In Reply to: Neg. feedback? It's probably your cheap cables you're hearing....(nt) posted by mkuller on August 22, 2006 at 12:25:03:
The most valuable posting I ever read on the internet about cables was authored several years ago by John Curl. He said he measuered noise from the 7th harmonic of 5 khz down -120 db for the cheapest $1 Radio Shack interconnect cable (the worst he could find) and down -135 db for the best cable he could find. This dispelled any lingering doubts I might have had about inexpensive interconnect cables being far more than adequate for use in ANY sound system. This hardly came as a surprise to me though since every test I tried where a 7 mhz video signal with over 350 times the bandwidth of a high fidelity audio signal appeared indistinguishable from the same signal sent to the same TV set as an RF signal for decoding by the TV set's own tuner. (The TV was Sony 36" Wega XBR extra bright and the source was cable TV feed to a VCR.) This is testimony to the dead flat FR of the cable and its immunity to noise at least in that application on that day. It is also in perfect agreement with my own A/B audo tests in which they are alternately inserted in the signal path an shunted by a preamp's tape monitor switch. Inexpensive cables have also never failed to sound indistinguishable to me from the shunt. Since I don't consider a cable a control element and I think most electrical engineers would agree, I consider any cable which performs differently from this to be defective and any cable more expensive that this to be an unnecessary waste of money. Nope, whatever the cause of the poor performance in Dan's setup, it wasn't the cable...unless of course he was foolish enough to use audiophile cables (sound's instead like he used Belden which is excellent.)
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Follow Ups
- Can't be - Soundmind 04:40:23 08/23/06 (20)
- "Inexpensive cables have also never failed to sound indistinguishable to me from the shunt" - BS64 02:46:51 08/24/06 (1)
- When you start reading books on electrical engineering and stop reading ad copy, come back and discuss it intelligently - Soundmind 05:55:05 08/24/06 (0)
- Can't be - unclestu52 13:18:24 08/23/06 (1)
- Re: Can't be - Soundmind 17:57:20 08/23/06 (0)
- How come objectivists have no sense of humor? (nt) - mkuller 09:34:58 08/23/06 (1)
- How can you say that, I read YOUR postings don't I? (nt) - Soundmind 10:41:01 08/23/06 (0)
- Re: Can't be - morricab 08:55:59 08/23/06 (13)
- You are almost right - Soundmind 10:40:07 08/23/06 (12)
- Re: You are almost right - john curl 17:34:56 08/23/06 (11)
- Re: You are almost right - morricab 02:30:29 08/24/06 (10)
- Wrong again Morricab - Soundmind 03:50:58 08/24/06 (9)
- You can't even seem to understand yourself - morricab 08:13:29 08/24/06 (8)
- You certainly nailed simplemind's illogic. What he really means is everything more expensive than mine is junk nt - Norm 19:36:53 08/27/06 (0)
- Actually - jneutron 10:07:37 08/24/06 (5)
- I suspect......... - Dan Banquer 10:18:26 08/24/06 (4)
- Re: I suspect......... - john curl 10:39:39 08/24/06 (2)
- Have a nice day - Dan Banquer 10:53:16 08/24/06 (0)
- Re: I suspect......... - jneutron 10:51:39 08/24/06 (0)
- Well, a guess is about all I can do, seeings as I never touched the thing. - jneutron 10:35:07 08/24/06 (0)
- OOPS1 - Dan Banquer 09:29:16 08/24/06 (0)