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In Reply to: RE: VH Audio V-Twist OCC Copper Interconnect Cable posted by Duster on July 15, 2015 at 15:47:38
Hi Duster,
I saw the V-Twist on the VH site and was intrigued, but I am wary of using an unshielded interconnect. What are your thought on this?
Dave
Follow Ups:
Shielding can act as a filter, and filters tend to affect signal purity in a compromised manner. The goal of such a compromise is to obtain a lowered noise floor if audible, but perhaps at the expense of signal purity. However, shielding can sometimes provide inherent sonic benefits, such as the very thin floating copper foil layer some Oyaide and Acrolink power cords feature, simply because the designers find it to "sound better that way", perhaps in part due to mild capacitive coupling, without gross sonic alterations as a result. But that's postulation on my part.
Many folks find that unless a system is located within an unusually high RFI and EMI environment, a twisted pair featuring a twist/pitch rate that effectively cancels noise riding on the cable is adequate. If shielding was considered mandatory, the ubiquitous unshielded Cat5 cable consisting of multiple twisted pairs with different twist/pitch rates for reduced interactions between them would not be an option to implement as a dependable data interface method.
Other than low-level phono-level cables that tend to require a braided shield to avoid highly audible hum, and digital cables which require a 75 ohm characteristic dielectric relationship, an unshielded line-level interconnect tends to be the preferable cable type for audiophile applications. That said, an early user of the new V-Quad interconnect cable (4-conductor, cross-connected star-quad design) finds it to effectively avoid audible hum, with excellent performance when used for a low-level phono application, without the need of a braided shield to address the issue. However, increased capacitance due to the star-quad wiring scheme needs to be considered for a low-level phono-level application with a capacitive loading issue, but a shielded twisted pair cable can also involve a level of increased capacitance vs. that of an unshielded twisted pair, so that aspect should be factored-in when comparing various cables for a low-level application.
Duster,
You have thought this out very carefully, I expect with a lot of listening too. At 14.95 per foot for twisted pair and 23.99 per foot for star quad, it won't break the bank to experiment. As you suggested to me with speaker cable, I think I should try mocking up some unshielded cable will lesser wire to see if my system can handle it. If I do go the V-Twist rout, hopefully there is something less expensive that NextGen WBT-0102 Cu rca connectors ($299.99 for a set of 4) that will suffice. I don't want to test my wife's tolerance too much!
Dave
I see no reason why you shouldn't choose a more affordable KLE rca connector option that RadioWonder selected for use with the V-Twist, but I can't vouch for the superiority of the KLE Absolute Harmony vs. the KLE Pure Harmony that I'm familiar with. That said, the price difference between the two models is nothing to quibble about from an audiophile POV, so opting for the the Absolute Harmony should be a safe bet in terms of the usual "you often get what you pay for" dynamic. I found the higher-cost Pure Harmony vs. the lower-cost Silver Harmony to be worth the extra expense, so the top-of-the-line the Absolute Harmony should provide similar sonic betterment for the price, IMHO.
It makes sense to me, as does the concept of a low mass connector.
Dave
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