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How essential is shielding?

Both my analog interconnects and my speaker cables are unshielded, yet my system is pretty much dead quiet. This is making me wonder whether the importance of shielding is sometimes exaggerated.

The majority of cable manufacturers seem to emphasize shielding as an essential feature of design. I don't doubt that there are many situations where shielding is both necessary and effective. But my results with unshielded cables makes me suspect that there are also situations where shielding is unnecessary or even detrimental, and that these situations may be more common than would be suggested by the dominance of shielded designs.

How essential do you think shielding is?

Thanks for any input,
Bryon
bryoncunningham

Showing 3 responses by lokie

lokie's avatar
lokie
528 posts
 
I just replaced a shielded PC with a non-shielded one on my preamp and the difference was dramatically positive. I'll be trying non-shielded on the mono blocks next and hoping to hear more improvement.

Cardas has a youtube discussion on this topic stating otherwise:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uhobsHs-_o

My theory is that if you stay below a certain price point (lets just say $500) then you just have to experiment with both typologies and pick your poison. As you get over say $1000 and up you start getting the best of both worlds. Of course there's plenty of snake oil that needs to be avoided but there are some real science behind a few of the higher end cables.

lokie's avatar
lokie
528 posts
 
Tholt: Your point is valid and in my case, I made the assumption that it was the shielding, but I could be wrong.

I had a conversation about power cords with Chris Hoff at BPT and his theory is that if you don't have any high register nasties or buzzing then shielding is a form of filtering and detrimental to the sonics. His power cord comes with or without shielding, so this would be a good cord to experiment as Tholt's "reasonable comparison" theory suggests.
lokie's avatar
lokie
528 posts
 
How about a list of non-shielded cables?
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