Hifi and AV cables. What's your opinion?

[Devils Advocate]

I went to a hifi and AV show yesterday, some lovely equipment there as you'd expect but the most interesting thing for me was a demo I attended re. cables.
Yes, I know cables are an important part of any system but I flounder when I see some of the high end offerings at eye watering prices, I'd love to know you chaps views as asking this on a hifi forum would cause a war

First off, HDMI leads.
This is one trick I've never fell for, I've witnessed the bunfights for and against.
I use leads which probably cost 10 quid, not the cheapest,cheapest but still fairly low end, I saw HDMI's for £1000 and more, and I'm stuffed if I can see a difference in picture quality? So is a HDMI a HDMI, if it works is it ok? I'm under the impression quality is the same, if the picture gets star bursts on it the lead is knackered, if not everything is ok.

Same with USB leads, any difference between a printer lead and a 600 quid dedicated hifi item?.......again I think not but would love to know if anyone has found a better to do something better than a cheap one.

Kettle leads...........£2000, why? Again no difference to my ears.

Next, and of more interest to me was Hifi cables. Ok I don't skimp on this one (in the scale of things).
I've been paying probably 60-100 a set for interconnects and maybe £50 a meter for good speaker cable.

Yesterday I heard interconnects at £4000 for a metre's length played against 100 pound items, the demonstrator guy "told" the room we could hear a difference, I'm afraid I couldn't.
Then the speaker cable at a whopping £600 per metre, again I just couldn't hear its merits.

Funny thing is it's not as you might think wealthy footballers buying this stuff (although they probably have never heard of it) it's ordinary none wealthy hifi enthusiasts.
I love my hifi and to a point AV but this cable foo just beats me.

Anybody hear delved into this or have knowledge on the subject, are expensive cables better than cheapo's? As I say asking this on a dedicated hifi forum would be classed as "trolling" so just thought I'd ask here, as I know a lot of you love your home entertainment gear. Have you ever spent on a more expensive cable?

Cheers.

[El Cid]

Sadly, you are probably too old to tell the difference, even if there is any. Anyone over about 60 is unlikely to be able to hear frequencies above 10khz.

True HiFi is only for young ears!

Sid

[Enrique]

Hi DA,
Some light reading for other Members on Cable and costs............

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/n ... money.html

Eye watering prices...........

As long as I can play Dire Straits from my Desktop through £10 speakers I'm happy..............

So will leave you Guys to Bun fight over this one...................

A great point Sid...........same as with eyes.........and all this High Definition.........

[Devils Advocate]

Hearing is a good point, Sadly it's some younger people who are damaging their hearing with buds on full blast in their ears. Hopefully my hearing is still ok, tests showed it was last year anyway.

Eyesight is ok too, and I can't see a massive difference in visual definition's some people rave about.

[gerryh]

I'm on another technical theatre forum where there are, amongst others, many professional sound designers and sound engineers.
The overwhelming opinion is that these leads etc are a total waste of money.
The sound only sounds better to those who are daft and rich enough to buy these grossly overstrict leads.
Cheers
Gerry

[northandsouth]

Takes me back to 1988 when my mum and dad after years of renting went and bought their first machine Panasonic vhs Nicam stereo video recorder , and then my dad was badgered by the Richer Sounds man about the merits of buying a gold plated scart lead, at 40 quid he politely declined the sales pitch.

However, for what equipment most of us have in our homes I doubt anyone could tell any difference apart from what's left in their bank accounts. Had to grab an HDMI cable in a hurry the other day and the nearest shop was a Chino and it is as good as any other, to my eyes anyway for €3.95
Then again one hears horror stories about the use of some cheap usb charger leads.

[quebin]

I bought a couple of Russ Andrews products over 15 years ago.An interconnect between the turntable and amp and a super clamp for cleaning the mains electricity at a cost of about £60 each.They both gave an improvement in sound but then again it could be subjective,nobody wants to spend money and not hear an improvement.
If you live close it is worth a visit to his premises in Kendal with some fascinating old hi fi set ups.
The biggest noticeable improvement in sound was when we moved to Spain and after a few years we upgraded the electrics and fitted a 1 metre long earth spike into the ground.A clean electric supply works wonders.
I used to visit a high end retailer in Manchester and I heard a very expensive set up with a pair of top of the range Martin Logan speakers connected to a valve amp with a pair of Monster cables about 3/4" in diameter.Absolutely superb sound but the cost of the system was about £100 thousand pounds and that was about 20 years ago!
I suppose it a problem with aging that makes it difficult to hear differences in cables but "garbage in,garbage out" is applicable in all circumstances.
I now listen to Flac files from my laptop using an Audioquest Dragonfly DAC,cost about £130,which to my aging ears does offer an improvement in sound quality.It is connected to a Musical Fidelity amp with a cheap 3.5 mm to phono interconnect so I might have to try a more expensive version to see if there is an improvement but I don't think it will be a super expensive,i.e more than £50,cable.
The law of diminishing returns comes into play.
If it sounds good,to your ears,why worry.

[El Cid]

Hearing is a good point, Sadly it's some younger people who are damaging their hearing with buds on full blast in their ears. Hopefully my hearing is still ok, tests showed it was last year anyway.

Eyesight is ok too, and I can't see a massive difference in visual definition's some people rave about.

The problem with hearing tests is that they only really throw up a frequency loss if it's outside the range expected for your age. It is an absolute fact that you lose the ability to hear high frequencies with age.

Lots of info here http://onlinetonegenerator.com/hearingtest-results.html

When I was heavily into HiFi many years ago, it was always the high frequencies that were the Holy Grail of speaker design - sadly a bit wasted on me now although my hearing is slightly above average for my age.

Back to the cable question, one thing is clear, expensive digital cables such as HDMI are a waste of money because of the binary nature of digital signals. Analogue cable are a different matter and expensive cable will, in theory, perform better or at least differently to the cheap ones - whether you can hear the differences is down to your hearing.

This article is pretty good http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/n ... money.html

As you say, it's the same with visual perception. Many people have the visual ability to pass the driving test, but could not distinguish any difference between an SD and HD TV signal and that is often an age problem, particularly with the development of cataracts etc.

Sid

[Devils Advocate]

I'm on another technical theatre forum where there are, amongst others, many professional sound designers and sound engineers.
The overwhelming opinion is that these leads etc are a total waste of money.
The sound only sounds better to those who are daft and rich enough to buy these grossly overstrict leads.
Cheers
Gerry

Yes I can see their points. For me a well constructed and firmly fixed socket/plug on the end is one of the most important things for me, I've had trouble's in the past with poorly constructed leads of the cheaper variety, and that in itself is the only reason I pay a few bob more for a cable of better quality.

I can undoubtably even in a blind test hear a difference between say for arguments sake bell wire v proper audio cable, but once you get into the realms of decent cable the benefits are harder to hear, and as you say multi thousand pound cables are a waste of money in my eyes, however guys with limited budgets do seem to be fooled into purchasing them.
As Sid said hearing does wane with age, and at the show yesterday it was mostly (suprisingly enough) the elderly guys/pensioners who were engrossed with the cable tests and could claim to hear differences that I couldn't. I thought it strange how they were picking up on changes I and the mate I was with couldn't, we felt like the babies in the room

Some things do make a difference to sound and vision products, but I think just moving a speaker slightly or taking a grill off makes a bigger difference than a swap of cable......although I may be wrong, these cables do sell well.

[Devils Advocate]

Sid said

perform better or at least differently

Exactly, and I said this to chap yesterday who was nodding with approval when a cable actually did make a slight difference I could hear. It was different, spot on, but not better. The midrange became very muddy and jumbled up as opposed to the cheaper cable. The connectors were different though so I put it down to that and not the actual cable.

I have certainly heard difference's with quality connectors v Maplins for instance.

Agree 100% about HDMI, although surprisingly many still swear a high priced designer does a better job.
There cannot be any logic in that surely?

[Chunky Monky]

This subject has niggled me for decades. Basically I think these super high price promoters are selling snake oil.

[Devils Advocate]

You and I both CM, and a host of others, yet people still buy them.

This show last weekend, there were probably 40 rooms full of gear. I found the proper good stuff had nobody there telling you how good it was, the equipment spoke for itself, the lesser stuff always had wafflers singing its praises.

This demo of the cables was very flawed too, what do you think?

The guy plays snippets, probably 1 minute long demo's as he works through the cables.
Starting with the 50 quid one working through to the 4k one. (I metre long by the way)
Problem was he used a different track for each demo, wouldn't you use the same track for all?

All tracks were bland and somehow muddy, then surprise, surprise for the £4000 cable he does the speech about it being shrouded in top secret US military material blah,blah,blah.............then puts a "safe" track on to demo the thing. You know, lots of hi hats, snares, cymbals etc, very punchy too, completely different than the earlier tracks.

I was amazed at the anoraks stroking their beards with approval and applauding the "difference" when demo was over.

I guess you can kid some of the people some of the time eh?

[Chunky Monky]

You've hit the nail on the head!

Back in the early seventies I bought a Pye stereo turntable/amp combination with separate speakers. If you went into Currys or similar and asked to listen to a system (radiogran? Nice piece of furniture!) they would put on an LP with loads of brass instruments on it to make it sound better. If you were in the 'know' you would take your own albums to try out. In my case Deep Purple in Rock! Still a great album incidentally.

[lmj56]

Opinion seems to be probably a waste of money. A bit like a fine wine. Does a bottle of red at £1200 really taste ten times better than one at £120?

[Devils Advocate]

Exactly CM, funny to think of them playing "safe" tracks at Curry's but it must have happened, it's all part of the sell.

Nothing has changed, even on Saturday the kit with something to hide played what the salesman had been told to play......The band London Grammar are flavour of the month for this, the screechy vocals are in every room

However, walk into a room with top notch proper Hifi and the guy will throw you the Ipad and tell you to play what you want. No need to stage it!

Funny this thread coming back up. I've been invited to a mate of a mates house later. This guy I'm told is a nutter for hifi, worse than us lol, apparently an ordinary lad, not wealthy by any stretch of the imagination, he has a windscreen repair franchise.
Apparently he's got about £150,000 worth of kit, and he's an expensive cable buyer. It should be interesting to see how it fares against my more modest tastes.

If you are interested CM I'll post pics of some of this gear, I can't wait to see it........some guys who've already been are less than impressed surprisingly, we'll see.

As for the wine question. I can't really comment on things I've no experience of, I'm a £5 Pinot Grigio man with a 10 quid Chablis as the weekend treat

However yes, I'm interested in hearing people discuss it!! I could never see me paying £30 for a none bubbly............but I'm a philistine!

[El Cid]

Does a bottle of red at £1200 really taste ten times better than one at £120?

It's a bit like the cables. The expensive wine will taste different, but not necessarily better. The drinker will decide whether the difference is worth paying the extra for.

Sid

[Chunky Monky]

I'd be interested in seeing photos of your chap's system. 150k phew!

The wine/cables comparison is quite valid.

I don't drink wine myself but my old dutch swears by a local rosé for €1.95 a bottle! I prefer the ancient vineyard of San Miguel!

[ebbnflow]

I think the main quality of a HiFi cable should be, "fit for the purpose". This will be good construction, correct gauge and with an effective insultion. Add to that it's properties of resistance, capacitance and inductance (RFI and MFI also play their parts) which should all be suitable to the equipment being connected.

These cables are purely an extension of the circuit board tracks so that the different boxes can talk to each other. Therefore, in a perfect world, they would do this without any effect on the passing signal at all.

However, all HiFi's are not created equal and indeed not always matched well. Cables can act as a sort of tone control altering the sound of said systems. Is this an improvement or simply an adjustment to personal preference?

There is a huge amount of BS in the HiFi trade that takes all of the above, and more, into account to befuddle potential customers into thinking their cables are "better" than next man's.

It is for the listener to draw their own line and trust their own ears, if it sounds good/better to you, then it is.

[Devils Advocate]

Agree with that summary Ebb.
I visited the chap today and the money he's just spent on cables astonished me. I've brought a few of his old ones home he's selling to try them out, purely out of interest.

Here's a pic of a few bits he set up today, purely to test the cables. I like hifi but it can get silly. Every room he has is full of the stuff, thought I was bad

Cables individually packed in rosewood boxes @ £19,000 for 5 leads. Nope, don't get

[costakid]

Funny that, Just been looking at a Samsung smart curve TV and the sales person was more interested in selling me an HDMI @ £70 than the tv. He said its very important to have high end cables. I thought at the time he was talking rubbish.