JACQUES HIFI PAGES

CABLES : THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS 

PTT ( French National Phone company ) cable : highly considered, psychedelic colors and free.Take your neighbours' .

If there is a place in hifi where myths run mad , it has to be cables. I just saw a AC multi-outlet for 'audiophile' with a 3000euros price tag .
I read again because I thought they were selling private nuclear power plants .
Anyway, cables can be important so let's have a closer look.

SPEAKER CABLES

DIN speaker plugs were obligatory in Europe before Japanese products invasion . At least , you could not inverse phase.

Well, it's not a good start. Speaker cables are not important. In your speakers, you have kilometers of wires , any size, in the filters and speaker bobin. So why care about the last 2 meters. You can put anything you want it will make no sonic difference. If you happen to hear a sonic difference when you change speaker cables it's simply because your connections were oxydized, according to Volta law :
wire Copper + connection Steel + dirty humidity = BATTERY
( Pure water is an insulator ) .
So changing cables have somehow cleaned your connections---or simply tightened them---, and you get a better sound.
CONCLUSION : the best speaker cables are Q-tips+alcohol for your connections.

INTERLINKS

No questions asked: Philips CD104 came with hardwired cables. And they were good.

It's a whole different problem. Guitar players know that cables between guitar and amp are important, mostly because guitar amps have MUCH more gain than hifi amps ( for an horrendous experience, try plugging your electric guitar into a hifi amp ) . It's easy to hear differences. Eric Johnson even says that he can hear the polarity of its cable. Maybe...he is such a good guitarist I really can't argue.

Garde a vous ! French '60s army cable surplus . I wonder what they used it for ...

In hifi, it's really hard to hear because of lowest gain, static sources---they don't jump in the air like EVH---and short distances. Anyway there should be a difference. I use this French Army cable because I love its very rich shielding and because making its own cables is an artefact . You will always feel better to hear something you have realized with your own hands. If you are too lazy and if this artefact philosophy sounds stupid for you, buy video cables, the yellow ones at your nearest supermarket. They are usually well better made than usual interlink cables . Here is how they look :

Of course, all your cables will be yellow, which is ugly and confusing.
But as you already don't care about philosophy so I suppose you'll cope with it.
CONCLUSION : Go to an electronic supply shop , ask for guitar cable by the meter and 4 cinch plugs. Or buy yellow video cables.

TWISTED PAIR FOR INTERLINK

I have the feeling they will sound the best. That's the way long distance telephone cables were made. We're talking thousand of kilometers here. Unfortunately you can't buy it at least to my knowledge. I love the way signals noise cancels eachother so I have to weave my way into this old time solution one day for a good listening test.

SPDIF cables

Ok we just transmit bits here , so why bother ? Well, mostly because spdif signal produces huge interferences. If you spdif cable is not perfectly shielded and comes near anything that makes music, you can hear hums . So go for huge braid shielded cables like my army stuff. Once again, yellow video cable will be perfect too.

AC CABLES

Seems like a joke to me. Power lines goes kilometers between power plant transformers and your house, have been installed in the '50s or earlier and cut/reconnected a million times at a million places by workers thinking of their next holidays. Really a miracle you still have AC. Then they go into hundreds of tiny fuses and counters to your plug. And you really think the last half-meter between your plug and your beloved hifi aparatus can do something ???
The only serious cord you should have---and you can make it yourself---is a polarity ( for AC read phase or blue & brown ) marked AC cable, like the one on the picture , which comes from paraphenalia of a Marantz CD player. Sometimes, not always , something happen when you reverse polarity. This was the case of my beloved Sony CD player which read all CD only in one polarity. On the other, it skips.
I don't really understand why, but it's free so worth a try.

My main inspiration for this page, besides personnal A/B blind experiences of course, is Roger Russell

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