I don't want to write too much about them. It's a Pandoras box. I
am a believer that cables
are audibly different. I LOVE exotic cables.
But be careful.
I think that circuit topology is 10 times more important than cables,
and system positioning in room is 10 times more important than cables.
And choice of system elements (amps, sources) is 10 times more
important.
People attach FAR TOO MUCH importance to cables. So many people end up
spending 500 dollars on an amp and same amount on IC and speaker cables
but later, trying in vain to improve the cheap amp sound by Siltech
wires.
DON'T BE SO STUPID.
I can guarantee that if I wire all my system EVERYWHERE with cheapest
zip cord, it will still thrash all and any systems out there costing 10
times as much, systems whose cables cost more than my entire
system. Because I have well thought out system.
From my experience, in cables the sound quality is a result of:
33% conductor material
33% insulation
and 33% geometry
One percent are plugs and termination.
Some warnings:
1. AC cables: read elsewhere in HERESY section.
Remember that the cable BEFORE your amp , in your wall, goes anything
between 100 to 1000 m to the street transformer. And it is just plain
copper wire.
After your "python AC" cable goes ... 100 m of hair-thin copper motor
wire in the power transformer of the amp. The contribution of your AC
cable - "as a cable"- to the electrical performance is ZERO.
Very audible are AC filters, usually consisting of 0,01 uF cap in
parallel and a ferrite ring. This RLC component in AC supply is
important. It can be BUILT IN some of the exotic cables. So remember,
these RLC components are worth less than a dollar. They are usually
hidden inside plugs. Or they form a "cigarette box swallowed by a
snake" kind of addition to a cable. It is just like my filter described
elsewhere.
I experimented by adding a resistor to the AC cable in series. I mean a
resistance difference between a thin AC cable and exotic python is like
between 0,5 ohm and 0,01 ohm.
I added R values from 2 Ohm to 50 (fifty!) ohm and there was absolutely
no audible difference in the amplifier's sound. So thickness (cross
section) of even power amp cables is irrelevant. Just more irrelevant
is
AC cable cross-section for CD players and other sources.
2. Speaker cables.
Remember, that inside your speaker there is usually the lo-pass coil
made of 50 meters of 1 mm motor wire. Plus some 3-4 m of internal zip
cord wiring from XO to speakers. And inside drivers there is many
meters of motor copper coil wire. So 2 m of speaker wire is not that
important. Don't over-estimate its significance unless the whole
circuit is wired intelligently. Investment in exotica silver will bring
small returns unless you plan everything well. I advise bi or better
tri-wiring the speakers with dedicated cables to each section. In this
case the cables can be really cheap and thin. I myself sold all my
super cables and currently I run on wires costing less than 10 dollars
in total of my whole system.
I normally laugh out loud about people who define their problem
like this: "Oh
uh I have these great speakers but I thing they may be a little bright
in the trebles so I am gonna go and buy the mellow sounding Van Den Hul
carbon speaker cables maybe this will tame the brightness a little bit"
OOooppps there goes 2 K Euros.
My recommendation is to buy 20 euro-cent 1 Ohm 1 watt resistors and add
to the goddamned tweeters and spend the rest of money on a 2 week stay
in Croatia for the whole family. Or better - 18 inch woofers.
And by all means - DO biwire and triwire if you can, using different
dedicated cables for all circuits - never believe in a doctrine that
says:
same speaker cables for
biwiring for whatever claim of
"coherency" That's B.S.
3. Interconnect cables
These can be very audibly different, but don't forget that inside your
amp or pre amp there is probably 1 meter more of hookup wire, usually
cheap one, or even worse - a hard disk type of ribbon or something like
that. Audionote sells fabulously sounding and criminally
expenceive cables but inside my old preamp M2 I found half metre of
hard disk ribbon.
Rewire everything throughout, inside out, with just decent cable,
instead of blowing a grand on an IC alone.
By definition XLR balanced IC's are much less sensitive to quality
issue than RCA's.
Having said that I just adore the way the Audio Note AN-Z sound in my
system. (used to sound because I sold them).
4. Digital cables
As explained in Transport section and in MYTHS section - these are just
analog cables which do transmit frequencies above audio - usually in
the 2 to 20 MHz range.