[Sithuk]

Hi,

I need a 15ft cable for my HD600s and I'm worried that the sound quality might degrade over what a 10ft would offer.

Am I worrying needlessly? I'm pushed towards the 15ft because of listening room geometry.

 

[Killercrush]

As far as I know, the longest the cable is, the less conductivity you get. I don't really think adding 5ft would be so dramatic, if you really need to move around, convenience comes first. Are you planning to re-cable them or just adding to the stock cable lenght ?

 

[Scotty757]

correct me if i'm wrong, but since the signal moving up the headphone cable moves at speeds approaching (c), the speed of light, variations in length, as long as conductance properties dont change, will have little effect.

 

[TURBO]

Perceived sound quality in cables, comes from a balance between the wire natural properties and the following variables:

G= I/R= I/V

G = electrical conductance
R = electrical resistance
I = electric current
V= voltage.

Note: As long as these variables keep changing, due to cable size, sound properties will be changing, also.

Thanks.

TURBO

 

[Wodgy]

Resistance is a function of the cable length.

The issue of very long cables is one of the few areas where the sound of cables is easily audible. I once tried a 60 ft run of unbalanced line-level RCA interconnects, and the sonic degradation was obvious, even on a non-critical listen. 30 ft of unbalanced signal is what I consider the absolute maximum in terms of acceptability, based on experience. 15 feet should be fine; the extra five feet won't make that big of a difference unless you're a very critical listener (on the other hand, I wouldn't buy extraordinarily high-end components for such a rig).

Since 15 feet is a decently long distance, I would also suggest purchasing sanely designed cables with proper shielding. Unshielded cables are in vogue, I know, but with this kind of length, the noise floor gets raised -- it's imperceptible while music is playing, but little details get lost.

 

[bigshot]

Everyone should shorten their cables to three inches and hold their heads up next to their stereos as they listen. It would be like night and day!

Leopold Stokowski was born to conduct... so are cables.

15 feet is completely safe. I used to have a coiled headphone cable that was 20 feet, and it worked fine. Don't worry about it. Use a hardy cable though, because a cable that long is likely to get tripped over.

See ya
Steve

 

[trains are bad]

What about speaker wires? I'm apparently forced to use speaker level inputs on my amp if I want it to turn up with the reciever, but I place it way off in the corner. Will a couple meters of speaker cable, along with a bit of length difference, be anything to worry about? Does anyone know of some resistivities of common speaker wire guages?

Also, is it kosher to zip-tie speaker wires together tightly, or is that asking for trouble?

 

[Klefbek]

Just for the sake of science

Quote:

G= I/R= I/V

Should be:
G = 1/R = I/V

Otherwise voltage would always be equal to resistance.

 

[steaxauce]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Scotty757 correct me if i'm wrong, but since the signal moving up the headphone cable moves at speeds approaching (c), the speed of light, variations in length, as long as conductance properties dont change, will have little effect.

Voltage, or the difference in potential energy between two points, passes throught the cable at nearly the speed of light, but the current itself is . . . slow. I believe that the voice coils are basically an inductor, which creates a magnetic field that moves the magnetized driver--do I have this right? In that case, the magnetic field produced is proportional to the current, not the voltage, so the responsiveness of your headphone would depend on how fast current can pass through it, not on how fast it can receive its voltage.

Maybe you should try balanced, if possible. That's better for longer runs.

 

[JaZZ]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wodgy Since 15 feet is a decently long distance, I would also suggest purchasing sanely designed cables with proper shielding. Unshielded cables are in vogue, I know, but with this kind of length, the noise floor gets raised -- it's imperceptible while music is playing, but little details get lost.

We're talking of a headphone cable -- so shielding makes no sence: Any «noise» (EMI) that could there be induced remains on an indaudible level, since it doesn't get amplified anymore (like in the case of speaker cables).

I would agree on interconnects of this lenght that shielding may be beneficial or even necessary, but generally it has the negative property to raise capacitance, so you better renounce it if you can.

But yes, the length of a cable has an audible impact on the sound. Metrologically it increases capacitance and inductance (also resistance, but this is no issue on a 0.5-2-ohm level in view of a >300-ohm load). Every foot counts, as it makes the signal slightly less defined, although this doesn't necessarily mean it sounds worse. And then, if you need 15 feet, then go for it! 10 or 15 feet are both quite a long distance for proper signal transfer, so the losses are inevitable anyway.
.

 

[Mastergill]

Quote:

Originally Posted by JaZZ We're talking of a headphone cable -- so shielding makes no sence: Any «noise» (EMI) that could there be induced remains on an indaudible level, since it doesn't get amplified anymore (like in the case of speaker cables).

In fact it can be audible, especially if you're living in or close to a big city full of all kinds of radio waves. I have noticed this when i switched from the standard Cardas 4X24 to the much better shielded Neutral Ref., it lowered the noise floor and thus i got better details retrieval. For the skeptic this is a kind of improvement that should be measurable, if you can measure 0.5 to 1 dB (or more) difference in noise floor.

 

[JaZZ]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mastergill In fact it can be audible, especially if you're living in or close to a big city full of all kinds of radio waves. I have noticed this when i switched from the standard Cardas 4X24 to the much better shielded Neutral Ref., it lowered the noise floor and thus i got better details retrieval. For the skeptic this is a kind of improvement that should be measurable, if you can measure 0.5 to 1 dB (or more) difference in noise floor.

We're still talking of headphone cables, right? I'm sure the two cables differ in sound, and it's not too surprising that the «higher» one sounds better. But how can you know it's due to the shielding, or more precisely: the reduced EMI? Maybe it's just because of a different geometry or different materials or a side-effect of the higher capacitance caused by the shielding which results in a rounder characteristic, perceivable as more clean...

I highly doubt that a normal environment, even a city full of electrical fields and radio waves, can cause audible signals in headphones and speakers through their cables. Test it for yourself: leave the headphone unplugged and test if you can hear any noise (from the headphone itself, not the environment!), using the headphone cable as «antenna»!
.

 

[bigshot]

My father was a ham radio operator and when he would broadcast, a faint signal of him talking would come through the stereo with the power turned off! He instructed the whole family that if the neighbors asked, we were to tell them that there was nothing wrong with our TV reception.

See ya
Steve

 

[Mastergill]

Quote:

Originally Posted by JaZZ We're still talking of headphone cables, right? I'm sure the two cables differ in sound, and it's not too surprising that the «higher» one sounds better. But how can you know it's due to the shielding, or more precisely: the reduced EMI? Maybe it's just because of a different geometry or different materials or a side-effect of the higher capacitance caused by the shielding which results in a rounder characteristic, perceivable as more clean... I highly doubt that a normal environment, even a city full of electrical fields and radio waves, can cause audible signals in headphones and speakers through their cables. Test it for yourself: leave the headphone unplugged and test if you can hear any noise (from the headphone itself, not the environment!), using the headphone cable as «antenna»! .

Yes i'm talking about headphone cables and the same could be said about speakers cables. I guess the effect of EMI/RFI is well know with audio cables. Radio interferences are of course not in the audible range but in a way i can't explain they smear and blur the micro details in the audio signal. The thing i know is you don't want your audio cable acting like an antenna and advanced shielding like you have with the top Cardas cables is very good for that. And yes to my big surprise i got blacker background even without music but the cable was still plugged into the amp.

 

[JaZZ]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mastergill And yes to my big surprise I got blacker background even without music but the cable was still plugged into the amp.

So your amp has an audible noise floor? Incredible (considering the price)!

Quote:

I guess the effect of EMI/RFI is well know with audio cables.

Of course, but almost exclusively in a small-signal or line stage -- where the signal gets amplified afterwards, so the same happens with the unwanted interferences which thus can get loud enough to be audible.

Quote:

Radio interferences are of course not in the audible range but in a way I can't explain they smear and blur the micro details in the audio signal.

I absolutely agree on this in the above sense, e.g. it's also imaginable that they cause interferences in amplifier components and thus do harm to the audible signal, even without becoming directly audible. But that's different from an amplified signal meant to drive sound transducers, where it would take an enormous strength of the interfering signal to cause audible interferences at all. I still think the more plausible explanation for the cleaner sound from your more expensive shielded headphone cable is its different sonic signature itself, not the absence of EMI (as opposed to EMI contamination in the unshielded headphone cable).

Quote:

The thing i know is you don't want your audio cable acting like an antenna...

I guess you know that the signal from a radio antenna has to be strongly amplified to get a strength usable for driving sound transducers. So I'm very skeptical about theories which say your headphone and speaker cables should be shielded to not act as an antenna. I for one don't really care. Nowadays I even build unshielded interconnects to minimise capacitance -- and the sonic benefit compared to my older, shielded cables is obvious, despite the theoretical susceptibility to EMI. So the much less critical case of a headphone cable can't react the opposite way. (In fact the signal strength is not so much different in my case, since I don't need a lot of gain from my amp -- with the UDP-1 as source).
.