Speaker Cables Really Don't Make Much of a Difference?

do speaker cables really make that much of a difference that's the question we're going to be answering in today's hey folks i'm gene delasallo with audioholics and you know i've been at this a long time you've seen tons of videos for me talking about speaker cables debunking the myths about all the different exotic cables and the manufacturer claims i've taken some heat for it today i come armed armed to the teeth with real measurements and before i get into that information with you i want you guys to understand the amount of effort that we put behind the scenes here and doing what we do at audioholics there's very few companies very few publications that dedicate this many resources into giving you the real science of audio so to start with i have some very sophisticated equipment i've got the wayne kerr i know the name sounds funny but it is called wayne kerr i have their 4300 lcr meter which can measure the resistance the inductance and capacitance of cables very accurately this is very precise equipment much more precise than someone using a volt meter or any or you know just a regular uh handheld lcr meter these things are really accurate i use this to measure the speaker cables or to measure interconnects so i could get all the electrical data of the cable and then i could build models on that and show you guys what this all means in addition to that i have the audio precision apx 585 hdmi 8 channel analyzer this is a forty thousand dollar analyzer it measures distortion signal to noise ratio frequency response i can measure amplifiers eight channels excuse me eight channels at a time i can measure dvd players blu-ray players any source device you name it has hdmi toss link digital aes outputs everything under the sun i could do with this this is very precise test equipment this particular piece alone could measure you know with resolution up to 120 130 db well beyond most audio equipment even the most expensive audio equipment out there this does it i have the tools here this is how we do the analysis so i decided to be kind of a good topic to do cables so i took three speaker cables i had laying around i have they're all 10 feet in length i made the assumption that if an audiophile is setting up a two-channel system they want to keep their cables as short as they can right most audio files put their amplifiers behind the speakers they want to minimize cable lens so i made the assumption that someone that's really serious about two channel audio is going to set up speakers with their cables no more than about 10 feet in length obviously if you go higher in length and cables then there's potentially more losses and we'll get into that so in this test i took regular 10 gauge speaker cable that i have from blue jeans i took generic 14 gauge cable i had laying around for whatever i did at the time it was exactly 10 feet and then i took the kimber 8 uh tc speaker cables and as you guys know these are my favorite speaker cables i know they're expensive i know that you know i talk a lot about cables and how you don't really need to spend a lot of money on cables but if you do spend money on cables at least make it that it's a good cable something that measures better than standard 10 or 12 gauge zip cord and that's exactly what the kimber cable does in fact the kimber atc is probably the best measuring speaker cable that i've measured to date that's why i still use it in my reference systems i love the way it looks i like the audio jewelry aspect of it but we're going to get into whether or not there are real differences even if they're measurable on my lcr meter does it translate to actual differences that are going to get to your speakers and then eventually get to your ears so i want to give you some of the electrical properties of all these cables if you look at the atc and the 5 t the 5 t 0 0 up is the 10 gauge from blue jeans cable that's just what they call it i probably should have put 10 gauge to be more clear and then the generic 14 gauge here and i just plotted when i measured the dc resistance of these cables i found exactly that the atc cable actually measures around 9 gauge the blue jeans 10 gauge measures at 10 gauge of dcr and the 14 gauge is at 14 gauge so there you know you we know that the resistance of these cables is what they are specced so the first thing i look at is ac resistance and people probably don't understand what that means what do you mean by ac resistance well when you're dealing with a piece of wire and you're transmitting frequencies through it your audio band or whatever you know obviously you're going from 20 hertz to 20 kilohertz to get the full band as you go higher in frequency what happens with a piece of wire is you get less and less current going through the entire the entire strands of the wire and they go more towards the surface of the wire and that's called the skin effect there's a skin depth associated with it and usually we don't really concern ourselves with skin effect at audio frequencies because it's really not that big of an issue but i plotted that here anyways i went from 100 hertz out to 100 kilohertz and you can see the 14 gauge speaker cable it's pretty flat up until about 10 kilohertz and then as you go up in frequency um the skin effect is causing a rise in ac resistance it's not a huge rise yet i mean it's still you know within 20 kilohertz it's fine it's a very minor amount of difference then you look at the 10 gauge it has kind of the same slope very similar characteristics now the kimber atc of course is a braided cable and they use multiple strands obviously it actually has less skin effect problem within 100 kilohertz than the other cables so you are getting some engineering involved in this cable you are getting better measurable performance here this cable's actually reducing the skin effect within the audio band so kudos to kimber for actually doing something beneficial with their cable next up i look at the inductance of the cables again here we have the atc which is the lowest inductance cable then we have the 10 gauge which is the next lowest inductance and then the cheap 14 gauge is you know 0.2 micro hemorrhage per foot now that's still pretty low but the idea behind inductance is you don't want to have very high inductance because if you have a lot of inductance and you plug it into your speaker you could act like a like a low pass filter and you could you know you could knock off some of the high frequencies so obviously here the kimber is is the lowest inductance cable of the bunch pretty significant you know four or five times lower than the 10 gauge here then you go to capacitance see anytime you lower inductance you're going to increase capacitance it's all about the conductor spacing that determines the relationship between inductance and capacitance so here the kimber cable cables the highest capacitance it's like 100 picofarads per foot whereas the uh 14 gauge and the 12 gauge are pretty similar they're hovering between 20 and 30 picofarads per foot so proportionally less capacitance because they have proportionately higher inductance and what do you care about in capacitance capacitance is not as important as the inductance although you don't want to have massive amounts of capacitance because that could cause an amplifier to oscillate if it's not a very good amplifier or it could cause some frequency peaking on very wide bandwidth amplifiers but generally speaking the most important metric in speaker cables as i've always said is resistance followed by inductance followed by capacitance so i want to show you what i did next i got my setup here i actually am in the process of measuring the denon uh pma a110 integrated amplifier it's 110th anniversary integrated amplifier this is a very good amplifier it's a very clean amplifier it's rated at 80 watts a channel and 8 ohms 160 watts a channel of 4 ohms i've actually been able to confirm and actually have some of that power exceed it at 4 ohm loads it was doing a little bit more than 160. it's a very good quality amplifier and you can see in the background i have the revel f328be speakers so the integrated amp here is 3500 bucks the speakers are 16 grand a pair the reason why i'm telling you prices is i know a lot of audio files will always come and say you don't have revealing enough equipment or you're you know you can't hear the difference in speaker cables because your amp's not good enough or your speakers are not good enough i think few people can argue the fact that these are pretty much benchmark products that i have here so i've got benchmark amplification benchmark speakers benchmark test gear and nobody can argue that the kimber 8 tc is a very good cable so here's what i want to show you the first test i ran is i took the audio precision i plugged it into the denon amplifier and an 8 ohm load and i measured the frequency response at the eight ohm load driving different cables and here we are we measured from uh a little 10 hertz out to actually full bandwidth we i went up to about 80 kilohertz so you can see here there's a slight difference in level between the different traces so we have the top trace which is the atc the blue trace which is the camber versus the lowest trace which is the 14 gauge cable now these are very minute differences if you look at the scale here i'm only going up my vertical scale is only about 2 db i had to really zoom in on this just to see anything if you use a 40 db scale this looks transparent you don't see a difference at all i had to really zoom in here we're talking about .06 decibel difference between the two cables running between the atc which is a 90 gauge cable versus the 14 gauge cable .06 db difference at 20 kilohertz the limits of human hearing the best anyone can actually hear and perceive differences in sound is about maybe a half a db maybe two tenths of a db at most it really depends on how loud the signal is and what what frequency it is and how good your hearing is nobody can perceive a difference of .063 db that's just completely absurd it's within the tolerance of electronics for even channel the channel to vary that much even on the best equipment so we're talking about point zero six three b three db difference and you can see i also plotted distortion here to see if there was any weirdness going on and again this is very perceptually low distortion if you look at the comparisons here i zoom in on it we're talking about a point zero zero six percent difference between the kimber cable and the 10 gauge cable barely measurable difference in distortion caused by the reactants of the cable and the amplifier and the and the load very in you know something that's not perceptual it could be argued that the audibility of distortion is around you know 0.1 percent and it depends again on the signal but nobody's going to argue that you can hear .006 percent thd difference just between these two cables so i know what people are going to say now the cable guys are out there they're going to say oh you can't just test it into an 8 ohm load you have to test it into a loudspeaker because a loudspeaker is reactive it's going to interact with the cable differently the only way you're going to be able to test if there's a difference in cables is if you plug it into a loudspeaker and then measure that well i did do that and as you can see here i have the rebel f328bes i have the kimber cables plugged in and i did the 10 gauge i varied all the different cables you can see up close here there's my test leads there's the kimber eight tcs and here we go i measured it again and what are we seeing again look at the difference .06 db difference between the best and the worst cable what i found on the 8 ohm load tracked with an actual loudspeaker and the rebel loudspeaker is a complex load impedance it's actually probably closer to a forum load so the differences should be even more pronounced but look at that the distortion is pretty much the same you get a little waviness here but they're all the curves shape follow it it doesn't matter this is because of the reactive load of the loudspeaker driving on an amplifier but the shape is the same on all the different speaker cables so again we're talking about perceptual differences that barely my test equipment can pick up and certainly your ears cannot pick up so what do you think about that guys i actually took cables i measured them on a loudspeaker i measured them on an 8 ohm load i showed you at the source what the differences would be with cables and this is all stuff that's easy to simulate because if you look at the differences here and you see that the 14 gauge cable has a lower level in general that's because of insertion loss because the cable has higher resistance it sets up a voltage divider and that loss is caused by the resistance the power is dropping in that cable and it's dropping the spl and we're talking again it's very imperceptible it's you know .06 db is not much and obviously if the cable lengths get longer then your losses are going to proportionally get longer for all the cables so what i did for 10 feet is pretty relevant to if you did all this again for 30 foot cables what i'm trying to tell you guys is the perceptual differences in cables is not because of the actual measurements when you plug them into a speaker it's probably has a lot more to do with placebo effect this is why it's so important to do controlled blind listening tests and to not just don't just trust yourself if you swap out a cable and someone is preconditioning you telling you you're going to hear chocolatey mid-range and the perception that you're airing it's going to be more airy things are going to open up flowers are going to bloom just realize they're preconditioning you to hear that that has a much bigger effect than a 0.06 db difference that i just measured here and if you really want to make changes in the sound of your system it's not going to be through cables it's going to be through room corr it's going to be through room acoustics and positional eq of your speakers getting your speaker set up right just moving your head a couple of inches will change the frequency response far more than whatever cable you're going to use and i know there's going to be a lot of resistance on this i know people are going to be there's going to be some people companies are going to come out and and just you know they're going to want to poo poo this whole test but the reality is the proof is on them the burden of proof is on them i'm showing you here with measurements that there's almost no difference at all with the very best cable versus a very generic cable you can get at home depot so i hope that sums it up why don't you guys give me a comment down below let me know what speaker cables you're using let me know if you bought into the magic and you were hoping for more and i'm not disparaging anyone for spending a lot of money on cables i like the fancy stuff i love the kimber stuff the kimber stuff is beautifully crafted there's many speaker cable companies that make great crafted products you know you got wire world you got all these different companies nordost beautiful cables but the reality is you're buying jewelry because at very best they measure a little bit better than 10 gauge cable but the actual output difference on your speaker is pretty negligible so i hope you guys found this video useful please make sure you hit that bell notification do the thumbs up on this give me some comments down below if you don't hit that bell notification you're not gonna get notices when i do these kind of videos and i really would like your support i really appreciate your support the fact that you guys have been sticking with me for so long and given me a platform to get my voice out to get the science out in audio we need more science and audio and i'm hoping others follow suit with this as well don't forget about our patreon channel at patreon.com audio hauls you get direct access to me if you want to suggest video topics or if you just want to do a console that could set something up like that for you as well and until next time my friends keep listening

Channel: Audioholics

Views: 150,938

Keywords: audioholics, home theater, audiophile, tech, headphones, speakers, amplifier, movies, music, audio, video, projection, bass, subwoofer, hdtv, blu-ray, dolby, atmos, cables, wire, hifi

Id: kR12Ttuxobs

Length: 17min 13sec (1033 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 25 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/GalacticArachnids]

The fact of the matter is that extremely low gauge cables can change resistance/impedance enough to eq the high end response somewhere around 0.25 - 0.5 db up on average.

You know what can also do that? Slightly toeing in your speakers. And that’s free! Even if different cables offer some sort of eq benefit, even if it is most likely inaudible, there are free and/or much better methods to tune response whether than be DSP, placement, treatment etc.

Buy cables that look nice if you want. Nothing wrong with that. Just know that their practical benefit ends there.

[u/kgturner]

If you don't think cables make a difference, unhook all of them and then tell me how good your system sounds!

[u/[deleted]]

Interesting though that he says to throw away the cables that come in the box because they are garbage. That means either all cables are garbage or there are better cables than what come in the box meaning there is a difference in cables. Personally I don't use the supplied cables but I don't spend a lot of money on upgraded cables either. Low mid-end I suppose, primarily because I like the aesthetics of them.

[u/Imaginary_Chemical]

Every competent electrician ever born understands the relationship between wire gauge and amperage, yet there seem to be few electricians in the Venn Diagram intersection with audiophiles.

[u/thegarbz]

Disagree. Cables make a huge difference to how well you can show others you have more dollars than sense. :-)

[u/labvinylsound]

Here we go again, Audioholics viewership must be down this month.

[u/squidbrand]

Absolutely incredible thumbnail. Only way it could be better is if his sleeves were torn off.

[u/AldoLagana]

so true. I recently had classic clear wire for one speaker coz a fancy banana plug one would not reach. both sound exactly the same.

[u/NahbImGood]

I can only assume the GR-Research / Amir video back and forth video series' is what prompted this video from Audioholics. I think it's kind of ironic that Audioholic's take on speaker cables is "this one (the kimber 8tc, the one he exclusively uses in his main system) is measurably better than other cables in terms of LCR, but since I took a frequency response measurement, and that's not very different, cables must be BS." Especially so because one of the cable kits that Danny Richie sells is literally a Kimber 8tc clone, and the other is a Kimber 12tc clone, which will be better (than the 8tc, which Audioholics deems worthy but also not at the same time) in every single aspect that Audioholics says matters (LCR measurements). I think it's almost dishonest to use frequency response as evidence against cables mattering. Obviously frequency response won't be affected by even the crappiest of cables. The debate is whether the LCR (inductance, capacitance, resistance) of a cable affect the apparent resolution. All of Audioholics measurements (except for frequency response which obviously won't change dramatically with different cables) are evidence for measurable differences between cables. If you're wondering, I'm personally from the camp of "yeah, speaker cables do matter a little bit, but shouldn't be worried about until every single other thing in your rig is perfect." To be clear, I love measurements, they're really useful for understanding what an audio device is doing, and why it sounds the way it does, not the other way around. I'm amazed that ASR types are still trying to prove that different cables don't SOUND different by taking a frequency response measurement. The entire concept of low ESR and ESL in cables and expensive capacitors isn't about frequency response, it's about the fact that every single electrical component is an RLC resonator, and the lower the inductance, the higher the cable capacitance (to a point), the more damped the resonator. I plugged Audioholics posted measurements into a simple online RLC calculator and got that the Kimber 8tc has a resonant frequency of about 80mhz, with a Q of 19.14 and the 14awg zipcord has a resonant frequency of the same about 80mhz, but with a Q of 100. So, what does this tell us? The Kimber Cable will be more than 5x more damped than the 14awg zipcord at any frequency. That's a contextualized interpretation of a measurement that's actually relevant to the subjectivist claim Audioholics is trying to refute. Audioholics has put out some quality content in the past, but I hate when these kinds of oBjEcTiViSt content creators call everything "snake oil" and that anyone who believes in it is a "shill" or scammer. Audio clearly has a snake oil problem, but in my opinion, it's equally wrong to make broad claims that "cables don't matter, all capacitors sound the same, frequency response and THD are all that matter, you can't hear below -110db," calling out more experienced, more educated audio designers that are widely praised for their skills, especially when making ad money misinforming the public (who's the shill selling snake oil now?). Most audio designers' decisions are based on an almost 200 year old theory that would be taught in any introductory analog electronics class at university, that most people could understand from watching a few youtube videos, and takes 5 minutes to verify. To all the self proclaimed objectivist publishers, you aren't even just the average consumer. This is your job, it's your responsibility to make sure you know what you're talking about. Choosing to spew this worthless misinformation makes you no better than a scientologist. I used to think Danny Richie calling people "flat earthers" was just name-calling and unprofessional, but he really has a point (I wish he could communicate it in a more professional way, but it's his brand). You can't call yourself an "objectivist" or claim that you're doing "Audio SCIENCE" when you reject the globally accepted current understanding of electrical physics. ObJeCtIvIsTs, do better.