Markus

I'd guess a fair few of you have, or do endure the "joy" of the cable nest that comes with an AV setup.

It's about time I cleaned up the cable nest and I wanted to check a couple of things with regards to cable tidying.

If I recall correctly, coiling power cables isn't a wise idea, and I have a feeling the same might be true for speaker cables, but what about normal AV cables, for example, interconnects between DVD and AV Amp, and also optical (coax and toslink) cables. Can these be loosley coiled together (secured with Velcro One Wrap) or will there be a degredation in video/audio due the the coiling?

One solution could be to get smaller interconnect cables, as some of the ones I have are rather long, and the DVD players, TV, Amp, and xbox all sit on/in the same stand, hence the nest of cabling. However, I'd rather avoid additional expense of changing cables if coiling or another method of organisation is available.

DCI Gene Hunt

*also interested in the answers to this question*

Spoon

Me, I'm positively erect just waiting for the answer.

davegtt

Now, the way I understand it is (and Im going off unless your an absolute perfectionist who thinks they have the eye of a hawk or ear of a dog) you will be fine coiling power cables together and audio/visual cables together (so you have 2 seperate coils.

Obviously dont put the power cables with audio cables etc and you'll be fine.

PeteBrant

It really shouldn't matter. Assuming you have decent speaker cable (i.e. co-axial), it's going to be shielded, and therefore any emmisions/interference are not going to touch it. Optical cable is precisely that - Optical, and not going to be affected by transmission problems. Digital Co-ax, again is shielded.

Any improvement/degredation you see/hear will therefore be a product of your imagination

Coffin Dodger

Since when did they start screening speaker cables? What is the screen connected to? If it's not grounded then it won't do anything. Now most of the speakers I've seen have posts / banana sockets for the +ve and -ve terminals but no ground. Guess you could hook up the screen to a ground point on the amp?

Either that or you're talking b*llocks

PeteBrant

A screen doesn't necessarily have to connect to ground. You can get speaker cables with a "floating" screen

siren

DCI Gene Hunt

As in life I imagine its hard to tell

PeteBrant

The main thing, I suppose if you really are concerned about it, is not to run mains and speaker cable together for any significant length. If they have to cross, cross them at 90 degrees to each other.

But really, you aren't going to tell the difference unless you are running a mains and speaker cable alongside each other for a few metres.

Longjing

When I were a lad we adjusted cable length with scissors and black tape

ScoobyDoo555

Does this mean that you're a ****?

The issue with coiling cables is the potential for crosstalk and induction etc....
The perfect answer would be to get shorter cables, but can be pricey.

So, option (a) - cut your existing cables to length and re-solder the connectors.
option (b) - keep the power and audio separate (although not as important as in cars IMHO)


An awful lot is down to trial and error. Theory is great, but practice is something else....... coil em up and see if you can hear the difference
The studio stuff we did, the cables would look like spaghetti! but never had any issues with noise or interference. All down to balanced connections

Dan

StickyMicky

i attacked the nest last night


VCR removed
SKYBOX removed

rats nest of cables dumped
new TV has freeview built in and the only thing i want underneath the new TV is the xbox360 and a cable to stream media from the pc in the other room

Markus

Thanks chaps

I knew that running power + any other cable together is probably not a wise move, and that my dad always told me never to coil a power cable when it's plugged in, something to do with induction perhaps? I just wondered if there would be any induction type interference with coiling AV cables.

ru'

To be honest you're not going to notice an effect, unless you have 'hi fi' equipment and 'golden ears' (and, therefore, have or have had in the past, a golden wallet).

Coiling mains cables for high current items (electric heaters etc.) is a total no-no, due to the cable getting very hot (try it if you must with a long, coiled extension lead but don't blame me when it all burns up...).

AV stuff is generally very low current so shouldn't be an issue, likewise for the lengths we're probably talking about I doubt you'd notice any audible issues either.

hades

Coiling mains cables will reduce their total safe current carrying capability, and yes it is "something to do with induction"! (and hence ru's comments about heaters). However, unless you have a ridiculously powerful amp working very hard through a 15m long lead, you (a) won't have many coils and (b) won't be anywhere near to the current limit of the cables so no problem there.

I'd disagree with Pete's comments that decent speaker cable = co-axial. Most "decent" speaker cable isn't co-axial predominantly down to the capacitive load on it. However, again unless you're running multiple coils very near their current carrying capability (i.e. ridiculously loud with mega power amp and speakers), you won't have any real problems.

Interconnects (digital and analougue) do tend to be co-axial, so in theory should be little effected by coiling - unless you put the coil around / next to a transformer or something with lots of mains in it! The only thing is to listen out for induced mains hum and move the cables if you get some. You might also get crosstalk from speaker cables if you're running the system very loud. As previously mentioned, fibre optic links won't pick up electrical noise.

So generally, no problems with coiling cables, but ideally keep mains, loudspeaker and signal cables as three separate "bunches". If something sounds worse afterwards, try moving the cables by all means, but I'd be surprised if you can tell any difference.

Shark Man

I agree with Hades. However, if you want to be ****, you should run each analogue audio/video signal cables separetly to each other and anything else and not bunch them together...Why? Cross-talk. This is down to the shielding quality of the cable. Scart cables are notorious, however most of the cross-talk is between the wires within the same cable rather than between seperate cables.

But don't use that as an excuse to blow £100s on interconnects, £30 will suffice. Even less if you make your own

Worst case having it all bunched up is the 50hz hum from a mains transformer leaking into a poorly sheilded signal cable.

Keep the speaker cables cut to the shortest possible length and kept at the same length for each channel; long lengths with thin cable plays interesting factors with resistivity which in turn affects the impedance and reactance of the circuit (taking to account speaker and crossover) however rarely have I noted any major effect on overall sound between a long thin speaker cable and a short fat cable. So again, no need to go overboard on expensive speaker cabling.