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Comment by kenhwang | Hacker News Reader

I had the same thought when I was building out my home theater system. Cables are cables, they're all just copper runs with gold plated ends, I'll just get whatever.

Well, I was dead wrong. Cheap cables hiss and hum like crazy when there's no signal.

Turns what you're paying for with expensive cables is better shielding around the copper. Unless you have perfectly air gapped cables that don't touch anything electrically conductive, they'll pick up some static charge and interference over a long enough run, and it's very audible.

So yeah, get half decent shielded cables for long unbalanced runs to passive speakers. Or just use balanced cables with active speakers.

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The problem isn't that you cant make cables bad, its that you cant make cables excellent.

Its like vodka. There's certainly bad vodka, but there's not such thing as good vodka, only neutral tasteless vodka.

If we're using the vodka analogy. Vodka is the metal of the cable: the copper/aluminum/gold. Yes, you can have really bad quality metal, but it's practically unheard of given how easy it is to make good enough quality metal for cables.

What matters more is the rest of the ingredients mixed with vodka to make the cocktail (which is the connectors, insulation, and shielding of the cable). If those are good, they'll easily mask the common issues with cables. If those are bad, it doesn't matter how good your vodka/cable metal is.

just for the record, the shielding is metal or it's not shielding; it also needs to be grounded, but the power audio outputs of amplifiers are generally not designed for grounding; and you also need to worry about capacitance and inductance; twisted pairs might give you better noise characteristcs wrt AC wiring hum than shielding

I'm not saying wires don't matter and I'm not saying wires do matter, I'm saying inasmuch as they make a difference, there are plenty of ways to undermine what you are doing. Might be a better idea to send shielded high impedance signals around the room and put power amplifiers at the speakers.

Irrelevant to your point: some vodkas to my and many others' (generally Eastern European/Russian) tastes do taste good. I drink Stoli the same way I drink whiskey.

Hehe.

It is an example I ripped off of an old SV founder.

The Code of Federal Regulations upgraded Vodka in 2020.

Previously:

“Vodka” is neutral spirits so distilled, or so treated after distillation with charcoal or other materials, as to be without distinctive character, aroma, taste, or color.

Now:

Vodka: Neutral spirits which may be treated with up to two grams per liter of sugar and up to one gram per liter of citric acid. Products to be labeled as vodka may not be aged or stored in wood barrels at any time except when stored in paraffin-lined wood barrels and labeled as bottled in bond pursuant to § 5.88. Vodka treated and filtered with not less than one ounce of activated carbon or activated charcoal per 100 wine gallons of spirits may be labeled as “charcoal filtered.” Addition of any other flavoring or blending materials changes the classification to flavored vodka or to a distilled spirits specialty product, as appropriate. Vodka must be designated on the label as “neutral spirits,” “alcohol,” or “vodka”.

Thanks for the heads up.

They've ruined vodka and a great example.

What does the sugar and acid do??? Does it cover up off flavors or something? Seems like that much would make it taste slightly like not vodka.

https://www.diffordsguide.com/g/1171/vodka/vodka-production-...

>Turns what you're paying for with expensive cables is better shielding around the copper.

There's a threshold where any shielding improvement is inaudible, and that threshold is far below what most people would consider "expensive cables".

I'm surprised there's enough energy in the EMI to be audible unamplified! That would make it audible even if you just had the cable run and speaker with no hifi.

Shielding is definitely important on the "line" side and somewhat on the PSU side.

You make a good point about it being unamplified. To be fair, I pretty much committed every audio cable sin by running the cheap speaker cables in parallel with powered cables with the excess coiled up plopped on top of coiled power cables. Maybe it would've been fine just not running it parallel to power or not coiling.

But yes on very important for the line side. Connected a long cheap RCA cable to powered speakers, and the moment I pulled it across carpet the speakers started crackling. Then I understood exactly what my buddy meant by "these are garbage" when he gave them to me, so not too sure what the intended purpose of such a long poorly insulated RCA cable was.

> To be fair, I pretty much conducted every audio cable sin by running the cheap speaker cables in parallel with powered cables with the excess coiled up plopped on top of coiled power cables.

Ah yes, that is basically just an impromptu air-core transformer between mains and your speakers.

You could also get rid of the whole problem by using and entirely digital pathway right up to the speakers by means of AES3 or AES67.

I mean you could just snap some toroids on there too

Or use balanced cables

Speakers can't be driven with balanced cables.

Speaker cables are literally balanced, unless you're grounding them at the speaker. I grant you that if you're grounding them at the amp it's 'fake balanced', but if you're running an amp with an output transformer then it's literally balanced.

Also arguably you only need balanced when the noise gets way too much. When driving a speaker the power audio signal is much much much higher than any noise being picked up over a reasonable length.

For lengths longer than that, balanced cables (or digital signals over Ethernet) are used and the speaker has more local amplification.

Balanced gear is pro gear. Consumer audio is single ended.

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