Esoteric Cabling. Is It Worth All The Expense?

Ever since I was a boy and was introduced to the joys of Hi-Fi audio, a war has raged on regarding the audibility of cabling interconnects. Now stretching to AC power cords and the the visual effects of video interconnects.

Let me say that based upon many years of experience, cables can make a difference in what you hear, but NOT what you see if using digital interconnects; analog video is a different beast. And power cords? Read my next two part posting on cabling, connectors and other pertinent issues to get up to speed on this topic.

So now a whole industry has grown up around selling exotic, esoteric cables that are supposed to change your entire listening experience for the better. Some of these cables costing over $5000.00 a pair! More money than the majority of the worlds population spend on an entire home theater system. In my experience, this type of money would be better spent on the equipment or better still, improving the rooms acoustics.

Note that I previously said, that these ridiculously expensive cables CAN make a difference, not that they WILL. The question arises as to why they can, under what circumstances they will, and what is going on within the cable that effects the speakers, and amplifiers that drive the cables, and how it all impacts what you hear.

Over the years I have had the ‘pleasure’ of testing many commercial speaker and line level cables, and making many myself including AC power cords. However, I have not had the desire (or opportunity) to test any of the recent ridiculously priced exotic interconnects. Most of which would not be applicable to my current speaker or audio system as it mainly uses professional active balanced cabling throughout, with the few core audio system interconnects barely being longer than three to four feet.  Having tested a number of audio line level and speaker cables in the past, I have never heard any difference between them, unless there were significant cable losses due to their mechanical construction and materials. Any changes being attributed to HF roll off and loss of top end detail, or poorly controlled bass in passive speakers.

What I determined was that if your system is fed with a clean stable low impedance AC power source, and has a well designed grounding system. That provided you use professional high quality low loss cabling, the the effects claimed by the vendors selling these esoteric cables are mute. Or at least can be explained by reviewing the technical, mechanical and material parameters of the cable; such as capacitance and inductance per unit foot, its DC resistance and types of dielectric (insulator) between the conductors.

In short, any audible improvements in the sound of any of my systems caused by changing cabling, including my current one, can be explained to a greater extent by the technical parameters of the cabling used. Don’t get me wrong, cabling absolutely effects what you hear, but in a well engineered system using high quality ‘standard’ copper interconnects, their effects should be minimal to none existent. The only time I have heard a worth while improvement is in moving coil cartridge and associated head amp connections. Where, I have used Litz wire and silver solder and heard an improvement in the openness and clarity of the top end of the spectrum. Not exactly surprising though, but as it was part of a much larger electronics upgrade, isolating the changes heard to just the use of Litz wire and silver solder is impossible.

Read my two posts, here and here,  that look at a number of issues regarding audio, video, speaker and power cables and the reliance on sound engineering practice, good technical grounding and low impedance high voltage AC supplies in obtaining a great sound.