Cable design is a lot like creating a pizza


If you look at the construction of an RCA cable it can be very simple or can be very complicated. Eg. Audio quest higher end interconnect cables are extremely creative, the diagram on their website is visually stunning.

Ultimately, Cable design in many cables involves coloring the tonal signature. Cooking a pizza is all about making all the ingredients come together so it tastes amazing. Some do it a lot better than others and Pizza is a lot cheaper.

For cables, There are conductors, drain wires, shielding, Airfilled tubes, different gauges, etc…. Then there’s the copper strands which can be very detailed and numerous and twisted. So much going on.

With pizza you have cheese and sauce and spices and the dough and it’s all mixed together with all kinds of variation. Ultimately the sauce makes or breaks the success of a pizza slice.

With audio cables, hi end Cable designers are endlessly trying different ways to do all this. In the end they find something that sounds kind of nice. They may not know exactly why it does sound the way it does.

So that’s my take on Pizza design and cable design.

jumia

Showing 2 responses by bruce19

@jumia 

A very good analogy! So I’ll have a plain pizza and add my own toppings of amp and dac and DSP please.

@rodman99999 

 I have no doubt that there are many using cables as tone controls, which simply goes to show: cables CAN/DO make a difference in reproduction.

      However: everyone I know that uses high-end cables, regardless of position in their system, is attempting to do as little damage to their signal* as possible.

                             *the goal = neutrality/faithful reproduction

at first glance these two statements appear contradictory to me. They raise the question as to how do we know that cables are revealing the truth versus adding desirable distortion? Seems like there might be a place for measurement here.

once we recognize that there is such a thing as desirable distortion then the question becomes what is the most effective way to add it when it is desired. I would think that DSP would certainly be competitive with cables as a means. If you want to learn more about desirable distortion I suggest you read some of what Nelson Pass has written about his First Watt amps.