Those who own Audioquest cable...what do you think?

[Speedskater]

If two reasonable interconnect cables have different loudness, then one has background noise, interference, ringing or oscillation problems. However if we are talking about 100 meter long cables then there might be small level differences.

[Speedskater]

If two cables have different loudness, it's because the less loud of the two has more series resistance than the louder of the two (wire is passive, it can have no gain without an active stage in it), and that's simply not a characteristic one would want in a conductor but could certainly, as you point out, occur with two cable s of wildly different lengths (say, 3 ft vs 100 ft). A cable can induce hum and noise if it is poorly shielded, but it can't generate it. Again, since wire is not an active component, it cannot oscillate. L-R-C and Z/frequency sums-up about all we know to measure about cable.

a] It's 3 feet to 300 feet (almost 100 meters) before you might have an audible difference.

b] The load is 10000 Ohms, no reasonable cable has enough resistance difference to make a meaningful fraction of a dB for realistic length cables.

c] Of course the cable can't generate it! This is all about the interconnect system. That's the output stage, the cable itself and the input stage. It's about the audio signal, the noise & interference picked up along the way. It's about the ringing, oscillation and other problems that the output stage might have driving a difficult cable.

[Speedskater]

From the website:

3- Helical Twisted.

I have pre-twisted the cable for you, which does a few things. 1- It gives a much wider bandwidth, lower inductance, and lower impedance . 2- It resists magnetic fields that are abundant in and around stereo equipment. 3- It makes cable management much easier.[/Quote]

Well a Unshielded Twisted Pair (UTP) does:

1] If done with a big expensive machine like they make Cat6 cable with, it will increase bandwidth but that has nothing to do with audio.

It will lower inductance, but it will also increase capacitance which may be a problem for the output stage.

It will lower the Radio Frequency Characteristic Impedance of the cable, but again this has nothing to do with audio.

2] UTP is good at reducing interference problems.

3] It very well could make cable management easier.

[Speedskater]

From the website:

1- Cryogenic Treatment. (72hr)

Cryogenic treated cables provide an extended dynamic range. In particular, high frequency range notes are much clearer and display less distortion. Measurements of cryo treated wires show that electrical and signal resistance is reduced after cryogenic treatment.[/Quote]

A member of several audio forums is a wire and cryogenic expert at a major research laboratory.

He reports that:

a] The differences in electrical properties is trivial.

b] It can damage insulation and plastics.

c] The differences will disappear with just a small amount of handling.

[Speedskater]

Just as many members have very little respect for you and your many anti subjective pronouncements !

Even the actual series output resistor value in a Preamplifier that is capable of being used as a low powered audio amplifier, due to having more than adequate current capabilities (>100mA Bias) and a low output Z, can cause a considerable difference in how a typical interconnect, whose impedance shouldn't matter much at audio frequencies sounds. Even the differences between say 82 ohms, 100 ohms and 120 ohms. In a Class A Preamplifier project in another forum, 100 ohms was found to sound more realistic than the other 2 values.It would have been helpful to have been able to have used 120 ohms, which is the designed output impedance for headphones meeting the old IEC61938 requirements.

This was when used with a Class A amplifier having an input impedance of around 15Kohms.

The Radio Frequency Characteristic Impedance of an interconnect cable and a real resistor in series with an output are two very, very different things. RFC Impedance has absolutely nothing to do with hi-fi, unless your cables are more than one mile long.

[Speedskater]

There are four different traditional digital interconnect system. In the past it was AES/EBU and SPDIF.

The current standards are:

 

[TABLE=class: mft-pivot mft-both-header]

[TR=class: mft-header]

[TD][/TD]

[TD][h=4]AES3[/h][/TD]

[TD][h=4]AES3[/h][/TD]

[TD][h=4]AES3id[/h][/TD]

[TD][h=4]S/PDIF[/h][/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]Interface

[/TD]

[TD]Balanced

[/TD]

[TD]Balanced

[/TD]

[TD]Unbalanced

[/TD]

[TD]Unbalanced

[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]Connector

[/TD]

[TD]XLR-3

[/TD]

[TD]CAT 5

[/TD]

[TD]BNC

[/TD]

[TD]RCA

 

[/TD]

[/TR]

[/TABLE]

 

Note:

The XLR uses a Shielded Twisted Pair (there is no ground)

CAT 5 does not required a shielded Cat5 cable.

BNC uses a shielded coax cable.

RCA uses a shielded coax cable.

 

Interfacing AES3 and S/PDIF