Audio Cables: All the Same?


My patience has worn thin reading numerous postings by individuals who proclaim that anyone who spends more than, say, $30 on a cable is an “audiophool” and that the manufacturers who sell cables priced above that price are snake oil dealers. These people base their claims on two factors: (1) they can’t hear the difference between a cheap cable and an extremely expensive one; and (2) all cables of any quality whatsoever measure the same when tested.


I believe that these individuals have blinders on. Allow me to set forth a useful analogy – eggs Benedict. The recipe for them is simple: toast an English muffin; sauté a couple of slices of Canadian bacon; poach two eggs; and prepare Hollandaise sauce. After those ingredients are ready, put the Canadian bacon on the English muffin, stack the eggs on the bacon, pour Hollandaise sauce over the eggs (and possibly sprinkle a pinch of hot paprika over the sauce), and serve. Voila! Now, take two preparers – one of whom doesn’t give a damn how his eggs Benedict turns and tastes as long as he gets his $17.50/hour pay; and the other a supremely talented chef renowned for his exquisite preparation of egg dishes. I am willing to venture a guess that one of them will taste terrific, perhaps being the memorable highlight of a marvelous breakfast, and the other will be an awful mess, perhaps a composition of barely toasted and soggy English muffin, Canadian bacon so overcooked that the meat is like shoe leather, poached eggs like hockey pucks, and a severely curdled muck of a sauce poured over everything, followed by far too much paprika. That serving will also be memorable, but for a far different reason.


Now, here comes the chemist to test and measure both versions of eggs Benedict. He confirms that, upon his testing of the two dishes, he is able to state unequivocally that they are identical because both contain exactly the same ingredients and provide the same nutritional value. The fact that one serving is nearly inedible and the other is altogether delicious is irrelevant. After all, there is no science-based test for taste.


I propose the same is true for cables – there is no scientific test for what we hear.
Let me end my soliloquy by relating my recent experience with cables. A couple of months ago, I upgraded my digital system by acquiring a new SACD transport and a new DAC. Both components are widely considered to be extremely high end pieces of equipment (and priced stratospherically, too). At the time I did not replace the cables I had been using previously – an Audioquest Cimarron Ethernet cable between my 24 port network switch and my DAC, and Monster Cable M1000 analog interconnects between my DAC and my preamp. Frankly, I was dismayed by what I heard when I began streaming (Qobuz) music through my new DAC. The magic I had heard at its demonstration at AXPONA 2024 was non-existent. Maybe it was a bit better than my old DAC, but certainly not by much. One of the local audio dealers with whom I shared my disappointment suggested I try a really good Ethernet cable, handing me a Shunyata Sigma V2. This Shunyata cable contains two filters (one for EMI/RFI and one for common-mode interference) as well as several differentiators in how it is constructed. I really despise the expression oft-used by reviewers – “like a veil was lifted” – but that is what happened. The magic had returned. However, now I had another problem. Voices seemed to come only from a singer’s mouth and not also from the chest. With instrumentals, a certain fundamental (bass) element was missing. Overall, it was as if the entire frequency spectrum was tilted – lifting the treble and lowering the bass. I went back to this dealer. He recommended I try a pair of DH Labs Air Matrix Cryo analog interconnects between my DAC and my preamp. All I can say is “Wow!” The frequency spectrum had returned to its proper equilibrium.


I have now been using these new cables for a month. Their impacts are not the result of a placebo effect. Moreover, the last thing in the world I had wanted was to spend a couple of thousand dollars more for cables after I had already spent far more than I had planned on the SACD transport and the DAC. However, they had addressed and solved two very real problems. The Shunyata cable filtered out noise coming from the network switch; the DH Labs cable eliminated a frequency distortion inherent with the Monster Cable cable (which evidently had been masked by the predecessor DAC).


Before this experience, I had never believed that cables could be so important an element of an audio system. I always spent between $100 and $200 on them because, on the one hand I did not want to “chintz” and shortchange myself sonically, but on the other hand I was very skeptical that even spending that amount was fully money-for-incremental-value.


Since then, I tried replacing another Audioquest Cimarron Ethernet cable between my Nucleus+ and my network switch with a $500 Ethernet cable of another well-regarded cable manufacturer. I could not detect a shred of sonic difference between them. Thus, it has become clear to me that every cable implementation is unique; sometimes there is a discernable improvement provided by one over the other, and other times there isn’t.


In summary, having a preconceived notion about the value of cables (or lack thereof) disserves oneself. In some cases, but not all, there is a cable out there that will truly improve the sound of one’s audio system. It may be immeasurable, but it is, nevertheless, very real. 
 

128x128Ag insider logo xs@2xjmeyers

@sstraus 

You can't be serious, and then you posted the exact same ridiculous comment on two different threads. 

@evillgeniuz Welcome, nice first post. Just use a larger font next time :) 

Bottom line is it is your $83,000 to do as you see fit, to spend on what you value, and what you perceive as a benefit to your enjoyment of your music, and therefore your life. That is the best purpose for our hard-earned money. You know the difference, and the price of admission is worth it. Why should anyone else have a problem with this?

 

 

@roxy54 

First time here.  Technical mistake posting twice.  My apologies.

@tomcy6 

If I were still a EE student with access to a lab, I would  Right now, life's short and I just want to listen to the music.  

 

Cables make a difference mostly in high-resolution systems only. Thank you for bringing up LAN cables in this context. The last LAN cable leading to the streamer is the most important one and here it can make a difference. The egg story made me hungry this morning, so I'm having some just now ;-) Instead of an egg story, I would propose a comparison between two paintings - one by an eminent artist and the other, a copy. For most people, no difference. When a Monet was stolen from my local museum, the fact was discovered only after a few days. The policeman on TV reported: "The thieves cut out the canvas and put in a similar picture." ;-)

I’ll do my best to save you the labor pains, and just give you the baby.

Taking the opposite approach: IMHO, 2 cables with different materials, geometry, gauge, dialetric (insulator) terminations, and termination methods, will sound DIFFERENT. Period.

Way back when, the Monster Cable guy convinced me to bring in the original beefy speaker wire. (It took some convincing. What a ridiculous, overblown spool of audio BS this is!!) It hung on the peg board for months. No sales. (Of course, we weren’t recommending, or even mentioning it).

Seeing dollars hanging on the pegboard with no perceivable return on investment, I decided to take them home and hook, them up to my system. After wresting with the mass of hundreds of strands, and a few curse words later, I finally got the signal from Point A to Point B, and dropped the "needle" on the record. Sitting very low exceptions, I was simply stunned by what I heard. My audio vocabulary was pretty limited back then, and several decades have passed since. I just remember a sound with less strain, more bass, and overall improvement in balance. We started recommending MC, and never looked back.

Part 2 of the cable story was a couple of years later and we had a high end ($80) interconnect on hand. We had just received a flagship $800 CD player from a manufacturer. We also had good success with their $300 unit. After spending some quality time listening to the new player, we swapped the OEM interconnect for the "high end" model. Boom!! This lead to a serious question: "Will a $300 player with a "high end" interconnect sound as good a high end player with an OEM cable?" Well, 6 out of 6 of us preferred the sound of the $300 player with the "high end" cable over the $800 player with the OEM cable. It was at this moment that I took audio cables very seriously as a "component" rather than an accessory. Literally, you could spend $500 on component upgrade and not accomplish what a cable upgrade can do for less than $100.

A few years later, a guy named Bill Low came around doing "training" and cable demos. Out comes a jam box with removable speakers to use for "high end" speaker cable demos. It worked!! Even on a cheap system, you can hear a difference. This stuck with me and continues this day. We’re still an AQ dealer today.

Just did a cable upgrade on a $99 digital amp. Stunning improvement!!. A nasty, gritty little amp that sounded like mono playing out of 2 speakers made bass, produced an image, and had some detail after the cable upgrade.  Actually "listenable."

I developed a metric over the years that I refer to as a "percentage of improvement." So, if a component/cable swap had a modest 10% improvement, then the "math" would dictate that it was worth 10% of the cost of the system. So, bang for the buck comes into play here, and there are many variables. A 30% improvement (WHAMM!!) for a 10% investment in the price of a system is a bargain, regardless of what component/cable/other was added. It’s a metric that’s worked for me for several decades.

Today, we yank the OEM internal cabling out of electronics and speakers and replace them with the good stuff. We’re pretty proud of our work, but are often surprised with what we get. Yes, the "expected" sonic improvements in A, B, and C in spades occurs regularly. But, often very pronounced improvements D, E, and F.

Cables matter. Cheap gear. Expensive gear. Long lengths. Short lengths.