Special cables don't improve audio... Or do they?

[NiHaoMike]

As many know, I have always been a disbeliever of fancy Monster Cables and similar, making the statement that a fancy cable cannot possibly make a noticeable audio quality improvement over a generic but decent cable. Every once in a great while, there would be a sale on some fancy audio or video cable that makes it cost about the same as a more ordinary cable. I did buy some, but they merely worked just as well as generic cables, not better.

A few weeks ago, an intern arrived at work and it became my task to teach her how to solder. At the same time, I needed an audio wiring harness made for a personal project (compact gaming/media center PC) I was doing. So rather than try to cobble up some "practice" setup for her to solder, I brought the unfinished harness to work - it just needed a little soldering. I had no difficulty getting her started and after a few minutes, all the connections were soldered. I checked everything with a multimeter and gave her the thumbs up.

When I got home and continued working on my personal project, I of course had to install and test the harness. I played a random MP3 (which I later found out was a horrible 128kbps) and it sounded like garbage. I cleaned the connections with no change. Before concluding that she must have made a cold solder joint that was adding distortion, I decided to try a FLAC file. Then the most magical thing happened - despite the signal coming from a $45 motherboard, it sounded unusually clear and high quality. So good, in fact, that it rivaled the audio quality of my main PC. In both cases, I was using a pair of Klipsch S3 for testing.

At that point, I was a little confused. The intern still needed a little more practice, so I decided to have her make another audio harness for my main PC. I installed it and loaded up a few FLACs. To say that the sound was amazing would be an understatement! She must have some magic charm that extracts every bit of performance out of a piece of audio electronics. The best part is that she actually enjoys doing it! Now I have a new best friend and a new appreciation for HD audio. (Before anyone gets the wrong idea, she's just a friend. She and I are now known as the "audio Mythbusters" by friends.)

Later, she soldered up a S/PDIF cable and a few power cables for me to test, which thus far did not perform any different from regular cables. I guess the "fancy cable" myth is busted for digital and power cables, but (conditionally) confirmed for analog cables.

 

[Railgun]

Analog has the ability to introduce noise, RF or whatever. Some would argue speaker cables shouldn't be skimped on. Meh.

The filters within any unit's power supply should be sufficient to remove any RF noise introduced there. And digital is digital. Unless the signal strength is too weak from a stupidly long run and you get bit errors (if it even works at all), it's irrelevant.

When you say harness, from/to what are you connecting, and how?

 

[Xaotic]

Higher quality can make a difference, but there are may other factors in place. I've seen people go to true extremes for negligible results, think rectangular silver cabling for speaker wiring. Proper cable routing and shielding using much more inexpensive cables would likely have given the same results.

Usually, induced noise from similarly routed cables is the biggest factor. The degree of impact can be determined by several factors. These include signal strength or the reference signal, shielding, distance and angle of intersection of noise source cables, and strength of the noise inducting signal. Basically, low power signals with poor shielding are more susceptible to induced noise. Even if these are low and poor, noise can be minimized by proper environmental considerations. Higher power signal cables (particularly AC) should be kept away from the weak signals. When they must intersect, the closer to a normal (90°) intersect, the less inductive noise will be present.

Twenty years ago, I did use higher end cables, but I was largely doing car audio. The outputs from the head units on RCA cables was pitifully weak and noise induction was a major issue for higher end systems. This eventually led to use of line drivers to increase signal strength and eventually balanced line drivers over shielded cable. Today's head unit have stronger amplification available for the line out signals and pose less issues. I still have the cables and they are still fine. Maybe in the next car, I'll get around to using the higher end equipment again...

There are many good sources to read up on the effects, ranging from basic to PHD level. This one is a fairly low level, but aimed at more practical purposes.

http://www.ni.com/white-paper/3344/en/

 

[NiHaoMike]

The first harness goes from the motherboard to the front panel headphone jacks, while the second one is more like an extension cable to extend the length of the headphone cable and allow the microphone to be used with a normal PC.

What's strange is that she seems to add a "magic" touch to the cables she assembles. I can make cables that test just as good on a multimeter, but they're just ordinary cables. The ones she makes somehow makes well encoded MP3s sound better and FLACs sound fantastic, and low bitrate/poorly encoded MP3s sound worse.

 

[Xaotic]

Some people have the touch. It's hard to quantify, but seems to be true. Some people have the reverse as well.

 

[knoober]

Is this guy in love or what?! There's girls out there that I think the world of as well, and everything they do is just a bit better.... j/k man, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity for a little ribbing.

In all seriousness, like ^^^ said. Some folks got the touch. I think it is quantifiable though. That's why we have machines to make certain things. Precision in repetition. This young lady must have dialed into exact Temps and distances and precision that most of us can't find. There is also the chance that she had a high mineral content in the oils on her hands.... Who knows, it's a nice thing to read though

 

[sobe]

Generally a $10 HDMI cable just as an example will offer the same quality of sound as a $100 Monster HDMI cable. I'll admit that I do have some Monster cables but more out of curiousity when I grabbed them on sale for $15-$20 each, so I grabbed 2. Quite frankly, the monoprice cables performed the same and at a lower price than those sale prices, at least to my ears.

It's like telling someone to go buy that cable that was selling for $10,000... Just.... why...

 

[NiHaoMike]

It's definitely a strange effect with what seems like no logical explanation. Some say it might actually be a "magic field" that surrounds her (with suggested ranges of anywhere from 5' to several hundred feet), so for a little variant, I decided to see what would happen with a cable that I assembled while she was within 3' of the assembly area, and as a control, another cable I assembled while she was off in another building. The cable I assembled while she was next to the assembly area performed like magic as well, while the cable I assembled while she was far away performed... like a regular cable... An already assembled cable, however, is not affected even if she touches it. It's like the molten solder (or even hot copper) captures and locks in the "magic field", kinda analogous to how (high capacity) hard drives use lasers to selectively lock in magnetic fields for storing data.

I also have a (preassembled) cable that started as normal, but then she drew arrows on the plugs to make it "directional". But rather than testing it as usual, I'm going to play a prank on some unsuspecting family members by purposely installing it backwards between their TV and stereo system. Then if they question why the audio sounds "wrong", I'll swap it around and use "dirty connections" as an excuse.

 

[knoober]

You could go even a step further and mess with the heat on her soldering iron. If the cables are still magic then you're in lov.... Er.. She's magic! But ifn they're normal... Well then you might just have too much time on your hands.
Still just Messing around a bit, had too but I wonder what the quantification of this effect could be? Forget reasons why for now. What is the normal loss between pc and receiver at a given length of cable? Is there even a method for measuring such minute details?

 

[Alaric]

#1) Monster cables are cheap junk
#2) Good quality RCA cables DO make a difference compared to Dollar Store junk wire
#3) It won't sound "wrong" no matter the direction

The higher up you go in cable quality , the better your equipment has to be to reap the benefits. Most "consumer grade" audio equipment will never deliver the value of good , silver , interconnect cables. I know everybody likes to think their Samsung or Pioneer Class D amp is 'state of the art' , but it just ain't so. You're looking at a few thousand dollars for mid-fi And you can't just plug your buddy's Cambridge 840 CD player in to the WalMart rig and claim sufficient electronics. Unfortunately , the money has to be invested in speakers , amplification , and source(s) , and some care has to be taken in setting up the speakers and the room. I have some cheap cables , and they are easy to tell from my good cables if compared in my stereo. Something grabbed off the shelf from BB probably won't show a difference.

 

[NiHaoMike]

You'll be using digital (S/PDIF or HDMI) from the PC to a digital amplifier/receiver. The fancy cable myth is already busted for S/PDIF. Later on, I'll test HDMI which is much higher speed and theoretically would be more sensitive to differences. I have a clue it's going to be busted given that any decent quality HDMI cable will carry 4K no problems. And note that if you want to use HDMI without requiring the receiver to be on just in order to have something on the monitor and possibly adding lag, a cheap HDMI splitter does the trick. Another option is to plug the receiver into another HDMI output on your GPU and then set the output to be mirrored, but some GPUs start heating up a lot when driving two outputs. (Or just use S/PDIF, which works every bit as well with two channel content. It's only surround where HDMI does better.)

The soldering iron settings used were exactly the same when she assembled the cables and when I assembled the cables. I'll have to try reflowing the solder on a "normal" cable when it's within range to see if it turns special, and try reflowing a "magic" cable far out of range to see if it loses its magic.

What matters most in the quality of an amplifier or receiver are how good the DSP algorithms are (newer is usually better, but largely unchanged between low/high end), whether the power stage is surface mount (less parasitics = higher carrier frequency = probably better resolution), whether or not it has variable supply rails (significantly boosts usable resolution at lower volume settings), and the quality of the output circuit (especially the output filter components and supply rail caps, which are often the first parts to be skimped on!). Samsung and Pioneer are good value as they perform almost as well as far more expensive pro grade units.

One tip is that if you want to get top notch performance for (relatively) cheap, look at evaluation boards for HVICs and other high end audio chips. They're designed to showcase the product so they won't skimp on quality (a few extra dollars per board is worth it if it gives them an edge over competitors), but you'll need to do some DIY work. (I should get some and have her assemble some parts...)

It turns out that truly directional cables do exist. They're double or more shielded (as in two or more shielded layers with insulation in between) and really only make a difference for long runs. The reason they're directional is because the outer shields are only connected at one end (some also having dedicated ground connections), which should go towards the end less sensitive to noise or with a more direct ground, usually the source. The "directional" cable I had her "make" was only single shielded so I messed up there. But I did get a comment this morning that something seemed to be "wrong" about the TV sound! I corrected it and it seemed to be better, but it was an old stereo so it really didn't make much difference. With a modern setup, the connection would be digital.

 

[knoober]

Ive still got my money on her being a robot and just being dialed unto the optimum temp/distance/time for her builds. Meaning she holds the iron on for EXACTLY the optimum amount of time and gets EXACTLY the optimum contact without even a hair of wire out of place. Not to doo doo on the quality of your work, but maybe she's just a phenom there are 2 holes in that theory though... 1) cables she hasn't even touched are magiked (otherwise I would say to ask her what her hand lotion is) 2) I haven't got any clue as to how much magik it would take to make 128kbps sound anything but terrible!

You know the formula man : find the max fsb then start raising the multi. If she's really magic, I want her soldering the board on my new mobo!

 

[NiHaoMike]

She appears to have no effect on digital signals. In fact, because she has a fast metabolism (she can eat a lot and still be pretty skinny), having her next to a high end PC would cause the PC to run a little hotter. (I'm actually jealous of her. I'll gladly take a very slight drop in computer performance in exchange for being skinny.)

Funny story: in the first week of her showing up at work, the GTX 570 (used for CUDA) in one of the test PCs did the infamous "display driver stopped responding and has recovered" two times on two different days, even though she was nowhere near the PC. Afterwards, it hasn't done it since. I joke that the GPU was upset over the intern stealing all the attention.

Actually, the effect is to make high bitrate MP3s and FLACs sound better and low bitrate or poorly encoded MP3s sound much worse. That 128k MP3 was just a test file I use to check if audio is working at all. The surprise was when it suddenly sounded much worse than I remembered it.

 

[knoober]

Well if she's that good, I've got a couple of graphics cards that I borked by being a dummy and getting TIM in all the wrong places.....

Quantify the magik, that's what I say. If you can get it figured out we may all benefit

And for the record, I've never put much stock in expensive cables either, but I do think "proper" cables are better than bargain basement. Also I've never had equipment that justifies the sweet cables either, or the kind of knowledge to use 'em right either

 

[WrkBoot]

We'll need to see a picture of this intern making magic cables

 

[NiHaoMike]

It turns out that while reflowing a "normal" cable within range turns it "special", reflowing a "special" cable far out of range doesn't cause it to lose its magic. Moreover, despite being an effect that only works on analog audio, it's either there or it's not. There's no "in between" I could find in my testing, indicating it could very well be a quantum effect.

She's a bit camera shy so no pictures.

 

[Audioaficionado]

Radio Shack Gold RCA cables are the best. RIP Radio Shack

Digital depends on the DACs not cabling so much.

 

[NiHaoMike]

I did have her mod a few of my cheap(ish) DACs with better caps, which did improve the quality a whole lot. (Much more than if I did the mods myself, out of range, due to the mysterious magic effect.) The CS4344 that's common in many cheap DACs is capable of a lot if you let it.

I'm working on a custom DAC built around PCM1794A, OPA1612, PGA4311, and TPA6120A2 as the analog signal path. Those components should be able to deliver outstanding sound quality without the help of any magic, but for good measure, I'll have her do the analog connections and/or I wire it up while she's within range. I should also mention that in another 2 months or so, she'll be going back to study, in which case it's all up to luck when, if ever, I'll get in contact with her again. For what might be a once in a lifetime opportunity, I might as well make the best of it!

As for purely digital amplifiers, I have no idea what effect the magic would have. Given that it's digital all the way up to the output filter, there are only a few spots where there is an analog signal. Also, speakers deal with orders of magnitude more power than headphones. As such, it would be a higher current that presumably be less able to be influenced by outside forces. During quiet content, the RMS current through a pair of headphones is well into the microamp range. (That's why crystal radios can be made to work!) Funny things happen when you're dealing with really tiny AC currents.

 

[Mpegger]

Imo, someone replaced NiHaoMike with a Monster Cable advertisement writer, and will pretty soon start listing these "magic" cables in the classified section.

 

[NiHaoMike]

Nope, what she does beats anything Monster Cable can offer. Also no plans to sell those magic cables. I'm going to stockpile the cables and audio gadgets since it's very uncertain if I will get another opportunity after the two months.