Cables Specifications

So long as the cables gauge is good enough (12-14) the exact material does not matter at all, however "resolving" the rest of your system is. OFC/LSC is more a ego booster and a sales trick for capturing large purses and confused mortals. Go for some cheap taiwanese speaker cables and save your money for room acoustics improvement.

I would definetly agree with what ravi has said as they say cables r snake oil,would rather invest them on cheap but good quality cables and pocket the change which would help in buying a good speaker(which is more important)

Good cables makes some diffrence to sound and not necesarily use exotic materials as it would make diffrence to rocket performance. Expensive cables just make you beleive emotionally that if it costs good it must sound good and any changes it brings forces you to beleive that you are getting close neutralty, but in truth you would be getting close to lunacy........

There are endless discussions like this on the web. Let your ears be the judge. Setup your system properly and borrow some good cables from a friend or dealer and see if you can hear the difference. If you can’t, don’t waste your money. Buy some 12/14 gauge generic cable. Good quality finolux copper cable is also OK.
I used to own Japanese mass market electronics and try as I might, I couldn't hear what all the cable fuss was about. Yes there was some small improvement from zip cord but no additional improvement with the high priced cables. So I was in the "it's all snake oil" camp. Now I own equipment with better resolution and suddenly my 250 rupee interconnects and mass-market ofc cable started sounding inferior to better ones. I borrowed and checked and I could make out the difference so I bought I bought better ones. The message is that not all the differences between various cables will be apparent unless the rest of the system is not the limiting element of the overall sound quality. If you evaluate the performance of a Ferrari in the local market parking lot you might conclude that the person that spent a ton for his Ferrari is a fool. On the highway you might reach a different conclusion. Even the cheapest wire will reproduce recognizable music. As the price goes up the differences become smaller and smaller but there seem to be incremental improvements available all the way up the price curve. Only your own perspective on the value of money can decide if the rewards justify the expense.
BTW, don’t spend more than 10 percent of the value of your system on the cables. If you do, rest of your system becomes the limiting factor.

square_wave, what do you say to the 2km of aluminium interconnects inside the DAC chip or the processor chip - the last meter of OFC in series with this still helps??
Its not like testing a ferrari in parking lot - thats a bad comparision, its like seeing whether painting your ferrari green instead of red would improve performance on an autobahn.

Square wave wrote :

If you evaluate the performance of a Ferrari in the local market parking lot you might conclude that the person that spent a ton for his Ferrari is a fool.

I would add to ravi's comment as this being a bad comparision too. Any car comes with specs to support it. Why do people drool over Lamborghini, Bugatti, Ferrari???It's due to specs : BHP figures, accelaration ,braking, roll over timings , torque etc etc which is easily comparable on paper as well as a road to any family sedan.or even another sports car ..and the one with superior specs is always a clear cut winner.but cables are purely physic.show me one exotic cable maufacturer giving you specs instead of claims.."Trust your ears only" is the most commonly used and any cable makes a slight diffrence in sound and once you use it and you get used to the sound and you feel it's better..show me one person who can A/B a good cable costing sane amount and a exotic one with all rocket ,nuclear materials thrown in and show the real diffrence..if not the diffrence like a performance between family sedan and a Viper, but atleast diffrence between a Viper and a Diablo.. .yes I do agree it needs a real world set up to diffrentiate so 2 points to it :

1. Nobody on our forum posses a system good enough to judge the diffrences except very few like Junia.
2. Using exotic materials in cables just adds to cost like using a titanuim gear knob in a Ferrari than using it for the exhaust or valves...

I understand your logic.
There are kms connections inside the DAC and other chips. When we choose a cd player, we choose it for it’s inherent qualities. All cd players sound different because of it’s design implementations and choice of chips, power supplies etc… Now we need the signal from the player to travel to the Amp. The job of the last meter of metal conductor is to do its job perfectly without adding or subtracting anything. But I guess none does it perfectly. All seem to do something to the integrity of the signal. All we can do is experiment with different cables and choose the cable that work for us depending on the partnering equipment, our taste and budget.
I can definitely hear differences in cables. The difference may be for better or worse. Sometimes higher priced cables sound worse to me. From my experience, synergy is the most important factor when it comes to choosing cables and equipment.

Square wave wrote :

synergy is the most important factor when it comes to choosing cables and equipment.

Right sir!.........

Cables make a difference for sure but only if your speakers and rest of the chain are up to the mark, otherwise the best thing to do is get cables from belden or phenolix (sp??) and call it a day.

Satyam

well practicality has to be kept in mind.. cables do not influence more than 5% of the sound .. a speaker can influence as much as 30-40 % and so can the cdp and amp..so make you value for money decision before you leap. If you want sweeter sound you are better off changing your amp or speaker than a cable.

cable decisions are for those people who have already set up their nearest to ideal components together working in synergy.

from a technical point of view you cannot go wrong with copper, as the difference in electrical propagation between Silver and copper for 3 meters would be too small for anyone ears to make out...


And you will never get a confirmative answer in any forum on this as tis has always been a controversial topic.. you best bet is at
http://www.audioasylum.com/scripts/etv.pl?forum=cables

Agreed that Expensive cables make a difference of only 5% but then thats what everyone is after in this game to achive the BEST possible SQ, its like most of the people in the world will run 100mts in 10.5 sec but it takes something to achive a time of 10.2sec's.

Regards,

Satyam

agreed.. thats where practicality comes into picture

If for 500 USD mpre you can get 30% more improvement with a better speaker and for the same amount a 5 % diff with a cable what would you choose.

Once you have reached your optimum with active components you can move into passive ones like cables..

Arj schrieb:

agreed.. thats where practicality comes into picture

Practicality is subjective and depends on ones pocket

Arj schrieb:

If for 500 USD mpre you can get 30% more improvement with a better speaker and for the same amount a 5 % diff with a cable what would you choose. Once you have reached your optimum with active components you can move into passive ones like cables..

Agree with this completely if your speakers are for 3K or more its eaiser to understand what cables are doing.

Satyam

sbfx wrote :

Agree with this completely if your speakers are for 3K or more its eaiser to understand what cables are doing.

Ya it's like using $5000 magnesium wheels for your $6000 roadbike to minimise weight and claim you gained couple of seconds on drag strip..whereas it hardly makes a diffrence...doesn't do much..but in real race machines when world titles are at stake every milligram counts..depends where we stand..a GP racer level or a road rider with loud exhaust.........

Hi,

I finally bought the cables fo my HTS.
QED Qunex -OT for the optical
Monster Component Video -3
QED - Qunex SW as the subwoofer cable
Van Den Hul - Skyline Hybrid as the speaker cable

Played the Veer-Zaara dvd and was simply mesmerised by the augmente sound and picture clarity.Good cables do bring out the best out of your system.

What other cables are you comparing to when you say the quality is now "augmented"? Please give details of any A/B comparision that you did.

I had the company provided cables ie the ones that came with the equipment.and the normal 14 guage OFC cable for the speakers.

Tryst,
How much spend overall on the new set of cables ?

Around 20K

20K...........
You are great.....

Abhi, how would you compare it with a customer who spent 8 lakhs on a system - 2.65 lakhs on Denon receiver, ~ 1 lakh on CD player, 1.25 lakh on cables and 1.6 lakh on 5.1 speaker system and the rest on projector. Apparently someone bought this system from a store in MG Road, Blr

ya.that really busted our brains did'nt it Rajesh.
some budgeting that is eh?