Cable Asylum: We are very close, but the difference is important by Al Sekela

enough to beat this topic to death :).

A year ago I would have agreed with your assessment that there are too many choices in cable-land, so any systematic approach is better than floundering around.

Since then I've been fortunate to meet several people with good insights, and to learn from them. I've learned that conductor composition is important, that cables in a high-RF environment should be electrically shielded, terminated, and damped, and that connector shells should be mechanically damped. The dielectric should be biased and the shield grounding must be done to avoid polluting the ground.

While I don't doubt I could improve my sound by further work on my cables, I do believe they are now sufficiently transparent to get out of the way of the sound, and that my sound is now primarily limited by the source, amplifiers, and speakers, and not the cables.

All this took a lot of research, thought, and work, but little cash. I don't know of any cables that include treatments for all the features I've found through trial and error to be important: Joe Cohen's Pranawire Cosmos series probably comes close, but their price is far beyond my means.

Like you, I have long-term commitments to my equipment. My speakers are ten years old and I built my tube amps myself eight years ago. Meeting Joe Cohen at CES and then having him visit, made clear to me how much improvement I could get from cables. Meeting Don Palmer revealed to me the importance of RF resonances in cables, and the need for electrical damping.

All I'm saying through this thread is that the situation with cables is not hopeless, but a lot of work is required to find the way.