

Xonar EMI shield concept

Xonar D2K at CeBIT, image courtesy of VR-Zone






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By Gecko1 on 3/23/2007 1:58:31 PM , Rating: 2
Wow! exdeath just laid out my entire sound system!

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By exdeath on 3/23/2007 2:03:24 PM , Rating: 2
Been there done that... until I got my Def Tech towers a few years ago and never looked back.

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By exdeath on 3/23/2007 2:07:14 PM , Rating: 4
Even with the Klipsch system I have on my PC, look at the crappy tangle of wire they give you to connect them with, lol.

I love it when people spend $500 on a pair of cables to connect to their $2000+ amplifier or HDTV with gold plated exposed jacks... open up the amp or the TV and and look at the 20 ga copper wire soldered to the tab on the back of the jack with corroded tin solder. Lol

RE: Wow
By Tsuwamono on 3/23/2007 2:40:13 PM , Rating: 2
thats my arguement with my brother in law(he sells expensive sound systems to people with more bucks then brains) he insists that better cables make better sound. I dont disagree but a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. and more often then not its the solder on the inside thats holding back the signal. not the wires that come with it.

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That is the whole point of digital after all =D

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I'm simplifying it alot, but thats the basic idea.


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By pdelagarza on 3/23/2007 3:43:04 PM , Rating: 2
Remember that the conection betwen the the RCA jacks its quite poor due to only a few contact spots, thats why you need to make it as good as you can, when you solder a cooper wire to that gold plated connector, that solder make it almost a perfect connection. So the weakest link is the rca conector, also remembre that the cable is only carring a signal, so that signal will be amplified later, thus amplifing also all the noise picked up by the cable in the way from the source to the amplifier.

I dont think a cable is worth $500, but I like to use good quality cables, I have spent for my HT about $200 in cables. also good cables usually last longer, and after installing everything, I dont want to mess with it again to change a bad cable. :)

RE: Wow
By exdeath on 3/23/2007 4:10:56 PM , Rating: 2
Yeah I use high quality heavy duty cables for my speakers and analog video where it counts. I think I paid at most $200 just for a pair of heavy duty molded cables with gold plated banana plugs for my front main speakers, and in retrospect that was probably slightly too much... but at least they look nice since they are visible.

I also went extra careful running a 30 foot insulated and shielded component video cable by spending $100 to ensure that it was 3 independant 75 ohm broadcast grade coax cables, of the kind suitable to carry high bandwidth 1080p over a 30 foot run in a perm. in wall installation for a projector. The wall jack that is really no more than a bunch of RCA couplers is my weak link, but it's unavoidable.

The s-video cable... well that was the lowest signal I was willing to wire up for a HDV system (forget composite) and just got some cheap cable. s-video sucks anyway and you can't change that by throwing money at it. Besides my sources are just pre-component video game consoles. For example the SNES which put out 256x224 through a cheapo RGB->NTSC RF noise generator doesn't look so hot blown up on a HD projector no matter how much you mess with it... I have slight ghosting, but I don't know if thats avoidable with a better cable as S-video isn't typically desireable for long runs in the first place.

The HDMI cable was like $40 for a 10 meter run, the cheapest I could find. My only concern was that the signal merely GET to the display over the long run. As long as that happened, the image would be perfect. Digital is kinda a 'it works or it doesn't' thing.

Unless you are running unusual distances, a fiber optic cable is a fiber optic cable. A $5 one and a $100 THX Monster one will have absolutely NO difference in that 4 foot cable from your PS3 to your stereo!

RE: Wow
By exdeath on 3/23/2007 4:22:27 PM , Rating: 2
The people I laugh at are the ones that get 99.999999% nitrogen filled cryogenically treated cables that are suspended off the ground with no bends, etc.

Even in my case I doubt the solder connections and wiring from the jacks to the internal crossovers in my Def Techs are as good or better than my $200 cables...

RE: Wow
By rcc on 3/23/2007 5:40:18 PM , Rating: 2

That's an extremely simplistic view of digital. From a practical standpoint it is generally true, however, as your thresholds get noisier, the receiving circuit has to guess as to whether it's a 0 or a 1. Granted, even if it makes an error, you'll probably never hear it as it's one bit out of many. OTOH, the same type signal in your computer will drive it to it's knees because every bit is critical.

Digital audio, be it HT, cell phone, whatever, will typically work until it doesn't. The threshold is almost, but not quite like throwing a switch. Analog actually holds up better after a certain point because the signal is still there, however noisy; where a digital system becomes random junk.

Only partially applicable, I know. But it's an important distinction in general.

RE: Wow
You mean RG6 cable for the video. :)

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By Comdrpopnfresh on 3/23/2007 4:25:52 PM , Rating: 2
I think the cables do make a difference- to an extent. I'd agree that the gold-plated thing is stupid- silver would be cheaper, and work better! But the transmission of data over one cable is where you get interference. So yes- the chain is only as strong as its weakest link, but the weakest link is usually the longest one that is exposed tot he outside ~ the wires connecting equipment.

RE: Wow
By exdeath on 3/23/2007 5:01:00 PM , Rating: 2
Silver oxidizes easily and quickly. Gold and platinum are used for this reason alone, not for conducting properties.

