Audioquest Jack 3.5mm cables: Worth it? And which one should I choose?

[casstoner27]

Hi all,

 

I have Bang & Olufsen Beoplay H95 headphones and using them wired via 3.5mm Jack audio cable. Now I am using original B&O cable delivered in package with headphones. 

 

I am listening via Tidal Hi-Fi and headphones are connected to Creative SoundBlaster AE-9 sound card. 

 

Now I am considering how to extract even more from those headphones and I am looking on cables.

 

Firstly I would like to ask you if buying some higher-end cable will somehow improve my experience? Will it be noticeable? I am quite sensitive person, so I think I can hear small nuances, but not sure if cable can actually improve the sound or possbily soundstage.

 

Secondly, If an answer for my first question is "Yes, it can improve the sound", then I would like to ask you for experiences with Audioquest cables. Here in Czech Republic we have available Tower, Evergreen, Golden Gate and Big Sur cables by Audiquest. Which one is the best? Budget is not an issue, so I just want the best sounding cable.

 

Every feedback would be great. Thank you very much

 

[Derkoli]

18 minutes ago, casstoner27 said:

I just want the best sounding cable

AmazonBasics cables sound great. The sound of actually having change in your wallet is unbeatable.

[tikker]

1 hour ago, casstoner27 said:

I think I can hear small nuances

That is exactly what they profit off of. People thinking they can hear a difference. Additionally, due to the way our brain works, once you expect your new thing to sound differently it will sound differently in the way you expect even if there is no significant difference. Most if not all of the exotic unobtanium superconducting audio stuff is snake oil, followed by lab-measurable improvements that you are not going to notice practically and then in my experience the reasonable stuff that's simpy built better (read nicer) rather than giving notably better performance.

[Spuriae]

From an objective point of view, headphone cables shouldn't normally ever cause an audible difference in sound, as long as they are reasonably well-constructed and of reasonable length. Poorly constructed cables can always have an effect on the sound; particularly poorly constructed cables can even destroy poorly designed amplifiers by shorting them or presenting too much capacitive load.

 

Physically, the most significant effect a cable will typically have is a slight low-pass filter effect, mostly from the cable resistance and parasitic capacitance. Coupling between channels can also occur, but again it takes hundreds of feet of cable for that effect's crosstalk to even approach audibility (although it doesn't take much cable to significantly increase crosstalk, it takes a LOT of crosstalk to be audible in music).

 

I ran a test using 10 50-foot long lengths of cheap Monoprice 3.5mm extension and ran a blind test to check my limits of audibility. The least cable I could consistently tell the difference from no extensions was about 300 feet (100m). The full 500 feet was audible in normal listening, but not strictly unpleasant; the filter effect is about the same as the sort you'd find on many older discrete amplifiers.

 

I was unable to measure any degradation in noise or distortion on the full 500 foot length (in fact, THD+N improved slightly due to the low pass filter) with that test setup, though it was limited to around -90dB in both measures. My current test rig using the cheapest no-name cables I could find (though this time at more reasonable lengths) has the second harmonic (the one you'd expect to be most obviously affected by parasitic capacitance) buried in the noise floor at -160dB. The cables don't seem to have any significant effect on the signal.

 

If you have an unlimited budget, it might make sense to spend on cables for "why not?" reasons; better cables certainly won't degrade the sound (though there's little correlation between quality and price beyond a few tens of dollars). But upgrading virtually anything else first will result in better bang for the buck. The H95, the AE-9, and even Tidal all degrade the sound more than a typical cable can.

[H713]

The measurements I've made more or less match the measurements @Nimrodor discussed. 

 

Here are a few other areas where I've measured differences:

 

-Bad connections, particularly if there's corrosion. Very often this results in added nonlinear series resistance, which is particularly problematic for low-impedance connections (speaker and headphone cables). 

 

-Shared ground in a headphone cable. This common impedance causes crosstalk issues. Whether it's enough to hear is another issue.

 

-Ferrous connectors for speaker cables. 

 

 

 

Honestly though, when I've had to replace headphone cables, I usually end up using miniature star-quad microphone cable. Cheap, or free if you cut up an old mic snake. Unbalanced interconnects? RG58C/U (Usually L-Com brand), because I've got lots of it around. Balanced interconnects? Canare shielded twisted quad microphone cable. All of this cable is cheap and easy to get, and works as well as anything, really.

 

I highly, highly recommend buying or making high quality cables. I see absolutely zero value to high-end cables for audio purposes. Seriously, this isn't UHF.