I recently ordered some OPENHEART 4.4mm balanced cables for my Hifiman Ananda Stealth. I couldn’t decide between the 8-core and 16-core cables, so I bought both.

The weights are as follows:

  • Hifiman original: 51g
  • OPENHEART 8-core: 37g
  • OPENHEART 16-core: 56g

I tried to measure resistance, but my DMM has some low-ohm drift. As far as I could tell, all cable connections were roughly somewhere around 200 milliohms end-to-end (correcting for lead resistance). I know there are methodologies for more accurate measurement, but honestly I think all these cables are sonically indistinguishable.

All three cables were extremely flexible. The Ananda Stealth came with Hifiman’s updated cables that address the complaints about their previous stiff cables.

I was surprised at how flexible the 16-core cables were. The 8-core cables were so “stringy” that they had a tendency to tangle when unhooked. The relevance of this would depend on whether you left them connected all the time or connected/disconnected/packed them up in daily use.

Anyway, that’s it. I figured I’d share since I had both in my hands.

  • crafty35a@alien.topB
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    1 year ago

    Oxygen free copper cables aren’t humanly distinguishable from a coat hanger last I checked. So I wouldn’t really call that important. But if it’s cheap anyways, why not?