Hey guys, just a question...

I currently use a cheap 3.5mm to 3.5mm cable to connect my iPod to my stereo. I was just wondering if buying a more expensive cable like this one

http://www.currys.co.uk/martprd/stor...ory_oid=-30411

would improve sound quality? Or does it make no difference what quality of cable you use?

Thanks

I doubt you would notice any difference.

No other input from anyone?

Like the other person said I don't think it would make any difference

I think the main thing is the quality of the stereo that you're connecting it to.
Unless it's a mid to high end stereo then I don't think you'll gain much by using an expensive cable, however, unless it is a very cheap stereo I think that a decent cable (circa 10ukp) will give an improvement over a 99 pence wire-thin cable.

At least - that's my experience so far....

There is an awfull lot of bull manure spoken and written about bits of wire.

A lot of it is pure fantasy, probably because someone spends £10 squillion quid a millimetre on a cable so it must be the cannine dangly bits So they just con themselves into thinking it reveals more of the music than some cheapy cable they could have picked up for a quid or so from Tesco's when doing the weekly shopping.

It is true that a poor cable can have an effect on sound quality. After all it is electrically a combination of resistors, inductors and capacitors. All of which can modify the signal going through it to some degree. But provided the effects of these are outside the frequency range of human hearing then can anyone truely say they can hear any difference?

But in any case you've already mangled the sound quality beyond redemption by loading it onto an iPod! Which means that you have already thrown away a very considerable quantitiy of the information in the sound (as much as 90% for a 128kB/s track!) so it isn't going to sound as good as the source recording anyway. No matter how many squillion quid you spend on the cable

poped into Currys to look for an optical cable- was stunned how expensive some were- i only want one like the cables that come in your DVD player box (you know the black thin ones) but some were £40 ! - the guy said they gave better sound- but optical is Light beam so wouldn't make a difference!!??

I bought a cheep ipod dock from iWorld (29quid) - it has a line out so you can have the ipod standing proud when connected to the stereo. your cable will be fine

Digital interconnects are an even bigger con than analogue.

The sole purpose of a digital cable is to carry a stream of ones and zeros from point A to point B. If they arrive at point B in the same order as they left point A then the sound will be identical no matter what you used to connect A to B.

I will concede that a poor cable or badly terminated plug can mangle the digital stream such that the error correction in the receiving equipment gives up. But the effects of this are not in any way subtle!

However I can see no logical reason at all why two identical streams of binary numbers arriving at the input to a Digital to Analogue convertor should sound any different because one stream got there via a bit of damp string and the other got there by some super pure oxygen free optical fibre cable that cost more than the entire US national debt!

Agreed.

My HDMI and optical cables both cost about a fiver each and work perfectly.

They're digital so, as chrisjr says, it either gets there, or it doesn't. If there is a problem with the cable, it'll be apparent pretty quickly as your picture/sound will be knackered.

Spending £40+ isn't going to make the picture/sound any better in cables like this.

Having said that, thet 3.5mm one for a tenner (reduced from £15!!!) looks like a rip-off to me as well. You could probably pick the same thing up in Maplin for a couple of quid.

I wouldn't get that 3.5mm cable, as listening through speakers you probably won't hear any difference. Normally it's headphones where high quality connections can be apreciated.

Thanks for the input everyone
I will take into account what you have all said

I came this connecter http://www.amazon.co.uk/Scoobee-iPod...pr_product_top. It's cheap, and from what's been said on this thread there's no need to buy a ridiculously overpriced one. It got pretty positive reviews, some also mention how it's produces better sound quality than some others do because it connects from the iPods charging socket instead of the headphone jack. Is this true?

Also on the back of my stereo there's only one red and white audio socket behind it, underneath it says 'AUX / DVD'. Will the connecter be able to work with my stereo?

Thanks for any advice/help anyone can give .

Yes it will

Cheers man. I was hoping you'd reply. Was gonna send you a private message lol. Thanks

Forget the quality of a cable the issue here is the output impedance of the source and the input impedance of the stereo system. It is likely that there will be a gross mismatch resulting in noticeably poor quality sound.

If there is a "mic" (or even the input for an old fashioned turntable) input the match might be better. If not you might find some form of converter at Maplins or the like.

Complete rubbish.

The only issue over impedance is that the source device output impedance must be low and the destination device input impedance must be high. Which it will be in any half way competently designed equipment.

Using a Mic input is a complete no no. Mic inputs are designed solely for microphones. They have a large amount of extra gain in the input amplifier to make up for the tiny output signals that microphones produce. Plugging a line level or headphone level device into a mic input is only going to lead to gross overload of that amplifier stage and some serious distortion.

A RIAA equalised turntable input is also a no no. Like mic inputs turntable phono inputs have extra gain as like mics the cartridge in a turntable is a very low level device. Then you have the RIAA equalisation curve to further screw up the sound.

Vinyl records are recorded with a very specific frequency response, that is a bit like turning the bass right down and the treble right up on the tone controls of an amp. The Phono input in the amp applies the opposite frequency response curve to restore the normal flat response (well nearly). So plugging a device that does not have the RIAA frequency response into an input that does will make the sound excessively bassy with poor treble.

I do not have a single item of equipment where the output from a headphone socket works effectively with a direct connection to an aux or line in socket.

In the meantime I'll get my coat.....

Whilst line-in to line-out is always preferable for analogue audio, provided the source output level is adjusted suitably, headphone-out to line-in can also work very well (because the line-in is much higher impedance than either the line-out or headphone-out).

Using a mic socket for connection from anything other than a mic tends to be problematic as there is usually a serious level mis-match meaning something on one side or the other has to be turned down low, resulting in excess noise. It can work, but you do need to adjust levels very carefully.

A turntable input is a definite no-no as has been said, because of the RIAA equalisation frequency response filters used with it (they date from the days when the RIAA tried to make music sound better, unlike today where the RIAA tries to convict people of copyright infringement).