Kirby66 Posted September 28 Share Posted September 28 I have just swapped a pair of unshielded flat ribbon speaker cables for a pair of shielded round speaker cables between mono blocks and speakers in my system and found an improvement I'm very happy with. Before I go any further I should say that the cables were at a similar(ish) price point, $2k - 3K per pair, and both are well regarded brands. I have another two pairs of unshielded flat XLR interconnects in my system between my DAC/PRE and PRE/Monos. So my question is, without diving into different brands having different 'flavours', in the current age of increased levels of RFI and EMI due to more and more WIFI, electronic devices etc etc does anyone have an opinion (what a ridiculous thing to say on SNA) on whether moving to shielded round cables between my DAC/PRE & PRE/Monos would deliver a similar improvement in my system? Or indeed the general relative pros and cons of both types. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Decky Posted September 28 Share Posted September 28 (edited) I am curious - how did you discover the "improvement" and what that improvement is exactly? Maybe important to say - unshielded XLR cables are a bit of an oxymoron. While you can have a 3 wire XLRs they do not provide the same benefit of STP (shielded twisted pair) interconnects. Edited September 28 by Decky 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
georgehifi Posted September 28 Share Posted September 28 Can't a shield turn an unshielded cable into a bit of a capacitor, and therefore create a "maybe" HF roll off if there's a high enough input impedance of the stage it's running into? Cheers George Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davewantsmoore Posted September 28 Share Posted September 28 1 hour ago, Kirby66 said: shielded round speaker cables Shielded speaker cables? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ray4410 Posted September 28 Share Posted September 28 yep shielded speaker cable i use them too and unless you have used them then no amount of techno mumble jumble means a thing i have had many speaker cables over the years some silly money and these shielded cables sound as good or better all of my power cables are shielded also i have absolutely no background noise hums or hisses at any volume and the sound is excellent. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andyr Posted September 28 Share Posted September 28 2 hours ago, ray4410 said: i have absolutely no background noise hums or hisses at any volume and the sound is excellent. That is the ideal! 2 hours ago, ray4410 said: yep shielded speaker cable i use them too and unless you have used them then no amount of techno mumble jumble means a thing i have had many speaker cables over the years some silly money and these shielded cables sound as good or better all of my power cables are shielded also Shielding power cables is a different exercise to shielding spkr cables. IMO using shielded power cables is essential if you have interconnects (even shielded ones) anywhere near the power cables. The shield stops radiation from the AC power cable from getting into the interconnects (and causing hiss). I've never tried shielded spkr cables - and never felt the need to; the one time I got a radio station coming through my spkrs was sorted by putting a 1nF cap across the amp's spkr terminals (to drain the EMI to ground). 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kirby66 Posted September 28 Author Share Posted September 28 10 hours ago, Decky said: I am curious - how did you discover the "improvement" and what that improvement is exactly? Maybe important to say - unshielded XLR cables are a bit of an oxymoron. While you can have a 3 wire XLRs they do not provide the same benefit of STP (shielded twisted pair) interconnects. Hi @Decky, thanks for the reply post ... the improvement was discovered when I swapped out the existing flat ribbon speaker cables with the new round ones - A/B'd as quickly as I was able. The improvement, and perhaps I should have used the term change rather than improvement, was quite broad ... better clarity and width in the soundstage, more air around individual instruments & vocals, the bass sounds more defined and while I was not unhappy with the bass before I think now that it was a little bloated or wooly perhaps. I do not think I had much buyers bias as I was very happy to move them on if I did not prefer them. I will look further into the 3 wire vs STP use in XLR interconnects. Thanks again Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kirby66 Posted September 28 Author Share Posted September 28 Thanks for all the replies. It looks like perhaps my rather low level of tech knowledge and terminology has tripped me up - although I am all about the music I really do enjoy learning about this stuff. The terms 'shielded' and 'unshielded' may not be accurate and I used them based on my assumption of the two very different looking types of cables ... and as on one occasion when moving some cables around when the system was on but not playing the was an audible 'crackle' from a speaker, a more knowledgable friend who was present said 'careful those speaker cables are not shielded'. A bit more surfing and it looks like most speaker cables of either design are not shielded ... however shielded are certainly available as @ray4410 posted. So I guess to refine the question in the original post I am more wondering whether flat ribbon style design XLR IC's tend to have a particular sound compared to round cable XLR IC's ... if I were to swap the two pairs of ribbon XLR IC's for round XLR IC's could or should I expect a similar change (going to use the term change now rather than improvement)? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
muon* Posted September 29 Share Posted September 29 There is a lot more than the shape of the cable that dictates performance, conductor size, stranded or solid core and quality and type of the metals, geometry as in how it is built (braiding ect') and the insulating materials all contribute to the end result. 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
playdough Posted September 29 Share Posted September 29 Light reading https://www.mouser.com/pdfdocs/alphawire-Understanding-Shielded-Cable.pdf 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kirby66 Posted September 29 Author Share Posted September 29 Thank you Glen Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
playdough Posted September 29 Share Posted September 29 (edited) https://www.wiltronics.com.au/wiltronics-knowledge-base/shielded-cables-explained/ @Kirby66 They all say roughly the same things. Shields work better if the shield is grounded. Shields work to reflect EMI if the shield is not grounded, but less effective than grounding/draining. Have experienced noise getting into speaker cables, generally it's a close proximity issue with some other piece of equipment power supply, or run with a loaded power cable, a transformer will do it, exhibits as a hum, low hiss. A well organised cable handling regime separating signal/speaker/dc and ac cables is a great place to start. Shielding speaker cables that cannot avoid close proximity might help reduce induced EMI, preferably earthed at the power amp, or a chassis ground on another piece of equipment that has one, in all essence it only has to be "earthed" Edited September 29 by playdough 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Full Range Posted September 29 Share Posted September 29 The original noise reducing cable for connection to speakers was the Kymber braided cables Originally for pro applications 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davewantsmoore Posted September 29 Share Posted September 29 19 hours ago, ray4410 said: yep shielded speaker cable can you post a link or something, so I can understand what it is? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davewantsmoore Posted September 29 Share Posted September 29 9 hours ago, Kirby66 said: however shielded are certainly available Are they? Anyways.... no matter. Can you post any info on the cables your replaced the flat ones with? link? pic? something? .... otherwise it's hard for anyone to really make much comment. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jamiebosco Posted September 29 Share Posted September 29 I'm curious too. Are we talking about using cable something like the Canare L-4E6S ? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kirby66 Posted September 30 Author Share Posted September 30 21 hours ago, davewantsmoore said: Are they? Anyways.... no matter. Can you post any info on the cables your replaced the flat ones with? link? pic? something? .... otherwise it's hard for anyone to really make much comment. It was more of a general question regarding the physical cable designs but sure ... also just noting that as per an earlier post I used the terminology 'shielded' incorrectly and now understand that most speaker cables are not shielded - indeed neither of these are. I swapped out Foilflex speaker cables for HiDiamond Diamond 7 speaker cables Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kirby66 Posted September 30 Author Share Posted September 30 Both companies make XLR interconnects. I currently have Foilflex XLR's between DAC/PRE and PRE/Mono's ... wondering if I would expect a similar change swapping XLR's as I found when swapping speaker cables. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andyr Posted September 30 Share Posted September 30 (edited) 7 minutes ago, Kirby66 said: ... now understand that most speaker cables are not shielded - indeed neither of these are. I swapped out Foilflex speaker cables for HiDiamond Diamond 7 speaker cables I've not seen or used either of these but the thing that springs to my mind, anyway, is that - if the Foilflex are made the way I think they are ... then having the '+' wire and the '-' wire so close together, means they will have a much lower inductance than the Diamond 7s. And low inductance is good ... bcoz inductance acts as a brake on the current flowing. Note: this doesn't apply to interconnects, as minimal current flows along interconnects. Edited September 30 by andyr 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
muon* Posted September 30 Share Posted September 30 Very system and listener dependent, one may sound better in a given system and the other better in a different system configuration. Same goes for listener preferences. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
audiofeline Posted September 30 Share Posted September 30 An explanation of how Kimber developed the braid as a shield for speaker cable is here: https://kimber.com/about Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andyr Posted September 30 Share Posted September 30 27 minutes ago, audiofeline said: An explanation of how Kimber developed the braid as a shield for speaker cable is here: https://kimber.com/about More, that he realised a shield (for his spkr cable, anyway) ... wasn't required, surely, Rob? (As it degraded the sound.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
audiofeline Posted September 30 Share Posted September 30 4 hours ago, andyr said: More, that he realised a shield (for his spkr cable, anyway) ... wasn't required, surely, Rob? (As it degraded the sound.) Indeed, Andy. The two paragraphs from Kimber (my bolding): In an attempt to solve the problem they encased the speaker cable in a steel conduit. This did help with the noise, but it also had the unintended result of lowering the fidelity of the audio. This happened because the steel conduit interacted with the magnetic field of the speaker cable. Ray had the idea of some counter-rotating sets of conductors to cancel the magnetic interaction effect, but then also surmised that the counter-rotating sets of conductors would likely not pick up noise even without the conduit. He was correct, the noise was greatly reduced! But, Ray was also quite surprised at the difference in perceived audio quality. It was that discovery of noise elimination and improved fidelity that set him on the path to develop cable designs. If shielding for speaker cables improved the sound, I would have thought it would have been standard by now, or at least be a significant part of a high-end speaker cable manufacturer's range. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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