What's better, one conductor or two conductors for an RCA interconnect?


I have a somewhat nice RCA analogue interconnect with one conductor, referred to as a coaxial Cable I guess.   But I see higher end RCA cables with two conductors and ground wire. Which is better?

Is better detail provided when connections are made with two conductors? 

jumia

Let me please clarify my statement from my earlier response.

Your coaxial cable can also be used for digital signals. Such as from a transport or music server to your DAC. A good coaxial cable is important to have.

Once you get into the analog world having a 2 wire RCA/SE or 3 wire XLR/Balanced cable is needed. Such as from a TT or DAC to your pre-amp.
This could change in the future as our equipment gets more digitized.

Joe Nies

Interconnects can be a very important components in a system. The better the boxes in your system the more important the interconnects are. With cheap interconnects the actually materials are important and maybe the configuration. But as the cost goes up… as does the effort in getting better sound the less the specific materials and configurations determine the output. It is the effort put in to choosing materials and configuration. There are lots of ways to accomplish great sounding interconnects.

In most cases one parameter will not determine the sound. It will be highly dependent on your system and the specific interconnects.

Got no audible difference between using two rca cables vs a single Coax

I prefer coax less cables 

I did a experiment once.

 

I tried to measure if I could get any graph or see any benefits or difference between my trippel shielded (stated on the jacket) RCA and new bought but braided sterling silver RCA.

 

I wanted to see if there were ANY notable diffrence between them and I don't want to make things worse down the road and note that X hours later.

I measured with the calibrated microphone and REW with the mic on stand. Then I switched out the triple one to the silver one and redo the measurements again with no other changes at all.

 

I sat down and compared the two measurements back and forth and really tried to find a difference somewhere/anywhere. I went through all 10-15 different types of graphs that I could find in REW and analyzed them and comparing them back and forth. That could give me any clue on what could be changed between differens shielded/braided or copper/silver.

 

I did not find anything at all only in one graph for impulse response that the silver had MAYBE a little bit better in that graph.

But it's so small that probably needed to run 10 measurements on each cable and analyze those and see if there were any average measurements difference. Now with only one measument of each RCA the difference could be normal variation between measurements that i had noticed. Yes ot were not a big difference!

 

With all that said i just let the new silver cable be in the system when it anyway didn't had any negative effects.

 

Another conclusion as far as cable construction, crossection and geometry when they were totally different is that it didn't do any difference in this situation*.

*Situation = if you have alot of RF in your place (near a radio station) or if you have low signal level as from TT to RIAA. That is a total different situations. And why some have totally different experiences.