Fancy cables a waste of money?

[bobones]

I've recently purchased a 210E and a Yamaha E800 processor, which sit about 3 metres apart in my living room. Being a bit of a skin-flint, I bulked at the cost of of 3metres of optical or coax for the digital audio signal, and decided to try out a cheap phono wire (not 75ohm) that cost £3.99 from maplins. I wasn't entirely suprised to discover that it seems to work perfectly, as being digital, I would expect any signal flaws to be obvious - silence, noise, clicks etc, but it's perfect.

In a similar vein, the thin .75metre s-video cable that came with my computer's video card provides an excellent picture when connecting my tv and dvd (I don't have RGB or component inputs) and I can't see how picture quality could be improved with different cables. Even maplins cheapest

I also purchased a 1.2metre 75ohm video phono cable for £2.99 which I use to connect the digital out of my cd player to the Yamaha, and again it sounds perfect. (How can digital cables sound different anyway?). An even cheaper phono would probably suffice just as well, as I am lead to believe the 75ohm rating doesn't come into play until the cable length is much longer and it begins to act as a transmission line.

So, am I insane to think fancy cables (esp digital ones) are a waste of money?

If you also think that buying fancy equipment is a waist of money, then you are not insane...

In fact, why don't you sell your DVD player and buy my VHS machine.


Only joking :-)

If you're happy with the cables your using then why change.

However.

I was happy with my s-video cable (not Ixos or anything like that) and didn't really expect an improvement. I comapred it to composite and did see a difference.

I spent the time one saturday morning and jury-rigged a component cable up. this consisted of cheap and cheerfull collection of stereo cables and yellow phono leads from various PC graphics cards. I used barrel connectors and joined them all up. Real Heath Robinson!! Blue Peter would have been proud.

I plugged it in and WOW. It was noticable. Even with cheapy junk

The point of this little story? If you don't see what you're missing (or hearing) how do you know it won't get any better?

just my 4 euros worth

yeah but your point is by using a different output you get better results. You'd have to be blind not to see the step up from composite to S to component.

The original poster was making the point that spending cash on an expensive lead might not make much of a difference when compared to using the bog standard leads thrown in with kit.

I must admit I've never really noticed a difference, especially for component video between expensive leads and cheap ones. So that was £30 down the drain.

As for digital cables - I couldnt hear any difference between an expensive lead and a cheaper one - system is Pioneer 737 DVD and Denon 3802 watching on a Tosh 56WHOB

I think the same principle applies though. If you don't demo the better cables how do you know they aren't worth it.

Richer Sounds will "lend" you a box of cables for a returnable deposit to see if you notice the difference.

they obviously wouldn't do this if the net result was everybody stayed with the original cables.

[General Skanky]

There were two big threads a while back about this topic.
Definatley search them out. One invovled Stuart Robinson and his opinons and another was optical vrs. coax. Lots and lots to read, you may get an answer amongst that lot.
Have fun reading it.

My opinion has changed about 5 times in 12 months. I don't think you can answer it with a 'this is best' answer. It really is open to your own opinion.

Whatever you decide, there will definately be an arguement against! Good luck.

I recently bought my new dvd player ( an onkyo dvs-939 with the 989 amp to follow next month!) and decided it was time to upgrade my digital lead.

I had previously a cheapish ixos optical lead (the purple one), and decided in a moment of madness to upgrade to Nordost Moonglo Coaxial lead.

The difference between the 2 leads is immense to say the least.

The co-ax is much more open sounding, there more bass, just more of everything.

Roll on the tx-ds989.

In my humble opinion cables most definitely make a difference

Regards, David

[gavan]

Originally posted by daag
I recently bought my new dvd player ( an onkyo dvs-939 with the 989 amp to follow next month!) and decided it was time to upgrade my digital lead.

I had previously a cheapish ixos optical lead (the purple one), and decided in a moment of madness to upgrade to Nordost Moonglo Coaxial lead.

The difference between the 2 leads is immense to say the least.

The co-ax is much more open sounding, there more bass, just more of everything.

Roll on the tx-ds989.

In my humble opinion cables most definitely make a difference

Regards, David

Hmmmm, you've done a double-blind listening test then, and can identify the digital interconnect by sound alone - even when you don't know which one is being used?


Gav

Yes, both myself and my mate who I work with both listened blind (he didn't know which lead I was using and vice versa) and there was a substantial difference, more detail, deeper bass etc.

But there again, the digital lead cost £180 and the optical lead was £20, so I think you would expect there to be a difference, especially on a £2,000 DVD player.

With spending that amount of money on a DVD player, any other lead would have been a compromise - the rest of my system is cabled with Nordost.

[bobones]

I could believe you hear a difference between optical and coax digital cables as it is widely reported that coax sounds superior in almost all circumstances. However, can you really tell the difference between two coax cables? It'd be interesting to see if you cound sonically differentiate between your £180 lead and a £2.99 75ohm video phono bought from Maplins.

Assuming the digital signal arrives uncorrupted and is buffered before decoding (removes so called jitter effects), I can't see how the cable can make a difference sonically.

The difference is to be heard, not seen... Sorry for another sarcasm, but I am sure there are lots of other differences you cannot explain, just try it, if you want to, or leave it alone...

If they sell the expensive cables, there must be some difference, I would say...

[Jase]

Personally, I wouldnt go too mad spending a fortune.

I´ve noticed a difference between a cheap coaxial and my Chord Prodac more detail, bass etc. Ive also tried using my Chord Chameleon 2 analog interconnects as a digital cable and they work really well (for cd playback) appears to give more detail than the Prodac!

Overall I prefer the sound of coaxial to optical but I wouldnt spend any more than I have already.

Its up to you though!

This thread reminds me of the fable where a fox tries to reach some grapes in a branch too high, as he cannot, he says they are not ripe, not worth it...

[oRiCN]

It really depends on the kit your using not just the cables...

I've got an Arcam DV27 DVD player and 42" Plasma display and I use the progressive scan out's on the DVD. I use a £200 Precious Metals component lead and I tested it against 3 cheapo composite video leads and the difference was quite noticeable, The picture was sharper and a lot crisper.

So I did another test with the S-Video leads I use to connect my Cable box to the plasma, again a noticeable difference between an OEM cable the £85 quid PM's one.

However the same test with the S-Video lead's on my old 32" JVC TV, and you couldn't really tell the difference between the 2 cables!

All this verified by my friends and family...

[PhilipL]

Hi

I have upgraded my network cable from cheap Cat5 to expensive cable with gold plated connectors. Wow, I have noticed when transfering pictures and sound files from the server they look and sound so much better. Pictures have much more depth with the colours leaping out at you. WAV files have much more base with clearer treble. What a difference over the cheap network cable, well worth the £250.00

Of course the above is ludicrous and doesn't happen, I must be imaging it. But that is what we are saying when we compare one digital connection cable with another!

I can send a WAV file around the world via the Internet, along all sorts of bad connections, through electrically noisy computers and so on. Yet it always arrives exactly the same bit for bit and sounds identical to the original, we can all accept that. So why then can a £250 digital cable be an improvement over the one included in the box when travelling about a metre in distance. Wise up!

Analogue, well that's a different matter.

Regards

Philip