Do cables Matter? Yes. You couldn’t hear your speakers without them! But do expensive cables make your system sound better? Not necessarily
My background is in sound engineering, I have a degree in music recording tech, and I work full time at a pro sound retail store as a repair tech and salesman. I also had this article fact checked by my coworker and fellow repair tech before posting it here.
Cables to matter to the degree that using the right cable for the right application matters. Using the right gauge wire for the amount of power you’re pushing matters, knowing where to use shielded cable vs unshielded cable matters. Knowing where to use balanced vs unbalanced cable matters.
Balanced cable: have 3 terminals. (+) (-) and (ground). A balanced cable from a balanced source carries two out of phase copies of the same signal, and blends them together at the destination. This eliminates hum that is picked up along the length of the cable. Balanced cables include XLR and TRS. Balanced cables are best when running long lengths of cable, because the longer the cable the more EM interference will be picked up along the length of the cable. For short cable runs of a few feet, it won’t make a noticeable difference.
Unbalanced cables have (+) and (-) terminals. Examples of unbalanced cables include most speaker cables, RCA cables, and instrument cables.
Shielded cables have a (+) and (-) terminal where the (-) terminal is a wire shield that is wrapped or woven around the (+) wire. This helps to reduce EM interference. Most small signal carrying cables will be shielded, like RCA cables and instrument cables. Balanced cables are also shielded with the shield connected to ground.
Now, most speaker cables are going to be both unbalanced and unshielded. They have just a positive and negative terminal. Speaker cables need to be heavy gauge wire, this is because speaker cables are typically carrying relatively high amounts of power, so thicker wire=less resistance=more power handling. Speaker cables don’t typically need to be balanced or shielded, this is because the additional EM interference picked up along the length of the cable will be negligible compared to the signal being carried by the cable, and therefore not audible.
So, using the correct gauge of wire is really important for speaker cables because the more power you put though a cable, the more heat you generate as a byproduct. If the cable is too small to handle the load, it will melt the casing, potentially causing a short and damage to your equipment or worst case a fire. So that’s why you don’t use a guitar cable to connect your head to your cab even though they both have 1/4 ends. That’s why you use speaker cable for speakers. That’s it.
What to look for? What actually matters when choosing a cable? There are definitely differences in quality of cables, there are some things that will make a small improvement in fidelity in theory, and higher quality cables will also last longer than cheap cables. There may be a slight difference in noise floor when using a good shielded cable vs cheap shielded cable, and oxygen free copper will have slightly less resistance than standard copper which will improve fidelity. I generally like Mogami/Canere cable because they use good quality wire and good quality casing. Overall, you will pay slightly more for a high quality cable that will last longer and may have a slightly lower noise floor. Anyone selling cables for hundreds of dollars making wild claims about clarity and sound stage is selling you snake oil. Period. Looking at you, audioquest and Cardas. The difference in audio fidelity will likely not be audible in most home audio setups. I wanted to make this post because I see this question pop up here DAILY and I’m getting tired of it. Less beating a dead horse and more focal grande utopia’s please.
I know I shouldn’t kick the hornet’s nest but here goes.
Until about five weeks ago I believed that cables make no difference. Never spent more than maybe $200 on a pair of interconnects, $300-$400 on speaker cables, but only because I liked the look of them. I thought that spending more money on cables was a waste, at least if the goal was to improve sonics.
Then, over the course of two days, I spent about six hours auditioning cables, interconnects, equipment feet at the headquarters of a European manufacturer. All I had to do was listen (and pay attention that no other components were swapped). With every step up in the product line, after the cables were swapped before my eyes, I did hear improvements, some subtle, some seemingly obvious. The music sounded “bigger,” more open, with more energy. It’s hard to describe. We must have gone through 20-22 products. Only twice could I not detect a difference.
I left shaken. I sucks when you have to fundamentally revise your dogma. But I know that I heard what I heard.
All along, I was conscious of potential biases, and fought them. Could I tell my hosts that I heard no differences at all? Was I just telling them what they wanted to hear, to avoid awkwardness? Was anything else happening when the cables were being swapped out — a secret small component in the signal chain somewhere?
I believe there was no trickery. I believe I would have said I couldn’t tell differences, awkwardness be damned. But I did. Make of that what you will.
Couple a days ago I decided to try and switch my Supra Power Strip out with a regular cheap power strip - just to try and listen for any difference. I started with the Supra which I listened to/with for years now. Then I shifted to the cheap regular one and wow! The whole soundstage opened up. It was like the Supra was making the audio some kind of mono in comparison. Then I switched back to the Supra and it sounded completely the same as the cheap one… I switched back and forth many times afterwards and the results was the same. No difference.
It isn’t the first time I think I hear a difference in sound after the first shift (cables, gear) and then when shifting back again no difference.
Placebo and expectations are really manipulative
I can tell you as an electrical engineer with a focus in power (this is what I studied and did for a living), there’s absolutely zero scientific reason that non-defective, inexpensive cables/wires would sound different than some more expensive cables/wires in this setup. Zero.
My bet is that they altered a setting, or maybe they “fixed” a connection or something else that a company that makes snake oil products would do.
Here’s my funny story: Prior to becoming an electrical engineer, I sold high-end home and car audio (McIntosh, B&O, ML, etc.) and I sold thousand dollar cables and wires to “match” these systems; I bought the snake oil and it was very profitable. Fast forward and years later while in college I chose power (transmission lines, signals, etc) as my focus and one of my professors is a HUGE audiophile - guy lives for Russian & Soviet-era tubes, kinda audiophile. He and I geek out on testing audio cables and wires for years - not so much wires since that’s pretty black/white but cables at least have the potential to accept interference, and then more importantly, pass that interference on to be amplified.
I run Home Depot extension cords for speaker wire and my cables are around the $50/6-feet range. I do have some XLRs running with a Carver set up but after running multiple tests with my ears and then finally with an o’scope, there was zero difference found.
Point is, beware of the snake oil salesman and their products. Unless you have a truly unique situation, you shouldn’t ever have to pay much for perfect cables/wires.
Some people can’t be pursuaded with evidence, placebo/confirmation bias is very powerful.
I’ll kick it with you. IMO you are spot on, different cables do sound different good or bad. I use to do blind tests with my wife. She would leave the room, I would change out an IC, power or speaker cable and she knew every time something was swapped out or not.
Same. I upgraded IC’s and my partner came home and said why does this sound better? When I said it was the cables, she got mad and said there’s no way. I don’t know…
Unfortunately, there is almost literally no way any of these stories can be true. The math and physics of the interconnects simply does not allow it. Effect of cables is just about barely measurable in a laboratory setting and far below anything humans could actually detect.
In every valid case, it is probably something else going on, including random chance that she thought something is different, or just setting that cables are different or position changed. Humans have no audio memory to speak of, so they can’t really compare anything past a few seconds anyway, so the change must be very large (and easily measurable) to be detectable to human.
Known sources of claims that something sound different involve things like not matching the level within a fraction of dB and not using double-blind testing. Because humans have no way to compare sound accurately to memory, it is easy to make claims that something is better now, and there’s nothing to contradict such claim unless the sound is a clear and obvious downgrade.
It’s not that I refuse to believe stuff like this, it’s that every time someone claims there’s a huge difference, it’s never backed up by anything other than extremely flawed, entirely subjective evidence. I don’t doubt your wife, she may even have the elusive “golden ears” so few of us are blessed with, but if she so easily hears such a massive difference immediately, it should be extremely easy to verify those results scientifically. A test signal should be possible to compare before and after to see if it has improved, or even changed at all. Frequency response graphs should show clear differences in key frequencies. And so on.
Yet this never happens. Actual, reproducible evidence never materializes. Either the person goes silent, or they start attacking blind testing as “flawed methodology” somehow, but never does actual, reliable, scientific data get presented to clearly and irrefutably prove the claim as at least valid, if not objectively true.
This is why, when I hear claims like yours, I instantly dismiss them. I just have no reason to believe it. I’m not calling you a liar, you may both genuinely have experienced what you say, but I have absolutely no reason to take that seriously, more seriously than any claim of anything ever on the internet.
Also, people’s memories are extremely flawed. If you change something, the only way to accurately hear the difference is to A/B it with a switcher. It’s really hard to accurately judge the differences between sounds if you’re leaving even a minute between comparisons. The longer you go, the less accurate your recollection will be.
This has been my experience with analog interconnects and speaker wires as well. The cables do sound different, some better some worse, the differences were subtle but definitely there.
About people citing their so-called credentials and why they’re no more qualified than anyone and their opinions deserve no extra credibility. The opinion of someone who drives a taxicab or races cars every day of the quality of machinery is limited to their impressions of what they’ve driven. A car salesman doesn’t necessarily know anything about the cars he sells. An individual working in a steel plant isn’t qualified to specify the application of the product he sells. And definitely the opinion of an individual working for a company that intentionally rips off their customers is entirely worthless.
Contrary to what one poster said, there are plenty of characteristics like capacitance and impedance, particularly at low levels, that change through transmission and these characteristics are frequency dependent and difficult to measure.
There are a lot of nonsense, ripoff products in this hobby but there are even more people who listen to and enjoy recorded music in a ham-fisted way and, for some reason, experience emotional distress when others appreciate something they can’t, themselves, hear or see. They rattle off some credentials they believe will make their “mic drop” opinion end the discussion, but their credentials aren’t relevant and are just another anecdote.
With interconnects and cables I ended up picking the ones I liked best and could afford. There were more expensive ones I liked better, but couldn’t afford them and there were more expensive ones that I didn’t like.
I still have some speaker cables I bought long ago but never liked so I used them in the garage. When I moved, I hooked them up in the living room and was instantly reminded why I didn’t like them and put the good ones back on. Both are braided copper and same gauge. One just sounds better.
There’s also this myth that digital cables like HDMI don’t matter if in spec, but they do both for video and audio. If you hear or see one better than another, the difference is real so get it if you csn afford it.
Digital sits on an analog carrier and is subject to disruption that creates digital errors. HDMI doesn’t have robust error correction so the errors arrive at the device. Same with USB. The reason disk drives are error free is because there is an error correction at a higher OSI layer. But DACs connected via USB don’t participate in any error correction. Ethernet cables in spec for the speeds make no difference for audio because of the error correction as well.
Bottom line: if you like what you hear, buy it, regardless of what others say because very few of them, and none in this thread are qualified to judge what you’re hearing
What about it is hard to measure? Capacitance and resistance of cables are known and most cable manufacturers will post that data on their website.
And if you don’t trust the opinion of professional sound engineers and electrical engineers on this subject, I dunno what to tell you.
When cables make a difference for the better, what do you hear? How do the sonics change?
Allow me to introduce you to Transmission Line theory and Network Analyzers