Are all RCA cables born the same?

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Plyphon
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Are all RCA cables born the same?

Post by Plyphon »

Possibly the driest topic ever.

Are all RCA cables born the same?

I'm not on about snake oil gold tipped Hi-Fi £1000 type things, but like just normal cables.

If I type in RCA cable to Amazon/Ebay and just buy the cheapest going will it be legit? Or is there a brand I should aim for?

And then what about RCA to 1/4 stereo...

Sorry, not formatted this question well - basically if I buy proper cheap £2 cables will they screw with the sound, or should I aim for a brand/price point?

Cheers

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Re: Are all RCA cables born the same?

Post by Belka »

Yes its mostly the same. Extreme cheap cables "can" lack of quality in the mechanical production area ... low budget chinese workers, terrible soldering, terrible assembling. But mostly its just copper.

Something against snakeoil

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Re: Are all RCA cables born the same?

Post by Lost to the Void »

You don't need to be buying diamond encased unobtanium reinforced dodecahedron spiralled monster bastard cable.

All that shit is snake oil.

But don't buy the cheapest.

Decent thickness, shielded and with good interconnects is what you want.

Gorilla Cable do pretty good quality for reasonable price.
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Re: Are all RCA cables born the same?

Post by Críoch »

I've bought the cheapo rca to Phono cables in a local cheapo bargain store. I needed them & it was the only place nearby that had them. I had no choice & I knew they'd be shite.

Bought 2.

First cable was broken straight out of the packet. 2nd worked in a fashion.. but required a wiggle around the Phono to make contact. Eventually the connection totally broke.

May have been cheap ass cable or poor soldering on the plugs.. but nevertheless it proved that you get what you pay for.

All those cheaper Chinese manufacturers are expert at making stuff that 'looks' comparable on the outside to stuff that you expect to be of a decent quality. It's hard to know sometimes.. but the retailer will usually provide a glimpse into the rep.
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Re: Are all RCA cables born the same?

Post by jordanneke »

Lost to the Void wrote:You don't need to be buying diamond encased unobtanium reinforced dodecahedron spiralled monster bastard cable.
FFS, now you tell me. Just remortgaged the house for these.

Image

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Re: Are all RCA cables born the same?

Post by Lost to the Void »

jordanneke wrote:
Lost to the Void wrote:You don't need to be buying diamond encased unobtanium reinforced dodecahedron spiralled monster bastard cable.
FFS, now you tell me. Just remortgaged the house for these.

Image

Jaysus!!
The sad thing is that some demented cunt will throw down their 24grand on that 1 meter of snake oil.

Look at the blurb
SOLID 100% PERFECT-SURFACE SILVER (PSS) CONDUCTORS: WEL Signature uses extremely high-purity Perfect-Surface Silver conductors. All conductors are solid, which prevents strand interaction, a major source of distortion. Surface quality is critical because a conductor can be considered as a rail-guide for both the electric fields within a conductor, and for the magnetic fields outside the conductor. The astonishingly smooth and pure Perfect-Surface eliminates harshness and greatly increases clarity compared to OFHC, OCC, 8N and other coppers. The superior purity of PSS further minimizes distortion caused by grain boundaries, which exist within any metal conductor.

CARBON-BASED MULTI-LAYER NOISE-DISSIPATION and CROSS-TALK-DISSIPATION SYSTEM (INSULATION): The negative conductors in WEL Signature are insulated with partially conductive Carbon-Loaded Polyethylene. This remarkable material damps radio-frequency garbage from being fed back into the amplifier. The sonic benefit is exactly the same reduction in “hash” and better dimensionality that comes whenever RF garbage is reduced in an audio circuit. WEL Signature uses Nitrogen-Injected Foamed-Polyethylene Insulation on its positive conductors because air absorbs next to no energy, and Polyethylene is low-loss and has a benign distortion profile. Thanks to all the air in Foamed-PE, it causes much less of the out-of-focus effect common to other materials.

DIELECTRIC-BIAS SYSTEM (DBS, US Pat #s 7,126,055 & 7,872,195 B1): All insulation slows down the signal on the conductor inside. When insulation is unbiased, it slows down parts of the signal differently, a big problem for very time-sensitive multi-octave audio. AudioQuest’s DBS creates a strong, stable electrostatic field which saturates and polarizes (organizes) the molecules of the insulation. This minimizes both energy storage in the insulation and the multiple nonlinear time-delays that occur. Sound appears from a surprisingly black background with unexpected detail and dynamic contrast. The DBS battery packs will last for years. A test button and LED allow for the occasional battery check.

DOUBLE COUNTER-SPIRAL GEOMETRY: WEL Signature and the other AQ “Tree Feature” cables have an inner circular array of positive conductors spiraling in one direction. Around this inner group are the negative conductors spiraling in the opposite direction. Even while the positive and negative conductors are crossing each other instead of being parallel, the relationship between the positive and negative groups is fixed and non-changing, adhering to one of AudioQuest’s most basic design tenets: consistency. The result is an astonishing clarity, like focusing a camera lens you had no idea was so far out of focus.

SPREAD-SPECTRUM TECHNOLOGY (SST): Any single size or shape of conductor has a specific distortion profile. Even though radially symmetrical conductors (solid round or tubular) have the fewest discontinuities, any conductor of a particular size does have a sonic signature. SST uses a precise combination of different size conductors in order to significantly reduce the audibility of these character flaws. The different SST-determined conductor sizes used in WEL Signature allow an exceptionally clear, clean and dynamic sound.

BIWIRING: When possible, running separate conductors or separate cables to the treble and bass halves of a speaker will considerably reduce distortion. BiWiring reduces distortion by keeping the large magnetic fields caused by bass energy out of the treble cable, allowing these delicate upper frequencies to travel a less disturbed path. Although WEL Signature is an ideal full-range cable, it can also be used as a double pair for maximum benefit from BiWiring. WEL Signature has also been designed to make it possible to Single BiWire. The five conductors per polarity have been chosen and arranged so that they may be divided into two groups, allowing WEL Signature to be prepared with four connections on the speaker end.

TERMINATIONS: WEL Signature spades are machined from a pure C11000 Electrolytic Copper billet and then a thick coat of silver is directly applied. Direct Plating (also know as Hanging Silver) means that no harsh sounding nickel is applied prior to the silver. This may leave the connectors looking less shiny, but the result is an unequivocal level of performance not match by any other connector on the market. These uniquely transparent spades are the closest things to no spade we have ever heard. WEL signature spades are available in both 1/4″ and 5/16.”

APPLICATION: The ABS breakouts on either end of WEL Signature are marked “Speaker End” or “Amp End.” Please use cables in the direction required.
You couldn`t possibly get more audiophoolery in to one spec sheet.
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Re: Are all RCA cables born the same?

Post by intrusav »

Oooh, you had me at "Dielectric-Bias"

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Re: Are all RCA cables born the same?

Post by Mslwte »

Really all I look for in a cheap rca cable is a decent connection. That's all you need imo. Something that looks secure and with a bit of quality.
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Plyphon
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Re: Are all RCA cables born the same?

Post by Plyphon »

Cool - thanks guys. Ill go for something like this:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/UGREEN-Stereo- ... =RCA+cable

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Re: Are all RCA cables born the same?

Post by disparate »

Mslwte wrote:Really all I look for in a cheap rca cable is a decent connection. That's all you need imo. Something that looks secure and with a bit of quality.
Pretty much this - the construction quality of the cable and connectors rather than the sound is what might persuade me to spend a bit more if I'll be plugging/unplugging a cable a lot, using it for DJing or live, etc.

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Re: Are all RCA cables born the same?

Post by Hades »

Lost to the Void wrote:
APPLICATION: The ABS breakouts on either end of WEL Signature are marked “Speaker End” or “Amp End.” Please use cables in the direction required.
:lol: :lol:
Fucking hell, up till this point in my life,
I never bought a cable before that had this specific feature !
That explains it all !!
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Re: Are all RCA cables boern the same?

Post by innovine »

Some of the contacts have the outer cylinder separated into 2 or 4 pieces, the idea being you can squeeze them in a bit to get a tighter grip (and stop the contact falling out). can't say if its any good, though, as a good fitting cylinder works fine in most cases. cheap cables will tend to snap at the end of the strain relief, where the cable comes out of the contact. if you never move the cable then fine, but if you move cables around they eventually fail there, first becoming crackly and you have to move it a bit to get it to sit right, and eventually becoming useless. The better cables have a bit more copper and a bit more plastic to help against this wear and tear. I'd never bother with super plated low copper mumbo jumbo, cos most things using rca as a contact don't have high enough quality dac/adc converters for it to matter much. save your money for where it counts.
Last edited by innovine on Wed Nov 01, 2017 10:30 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Are all RCA cables born the same?

Post by innovine »

Hades wrote:
Lost to the Void wrote:
APPLICATION: The ABS breakouts on either end of WEL Signature are marked “Speaker End” or “Amp End.” Please use cables in the direction required.
:lol: :lol:
Fucking hell, up till this point in my life,
I never bought a cable before that had this specific feature !
That explains it all !!
possibly makes a difference if the cable has a ferrite bead on it, or a ground lift

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Re: Are all RCA cables born the same?

Post by Hades »

innovine wrote: possibly makes a difference if the cable has a ferrite bead on it, or a ground lift
RCA cables have that ?
Honestly, never saw an RCA cable in my whole life where the ends didn't look the same.
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Re: Are all RCA cables born the same?

Post by innovine »

Hades wrote:
innovine wrote: possibly makes a difference if the cable has a ferrite bead on it, or a ground lift
RCA cables have that ?
Honestly, never saw an RCA cable in my whole life where the ends didn't look the same.
I dunno. I've never paid 200euro for a Monster rca cable.. but thats the only reasons I can think of where the directionality might matter, and its really unlikely anyway.


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