Entertainment Center: TVs, Stereos, VCRs and DVDs - Cable Quality

As an engineer I have often wondered about the quality of Audio/Visual cables. What really makes a difference?

All this gold coating, silver wire, oxygen free single crystal copper strands, all to 'improve' quality. Well I wonder how exactly in some cases.

Okay for long speaker cable and high powers you probably want something that isn't too lossy and has the right inductance, but for something like a digital surround sound comm cable? I mean, it is digital!! How will a 2.99 cable made of standard copper with a nickel connector be any different to a $99 cable with gold connectors and all the rest? Digital is digital, either the 100Mhz carrier signal gets through, or it doesn't

Anyone else have any comments?

Don't know enough to get technical, but I can give you an example of quality cable making a difference.

Bought my first dvd player several years ago and decided to use the s-video connection, since that was digital and my tv had the connection. Picture was horrible, so I went back to the store where I bought the player and asked if they had any advice. When the sales guy found out the s-vid cable I was using had come with the player, he said that was the problem because it was a low quality cable and pointed to a $30 one on the rack as a better choice. I was obviously skeptical, but bought the cable anyway - made a huge difference, the sales guy was right.

I'm quite suprised by that, but I guess you cant argue with the results.

Was the cheap cable damaged in anyway? I have been playing around with my video projector and various cables. I can see a big difference between using RGB connectors and S video. However using a short high quality gold, oxygen free S video cable produces the same results as two 5 m long low quality S video cables strung together using an equally low quality female to female connector!

The cable wasn't damaged and I don't know what made it inferior, but the sales guy knew it was the problem the instant I told him the cable had come with the player.

I approach it like this: Spend a relative amount on cables as you spend on the rest of the system.

eg) if you spend $2000 on speakers, buy the good cables. If your ear is good enough to hear the difference between $2000 speakers and $200 speakers, it good enough to hear the difference in cable quality. If you have cheap speakers, even expensive cable won't make them sound any better.

Same for the tv.

Nickel connectors will gradually erode over the years. Gold will not.
It doesn't take much to damage cheap cables. Often the damage isn't even visible.

There are really cheap cables (supplied with devices), and there are very good and expensive cables. The main difference between the very good and the expensive cables is the profit to the mfg of the expensive ones!!
my .02

fred

I can definately understand the point about cheap cables damaging easier and not lasting as long. I can tell the difference between $20 speakers and $200 speakers, but I might not be able to hear an improvement with $2000 speakers. Still that means my home entertainment system is nice and cheap for me!!

I decided to jot down my thoughts on making a home cinema system, if anyone want to look they are here http://www.whatprice.co.uk/how-I/cinema.html

There might be a percievable difference between "dollar store" and the $20-30 cables. There will likely be no difference between those and the $100 cables.

FWIW, I ususally buy the el-cheapos and am satisfied with them, and what comes with things.