Comments on: The most expensive speaker cable in the world?

By: Manbient

Manbient — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 02:31:58 +0000

I do. My power distribution is internally wired with Nordost Valhalla, and the inside of my speakers were rewired with the same wire that comes from my amps.

By: wgb113

wgb113 — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 19:44:57 +0000

oddio,

I won’t even tell you who laughed all the way to the bank making this cable for AudioQuest. It would shatter your imaginary world.

Do any of you audiophools also rewire your speakers and associated equipment internally to uphold the level of quality that your precious interconnects and speaker cables reach? Wouldn’t want to bottle-neck them at that point would you? After all, a system is only as good as it’s weakest link…but then again that’s probably either your ears or your room.

By: froze

froze — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 03:18:58 +0000

I too use to work in a highend audio shop in Woodland Hills California plus worked with a friend who owned a recording studio in Thousand Oaks California. I compared $500 (sold terminated in 6′ lengths) highend audio speaker cable to $18 (sold by the foot at $1.50 and adding terminators that cost $5 each) midend audio speaker cable of equal lengths of 6′, and isolated from any other wiring that could cause interference. Neither my friend who records professionally nor I who sold the stuff could tell the difference doing an A/B blind test comparison. BUT, then we took a set of cheap copper/aluminum small guage wiring and compared it to the $1.50 wires we used above and we could hear a difference in the base especially but also in clarity. I asked why, so my friend hooked up a volt meter that measured resistence and found the resistence to be higher in the cheap wires vs the $1.50 wires, but the resistence was same when comparing the $1.50 to the $500 wires. The guage of the $500 wire was the same as the $1.50 wire except the $500 stuff used timed phased twisted stranded silver wire (huh?) instead of oxygen free stranded wire.

We did the same test with equal 3′ lengths of audio interconnect cables using $25 midend cable against $1,200 higher end and concluded the same results, no difference. But those results could change if we were running 150′ feet of interconnect cable, but we didn’t test for that.

Our test basically proved that you should use larger gauge wiring the longer your wire run has to be. The same is true with electrical devices, for example my wet/dry vac says that if I run it using a 25′ extension cord I can use a 18 gauge (AWG) cord, but if I use a 150′ cord I need to up that to a 12 gauge (AWG) cord. If I use a cheap 18 gauge 150′ cord then I take a chance of burning my motor out. Your speakers are electrical devices plain and simple, there is nothing magical happening, just electrical current making the voice coils that turn into electromagnets when current is applied do their jobs. Thus the longer your speaker run is the larger the speaker wire gauge has to be to prevent your amp from running hot and maybe burning out just as my wet/dry vac would do.

By: The Swede

The Swede — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 13:32:38 +0000

It is interesting to note that few if any of the postings contains any scientifical reasoning. The audio spectra is close to DC, and there will for example not be any skin effect on the conductor. The current travels through the entire cross section of the material. Only when you start to approach the microwave spectra will the surface of the conductor start to count.
Some inductive attention might be justified to speaker cables, but any such consideration is likely to have very minimal practical impact. Low resistance is the key, little else matters. And BTW, you can measure all these parameters very precisely instead of using your pityful instruments for ears.

To you audiophiles; had you been educated, you would have understood that you should not have cables at all. The theoretical optimum is of course to attach the speakers directly to the terminals of the final transistor outputs (or valve transformer if you are religious enough to beleive in that stuff).

Here’s my suggestion on making even more money on the global ignorance; sell these ridiculous cables as a kit together with a homeopathic treatment that will promise the believer that his ears will suddenly be considerably sharper, all it takes is a year’s treatment with that extremely diluted substance, for which the effective molecule we cannot disclose.

By: oddio

oddio — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 02:32:10 +0000

All cars go forward, brake, and steer left and right. Yet you will not find any affluent car enthusiasts aspiring to own a toyota corolla. Ask yourself why is this so. They must see or feel something is missing in the driving experience compared to ( insert your favourite expensive car here). Having listened to nothing but upper echelon equipment for the last twenty years or so, I cannot enjoy hearing music through what most would consider “good” equipment and accessories. It just sounds flat, harsh and little better than noise. It is a shame that these consumer products are so costly but I appreciate and applaud the manufactureres for producing them. They are truly works of art and a joy to hear and own for those who can afford them. Someone mentioned recording studios using canare and belden. I won’t disparage these products but they are pure workman cables. Most studios have tight budgets but the most successful of them are coming around and have installed highend equipment and cabling. In the early days of cds most studios were using AD convertors that cost $200. Many recording artists have openly complained about how when they listen to their own recordings at home, just how truly awful they sounded compared to the master tapes ergo many invest in expensive sound equipment even though some have their own studios at home. If coathangers were any good at conducting music to speakers, my clothes would be on the floor!

By: Dave

Dave — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 01:06:38 +0000

The irony of spending 50k on your stereo system is that the album you’re listening to was probably recorded on 10k worth of equipment.

While many albums were laid down in million dollar studios, the bulk of the world’s recordings have probably been recorded on average equipment.

Any gains in sound quality you may hear on playback, sure as hell weren’t heard during recording and the artists/engineers probably didn’t even care that much.

By: Shran

Shran — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 20:14:08 +0000

Hey Dad,

that special cable we bought yesterday ?
Yes ?
It’s 3 inches too short !!!

By: Ron Huras

Ron Huras — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 22:10:26 +0000

it is for the most part a bunch of crap…however, i once got my hands on some 400 interconnects for a few days. I decided to try an tell a difference.
i bought a pair of $1, heavy(16 gauge in a dollar store interconnect!) dollar store interconnect. I had my friend cover my equipment from view and put on a set. he would leave the room after turning on the cd player. he randomly selected which one he would try next with a graphing calculator random number generator. we did this 40 something times over the course of 1.5-2 hours….i could tell the difference, picking the correct one more than 90% of the time, with very short music samples. he tried it a few days later, with the same setup, same music, it was the same result….
what i dont understand is cables costing more than $400….what are you paying for? if you made a cable out of solid gold it probably would not cost more than 15k….(no idea what it would weigh…just my guess)
this is simply highly refined copper
a funny thing is, the $400 cable was audioquest to…

I guess if you are obsessive enough you will spend anything…

By: Brad

Brad — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 20:21:28 +0000

As a musician and an experienced recording engineer and electronics technician, I can assure you that these expensive interconnects, Speaker cables, and especially power cables make absolutely no difference in sound. It is a total placebo effect. If you tell yourself that you can hear a difference, then you will hear a difference…..but the difference is in your head. These companies are selling expensive products to people with more money than brains. The one thing that all of the high-end audiophile companies are experts in is Marketing.

By: francis

francis — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 13:12:25 +0000

crazy invention