mart360

Am i right in thinking component video cable,s are just three Phono cables in a bundle?

been looking around for some cable,s and the price at some places is bordering on stupid.

why?


Mart

Shark Man

Yes three phono cables.


Amazing what people pay for a bit of coaxial copper cable and some 1ct plated plugs

IWatkins

Any old phono cables will do, only worry about sheilding if running long lengths or crossing lots of power cables.

Yes, some stupid prices out there. Saw the cable that Comet "recommend" to people wanting to connect their new Blu-Ray player to their LCD TV, made by Monster and is a 1m long HDMI cable that costs £44. Where as the cheapo HDMI cable from Maplins for £4.99 does the job just as well. Madness.

Cheers

Ian

PeteBrant

TVCables Audio Cables Video cables HDMI Cables DVI cables Home Cinema & Hi-Fi

10M for £15

jaytc2003

iTrader: (1)

Funnily enough a guy at work just bought a 50" samsung hd plasma, I asked him if he got the cables and said he had to buy them seperate and was recommend the gold plated stuff that currys sell. £39+ later he had a hdmi lead that didnt offer any improvement in visual quality as he hasnt got a hd source (dvd player only upscales and he did a comparision with hdmi upscaled and the component)

TelBoy

Cheapskates


Nordost HDMI Silver Screen


You know you want to.

The Chief

Try CPC mate

PeteBrant

There should an automated process whereby when anyone actually presses the "confirm" button on buying that product, an email gets sent to the British donor record and that persons Brain is immediatly put on a "do not use" list.

TelBoy

Don't for Christ's sake click on the Nordost Valhalla page then. Two metres of mains cable with a plug on the end, yours for just £1,925. Bargain.

Decent cable can make a difference though, no doubt about it. If anyone's got £30 going spare, get a Kimber Cable "Yello" mains cable and see what you think. I was amazed how much difference it made.

Like all things hi-fi though, the higher you go, the smaller the incremental improvements you'll notice.

Coffin Dodger

Yes its the HDMI cables I find really amusing. They carry a digital signal, the only reason one cable is likely to be better than another is if enough noise is getting onto the cable to produce bit errors. In most cases / cables I'd say that would be very unlikely unless the cable itself was faulty. How these Hi-Fi magazines can say a £50 HDMI lead gives a better picture than the £5 one I don't know. The only hard evidence that one is better than another would be a bit error rate test of the cable ran over several days though I'd be surprised if you got more than a couple of errors in that time whatever cable you used.

Analogue cables such as a component lead are slightly different as poor screening etc. could allow interference which would show itself up in degradation of the picture. Ever diminishing returns though.

To the OP, try TVCables Audio Cables Video cables HDMI Cables DVI cables Home Cinema & Hi-Fi Always found them to be reasonably priced and their own brand stuff is good if you don't want to spend mega bucks.

PeteBrant

On an analogue cable like component - Yes - Dependant as has been said, on the length of cable, running parrallel for any length of time, proximity of AC etc.

In other words, thinking about how you cable can make just as much difference as what you cable with.

TelBoy

In theory, perhaps. But i can demonstrate to you beyond any reasonable doubt that one digital cable doesn't sound identical to the next one, on some reasonably decent audio equipment. Don't ask me why, but the output from the speakers is definitely different. You might not have sufficiently responsive speakers on a home cinema system to notice, however.

mart360

I seem to recall, one notable hi fi magazine did this in blind testing.

The results wernt what they expected.

I did the same using a good SVHS cable, vs scart

i tried a section of film, and convinced myself it had ehhanced the colours etc.

I proudly showed it off to my wife, who did a comparison with the scart clip...



















































egg on my face moment.


No difference whatsoever


Mart

TelBoy

Yeah there's plenty of articles that de-bunk cabling differences, and i'll vouch for that in some instances. But that Yello power lead i mentioned earlier, honestly, i'll put any money you like on the fact you'd hear a difference on something like a ghetto blaster. It's finding the products which really do make a difference which is the hard part.

GC8

Theres a place for good quality interconnects, but I doubt anyone will convince me that it will make any difference to an HDMI lead or a single RCA phono cable carrying a digital audio signal to an amplifier... How do companies get away with making such useless tat?

TelBoy

I could convince you on the second one, Si. You might not think the more expensive cable is better, but it can definitely be different. Not all of it is tat, but there's certainly a lot of incestuous back-slapping within the hi-fi industry which keeps getting these high priced products recommended.

Shark Man

Belkin and Monster cables (i.e the Comet/Currys/PC world variety) are shockingly poor quality for the price too. fancy gold connectors doesn't make the slightest bit of difference (actually can cause galvanic corrosion due to phsyical contact between two different metals).

Yes the cable has lovely silicone insulation, fancy bling gold on the plugs. But they are commonly no better made than the £5 cables. Main issue is the core conductors and how the cable is wired to the plug. Some use poor quality crimping methods, whilst other are soldered, but poorly- that combined with poor cable clamping mean a few wiggles and the solder joint or crimp joint starts to break away. Causing signal loss, interferance and cross-talk.

The stupid thing is you can pay £50 for a cable and it it be no better made than a £5 cable. Just it looks nice.

If one insists on having "the best" cable. Then buy the cable and the connectors seperately, and build your own cables. That way you can inspect the cable, and make sure the core conductors is of good quality, and there is sufficient sheilding (For example many RF or Scart cables where sheilding is most important are very poor). You can also inspect the connectors, making sure they are solder types or professional quality crimp (requiring a "proper" crimp tool-ask a ethernet installer) and good clamping of the cable.

This is quite a good FAQ: Comparing Video Cable Quality

(although their cables aren't exactly cheap either )

GC8

Theyre both a digital signal though Tel, so how can they be improved upon? With digital its either there, or it isnt. I dont doubt that the quality of the received signal will be improved, but as long as the 'on' and 'offs' can be distinguised between clearly enough, then you get the same output (surely?).

TelBoy

As i say, yes in theory, but in practice they just aren't all identical. I have a digital cable costing £350 doing not a lot at home because the £100 one i originally bought is better, to my ears at any rate. And you never want to concede that you've wasted £350, believe me!!

GC8

I will bow to your superior purchasing power

GC8

I will no longer feel pissed off at having an excessively priced single RCA interconnect between my DVD player and my amplifier. £15 well spent.....

Shark Man

<thud>

Words fail me.

Anyhoo, may I but in? As I think I can shed some light on why

The best way I can put it is to split into two areas: There are two matters with digital signals. One is down to the reciever's ability to clean up a interferred signal. This is why we are getting broadband over 30+ year old telephone lines (ok, phone lines are frequency and time division modulated and multiplexed - I'm just pointing out advancements in technology). I think thats pretty obvious, so I'll skip that lot.

Secondly: The Cabling, yes it CAN affect a digital signal, just like it can with an analogue signal.

For example my old Technics amp (Which cost less than your cable, I may add ), uses a raw data stream on optical and electrical digital inputs. It pretty much outputs exactly what it recieves (Which gives interesting results if one inadvertantly feeds it a Dolby or DTS compressed data stream ). Timing or sampling frequency is fixed by auto detection (32Khz, 44.1Khz or 48Khz respectively).

So the impression is there is negligable cause of a 0 being transposed as a 1 from a weak signal, or vica versa. Or is there? With both electrical and optical links, there is an issue where a timing miss-match can occur, and teh signal being interferred with. This being mainly associated with the reflective losses (or return loss) of the cable.

Reflective losses are caused by cable length, quality, condition, termination quality, and external interferance, this affects both optical and electrical connections. For electrical connections, this being impedance mismatches and attenuation (i.e the nominal cable resistance, which is a combination of its capacitance and reactance over the cable length at a given frequency over a given length). Optical cable also suffers from this, (in the form of light reflected back long the cable), its not as bad, but can suffer - especially if the cable is damaged.

So whats happening? Well, to put it in short. Think of return losses as an echo down the cable in the opposite direction. If the reflected signal and attenuation of the main signal is large enough, then the receiver can inadvertantly pick up an "echo" instead of the main signal, with obvious consequences. Also impedance at connection points (or laggy repeater units for optical) can cause bottle necks which leads to timing-mismatches and phase shifts - where the signal timing can go out of phase, which in a digital system with fixed signal timing (like my Technics amp) would cause a "lost" data bit(s).

Does it matter? And would you notice it? In most circumstances, no. Especially if the reciever is working with a low data rate raw signal (as in my case), the exception is if the cable was excessively long or damaged (kinks affect coax as well as optical). However, what about more advanced systems, like DTS or Dolby surround? Again not that much, the signal is compressed but is still carried at the same data rates as a raw signal, although small errors will be multiplied when the signal is decompressed and decoded. Next...HDMI or DVI ahh, well, now we're pushing technoligical boundries. Again up to a point no issue, but with excessive cable length, damaged/poor cable, nasty repeater/booster/splitter units or a duff/poor quality interface in the AV amp, DVD/Blueray or TV then you can and will get problems.

Apologies for the waffle, but I hope that helps explain why you could tell a difference between digital cables, if one cable were to be faulty (for example).

bigsinky

£350 for a cable. I thought i needed my bumps felt when i bought a £50 component cable when i bought my 50" plasma. I bought a cheapo HDMI cable for my sky HD box and did a swap of the component cable and hdmi cable on my blu-ray player and i couldn't tell the difference.

houses for courses i suppose. i'm tone deaf and can't see so it makes little odds to me.

Coffin Dodger

Yes very good, reflective losses eh, for a signal at say 2GHz it could be an issue and in this case a properly matched termination is a good idea. But for audio signals at 48kHz, don't make me laugh. You could send a 48kHz digital signal along a few meters of 13A mains cable and you'd have no bit errors, just the same as a overpriced hi-fi cable.

Our systems have to be able to receive a digital signal from satellites nearly 36000km away, as far as signal processing is concerned it's like trying to find a needle in a haystack. However the cable we use from the antenna to the receiver is pretty much standard 50ohm co-ax, well screened, but only a few £ per meter. The losses from it are minute compared to the rest of the link budget. So for you Hi-Fi this will be fine, there will be zero bit errors.

Shark Man

I never quantified anything! In fact, to stress the point, in that quoted post I asked the question "does it matter?" and I said No.

Like I said earlier, there is an exmplaination why one "could" tell a difference, and how a digital signal could become degraded. BUT, I NEVER said that buying a £300 cable would justify that (and in Tel did saying his £300 cable was inferior kind of backs that up).

All the above just suggested that there couldbe a noticable difference if a faulty cable was used, or if there was some other system problem.

With regards to satelites: I can give an personal example of a problamatic satelite system though: Where replacing CT100 (new) satelite cable over a 40metre run with a wall plate connector in a marginal signal area with CT125 cable direct from dish to reciever does make a difference. Yes we're talking about noisy GHz signals over long lengths. And yes, the satelite to the dish is the weak point in the whole system, however the approximate 5dB gain in signal accompanied by a reduction in return loss did obtain a noticable improvement.

When its an issue, there will be a problem.

TelBoy

All i know is that there are genuine audible differences. I don't know the physics. Is digital data transferred in the same way regardless of material then? Surely there is a point at which the transfer of data IS affected by the medium carrying it?

mart360

Its a bit like oem equipment,

take your brakes of your car, All must conform to a minimum legal standard, as must each of the individual components of the system.

The fact that the individual parts can be of varying levels / cost, may cost more to produce,may be oem or 3rd party and may or may not offer improvements over the "standard" parts. it's down to the individual purchaser. however they will / must meet the minimum standard.

same with cables, all must work, thats the basic standard, Just because cable X imparts supposedly more sonic audibility over cable Y, dosent mean it better, it may offer improvements but at the end of the day, it still works


does that make sense


(bloody cables still worked out expensive though )


Mart

corradoboy

Haven't read everybody's replies, but here's my two-penneth.

Back in the days of analogue I once bought a £120 Audioquest Quartz Hyperlitz 3 to go between my CD and Amp, and it was awesome. Analogue signals can be influenced by cable resistance and RF interference greatly, so a perfectly balance cable with good screening, and of course a very good connection reaps dividends. Component is analogue, so I see the point of a good one.
However, with digital I'm thankful that those days are over. I run my DVD player through a £2.80 HDMI cable and it is perfect IMHO. Similarly, my AV amp is fed through a £2.20 digital coax lead, with no detriment. Leaves more money in my wallet for discs and equipment upgrades

kenable - for cables, networking and peripherals

kenable - for cables, networking and peripherals

Oh, and I have a Profigold 5m component cable worth £70 (£40 or so on eBay) anyone can have for £20 delivered.

mart360

Blox looks like i should have payed attention .

just watched some stuff from sky+ tonight, and thought the picture was crap,

to the point we could see artifacts onscreen turns out the artifacts were letters!!! we have bleed through from terrestrial tv. unplug the ariel and it goes away.

I bought a cheap scart lead (if you can call £13) cheap and i,m guessing its not that well shielded

So the next question is, whats a good quality scart lead 3m length, thats not too thick, or it wont fit my trunking

or have i got a duff tv


Mart

Shark Man

Its possible. Internal crosstalk issues are quite common. Although often made worse by earthing/ground sheilding interference caused by, yup, a dodgy lead.


Can't help on the leads, my current set started life as a £20 set of Vivanco leads, but I've since chopped off the connectors and crimped on my own.