well, absurd. Let's look, instead, at a 3-foot piece of cable with a shunt capacitance of 30 pF/ft, for a total of 90 pF shunt capacitance. You'd end up with a system that isn't 3 dB down until well past 1.5 MHz. You'd have to come up with some pretty wierd cables to end up with the level of concern you express here. Those 2000 $/meter cables are rubbish and surely sound different from a good real low capacity double shielded solid "video" cable. And your reason for this is? My ears. Young and working. Never been to a disco. Would you like to share the formulas you use to obtain that result and what happens if loads are higher? I've seen cables with a 350-400 pF capacitance per meter (circa 3 feet?) marked low c. Frank |
#13
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Audio Interconnects
On Thu, 11 Feb 2010 08:09:21 -0800, Frank wrote
(in article ): Dick Pierce wrote: Frank wrote: I agree about speaker cables but ... "bad" audio low signal cables do exist and have high capacity. Try putting 2 or 4 nF across your rca connector terminals and hear the difference please. Let's see. 2 to 4 nF of capacitance... Well, assume the load impedance presented at the receiving end of the chain is, oh, 10 kOhms, and assume the sending end of the chain has a source of, let's say, 1 kOhms, the result is an additional 0.23 dB down at 10 kHz with 4 nF shunt capacitance. The response would be 3 dB down at about 43 kHz. Maybe you'd hear it, maybe not. Likely not. Now, I'd bet you could hear it if you hung a 1000 uF cap across the RCA jack as well. So what? It's hard to find coaxial cable with more than about 50 pF/ft of shunt capacitance. That means to achieve a 4nF shunt capacitance , you'd need, let's see, 4nF/50pf/ft ... That's a piece of interconnect cable 80 feet long. With more typical figures in the, oh 25 pF/ft realm, that's a 160 ft long interconnect. The notion that a 4 nF shunt capacitance is at all a reasonable test for demonstrating cable effects is, well, absurd. Let's look, instead, at a 3-foot piece of cable with a shunt capacitance of 30 pF/ft, for a total of 90 pF shunt capacitance. You'd end up with a system that isn't 3 dB down until well past 1.5 MHz. You'd have to come up with some pretty wierd cables to end up with the level of concern you express here. Those 2000 $/meter cables are rubbish and surely sound different from a good real low capacity double shielded solid "video" cable. And your reason for this is? My ears. Young and working. Never been to a disco. Good for you. I envy you your young ears. Still and all, such tiny losses (less than a half a dB) at the top extreme of human hearing is unlikely to be heard in such a way that it would be noticed by even a 12-year old girl. Would you like to share the formulas you use to obtain that result and what happens if loads are higher? I did that in another post. You should be able to see them on your news reader now. They've shown up on mine. I've seen cables with a 350-400 pF capacitance per meter (circa 3 feet?) marked low c. I'm sorry Frank, but that seems pretty unlikely to me. Are you MEASURING these cables? Can I ask you what your methodology is? About the highest capacitance that coax gets is 50 pF/foot, but one would be fairly incompetent to specify such a cable for audio interconnects, when plain-jane average coax of the type commonly used for audio interconnects is about 30 pF/foot and relatively inexpensive low capacitance cable is available at 20 pF/ft. |
#14
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Audio Interconnects
I've used a lot of different cables. I've settled with Blue Jean Audio
for straight up speaker wire and banana plugs, and monoprice for everything else. The products both companies sell are inexpensive (relatively) and the build quality is excellent. I would like to know who their supplier is so I can buy direct from them. |
#15
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Audio Interconnects
On Wed, 10 Feb 2010 05:15:49 -0800, Frank wrote
(in article ): Il 10/02/2010 4.03, Audio Empire ha scritto: On Tue, 9 Feb 2010 16:33:01 -0800, wrote (in ): Have been looking at some really good interconnects for my system; MF KW550 Amp, DM25 transport and dac and Keff reference 205 system - Need RCA and XLR - speaker cables are Chord signiture Looked at Van De Hul, Chord and some stuff on Russ Andrews. Any opinions? Lot of stuff about Nordost but the money is quite significant. It seems that silver is the best so would be looking at that , but not sure about the science. PS also found some people call Pure Reference but no heard of them Thanks StevieT The science is simple: wire is wire at audio frequencies. A piece of coat-hanger or a pair of $4000/meter Nordost Valhalla interconnects, they both will sound identical. Cable is audio jewelry; IOW, bling, and nothing else. Do the math. It will tell you all need to know about the three components of any conductor: DC resistance/foot, capacitive reactance and inductive reactance. The effect of these components on an audio signal (DC - 50KHz) over any practical length? Negligible, unimportant, a non-event. Add that to the fact that NO double-blind test (and there have been lots of them) has EVER been able to detect any difference between an expensive speaker cable and a length of zip cord. No double-blind test has EVER been able to detect any difference between the "sound" of a set of Radio Shack throw-away audio interconnects and any expensive interconnect that you care to name. Spend your money on better speakers and forget this cable nonsense. I agree about speaker cables but ... "bad" audio low signal cables do exist and have high capacity. Yet, the cheapest Radio Shack cables do not have significantly high capacitance, and even if they (or anyone else's interconnects, for that matter) DID have high capacitance, it would have to be impossibly high for it to have any affect whatsoever on an audio signal at the typical half and one meter lengths used in most audio systems to connect between components. Try putting 2 or 4 nF across your rca connector terminals and hear the difference please. 4 NANOFARADS (10 to the minus 9)? Are you serious? You've actually SEEN cables with that high of a capacitance? Are you aware that this would give an X sub C of almost 2000 Ohms at 20 Khz (assuming I didn't get any decimal points in the wrong place)? I question whether it's possible to make a reasonable length of coaxial cable with that high of a capacitance. Now, maybe a cable 100 meters long could have that kind of capacitance, but 1/2 and 1 meter interconnects? I'm dubious. What brands might these be? The highest capacitance per foot coax that I've ever heard of is 50 pF/ft (50 X10 to the minus 15) with most coaxial cable types being in the neighborhood of 30 pF/ft and real low capacitance being around 20 pF/ft. Average coax would make a 1-meter run approximately 100 pF total. That's several orders of magnitude less than your 2-4 nF! Those 2000 $/meter cables are rubbish and surely sound different from a good real low capacity double shielded solid "video" cable. You mean that they surely sound NO different from a good, real low capacity etc.? |
#16
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Audio Interconnects
Audio Empire wrote:
The bottom line is that if you can hear, using controlled double-blind testing, any difference between two interconnects or speaker cables it's because one of the manufacturers has purposely designed the cable to attenuate (that is, take away from) some portion of the audio spectrum and this is NOT anything that one should want. I mostly agree with what you have said, and am no fan of "magic cables". But one thing is worth correcting: For speaker cables, long runs of high-gauge cables can be audible. Say, 100 feet of 20 gauge speaker wire. This gives a series resistance of about 2 ohms, which is close enough to the load impedance (nominally 8 ohms, but many speakers have a dip at certain frequencies, sometimes as low as 2 ohms) to create audible effects. This, of course, depends on the impedance plot of the speaker. Given the capatance per foot and the resistance per foot of the wire, the output impedance of the amp, and the impedance plot of the speaker one can calculate the frequency response of the circuit. For most reasonable wire at reasonable lengths, cable effects are negligable. And for line-level signals that are normally terminated with a high impedance (10k ohms is typical) the response at audio frequencies doesn't change until you reach multiple hundreds of feet. So, yes, you can hear the difference between cables, but you need a *lot* of cable! //Walt |
#17
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Audio Interconnects
In article ,
Dick Pierce wrote: Robert Peirce wrote: The longer the run the more likely you may encounter resistance, capacitance and reluctance issues, but it would take a really long run. The only reluctance you will find in long cables is the reluctance I and other hasve in believing that reluctance is a relevant property of interconnects. :-) Reluctance is a property of magnetic materials and circuits. It's not a relevant factor in the conduction of eletrical signals in cables. That being said, I assume you meant "inductance" and not "reluctance." You are correct. |
#18
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Audio Interconnects
On Thu, 11 Feb 2010 17:20:31 -0800, Walt wrote
(in article ): Audio Empire wrote: The bottom line is that if you can hear, using controlled double-blind testing, any difference between two interconnects or speaker cables it's because one of the manufacturers has purposely designed the cable to attenuate (that is, take away from) some portion of the audio spectrum and this is NOT anything that one should want. I mostly agree with what you have said, and am no fan of "magic cables". But one thing is worth correcting: For speaker cables, long runs of high-gauge cables can be audible. Say, 100 feet of 20 gauge speaker wire. This gives a series resistance of about 2 ohms, which is close enough to the load impedance (nominally 8 ohms, but many speakers have a dip at certain frequencies, sometimes as low as 2 ohms) to create audible effects. Well of course. As I've stated several times here over the last several days, long runs will start to have deleterious effects on high frequency signals. This, of course, depends on the impedance plot of the speaker. Given the capatance per foot and the resistance per foot of the wire, the output impedance of the amp, and the impedance plot of the speaker one can calculate the frequency response of the circuit. For most reasonable wire at reasonable lengths, cable effects are negligable. And for line-level signals that are normally terminated with a high impedance (10k ohms is typical) the response at audio frequencies doesn't change until you reach multiple hundreds of feet. So, yes, you can hear the difference between cables, but you need a *lot* of cable! AS I and several other have pointed out several times. //Walt |
#19
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Audio Interconnects
"Eric Downing" wrote in message
... I've used a lot of different cables. I've settled with Blue Jean Audio for straight up speaker wire and banana plugs, and monoprice for everything else. The products both companies sell are inexpensive (relatively) and the build quality is excellent. I would like to know who their supplier is so I can buy direct from them. I believe Blue Jean uses Beldon and maybe some Canare cable. |
#20
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Audio Interconnects
On Wed, 17 Feb 2010 21:07:50 -0800, Rick wrote
(in article ): "Eric Downing" wrote in message ... I've used a lot of different cables. I've settled with Blue Jean Audio for straight up speaker wire and banana plugs, and monoprice for everything else. The products both companies sell are inexpensive (relatively) and the build quality is excellent. I would like to know who their supplier is so I can buy direct from them. I believe Blue Jean uses Beldon and maybe some Canare cable. I don't think that is what he meant by "supplier". I suspect that he wants to know who manufacturers the finished cables for Blue-Jean so that he can purchase from them directly. I don't think he cares about who makes the actual wire. |
#21
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Audio Interconnects
I believe Blue Jean is the manufacurer. I checked their web site, and they
said their manufacturing methods were state of the art. They supply a full range of finished cables across the entire broadcast and communications industry. they are not limited just A/V cables. "Audio Empire" wrote in message ... On Wed, 17 Feb 2010 21:07:50 -0800, Rick wrote (in article ): "Eric Downing" wrote in message ... I've used a lot of different cables. I've settled with Blue Jean Audio for straight up speaker wire and banana plugs, and monoprice for everything else. The products both companies sell are inexpensive (relatively) and the build quality is excellent. I would like to know who their supplier is so I can buy direct from them. I believe Blue Jean uses Beldon and maybe some Canare cable. I don't think that is what he meant by "supplier". I suspect that he wants to know who manufacturers the finished cables for Blue-Jean so that he can purchase from them directly. I don't think he cares about who makes the actual wire. |
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