Audio Speaker Wire

S

spacenoxx

Adept
Folks I have 2 questions:

1. What exactly is considered a good speaker wire for say a distance of 20-25 feet for 8 ohm speakers.

and I stumbled upon this page:

Speaker Wire

I have heard of Monster cables and other expensive speaker wire(oxygen free and stuff). Can someone here at TE throw some light on this?

2. I am using a 5ft cheapo TOSLINK cable to connect my DVD player and Z-5500. I bought it for Rs. 400/- I compared it to an RCA cable I got with the DVD player with goldplated connectors. I couldnt find any difference between the too. So may be I wasted 400/- on teh TOSLINK cable when the SPDIF (RCA) cable that came with the DVD player works just fine....

or is it that I should have bought the Rs 1500/- Monster TOSLINK cable?
 
Digital Cables are mostly immaterial and in any case Coaxial is better than Toslink since it has less jitter. Monster is a pure scam. There are way way better cables out there than monster.

Your Z5500 won't show the difference in cables anyway.
 
no need to spend heavily on digital cable transmission.

because they'll send the data or they wont..its nothing like less or more.

so they work or they dont work, you should get good quality wire if you expect your dog to eat it :p

right chaos ? :p
 
coolraghav said:
no need to spend heavily on digital cable transmission.

because they'll send the data or they wont..its nothing like less or more.

so they work or they dont work, you should get good quality wire if you expect your dog to eat it :p

right chaos ? :p
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Thats what I thought when I bought this TOSLINK cable but then I am not an expert. What amazes is me is why other TOSLINK cables are so damn expensive if its just a 0 or 1 thing?

And then Chaos above just said that COAXIAL is better than TOSLINK which means that even TOSLINK is not 100% accurate.

So if TOSLINK is not 100% accurate, at the same time an optical cable cannot by itself induce any errors (contact losses/poor quality cable and such) cause its simply 0s and 1s (my assumption) does it mean the problem is with the electronics involved before and after the TOSLINK cable, ie at the converter level (input/output)?
 
spacenoxx said:
Thats what I thought when I bought this TOSLINK cable but then I am not an expert. What amazes is me is why other TOSLINK cables are so damn expensive if its just a 0 or 1 thing?

And then Chaos above just said that COAXIAL is better than TOSLINK which means that even TOSLINK is not 100% accurate.

So if TOSLINK is not 100% accurate, at the same time an optical cable cannot by itself induce any errors (contact losses/poor quality cable and such) cause its simply 0s and 1s (my assumption) does it mean the problem is with the electronics involved before and after the TOSLINK cable, ie at the converter level (input/output)?
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SPDIF transmission is theoretically lossless when transmitting stereo data with two perfectly synchronized sources. With 5.1 data, its lossy as AC3 compression is used.

However perfect sync is next to impossible. The SPDIF standard essentially multiplexes the clock and data signals together into a single channel. Because of this there are always perceptible timing errors in digital signals due to a lack of perfect synchronization between the source and the receiver. This is called jitter. Google for more info on this term. If I2S is used where the clock and data are sent separately or an asynchronous method of transmission is used, such problems can mostly be avoided.

Many higher end sources such as dCS come with a dedicated clock to which both the transport and DAC can be slaved and don't use spdif for transmission. They use their own mechanisms. However we are talking about ridiculously expensive stuff here to the tune of 20000-50000 USD.
 
So its the electronics involved at the source and destination that can cause a problem but not the cable itself in case of digital.

So any el-cheapo digital/optical cable is as good (or as bad) as the most expensive under the sun?
 
^^Again... the source and destination have to be good enough to discern the difference for better cable to be of any use. Poor cable can increase jitter but if the source/destination jitter is a few orders of magnitude more than the jitter introduced by cable, it really doesn't matter.
 
So you are saying that YES, there could be a difference in quality between 2 digital cables, be it Optical or RCA.

So assuming that both source and destination are in sync (or almost) using whatever error correction method these Hi-Fi devices use, then cable quality 'can' make a difference even for a digital transmission. But by and large the jitter at the source/destination itself is the major factor in any signal loss compared to the loss/noise introduced because of cable quality, right?

If so we cannot give a blanket statement that any cheap digital cable is same as the expensive ones.
 
spacenoxx said:
So you are saying that YES, there could be a difference in quality between 2 digital cables, be it Optical or RCA.

So assuming that both source and destination are in sync (or almost) using whatever error correction method these Hi-Fi devices use, then cable quality 'can' make a difference even for a digital transmission. But by and large the jitter at the source/destination itself is the major factor in any signal loss compared to the loss/noise introduced because of cable quality, right?

If so we cannot give a blanket statement that any cheap digital cable is same as the expensive ones.
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Yup you can't make a blanket statement like that. However for most low-mid end equipment, its a non issue.
 
yeah, i think high end and normal cable might not make much difference. Its the source and destination that matter. Also avoid putting the cable near power source, ups etc
 
Chaos said:
Yup you can't make a blanket statement like that. However for most low-mid end equipment, its a non issue.
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Thanks a lot for clearing that up Chaos. Even though its like 1.0 and 0.99999999... there is still a difference even though practially they are 'almost' equal.
mick_ralte said:
yeah, i think high end and normal cable might not make much difference. Its the source and destination that matter. Also avoid putting the cable near power source, ups etc
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Its easier said than done dude..
 
Rightly said Chaos. Spdif gives pleasing sound than optical. Toslink seems more louder though. Donno abt Moster or...or.... but I use a cable worth 300(MX0 and it is enough...hmmm.
 
just the thread i was looking for. im getting the wiring done in my room for my jamo home theater. it came with 30m wire in running length. i think its gonna fall short. should i go for any specific brands or gauges. also, is it ok if all the speakers are not wired with the same wires. in this case the rear speakers would be on the wire that came in the box and the front speakers will be on the new wire that i need to buy.
 
Audiophile cables is a pure scam..... just checkout this engadget experiment link

I would prefer optical over coaxial anyday for better signal carrying capacity.
 
^^ i have a decent jamo 5.1 with a jamo amp. i will be using an optical cable between my wd tv n the amp. already have that. i just need some extra speaker cable in running length.
 
anooj30299301 said:
Rightly said Chaos. Spdif gives pleasing sound than optical. Toslink seems more louder though. Donno abt Moster or...or.... but I use a cable worth 300(MX0 and it is enough...hmmm.
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:no: :ashamed:
 
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