Why do cables make a performance difference
Yes they make a difference, but they are the last on the list. Save yourself a ton of time, money and frustration and know what it is in playback you really want to reach. Get the right loudspeakers for your sense of music and sound, find the happy amp that feeds them, and then get busy on your analog and digital source needs. Fill your room with a bunch of albums and books. Now you have a rig you like, start messing with cable. And one more note, don’t use cables as tone controls to fix a loudspeaker issue—it’s a trap that will have you spending more money on accessories than on music! If your system has a timbre problem look at your room, amp, speaks…. Yes, interconnects and loudspeaker cables can make a large contribution, as can power cable, though not as often. Each type should be looked at individually. RCA-type interconnects patch together gear with a super small power factor. Here impedance makes very little difference, at line level it’s all about preserving the inserted signal without introducing reactive elements that cause time and frequency problems. It’s also about protecting the small signal from environmental influences, RF in all its forms, and acoustic. Loudspeakers are both power level and signal level and are tackled very differently with impedance playing a much larger role. AC power, well that’s a bit tricky. It depends on so many factors that it’s impossible to predict if a hi-fi power cable will even make a difference. The power grid in your area, the transformer feeding your house, the grounding of your home’s grid, the noise on your lines, the ground relations of your gear; and on top of that you have the power supply of each component in your playback. The perfect power supply would not benefit from a super duper power cable. But, since perfection isn’t attainable, well, you get power cable proliferation. For Zu, we think containing the radiated field is essential, this takes a whole lot of conductor; a simple foil wrap ain’t going to cut it. Zu also believes in keeping the ground circuits’ impedance as low as possible. All this is a very brief overview focused on the fundamental reasons for fidelity preservation and electrodynamics. Chemistry and other branches of physics are also used by Zu to research, develop and finally market a good sounding cable, but way too much has been made of “conductor purity” simply to justify the stupidly high prices charged for patch cables.
