I agree that shielding tends to add unwanted side effects to audio cables. Of course, this is more noticable with some more than others..depending on the cable itself.
Unless you have gobs of wires going here and there and running parallel to each other (always cross your cables as close to 90 degrees as possible where they HAVE to meet), have cable TV hooked up in your system (a HUGE source of RFI and other nasties), or live near radio towers and the like, MOST systems are not exposed to enough interference to warrant the necessity of shielding.
Shielding veils the last bits of detail, emotion, and clarity of the sound. I make my own cables and have eperimented by making identical cables with the exception of shielding and there is an obvious difference even from the starting block. -Jason
Unless you have gobs of wires going here and there and running parallel to each other (always cross your cables as close to 90 degrees as possible where they HAVE to meet), have cable TV hooked up in your system (a HUGE source of RFI and other nasties), or live near radio towers and the like, MOST systems are not exposed to enough interference to warrant the necessity of shielding.
Shielding veils the last bits of detail, emotion, and clarity of the sound. I make my own cables and have eperimented by making identical cables with the exception of shielding and there is an obvious difference even from the starting block. -Jason