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Old 13th Oct 2017, 11:31 am   #122
G8HQP Dave
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Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: Solihull, West Midlands, UK.
Posts: 4,872
Default Re: Audiophoolery. 'Cable Break In' - I never knew that!

Quote:
My only audiofoolery is the speaker cables - for which I use Kimber. This is a woven construction, with very low inductance and very high capacitance - so it inherently acts like an RF filter - although another way of skinning the RF cat is just to use a Zobel at the speaker end.
Woven construction is likely to be very poor for RF pickup i.e. very good at picking up RF. Certainly not an RF filter. I suspect the popularity of woven (and other unsuitable audio cables) is precisely because they do pick up RF, and the resultant background noise is misperceived as extra 'detail' or 'sparkle' around the musical instruments. A Zobel at the speaker end may help at those frequencies where the cable length is resonant, or if the amp cannot cope with a capacitive load. Anyway, you admit that this is audiophoolery.

I once saw someone try to justify woven speaker cables by saying that earthing straps are woven, so therefore woven is good for RF.

Quote:
I believe that when listeners report different sound quality between cables, they are mainly hearing the difference in RF characteristics when linked up to their particular system, in their particular location.
Yes, I suspect the same. As a general rule, the more expensive or more 'exotic' the cable then the more it picks up RF. The best cables are ordinary competent (i.e. quite cheap!) screened for interconnects, and ordinary (but fairly thick) for speakers.
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