Audio Cables – The Infinite difference to music quality – Revealing the Fact’s & Fiction

Now, in my lifetime of enjoying music and migrating from the simple Indian filmy music to listening to classics to the final transgression of passing onto the forbidden rock and the true 80’s rock culture I’ve never fathomed the importance of audio cables. I always thought these measly things are just to hook up my speakers and are of the least importance to the source, amplifiers and speakers. Thus, I was surprised that my audiophile friends are spending immense amount of dollars, recently, upgrading audio cables and interconnects and the likes for both the home equipments and cars. The complete ignorance of the topic has made my life an unreal hell amongst my friends whilst on topics large and small at parties and binges and get-together and when in ignorance most would avoid or act impassive, I chose to get in and discover the realm of cables. And, as this article explores the facts and fiction facet , I would have to put it forward that most of the content has been google’d in and I will have to give credit where due, but with the frenzy I went about collecting facts and learning the subject I have failed to document the sources for these facts. So my humble apologies if any of these subsections bear a resemblance to someone’s proprietary knowledge. Ok, now that I have managed to protect my bases from being called a plagiarizing dimwit, I shall put to rest the antagonism of the lesser “cable-men”, who may hold fast to the concept of plain connectivity rather than high-end audio cables. First question I (and most will ask) asked myself was “Can cables make an audible difference? “.Most definitely, but usually not for the reasons that many exotic cable vendors would have you believe. And the “difference” may or may not be a good thing. I refer to companies that produce high glossy cables constructed of elaborate metals and/or wrappings supported by fancy marketing to justify high prices as Exotic Cable vendors. Few may have seen many exotic speaker cables that actually acted like a tone control rolling off high frequency response due to excessive resistance and inductance, while I have seen other cables make a system sound bright because of their excessive capacitance causing the amplifier to peak its high frequency response. So I guess we have to be cautious about exotic cable vendors that do not specify cable metrics or downplay the importance of measurements. I should let it be known, what really is the purpose of an audio cable? Though it may sound stupid, this is a good question and certainly often a misunderstood one due to the bombardment of misinformation in the audio industry. The basic purpose of a cable is to transfer the signal from point A to point B unadulterated. At audio frequencies the goal is to minimize losses by controlling the amount of Resistance, Inductance and Capacitance. For speaker cables, I have found the primary concerns for optimal signal transfer is to minimize resistance, followed by inductance, while also keeping capacitance in check to eliminate the possibilities of amplifier oscillation or frequency peaking. For line level analog interconnects it’s a good idea to use cables that are low in capacitance and are well shielded to eliminate interference and external noise sources from mitigating into the signal. For video, good shielding and maintaining the proper characteristic impedance is vital. With the basics just discussed my next inference is should we really buy expensive cables that may, in truth, cost more than a simple receiver? To grasp this aspect is more to do with your bank-account but provided that the cables are properly designed and meet your specific requirements I see no reason why one shouldn’t invest in quality, not necessarily expensive cables. However, many of the lavishly priced exotic cables are not designed well and more often the case than not, cheaper cables, which are usually not covered in bogus marketing literature, offer better performance and certainly better value. Now come’s the question, how much should one invest in cables? And why do some cables cost so much? From what I found, it’s generally recommend about 5-7% of total system cost. Anything more would be better spent on higher performance electronics, speakers, room treatments or software. To answer the second part of the question In my opinion, there are several reasons actually. 1) In HiFi, if a product doesn’t carry a very high price, it won’t be taken seriously by many audiophiles. 2) Many of the exotics are niche products that sell in low quantities to a limited market, thus in order to be profitable must carry a high price tag to pay for company overhead and marketing expenses. 3) Some of the exotic cables do involve higher material costs. While this may not improve the electrical or audible characteristics of the cables, it does usually improve their cosmetics and product appeal. By now I am deeply perturbed to ask why there is so much confusion about cables. Well, I suspect misinformation and low consumer awareness are the key reasons. Of course glowing subjective reviews and endorsements in audio publications don’t help this either. Many exotic cable vendors know the average consumer/audiophile has little or no background in electronics, yet they somehow have to justify why their products cost so much and why the consumer/audiophile needs them. So with that, the exotic cable vendor concocts marketing literature, usually in the form of a story, based on half engineering truths or misapplied engineering principles to lure you in. They often reject the proven fundamental truths that govern these principles and claim established associated theories cannot be verified through measurements or engineering certainties, but instead only through hearing. What they fail to provide however is repeatable statistical data and correlation that their cables do sound “better” for the reasons they tout. They often go one step further and claim it can take weeks for the consumer to hear the benefits of their cables since they require a break in period. In reality cable break in is another misnomer, which I suspect is used to convince the customer to keep the cables beyond the retailers return policy. In addition, statistically, the longer the customer keeps a product the less likely they are to return it. Eventually one might ask, like me, are there any industry cable standards in all the top-notch cables available in the market. Unfortunately I didn’t find any such standards. Thought, Organizations such as the FTC do not regulate cable vendor claims and most cable vendors are slick with their claims by how they phrase them by using terms like (can, may, in our opinion, etc). Their claim about solving a problem that really doesn’t exist is mostly nebulous. For example, I saw a vendor claim that their cables resolve “Strand Jumping” ten times better than ordinary 12AWG Zip Cord, then since this problem really doesn’t exist, ten times zero is still zero. Finally, the question fore-most in my mind was why aren’t hardware vendors who design the electronics more vocal about cables? I found that this is a rather complicated subject that I will try to answer as eloquently as possible without offending anyone. Many of the reputable hardware vendors I have emailed with feel exactly as I do about cables, at least privately. I suspect they aren’t publicly vocal about it because they don’t want to undercut their dealerships. Believe it or not, most dealers’ bread and butter result from cable sales. Cables offer some of the highest profit margins in the industry. It is not uncommon for a dealer to do in excess of $100K/month in revenues for cable sales where they would be lucky to do 1/4th of that in sales and maybe 1/8th in profit margins of say loudspeakers.

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