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Old 22nd Dec 2019, 10:33 am   #1088
Radio Wrangler
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Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: Fife, Scotland, UK.
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Default Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.

And that is the important point. Arguments have to be strictly fair, honest and accurate.

A cable CAN be made that better rejects incoming or outgoing radio frequency energy, both conducted and radiated compared to a simple cable. It isn't even difficult to do, and the performance can be measured compared to the simple design of cable. These sorts of cables, at least of one sort of enhancement, are very common. A lot of cables provided with computer equipment have overmoulded ferrite sleeves on them to act as common-mode high frequency absorbers. These things work, and such equipment usually needs them in order to pass the RFI tests applied to new equipment. Fancy cable construction can also help with differential mode unwanted signals. So I'm not surprised that a fully accredited test house can measure a difference, and thus an advertisement can be written around hard facts which can be independently verified.

The one cable supplied with computers without a common mode choke on it, is the mains cable. This one gets away with it because RF filtering, both common made and differential mode is performed inside the PSU. But if you open a PC PSU you'll often find that the filter components in many are not loaded and common mode chokes are replaced with wire links bridging them out. It looks like some manufacturers may fit them to get an EMC pass, and then not fit them in production units to save money. EMC tests on such shipped products do throw up some fails.

Computers aren't hifi amplifiers. Does hifi need fancy cables or external filters?

Not if it's designed well.

Is hifi equipment designed well?

Some, but not all.

The equipment ought to have a few quid's worth of components inside it along with some care over layout. What it shouldn't need is several hundred pounds spent on fancy cable.

Russ Andrews' advert quite correctly proved defensible. But the value of the product is in putting a sticking plaster on the symptoms of corner cutting/cost saving (or incompetence) elsewhere.

I'd rather tackle problems at the source.

David
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