Cables can make a huge difference...

[Hear Here]

The silver in cotton was the only silver i heard that was not somewhat bright, but it was colored to my ears, with a sameness to the sound, preferred their copper version in my system.

The Duelund cables are tinned copper (no silver) with an oil and cotton dielectric, as WE. Not ideal for DIY construction as this is awkward to work with and both conductors have black covers. I let the UK distributor do the job, but I checked their connections were in phase.

 

[Salectric]

The Duelund cables are tinned copper (no silver) with an oil and cotton dielectric, as WE. Not ideal for DIY construction as this is awkward to work with and both conductors have black covers. I let the UK distributor do the job, but I checked their connections were in phase.

Duelund also sells wire with flat silver conductors and oil-impregnated silk insulation. The tinned copper wire you refer to is actually quite easy to work with in assembling interconnects or speaker cable, although I understand many people prefer to leave assembly to others.

 

[Hear Here]

Duelund also sells wire with flat silver conductors and oil-impregnated silk insulation. The tinned copper wire you refer to is actually quite easy to work with in assembling interconnects or speaker cable, although I understand many people prefer to leave assembly to others.

You, I believe you're right about Duelund silver cable, but isn't this for interconnects rather than for speaker cable?

The tricky aspect of DIY is the covering. Neatly cutting the cotton cover can be awkward compared with the usual plastic, hence my recommendation for letting the supplier do the job!

 

[Lagonda]

The Duelund cables are tinned copper (no silver) with an oil and cotton dielectric, as WE. Not ideal for DIY construction as this is awkward to work with and both conductors have black covers. I let the UK distributor do the job, but I checked their connections were in phase.

They make/made a silver version too, i still have a pair of IC's lying around somewhere, the solid copper ones i use in one of my cars to tame down a bright Focal beryllium tweeter.

 

[Amir]

Yes. We have also compared, Purist, Kimber, Esoteric, Audioquest and Tara Labs. If the balanced equipment is doing its job properly, the differences between these cables go away. If the balanced equipment isn't doing its job properly then you here differences, sometimes pretty profound!

No. My claim is that if the equipment meets the specifications, then the cables will all sound correct and therefore alike.

Just for the record, in case that matters or anyone cares, we (Atma-Sphere) have been doing balanced line operation longer than anyone else for home audio. When we started, it didn't occur to us that it might be 'OK' if we didn't support the balanced line connection standards. So our preamps have supported AES48 from the beginning and have no trouble driving a 600 Ohm balanced line, despite an all-tube signal path. We got a patent on how we did that FWIW. But as time went on we found a lot of 'high end' audio companies either chose to ignore the standards or were ignorant of them. Not sure which.

So the 'balanced cables can sound different from one another' and the debate about whether balanced cables sound better than RCA cables arose (FWIW, they sound better if the balanced standards are observed) because the standards weren't observed. We literally would not be having this converation otherwise.

I've been doing this and running cable comparisons, demonstrating that what I'm saying here is correct, going back to the 1980s. When Robert Fulton (the founder of the high end cable industry) first showed me his new RCA cable back in 1978 I wound up buying it because my system sounded better with it than without. After that I bought his new interconnect when it came out and again after that for the very same reason. I found it annoying! Since I had heard years earlier how balanced lines eliminated this problem (and its merry go round), when it came time to design a preamp I chose to support the balanced line tenants of AES48 and the low impedance aspect. I've been harping for decades now what that's all about. I'm doing it here. My point is: this is real. Go look at the schematics of studo equipment and you'll see that they usually take care to make sure it conforms to AES48 and also low impedance.

So in studio gear you'll see that its output is stated in dBM such as +10dBM (my Otarai tape machine is on the latter standard), rather than state what Voltage or minimum load is to be used. +10dBm is 10 milliwatts into 600 Ohms. Usually with tubes you need an output transformer for that and there are special semiconductor circuits that allow the output to float in a similar manner as an output transformer without damage. That dBm part is important as it assumes a 600 Ohm load at the output of the cable. My suspicion is those loads aren't present in your studio for some reason.

in real world we hear difference between xlr cables and nobody can describe it by common measurements. even 100% similar cables with different material (silver or copper) have different sound.

low output impedance pre + high input impedance power decrease the current and change the equation for simple voltage transfer but even in voltage transfer the sound of different cables are not equal.

 

[Salectric]

The Von Schweickert/VAC room at CAF last year had at least four very long Master-Built Ultra interconnects with XLR connectors. The retail price for those cables alone is probably well over $75K, maybe double that. If balanced cables all sound the same, that would seem a poor investment.

 

[Lagonda]

The Von Schweickert/VAC room at CAF last year had at least four very long Master-Built Ultra interconnects with XLR connectors. The retail price for those cables alone is probably well over $75K, maybe double that. If balanced cables all sound the same, that would seem a poor investment.

A poor investment even if they don't

 

[Robh3606]

I doubt it is random.
The wire material and the insulation are made with repeatable processes.
Traceability is great for post-facto forensics, but one could test the copper purity in the WE cables… for instance.

LOL yeah you can do that test the wire to what purpose? You don't know what the original spec was why waste hundreds of dollars for a chemical assay on $40 of wire?

Did you read the referenced post where it was stated some wire was good some bad? Without lot numbers it's completely random if you are trying to find a specific lot.

That assumes there is an audible lot to lot difference. With 60-70 year old wire stored under questionable conditions sold in un-marked bags or off a spool by the foot?

To use this at all is a bad idea no matter how much audio voodoo it may have attributed to it.

Rob

 

[DaveC]

I thought that Ralph was talking about ICs, and in particular the balanced AES specification, not power cables and speaker cables.

In case you don't understand why I ask...

SCs and PCs operate at a lower impedance than even the 600 ohm std Ralph references for getting XLR "cable immunity". Speakers are generally 4-8 ohms. AC power varies but the standard for EMI/RFI filter design is 50 ohm. By Ohm's law a 600 ohm load at 120V results in a power draw of 24W, so almost all components are at or less than 600 ohms load. Neither reference ground.

So this means that SCs and PCs would also have "cable immunity". Ralph thinks this is the case. Ralph doesn't think SCs, PCs or tube rectifiers make an audible difference if they are used as designed and not broken.

Ralph refuses to answer this question because if he admits he thinks SCs and PCs don't make a difference, then people won't take his XLR "cable immunity" claims seriously.

Why doesn't anyone else use 600 ohm in/out trafos in all of their components? It's mostly just Atmosphere. Don't you think if Ralph's claims are true that other manufacturers would do so? It's a powerful and tempting claim to say you no longer need to worry about cables, that "cable immunity" has been bestowed upon you, and it's one less issue to have to deal with? If true, component manufacturers would be all over this, it's a fantastic selling point.

This reminds me all too much of DDK. He too claimed you can use his Alibaba cables and never have to worry about it. I mean, all you have to do is buy into his cult-like beliefs. And I don't say this lightly. There's reality, where things like electrical properties, material quality, and objective measures actually matter. And then there's magical thinking where none of it matters. DDK and Ralph are/were here selling magical thinking that has the same properties as a cult. You buy into them, you buy into their story, you become one of the clique and they are the ONLY ones that you can now buy from to satisfy the beliefs you just adapted.

It's irrational to believe the entire audio industry is wrong and Ralph is right. It's irrational to believe that commonly accepted objective properties such as LCR and material quality don't matter... if you buy what they're selling!

 

[Holmz]

LOL yeah you can do that test the wire to what purpose? You don't know what the original spec was why waste hundreds of dollars for a chemical assay on $40 of wire?

Did you read the referenced post where it was stated some wire was good some bad? Without lot numbers it's completely random if you are trying to find a specific lot.

That assumes there is an audible lot to lot difference. With 60-70 year old wire stored under questionable conditions sold in un-marked bags or off a spool by the foot?

To use this at all is a bad idea no matter how much audio voodoo it may have attributed to it.

Rob

I am still not talking specifically, or exclusively about WE.
That is more of the example de jur.
The question still remains as to WHY the some particular cable sounds good.

Then we sidebared into cotton being unsafe, and a few threads later, how the cotton is very difficult to trim off.

Basically I am pretty convinced that the insulation/insulator might make a difference in the cable.

 

[Atmasphere]

With all due respect, statements like the above can come across as arrogant and absolute despite numerous opinions to the contrary. Therein lies the "flash point" for many, myself included. For better or worse, similar to what EW did in the past on this forum. Best.

I'm just trying to state the facts as simply as I can. We all play recordings, the vast majority of which are made without the aid of exotic cables. Its been posed they might sound better if exotic cables are used. Since I might seem too emphatic (which might brand me as unreliable), my recommendation is to obtain properly working studio gear of the era prior to the existence of exotic cables, make sure its refurbished and then use it to see if you can hear cable differences.

The fact Ralph says all tube rectifiers sound the same (when used within their limits and with the same voltage drop) is also ridiculous.

Have you tried to verify that or is it ridiculous out of declaration? I've never said you can't hear differences between rectifiers just as I'm not saying here that you can't hear differences between cables. To verify the rectifier thing you would have to note what you hear and then measure the Voltage drop and see if I'm right. Tubes testers can help you winnow out how a strong rectifier of a given brand and era can sound better than one of the exact same that isn't as strong. I know we all like to assume its magic, but it really isn't- its just Ohm's Law, which made all of this possible. For the cable thing, to verify I'm I'm wrong you would use the technique I mentioned in this post just above.

I thought that Ralph was talking about ICs, and in particular the balanced AES specification, not power cables and speaker cables.

That is correct. But since it got brought up I'll state my position on those.

You can measure power cables easily to show why the sound different. Usually a Digital Voltmeter is all that's needed. Measure the Voltage drop along the length of the cord. When people tell me )like Ethan Winer) that power cords don't make a difference, I usually ask them if they have measurements to back up their claim. You do this by measuring the output power, output impedance and distortion of an amplifier that might be used with the cables. The more Voltage drop across the cable, the lower the output power, the higher the output impedance and the higher the distortion. Not voodoo, not rocket science either (unless you're really old school).

Speaker cables vary in sound according to materials, construction (geometry), the equivalent gauge and their characteristic impedance, the latter of which is rarely anywhere near speaker impedances, and if it were, no speaker is made that would properly terminate it. Length makes a difference too as it magnifys the weaknesses of the particular cable. This is particularly noticeable with tube equipment which has a higher output impedance; the speaker cable thus can mess with the damping factor exerted on the loudspeaker.

in real world we hear difference between xlr cables and nobody can describe it by common measurements. even 100% similar cables with different material (silver or copper) have different sound.

low output impedance pre + high input impedance power decrease the current and change the equation for simple voltage transfer but even in voltage transfer the sound of different cables are not equal.

If a balanced interconnect is used properly its a Power transfer, not a Voltage transfer. That's why dBm is used instead of Voltage. And I'm not denying you can hear differences between balanced interconnect. I've heard them myself and said so earlier.

I've written this elsewhere but I'll repeat this anecdote again to put this more clearly:

Back in 1989 we did a test using four 30 foot interconnects. The 'control' was an old pair of studio cables. The other cables were Purist, Kimber and Esoteric. For the test we had two methods of driving the interconnects. The first was a balanced passive volume control. For it to work it had to reference ground so in no way supported any of the balanced standards although it was balanced. Using it to drive the cables we could hear differences between them easily. The Purist came out on top. The control cable made the system sound broken- really bad.

Then the passive balanced control was replaced by an active line stage that supported AES48 and also low impedance operation. The same musical cuts were used. The audible differences between the cables vanished. More detail could be made out; the bass had more impact and so on. IOW all the cables sounded better than the best had earlier.

I've repeated this test with a variety of older studio gear like Ampex, an RCA microphone preamp (MI-11241) and my Neumann U67s. The results don't vary.

This causes me to conclude that conversations like this one occur because there is a lot of balanced equipment now that does not support the balanced line tenants of operation. Most of that seems to be 'high end audio' equipment, although there is a fair amount of semi-pro recording gear that is like that too.

Again, how to think of balanced lines is like this: Its an exotic cable system where the equipment driving the cables and receiving the signal does the heavy lifting by forcing the cables to be truly neutral and sound right. To do this the balanced standards have to be supported. All the cable need be is a twisted pair within a shield and it will work. Sometimes you don't even need the shield.

Single ended cables are the opposite- there's no termination standard other than the connectors all fit one another. The cable does the heavy lifting so construction and materials are paramount to how they sound.

I hope what comes from this post is I'm not a cable denier at all. Instead I'm trying to get across the idea of why we hear what we do.

 

[audiobomber]

Basically I am pretty convinced that the insulation/insulator might make a difference in the cable.

That should not be in doubt. The impact of a dielectric is easily measured as it affects the capacitance and therefore the inductance.

Every cable is a filter. The hinge frequency is determined by the LCR characteristic.

 

[Salectric]

I am not responding further to @Atmasphere about cables or rectifiers. We had an extended discussion about rectifiers on another thread and the same arguments just get stated over and over.

 

[thedudeabides]

I'm just trying to state the facts as simply as I can.

You apparently don't understand my point. Let's try this. Effective communication is an art, not a science. Sorry Tom.

 

[DaveC]

You can measure power cables easily to show why the sound different. Usually a Digital Voltmeter is all that's needed. Measure the Voltage drop along the length of the cord. When people tell me )like Ethan Winer) that power cords don't make a difference, I usually ask them if they have measurements to back up their claim. You do this by measuring the output power, output impedance and distortion of an amplifier that might be used with the cables. The more Voltage drop across the cable, the lower the output power, the higher the output impedance and the higher the distortion. Not voodoo, not rocket science either (unless you're really old school).

This is a perfect example of deceptive statements and illustrates how Ralph is misleading everyone here. The claims he's not a cable denier are false. They are a lie.

What Ralph's statement here boils down to is RESISTANCE. If the resistance of the PC is too high and there's measurable voltage drop across the cable, IT'S BROKEN!

Let's look at this carefully:

A 12g wire has a resistance of .0159 ohms for 10 ft. A relatively long power cable, but let's go with that as 10ft is a nice round number.

What's the voltage drop across .0159 ohms? Ohm's law states V=IR. Take an amp that draws something significant, like 500W. At 120V we have just over 4A, so let's go with 4A for simplicity. The voltage drop is going to be V=4A x .0159 Ohms = .0636V.

This means if we start with 120V, at the other end of a 10 ft long, 12g power cable we get 119.9364 Volts.

Now I'll claim this makes no difference, your home AC power supply often varies by several volts, and .0636 V difference is not going to actually change the output power, impedance or distortion of an amplifier.

Ralph's claim is deceitful and misleading. If you do the math you'll see the only way his claim makes any sense is if the cable's wiring or terminations have been compromised and present significant resistance, in other words, if the cable is BROKEN.

So yeah, Ralph isn't a cable denier. He's just believes that the only way a cable makes a difference is if it's broken, or so horribly misdesigned that it's an outlier, like using a power or speaker cable made with super light gauge wire. But we don't do this. If anything we use cables that are OVERKILL as far as gauge and quality of termination.

 

[Gregm]

Leaving the Ralph controversy for a moment I'd like to share my experience.

Playing around, I found (subjectively) the major differences came from the connectors & the type of wire used -- single strand or multi.
No doubt this is obvious to most but I just thought I'd mention it...
BTW, for someone who favours broken cables, Ralph sure succeeds his circuits -- all the Atma products i've listened to sounded excellent!

 

[Don Reid]

In reading the posts in this thread I have found that Atmasphere, Ralph, makes quite reasoned and reasonable claims. I am leery of placing too much importance on opinions about cables from someone who has a vested interest because they sell cables.

 

[Atmasphere]

You apparently don't understand my point. Let's try this. Effective communication is an art, not a science. Sorry Tom.

That is certainly true! Do you think I've been ineffective at presenting what I know about this?

 

[DaveC]

In reading the posts in this thread I have found that Atmasphere, Ralph, makes quite reasoned and reasonable claims. I am leery of placing too much importance on opinions about cables from someone who has a vested interest because they sell cables.

Sure, I understand what you're saying and believe Ralph's argument is convincing on some level. Here's a few things to consider:

- I do sell cables, but I'm not unique. You can find many similar cables out there. The guidelines I give for what makes a good cable are not specific to my own cables, but are an attempt to educate folks about the subject.

- The hifi industry never uses 600 ohm in/out trafos. If you want gear that uses them, your options are quite limited, and unsurprisingly include Atmasphere gear, which Ralph is selling. Do you think all other component manufacturers are ignorant? If Ralph's claims of cable immunity are true, that's a HUGE deal. Component manufacturers would surely use 600 ohm trafos if this was true, and it'd be a huge selling point that you no longer need to worry about cables when buying X-brand gear.

- Ralph does not believe PCs or SCs or even PS rectifiers make a difference unless the resistance is too high. Please see my previous post that goes over the math on this, and why the claims Ralph isn't a cable denier are false. However, if you yourself are a cable denier, then I suppose you'd buy into the fact that having low enough resistance is the only thing that really matters.

- It's irrational to believe the entire audio industry is wrong and Ralph is right. It's irrational to believe that commonly accepted objective properties such as LCR (inductance, capacitance and resistance) and material quality don't matter. If this is the case than where do you draw the line? Do all digital components sound the same? Some say yes... Do all amps with THD <X% sound the same? Some say yes... If you do believe all digital gear and amps sound the same then what I say doesn't matter, I'll never convince you otherwise. If you believe that electrical and material properties of the parts used in an audio system matter, then you might at least consider what I'm saying.

 

[audiopro92]

If you do believe all digital gear and amps sound the same then what I say doesn't matter, I'll never convince you otherwise. If you believe that electrical and material properties of the parts used in an audio system matter, then you might at least consider what I'm saying.

This is my train of thought exactly.

There are many newbie audio enthusiasts who believe both of these things.
Many of whom have never visited an audio shop, auditioned any other audio devices, and bought audio equipment based on measurements alone. These people believe their cost-effective / primitive electronics to be the be-all-end all; Everything sounds the same! You're imagining differences where they don't exist. They say. lol.