Is It Possible for a Manufacturer to Create a Design that Minimizes the Effects of Cables? Anyone you are familiar with?

[Robh3606]

Is It Possible for a Manufacturer to Create a Design that Minimizes the Effects of Cables?

Obviously, one way to do it is to reduce the number of boxes and provide proprietary connections as dCS has done with Varese. One of their sales pitches is : upgrade cost is not as high , as you need less cables.

But is there anything that a Manufacturer can do in terms of the design itself?

thanks

Sure do what electronic test manufacturer's do. I have walked through test labs with millions of dollars of test equipment and not seen a single one using anything other than the manufacturer supplied power cable/cords. If they can do it certainly audio companies can.

Many times equipment is rack mounted so when they are taken for calibration the stock cords are left in place and a standard computer cord is used to power them when being calibrated. Never had a failure linked directly to a power cord or power cord substitution while being calibrated.

Good power supply design counts.

Rob

 

[microstrip]

execution always matters. i respectfully disagree that perceived differences between BNC cables proves that the concept is wrong. also does not prove it's right. it proves nothing. it was only my personal experience.

Probably because you did not understand the concept you are repeating and the associated claims. Sorry, ignorance does not make you less guilty.

Your personal experience proves that the Dartzeel claims as state are dubious. Sorry, were, the site in not active anymore.

cannot quibble with this. we can start to form opinions over time based on our experiences

Surely,

. but connecting the technical and experience is more problematic.

Yes, but the marketing guys do not need such reflection time.

FIY information, cable impedance and termination are not rocket science - surely their elementary maths implying derivates impresses audiophiles.

 

[Elliot G.]

below is a pdf of an article published in the Sept 2001 Stereophile magazine, written by Herve Deletraz (i still have a hard copy of that issue). this was a year prior to Herve launching the darTZeel brand in 2002, with the Stereo 108 amp, and is the basis for the 50 ohm 'Zeel' BNC interface which is intended to minimize the effects of cables.

the main perspective of the article is that conventional cable interfaces (RCA and XLR) are not capable of proper impedance matching and so allow for signal reflections which reduce transparency. and that improvements in impedance matching matter. i'm sure i'm glossing over lots of details. but that is my take to the degree i can understand it.

the math and theory is beyond my capability of understanding. but it is one person's vision and was implemented and in my view had success. i still use a 7.5 meter Evolution Acoustics 'zeel' BNC set of interconnects between my dart 18NS preamp, and dart 468 mono blocks. btw; not all 50 ohm bnc cables sound the same. the quality of the plug construction and cable matters alot. cheap BNC's sound cheap. the EA's i use are the best one's i've heard over the years.

https://www.townshendaudio.com/PDF/Impedance_matching%20deletraz%20paper.pdf

this link was provided by @marty and was found here.

Mike,
I am having a hard time understanding this. If his cables are built to minimize cable differences then why are different 50 ohm cables sounding different. Isnt that conflicting info?
To me it seems that it may work too some degree with his gear but alas that truly isn't proven with whats available in other cables today No?

 

[microstrip]

I am the only one finding strange that people want to discuss cable matters without using words such as noise, distortion, bandwidth and spectrum?

 

[Mike Lavigne]

Mike,
I am having a hard time understanding this. If his cables are built to minimize cable differences then why are different 50 ohm cables sounding different. Isnt that conflicting info?
To me it seems that it may work too some degree with his gear but alas that truly isn't proven with whats available in other cables today No?

first of all, i'm not claiming anything technically. what i said was "but it is one person's vision and was implemented and in my view had success."

"IN MY VIEW"

and the point i made was that in my experience the BNC 'zeel' cables, when used between gear designed with the BNC 50 ohm 'zeel' interface, seemed to have a performance advantage over conventional cables. i also found that length was less an issue related to performance with the 50 ohm zeel approach.

but i never said all BNC 50 ohm cables sounded the same. i know that there were specific build specs that Herve used for the cables he sold, as well as the one's EA built. i tried some Radio Shack 50 ohm/BNC cables and they sucked for music reproduction. likely they were built for video interfaces. and as far as the article was concerned, it really did not get into the whole 50 ohm, BNC thing. it was more focused on impedance matching and how significant that was. the 'zeel' thing came later when darTZeel was launched....as his own branding of the concept.

it is certainly not controversial that impedance matching might help cables sound better. implementation of cable interfaces is important.

and i never claimed or attempted to do any scientific compares. it was all just my own anecdotal experience. i was only throwing this out there as relevant to the thread topic. Fremer comments from time to time about the advantage of the 'zeel' cables in his system between his darTZeel electronics.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

I am the only one

yes.

finding strange

strange is in the eye of the beholder. we are technically ignorant listeners staying in our lane here.

that people want to discuss cable matters without using words such as noise, distortion, bandwidth and spectrum?

wrong forum for that stuff; you are about 10 years too late for when we had all sorts of tin foil hat/propeller heads who would dive into the deep end. most are gone now or dormant. OTOH they did know how to party. sorry.

 

[DasguteOhr]

If the wave impedance of the cable does not match the termination of the 50 ohm connection, then reflections will disturb the signal. I have no idea whether this will affect the sound. But the signal will definitely not be transmitted cleanly.
Exsample to put it very simply:
The wave resistance is like the diameter of a water pipe.
If you connect a second pipe (water pump) to it, you will only get an uninterrupted flow of water if both have the same diameter. If the water pump connection is larger, some of the
water bounces off a wall and is reflected or causes eddies.
Don't forget there are 50 and 75ohm bnc cables always pay attention.

 

[microstrip]

yes.

strange is in the eye of the beholder.

wrong forum for that stuff; you are about 10 years too late for when we had all sorts of tin foil hat/propeller heads who would dive into the deep end. sorry.

IMO it is unfortunate that the forum evolved in such way. It was not so ten years ago, people asked for correlations and wanted to understand things, not just to hear from gurus and old experienced audiophiles or share experiences for the fun of it.

I expected that modern audiophiles had forgotten the trauma of the perfect measurements of the 70's and were able to adapt for a new vision of old concepts. But as far I see the Voodoo approach still rules for much of them.

It is curious that most (not all, we have some exceptions in WBF) high-end designers and manufacturers made the jump, but for easily understood reasons want to keep consumers in the dark.

 

[Elliot G.]

first of all, i'm not claiming anything technically. what i said was "but it is one person's vision and was implemented and in my view had success."

"IN MY VIEW"

and the point i made was that in my experience the BNC 'zeel' cables, when used between gear designed with the BNC 50 ohm 'zeel' interface, seemed to have a performance advantage over conventional cables. i also found that length was less an issue related to performance with the 50 ohm zeel approach.

but i never said all BNC 50 ohm cables sounded the same. i know that there were specific build specs that Herve used for the cables he sold, as well as the one's EA built. i tried some Radio Shack 50 ohm/BNC cables and they sucked for music reproduction. likely they were built for video interfaces. and as far as the article was concerned, it really did not get into the whole 50 ohm, BNC thing. it was more focused on impedance matching and how significant that was. the 'zeel' thing came later when darTZeel was launched....as his own branding of the concept.

it is certainly not controversial that impedance matching might help cables sound better. implementation of cable interfaces is important.

and i never claimed or attempted to do any scientific compares. it was all just my own anecdotal experience. i was only throwing this out there as relevant to the thread topic. Fremer comments from time to time about the advantage of the 'zeel' cables in his system between his darTZeel electronics.

ok so then its just another type of cable that can or can not effect the sound and therefore its another option. I was asking since the OG was talking about something different and this is just another form of different.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

It is curious that most (not all, we have some exceptions in WBF) high-end designers and manufacturers made the jump, but for easily understood reasons want to keep consumers in the dark.

i like the dark. or at least dim.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

ok so then its just another type of cable that can or can not effect the sound and therefore its another option. I was asking since the OG was talking about something different and this is just another form of different.

i've made my case. no worries however you view it.

 

[microstrip]

If the wave impedance of the cable does not match the termination of the 50 ohm connection, then reflections will disturb the signal. I have no idea whether this will affect the sound. But the signal will definitely not be transmitted cleanly.
Exsample to put it very simply:
The wave resistance is like the diameter of a water pipe.
If you connect a second pipe (water pump) to it, you will only get an uninterrupted flow of water if both have the same diameter. If the water pump connection is larger, some of the
water bounces off a wall and is reflected or causes eddies.
Don't forget there are 50 and 75ohm bnc cables always pay attention.

Unless you quantify such statements it is like saying that the weight of a passenger affects plane speed. Yes, it affects. Cable termination must be seen from the separate perspective of signal time and signal amplitude.

This debate lives on the ambiguity of mixing them. Audio cable termination was not created by DartZeel - Meridian Audio used it is the 80's in their systems, curiously using 75 ohm cables and termination. The main reason for being unsuccessful was poor implementation and poor understanding of the role of cables in the analog domain. .

The introduction of digital cables in the 90's, when timing of fast digital signals became critical and cable termination become mandatory made the situation even more confusing for audiophiles.

 

[Elliot G.]

i've made my case. no worries however you view it.

My view is so far cables make a difference. I have heard the difference with power cables, speaker cables, interconnects etc.
I have heard the difference with different lengths of cables and other strange and mysterious things. Who would have thunk it 50 years gone.
Bob Fulton walked into my little store at 5 pm on a Saturday night with a assistant that looked like a wolfman and started spouting about the colors of music and his cables. He even had a chart and a book. It was strange as hell but the world proceeded to change and the earth stayed on its orbit

 

[Robh3606]

If the wave impedance of the cable does not match the termination of the 50 ohm connection, then reflections will disturb the signal. I have no idea whether this will affect the sound. But the signal will definitely not be transmitted cleanly.
Exsample to put it very simply:
The wave resistance is like the diameter of a water pipe.
If you connect a second pipe (water pump) to it, you will only get an uninterrupted flow of water if both have the same diameter. If the water pump connection is larger, some of the
water bounces off a wall and is reflected or causes eddies.
Don't forget there are 50 and 75ohm bnc cables always pay attention.View attachment 144981

Where are they using BNC in audio? Digital streams? It's an RF based connector?


Rob

 

[Atmasphere]

i also found that length was less an issue related to performance with the 50 ohm zeel approach.

You can run 50 Ohm cable some serious distances- 100 feet is no problem at all

Bob Fulton walked into my little store at 5 pm on a Saturday night

Almost sounds like a joke. He was from the Twin Cities. I first met him about 1979.
.

 

[Elliot G.]

You can run 50 Ohm cable some serious distances- 100 feet is no problem at all

Almost sounds like a joke. He was from the Twin Cities. I first met him about 1979.
.

I understand the long runs but they aren't normally required in home audio.
That evening was so freeking strange. I was a very young man and to be honest my initial thoughts were this is bullshit and I wanted to go home to my wife. I stayed about 45 minutes and then left leaving my then business partner alone. The next day he looked like the bride of Frankenstein and was babbling all this stuff.
It was really funny but to be honest the system was very different and better once I stopped laughing at him

 

[microstrip]

My view is so far cables make a difference. I have heard the difference with power cables, speaker cables, interconnects etc.

I think no one questions it nowadays. We have however many disagreeing on how relevant these differences are. And a few that believe their preferred cable is the "reference".

 

[Ron Resnick]

This statement in context is false. Those of us who have LP or tape recordings from the 1950s will understand when they also understand what cables were like back then. Microphone cables back then had wire and insulation that would be considered crude by today's standards. So why do those recordings sound so good when the mic signal has traveled through 100 feet or more of cable?

The fact that 1950s recordings were good and that microphone cables and connections followed the balanced standard are interesting facts. It may be coincidence, or it may be causally related.

But merely citing these facts does not logically, without more, prove causality.

It makes sense to me that adherence to the balanced standard would result in the subjective sonic differences among balanced cables and connections having lower perceived variance than the subjective sonic differences among single-ended cables, due to common mode noise reduction.

It remains to me an open question -- and a mystery -- why Bill Conrad and Vladimir Lamm and André Calmettes, among other designers, designed only single-ended circuits, forfeiting the theoretical advantages of balanced cables and connections. There must be they didn't like balanced cables and connections.

 

[Lee]

No

Agreed. I tend to think of better cables as another component to be carefully considered.

 

[microstrip]

(...) It remains to me an open question -- and a mystery -- why Bill Conrad and Vladimir Lamm and André Calmettes*, among other designers, designed only single-ended circuits, forfeiting the theoretical advantages of balanced cables and connections.

Easy - they considered that the advantages of balance cables are not needed for domestic audio and the added complexity and cost of balanced audio increases cost without benefit. Also they prefer the sound signatures created by simple single ended circuits.

Vladimir Lamm also designed balanced units - e.g. the LL2 preamplfier and the M1.2 amplifier.

People using SE connection are not supposed to use long cables ...