John Dunlavy On "Cable Nonsense"

Bravo Trappist. Just don't take it to far is all I ask.

Grungle, you know it. I'm on the placebo hunt right now for some AudioQuest Anaconda interconnects!!!

I do believe that cables can be 'engineered'. When you change the capacitance and inductance of a cable you are effecting a parameter called the "charateristic impedance"(I will use CI for short). In normal zip cord type wire, the CI is approximately 90 ohms. In RF theory it is said to be very important to match the load impedance to the CI of the cable.

If this theory was applied to speaker cable then we need to design cables with a CI of 8 ohms. The problem with designing a cable to 8 ohms is that a speaker is only a NOMINAL 8 ohms (or 4 ohms) and varies with frequency. It would be practically impossible to build a cable that could match the impedance curve of a speaker.

A few years back I investigated the effects of lowering the input impedance of my power amp. I tried some 75 ohm video cable as an interconnect and a 75 ohm RCA with a 75 ohm termination on the circuit board of the amplifier. This combo sounded very close to the best interconnects I had used in a more conventional manner. My preamp has a very high current output and can in fact drive a 8 ohm speaker at low volumes. It was important to drive the amp with this pre amp but it was less important what interconnect I was using. The differences that I heard in interconnects when the input impedance of the amp was 20,000 ohms was far larger than the differences when the input impedance was down around 100 ohms.

I do not know if it was the reduction of reflections due to the matching of the cable to the load. It may have also been the contribution of a lower noise floor due to the reduced thermal noise of the lower input resistor. I believe that musical enjoyment can come from the contribution of a number of factors, combining in a manner that makes the sound pleasant to YOUR ears. I kept the low input impedance in my amp for about a year until I got a different pre and had to take it out cause the new pre could not drive the load!

So, Sqjudge, R,L& C variations are what detemine(in the largest percentage of) our final sound in ICs?
Do you feel that a direct connection (wire free)will always provide the most accurate results no matter what?
(i.e directly soldered I/O connections to the PC board, an integrated amp wired direct internally with a negligable amount of buss or braid)....Frank

Frank, I am not sure what all effects the sound of cables, but I do feel safe to say (quoting a friend in the know) "everything makes a differance".

I do feel that no connector is better than a connector and there is a lot of connectors with wider bandwidth than a RCA plug. A BNC is one just for starters.

Lets get some oppinions on this ...... Chris