Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater High-end interconnect and speaker cable ?

Does it make a difference between high-end interconnect/speaker cables and DIY cable? I was just wondering why the price is so high....just curious...

do a search, and you will find about 20 zillion threads about cables and speaker wire. its a very hot topic

bottomline, in my opinion, any well built, solid interconnector will be fine. the super cheap ones that come in the box when you buy a new dvd player are not that good. but the ones in radio shack that are 1/4 the price of monster cables, and every bit as good. dont get fooled by the hype.

and speaker cable.. just get the $.30 cents a foot 12/14 gauge from home depot.. will work fine for all your speaker wiring needs.

bigjohn

Because they can.

I am willing to admit that some high end cable may sound different, but probably only because they do some really funky things with inductance and capacitance. This could result in rolled off highs that some people like. Of course, I'm just guessing at that stuff. I personally have never heard a difference in cable. Here's the usual article. I built my cables from this, just for fun. I'm pretty sure that 14 gauge (or even 16 gauge!) would work just fine for the 10 foot runs I've got.

Don't waist your time and money on "high end" cables - they are high end purely because they are high-priced.

Is there a correlation between believing in "high end" cables and believing in ghosts? It seems to be an interesting research topic

That's not completely true. A lot of high-end cables are meticulously assembled with high-quality materials and look downright sexy, which partially justifies their exorbitant prices. That doesn't jive with my cable philosophy, though: they should be neither seen nor heard.

This is my favorite way to answer this particular question.

AF, while we don't have to go as far as Mick Loney does in the post Ray links, it does give a rather extreme example of what a trivial problem technically cables and wire are. You might also be interested in something I ran into last night during a slow period on the board. Scanning AVS for something interesting I almost passed it up as just a routine skirmish in the wire wars, and much of it was, but found this post where speco cites a post by dhanson which is one of the best combinations of technical knowledge and just plain common sense on the point that I've ever read.

You can also make your speaker cables look like the expensive ones with the snake skin type. The other day I put a sleeve on my wires and they look cool. I don't know if it will do anything but they said that it should reduce the static. I dont really care if it does or not but it looks like a snake skin Monster cable. It's cheap too (50 cents/ft).

I think some make a difference. Personally I've heard the difference between three seperate coax cables from different brands. So one could almost attest of cables having different "flavors" as opposed to being "good" or "bad" cables.

I also have done several studies and found, that once finding the right coax for you, it to be superior to digital optical. Digital optical's strength is it's linearity. But ultimately coax is a cleaner signal when done right.

The reason for prices being so high with cables can be attested to several things. Firstly, the technology in research and development and cost of materials make up the bulk. Other costs could be included because of name recognition (BOSE anyone?). Another includes people just having enormous markup to rip off the unsuspecting. The first reason I mentioned of course being the most honorable. Its fair to pay a company for a product done well.

If you know how to put a cable together, and you find the parts you like...more power to you. Here's a source that carry's high end components where you can purchase either just the cables, the connectors, both or have them assembled for you. http://venhaus1.com/VH_Audio_Test.html

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But ultimately coax is a cleaner signal when done right

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You're talking about digital, right? The jury may me out on whether cable quality makes a difference in analog signals, but the verdict is definitely in when we're talking about digital. With digital, the signal either gets there, or it doesn't. Remember the unshielded fence wire experiment.