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.
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.
Allow me to introduce you to Transmission Line theory and Network Analyzers