wjm@whuxl.UUCP (MITCHELL) (07/17/84)
<gulp> One compromise between high end and trash are the Discwasher Gold-ens, which are better than the low end cables and run about $10 for a pair of 1 meter cables. However, given what people spend on audio equipment (and even more so if video is involved), cutting corners on low end cables seems to be false economy. Personally, I'm using the Monster Cable Interlink II's (not cheap - about $45 for a 1 meter cable pair, but cost effective when one considers the cost of a typical stereo system owned by a reader of this newsgroup. Remember, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Bill Mitchell (whuxl!wjm)
hakanson@orstcs.UUCP (hakanson) (07/19/84)
<can't eat just one.>
I for one would be interested to know what you believe to be the amount of
money the average reader of this newsgroup has invested in his/her equipment.
Your point about a chain being no stronger than its weakest link is a good
one, as usual. But I believe a bit more emphasis should be put on the
cost-effectiveness issue -- it all depends on how strong (or expensive)
a chain you want. Unfortunately I wince just a bit at the thought of
paying $45 for a one-meter cable, but then I only have $950 or so tied
up in my system. (Let me add that I don't own many components, since
I decided to wait awhile 'til the bugs are worked out of the CD system.
Luckily, since I'm still a starving student, it isn't difficult to wait!)
I mean, I spent nearly $20 for my speaker cables, and I thought that
was just a teensy bit extravagant.... But they are more than adequate
for my current needs (no pun intended, but accidents do happen).
To paraphrase another contributor,
Yours for higher fidelity -- at a reasonable price.
Marion Hakanson CSnet: hakanson@oregon-state
UUCP : {hp-pcd,tektronix}!orstcs!hakansongm@trsvax.UUCP (07/19/84)
#R:whuxl:-5000:trsvax:55100046:000:325 trsvax!gm Jul 19 12:43:00 1984 Oh boy, another argument over the "Monster Cables" is already starting up! It's been at least 5-6 months since we have yelled about the good/bad qualities of the large speaker cables. Let's stop talking about square waves and get some GOOD flames going. George Moore Tandy System Software ...!allegra!convex!ctvax!trsvax!gm
mr@isrnix.UUCP ( Michael Regoli ) (07/23/84)
>>From: gm@trsvax.UUCP >>Oh boy, another argument over the "Monster Cables" is already starting up! >>It's been at least 5-6 months since we have yelled about the good/bad >>qualities of the large speaker cables. Let's stop talking about square >>waves and get some GOOD flames going. Please, let's not and say we did. If I wanted to read flames I wouldn't be reading net.audio. Think about it. -- .:. /.\ Michael Regoli '|-|` ...ihnp4!inuxc!iuvax!isrnix!mr
newton2@ucbtopaz.CC.Berkeley.ARPA (07/27/84)
I don't know where to start with people who entertain quasi-religious beliefs (i.e. unverifiable) about mere engineered hardware when it's applied to something as sacred as perception of music (or is it just sound?), but I suppose the "filaments of the Gods" cult around audio cables --excuse me, two-port transmission lines-- is as good a place as any. A couple of years ago, I designed a fairly elaborate multichannel noise-reduction-cum-signal-processor intended for the radio/TV broadcast market, particularly for so-called cart machines, which had several well acknowledged problems with noise, stero "phase" stability (actually a mechanical problem inherent in the format) and maintainability. While (according to me) the product was supercalifragilisticexpialidotious in its wonderfulness, selling it proved a different order of undertaking from building it. After casting about widely under the insistent prodding of nervous investors, we were brought together with a (reputedly) wizard' marketer/salesperson who could (and, properly motivated, would) sell Frigidaires to persons of Aleution ancestry (to observe the modern delicacies of the post-Agnew era). Point of longwinded story: the bulk of the reputation of this sleaze merchant had been earned via the promotion of Monster Cables, the appeal of which this affable cynic credited to factors the least offensively scatalogical of which merely animadverted to the alleged envy of many under-amped audiophilesfor the love-wand of a Watusi --whoops, there he goes again...-- ..anyway, if you're wiring up your house for audio (or video, or data), why not run low-level (low impedance) audio hither and yon, and park an appropriately sized amplifer next to the transducers it drives. Switiching, signal distribution and versatility all benefit greatly- you can route the equivalent of a wide "program bus" everywhere, selecting different local programs in different rooms, spotting program sources in more than one place (monitor the TV audio in various different TV locations etc) and so obviously on. Believe it or not, its cheaper to build (or buy, if you're not suffering from the "carve me an amplifier froma single flawless blue-white block of silicon --or is it thorium cathode?-- syndrome) an appropriate number of properly sized and locally sited power amps than one giant one (which will fry the tweeters of your many speaker systems one by one, weakest first) together with the necessary 000 gauge welding cable to hook it up everywhere. Well- had enough? Me too.
rcd@opus.UUCP (08/30/84)
>I had a friend who accidentally double-blind tested cables on >his roommate... >...(description of notable change on going to better cables) >Note 4. The change might have been caused by the clean connections >(no oxide) after the new cables were installed. The cables proabably >had not been touched for a few months (2-6), but things rot pretty >fast in Houston. I just recently finished tracing an utterly obnoxious problem in my own system--sort of a scratchy sound in the high end in one channel. It sounded a lot like a badly mistracking cartridge. After considerable chasing, I found that the cause was a scuzzzy connection between preamp and power amp. A few experiments seemed to indicate that a teeny amount of vibration (from low bass) was vibrating where the amp sits and making its input connection vibrate a little, generating some intermittent noise. The connection (standard phone plugs, NOT gold) was hooked up no more than six months ago. Unlike Houston, it's pretty dry here. I'm actually somewhat surprised that it went to hell so fast, but I'm sure the problem is what I described--enough tests confirmed it. aaaack. -- Dick Dunn {hao,ucbvax,allegra}!nbires!rcd (303)444-5710 x3086 ...I'm not cynical - just experienced.
crg@druxo.UUCP (GenterCR) (07/19/86)
> > >I spent several hours auditioning cables this last weekend and was really > >amazed. > >John Irwin (jdi@ucbvax) > > I'm sorry John, but frankly I can't hear the difference between cables, at > least not speaker cables. Does anyone out there know of a single reason > why these expensive cables should sound better? If Mark will forgive me, I have re-posted his article on impedence vs. frequency differences. This is an interesting article from the perspective of the amount of flames it DIDN'T receive: when it was demonstrated that skin effect was insignificant at audio frequencies there were a flurry of "told-you-so, cables don't make a difference" articles posted. I am awaiting the responses from these folks disputing Marks measurements. My own opinion on cables: the right cable on the right system can make an awesome improvement in the sound quality (both speaker and interconnects), and the only way to decide is to audition them at home, on your own system. I have had some very well respected cables on my home system that sounded terrible, but worked fine elsewhere, and vis versa. The great cable debate was properly put to rest a short time back with the following statement, which applies to every piece of audio gear: If you can't hear the difference, don't buy it. And flamers, please note: A proper, appropriate, and useful response to the net is to say that with such-and-such equipment, I was unable to hear a difference: NOT that since on my system I couldn't hear a difference, that nobody will ever hear a difference. The former tells me that if I have similar quality equipment it is probably not worth my time to audition cables: the latter tells me a little about the maturity of the poster, but certainly nothing about audio. (I guess I better practice what I preach: my system consists of a SOTA Sapphire, Accuphase AC-2, Sumiko headshell, Dynavector 501 arm, 1-m Reference Interlink, Denon POA-2000 pre-amp, 15-m Original Interlink, Acoustat Model III with Medallion Interfaces and the large RH-labs subwoffer. The Acoustats are passively crossed at 100 Hz (12 db/octave), and the RH is activly crossed (RH Labs ABX-4) at 100 Hz (36 db/octave). Amplifiers are a NYAL Moscode 600 (500 Watts/channel) on the Acoustats and a strapped Denon PRA-3000 (800 Watts, Class A) on the RH. Speaker cables are three 2-m sections of Moster Cable Powerline 2. There is also a B&O 9000 Cassette Deck and a JVC 566 HQ VCR hanging around the edges, with an Advent 6 foot projection TV centered between the Acoustats. Reference Interlink into the B&O, all other cables Original Interlink.) > OK tech weenies, here are some MEASURED impedances vs frequencies for some > real audio cables on the market. These are measurements done with a > HP 4192A Impedance Analyzer by Elite Electronic Engineering Co., Dowers > Grove, IL. They are not numbers generated by computer programs or pulled > out of a textbook. These are all cables you can buy. I'm quantizing the > numbers off plots published by Straightwire on some lit. I got at CES. > 2 Meter Interconnects (Impedance in ohms) > Brand 5khz 10khz 15khz 20khz > Randall .012 .040 .067 .114 > Interlink Ref A .010 .036 .063 .103 > VanDenHul .006 .026 .046 .087 > Distech .004 .018 .032 .050 > Flexconnect .004 .009 .014 .021 > LSI connect .000 .002 .003 .005 > 10 foot speaker cables (Impedance in ohms) > Brand 5khz 10khz 15khz 20khz > Monster Cable .040 .101 .155 > (off chart) > Monster PL II .033 .087 .144 > > MIT MH-750 .025 .074 .122 .162 > Livewire 10 .012 .045 .078 .109 > Randall 64TBC .004 .011 .017 .028 > Teflon-12 .002 .008 .015 .025 > MusicRibbon12 .001 .005 .008 .013 > Music Ribbon, Teflon-12, Flexconnect, and LSI connect are all Straightwire > products and usually cost much less than the competition. No additional > information on the test set-up was given. I use flexconnects, but I > didn't like their speaker wire. The Music Ribbon rolled off the bass, > and it and the Teflon-12 were bright, fast and lacked midrange harmonic > body, and warmth compared to my FMS speaker wires and also Monster PL II. > The flexconnect looks like a thin coax. Teflon-12 is a heavier coax using > cylindrical conductors and a teflon dielectric - probably similar geometry > to Neglex/Mogami speaker wire. The Music Ribbon is either 12 or 24 conductor > ribbon (computer) cable. The difference is that the insulating dielectric > is polypropelene and not PVC. Music Ribbon sounds and measures differently > depending upon which conductors you connect together to form a pair. > Some quotes in the literature: > "Cables tend to accentuate the portion of the spectrum where their impedance > begins to rise, while higher frequencies are attenuated. This alteration of > harmonic structure and the attendant masking of quiet information are the > result of phase-shifted musical energy filling in the space between notes. > Phase-shift also tends to make transients sound louder because their > duration is increased." > "Note that deviation of series impedance is caused by skin effect and > inductance." > Straight Wire can be reached at PO Box 78, Hollywood, FL 33022, > (305) 925-2470 > Mark Kaepplein decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-amber!kaepplein Forgive me Mark C. Roy Genter AT&T Information Systems 11900 N. Pecos St. Denver, Co 80234 inhp4!druxo!crg 303-538-4854
sjc@mips.UUCP (07/22/86)
> If Mark will forgive me, I have re-posted his article on impedence vs. > frequency differences. This is an interesting article from the perspective > of the amount of flames it DIDN'T receive: when it was demonstrated that > skin effect was insignificant at audio frequencies there were a flurry > of "told-you-so, cables don't make a difference" articles posted. I am > awaiting the responses from these folks disputing Marks measurements. > > OK tech weenies, here are some MEASURED impedances vs frequencies for some > > real audio cables on the market... > > > 2 Meter Interconnects (Impedance in ohms) > > Brand 5khz 10khz 15khz 20khz > > Randall .012 .040 .067 .114 ... > > > 10 foot speaker cables (Impedance in ohms) > > Brand 5khz 10khz 15khz 20khz > > MIT MH-750 .025 .074 .122 .162 ... My memory of EE100 is so rusty it would be presumptuous for me to claim to be a tech weenie, but when I read the original posting I thought the author was throwing in the towel! The numbers are so darned small (except for the "off chart" readings, which I can't judge without seeing the chart) that they suggest that if there _are_ audible differences among these interconnects, they're due to something other than the magnitude of series impedance. Seriously, 1. If the input of your well-designed amplifier presents a uniform impedance across the audio spectrum, then the magnitude of series interconnect impedance is less important than its uniformity with respect to frequency. An interconnect whose impedance is a uniform 100 ohms would not affect the frequency response, but the Randalls (the worst shown), whose impedance varies from .012 to .114 ohms, would: given a typical amplifier input on the order of 1e4 ohms, the perturbation would be (ignoring phase, which the posting has regrettably not provided for us) roughly 20*log10(1e4/((1e4)+(1e-1))) = -0.00009 dB. 2. Assuming a 1-ohm speaker, then the .1 ohm variation in impedance for the MIT cables (the worst shown) could perturb the frequency response on the order of 20*log10(1/(1+.1))= -0.8 dB, which may well be audible. That's a good argument for using 16 gauge zipcord, which will not exhibit this problem. 3. To claim that "cables can't make a difference" is to climb out on a shaky limb. One can surely concoct a cable having sufficiently weird reactive properties to make an audible difference. A less shaky limb is "a cable can sound different from 10 feet of 16 gauge zipcord only by being worse". > > ...Some quotes in the literature: "Cables tend to accentuate the > > portion of the spectrum where their impedance begins to rise, while > > higher frequencies are attenuated...Note that deviation of series > > impedance is caused by skin effect and inductance." This literature contradicts itself. Never mind that Kirchoff's voltage law suggests that rising cable impedance should attenuate rather than accentuate; assume that this literature is right. Then skin effect (which raises the series impedance) would _accentuate_ the highs. -- ...decwrl!mips!sjc Steve Correll