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Do cables make a difference? Depends on who you ask
Posted by Brendon Heinst
A short little while ago, we asked you to listen to a couple of samples recorded using different (analogue) microphone cables and fill out a form describing whether you hear a difference, and if so, what that difference entails. All this to, hopefully for once and for all, settle the age-old argument: do audio cables actually make a difference?
Let’s first get some major disclaimers out of the way, since this is apparently such a controversial topic, with people even resorting to insults and threats. First of all, while two pairs of the cables in this test were graciously supplied by their respective manufacturers, they were in no way otherwise involved in the test and as such had and have no influence at all on the outcome or on this blog post and video. Secondly, we’re not saying in any way, shape or form that this is the be-all-and-end-all of cable comparison tests. Our goal was to provide a basic test to hear whether changing between different microphone cables in our specific recording system would make an audible difference to our listeners. Of course, we could do a standard measurement of the cables and show you graphs and numbers and lines and whatever, but that’s not how we record music. We generally use one main array of microphones, positioned to get a good balance of instruments, voices and acoustics, and then try to record that as transparently as possible. We’ll describe our recording system in more detail a bit later on in this post and video. Furthermore, we’re only comparing analogue microphone cables here. No digital cabling, no power cabling, just analogue, relatively low-level microphone signals. Lastly, this test isn’t meant to say anything scientific whatsoever; it’s just a little practical subjective listening test. We could’ve gotten into much more detail in both the test and the form, and we might in the future (note that it’s called Cable Comparison 2023), but we wanted to start off in a way that’s accessible and pragmatic to everyone.
So, now that those things are out of the way, let’s get to the how portion of the test.
The recording setup
While some of you may be familiar with our recordings and the way we record, I think it’s best if we go over our recording setup just very quickly, so to give a good overview to those who might not know us and our recordings just yet.
A close-up of one side our microphone array — two A/B arrays right next to each other, each using different microphone cables.
Let’s start with the microphones. Our main array of microphones consists of an 70 cm spaced pair of Josephson C617SET microphones, with the Microtech Gefell MK221 measurement capsule. It’s an omnidirectional capacitive pressure transducer with an almost completely flat frequency range of 3.5Hz to 20kHz and an A-weighted noise floor of 15 dB. For each comparison sample, we have two main pairs of microphones right next to one another, both spaced out exactly the same. The distance between the two pairs is about one centimeter, the closest we could get them in their Rycote shockmounts.
We then go from the microphones to the preamplifier, a Grace Design m801mk2, each time using two different pairs of microphone cables — we’ll get to those a bit later. The preamplifiers we use have a frequency range of 3.2Hz to about 500kHz and a noise and distortion figure of less than .0004%. Each channel is matched extremely precisely with the rest of the unit, so we get as little discrepancy there as possible.
The preamplifiers then go into the A/D converters using a custom-made high-end multicore. Speaking of A/D converters, these are the Merging Technologies Hapi MkII running in DSD256. Why DSD256? Well, we found out that through recording in DSD256 and then converting into the different PCM sample rates using Weiss Engineering Saracon, we’re able to squeeze just a little bit more of a transparent sound out of this converter.
The resulting DSD signal is then recorded using Merging Technologies Pyramix, converted to PCM formats using Saracon, and bit-perfectly cut to length in WaveLab Pro. All metadata was removed as to give a true blind A/B comparison, without the listeners knowing which sample is recorded using which cables. The right and left pairs were also randomly shuffled, as to make sure people don’t just prefer one array over the other, or A over B or vice versa.
Belal Alkhatib (right) and Rebal Korkmaz (left) in the Evangelisch Lutherse Kerk in Haarlem, the Netherlands. Here, you’ll also see the microphone positioning.
On the musical side of things, we’ve got Belal Alkhatib and Rebal Korkmaz, a duo from Syria performing a song called Mahbob Kalbak. Many thanks to Belal and Rebal for their patience and beautiful music. We recorded the song in its entirety too; the single should be out very soon from now!
The featured cables
So here comes the fun part. You’ve asked us over and over which cables we compared in the test, and we’re finally ready to introduce you to our contenders. All of these are balanced XLR cables, made or at least suitable for microphone signals. All cables were exactly 10 meters in length, and matched to their stereo companion by less than half a centimeter.
The cheapest from the bunch is the Procab CAB901; a run-of-the-mill microphone cable using the Procab-branded MC305 cable and VC3MX and VC3FX connectors. Priced at about € 39,- for a pair if you buy them complete, or about € 17,- if you’re willing to solder them yourself.
Grimm Audio TPR with Neutrik XLR connectors.
Next up is the TPR XLR cable by Grimm Audio. Built in our home country of the Netherlands, they use Grimm Audio’s own TPR cable with Neutrik NC3FXX and NC3MXX connectors. Assembled by Grimm Audio, a pair of them will run you about € 244,- or about € 212,- if you’re willing to build them yourself. At this price, you’ll get a cable that’s designed focusing on high RF immunity and low microphonics, thanks to a special interface layer under the shield, along with some other construction details.
The next step is the cables you might have seen from our behind-the-scenes pictures — we’ve been daily-driving these custom-made Furutech cables since 2019 already and have been really happy with them. They consist of Furutech’s FA-aS22 cables with CF-601M and CF-602F rhodium connectors. Ours were made by Furutech’s own engineering team, but if you’re willing to build them up yourself, a pair of them will set you back about € 1.921,-. At this price, you get a pair of cables using PCOCC copper at a purity of greater than 99.99998% housed in a sheath that contains damping carbon particles.
Furutech DAS-4.1 with CF-601/602 NCF connectors.
Our fourth contender was graciously provided by Furutech and their Dutch distributor XFI; the recently introduced DAS-4.1 cable. It consists of cryogenically treated, demagnetized PCOCC and DUCC copper (10 times the purity of the FA-aS22 I mentioned before), housed in a special carbon and nano-ceramic compound that, according to Furutech, is supposed to help with interference as well. The cables are terminated with Furutech’s new XLR connectors with NCF materials, a proprietary technology using nano-sized ceramic particles and carbon powder Furutech claims eliminates static, converts thermal energy into far-infrared, and is the ultimate electrical and mechanical damping material. It’s a whole bunch of technical jargon I’m not going to pretend I fully understand since I’m just a simple recording and mastering engineer, but a pair of these top-of-the-line cables will set you back about € 7.656,- if you’re willing to solder them yourself.
Purecable Optimus Link, pictured here with their default ETI connectors. The microphone edition of these cables feature the same NCF XLR connectors by Furutech as seen above.
For our last cable in the comparison test, we wanted to see how two ultra-high-end (and highly expensive) cables would stack up to one another. Is there a limit after which any cable is just “good enough”? Therefore, these last cables in the test are another Dutch product, the Optimus Link Microphone Edition by Purecable. Using a proprietary (and secret!) twisting technique and construction with PC-Triple-C copper, a type of copper where the crystals are longer and more uniform through a special forging and rolling process, which increases the density of the material and reduces the amount of oxygen even more. They also use pure silk as a dielectric. These cables will cost you an absolutely eye-watering € 7.797,- for the pair. However, that does include expertly terminating and finishing the cables, so you don’t have to do that yourself. Ours were graciously provided by the Purecable team to try out for the test.
So, with an almost thousandfold difference between the cheapest and most expensive cables of the bunch, we think this gives a pretty decent range to try out. And try out you did!
What we asked of you
To the almost 100 of you who have already done the listening test and filled out the form, this next section should come as no surprise. But to those of you who didn’t, here’s what the test looked like.
Before starting, we asked in what sector you work, simply because we wanted to see whether people who work with music or audio for a living would be able to hear more subtle differences than people in other fields. Also, we wanted to understand if the way you work with music (as a musician, as a producer, in sales, or otherwise) would in any way make you able to hear more details, if at all. We also asked for your age, more or less for the same reason; if there’s a difference between different cables, do only young ears hear them, or does everyone? Furthermore, we asked you what kind of system you use to play these files. We asked some experts in the field of pro audio and hi-fi to rate the systems’ subjective transparency from 1 to 5, in order to perhaps understand any correlation between hearing differences and transparency of the listening setup. Lastly, since anything in audio and especially cabling is so extremely subjective and placebo effect plays a huge role in it, we asked you whether you expected to hear any differences at all, and what differences you expect. This was then paired with a question at the very end of the test, where we asked you how the test matched your expectations.
For each blind A/B test, we asked three simple questions: 1- do you hear no difference at all, a subtle difference, or a big difference? 2- can you describe the difference you hear? And 3- which sample, A or B, has your preference? The first question has a bit more to do with how the second question was interpreted; some people like to talk in superlatives whereas some people are more subtle in their descriptions. The results of the second question, to describe the differences you hear, were divided into four main categories based on keywords that were used throughout the test: Timbre, Detail, Soundstage, and Miscellaneous. I want to reiterate these comparisons are blind A/B tests, with all metadata stripped from the resulting WAV files that were compared. The listeners did not know which take was which cable or even which was the more expensive one (not that cost seems to matter too much anyhow).
Now that we know our categories and the way the results were interpreted and catalogued, let’s have a look at the results, shall we?
The results
Let’s start with the Procab CAB901 and Grimm Audio TPR. Overall, about 68% of you said to hear a difference, of which a small majority of 57% said to prefer the CAB901. Dividing the results into the four sonic categories, those who described the difference as timbre and detail voted more towards the Procab’s offering, those describing imaging and miscellaneous generally preferred the TPR by Grimm Audio. We didn’t find anything significantly different between listening setups — more on that later — but interestingly, out of all listeners working as a professional musician, everyone claimed to hear a difference and almost 75% voted for the TPR. About 70% of respondents not working in the field of music, pro audio or hi-fi preferred the CAB901.
Moving up one step on the ladder, comparing the Grimm Audio TPR with Furutech FA-aS22, 77% of all respondents claimed to hear a difference (especially those with more transparent playback systems), with a tiny majority of 52% favoring Furutech’s offering over the Grimm Audio one. When it comes to timbre, about 57% of people voted for the FA-aS22, whereas the TPR won ever so slightly in the imaging department. In detail and miscellaneous categories, it was pretty much a tie. Also a tie: preference towards Furutech or Grimm seems to be spread pretty evenly across professions, but those in the recording industry seem to have a slight preference of 60% to the TPR. Interestingly, from all the engineers that have filled out the forms, the ones of which I know use TPR cabling throughout their studio almost unanimously voted for the TPR.
Moving up another step means we’re comparing Furutech’s previous top-of-the-line FA-aS22 with their new top-of-the-line DAS-4.1. Since both are already extremely high-end cables, I expected not a lot of people would be able to hear a difference, and I think I was right; about 61% of you claimed to hear a difference, and around another 61% of that 61% prefers Furutech’s latest and greatest. In timbre, there seems to be a slight leaning towards the FA-aS22, but in detail, imaging and miscellaneous, an overwhelming majority chose the DAS-4.1. For example, almost 70% of you described the DAS-4.1 as having a better soundstage/imaging, and over 80% says it sounds more detailed. I honestly didn’t expect this! Also, when we divide our listeners up by profession, we see that professional musicians, recording producers and people in the hi-fi industry have a strong presence (100%, 70% and 80% respectively), but for all other professions this is more of a tie.
Going up another final step, we’ve compared Furutech’s top-of-the-line DAS-4.1 with Purecable’s Optimus Link, again, two extraordinarily costly cables, to see if there’s any difference at all. And 71% of you claim there is — according to those who did the test specifically in imaging and timbre (32% and 30% respectively), less so in detail (25%) and others (11%). As expected, these differences claimed to be heard seem to be mostly by people using more transparent systems; systems ranked “medium” to “very low” in transparency did not seem to hear a lot of difference, only about 30% (medium) compared to 90% among those listening through systems ranked “very high” in transparency. More on that in the conclusions section of this blog post and video. Divided into subjective sonic qualities, we don’t see many significant differences except for imaging, where 71% of you voted for the Optimus, and detail, where 55% of you voted for the DAS-4.1. Grouped into professions, we see things even out even more; amongst professional musicians there seems to be a slight preference towards the detail of the DAS-4.1 and soundstage of the Optimus, whereas people in the hi-fi industry and other professions seem to have a slight preference for the Optimus. Overall, we see that generally people prefer the Purecable over the Furutech for soundstage and imaging, and Furutech over Purecable for detail. That being said, the differences are so small, it’s a little difficult to say anything conclusive here.
Lastly, we were really curious whether there was any audible difference between our cheapest cable of the lineup, the Procab CAB901 at less than € 20,- a pair, and the second-most expensive of the bunch, the Furutech DAS-4.1 at almost € 8.000,- a pair. Here, we see 79% of you responded you hear a difference between the two, with about 61% of those preferring the latter. Now, I hear you say, “that’s not really worth the 400 times higher price, is it?” Well, it depends on who you ask. If you ask professional musicians, according to our test, everyone will prefer the DAS-4.1, unanimously. If you ask professional recording producers, over 90% of them will prefer the DAS-4.1. Only people from the hi-fi world and other professions have a slight preference for the DAS-4.1. We also see a big difference when we group our test subjects by the transparency of their system: those with a system classified as “medium” to “very high transparency” will have an over 70% preference for the DAS-4.1; “low” to “very low transparency” systems have a more even distribution of preference. Lastly, dividing up the results in subjective sonic qualities, our biggest categories are imaging (38% of respondents, of which almost 70% voted for the DAS-4.1) and timbre (24%, of which roughly 65% voted for Furutech’s latest).
Some conclusions, if any
The night before we recorded this cable comparison, I went around our team and asked what percentage of people, if any, they think will hear a difference between these cables. Our recording team of three people were a bit skeptical; I for one said I’d be surprised if more than 10% of people would do so. My business partner, who has worked in the hi-fi industry for nigh-on a decade, guessed about 80% of listeners would hear a difference. We were both extremely surprised, to say the least: on average, roughly 70% of respondents claims to hear a difference between comparisons. Of these listeners, about 42% describes the difference as something regarding imaging or soundstage. About 29% says the difference is in timbre. Detail accounts for 17%, and the rest is other subjective qualities we aren’t able to put in the previous categories.
When we group our respondents based on the transparency of their playback system, we see a gradual decline in responses hearing differences; listeners with systems rated “very high” in transparency, 86% hears a difference. Those with “high” systems will hear a difference about 76% of the time on average. “Medium” ranked systems respond with a roughly 50% being able to hear a difference, whereas “low” and “very low” systems’ users report 52% and 41% respectively. My personal take is that, if anything, these differences are so extremely subtle, you can’t hear it as well on less transparent systems. Also, since — at least in my view — our recording and your playback are part of one system, in a lot of cases, these cables aren’t really the bottleneck in your system. The same goes for the work we do at TRPTK; it wouldn’t make a lot of sense getting the best of the best (and most expensive) cabling there is, if there already other bottlenecks in the system.
Dividing up per profession, about 90% of all musicians on average responded they heard a difference between the cables tested, as well as 78% of the recording producers who filled out the form. 80% of those in the world of hi-fi did, too. Other professions scored a bit lower, on average claiming 61% of them to hear any difference at all. I think this has to do with the way musicians and recording producers are trained; we as a group tend to concentrate on the extremely subtle — but to us extremely important — minute details. These details help us getting better at what we do. The same goes for those in the hi-fi industry; if you’ve spent the lion’s share of your life dealing with tiny differences in sound, you tend to pick up more of these details in tests such as these.
In conclusion: do microphone cables make any difference at all? Well, it depends on who you’re asking.
Thank you so much for reading the blog or watching the video. We already have big plans for a more comprehensive and scientific test for the future, so if you’re interested in that sort of stuff, be sure to subscribe to our newsletter, our YouTube channel, or our social media pages. We’ll see you in the next one!
Do cables make a difference? Depends on who you ask
A short little while ago, we asked you to listen to a couple of samples recorded using different (analogue) microphone cables and fill out a form describing whether you hear a difference, and if so, what that difference entails. All this to, hopefully for once and for all, settle the age-old argument: do audio cables actually make a difference?
Let’s first get some major disclaimers out of the way, since this is apparently such a controversial topic, with people even resorting to insults and threats. First of all, while two pairs of the cables in this test were graciously supplied by their respective manufacturers, they were in no way otherwise involved in the test and as such had and have no influence at all on the outcome or on this blog post and video. Secondly, we’re not saying in any way, shape or form that this is the be-all-and-end-all of cable comparison tests. Our goal was to provide a basic test to hear whether changing between different microphone cables in our specific recording system would make an audible difference to our listeners. Of course, we could do a standard measurement of the cables and show you graphs and numbers and lines and whatever, but that’s not how we record music. We generally use one main array of microphones, positioned to get a good balance of instruments, voices and acoustics, and then try to record that as transparently as possible. We’ll describe our recording system in more detail a bit later on in this post and video. Furthermore, we’re only comparing analogue microphone cables here. No digital cabling, no power cabling, just analogue, relatively low-level microphone signals. Lastly, this test isn’t meant to say anything scientific whatsoever; it’s just a little practical subjective listening test. We could’ve gotten into much more detail in both the test and the form, and we might in the future (note that it’s called Cable Comparison 2023), but we wanted to start off in a way that’s accessible and pragmatic to everyone.
So, now that those things are out of the way, let’s get to the how portion of the test.
The recording setup
A close-up of one side our microphone array — two A/B arrays right next to each other, each using different microphone cables.
Let’s start with the microphones. Our main array of microphones consists of an 70 cm spaced pair of Josephson C617SET microphones, with the Microtech Gefell MK221 measurement capsule. It’s an omnidirectional capacitive pressure transducer with an almost completely flat frequency range of 3.5Hz to 20kHz and an A-weighted noise floor of 15 dB. For each comparison sample, we have two main pairs of microphones right next to one another, both spaced out exactly the same. The distance between the two pairs is about one centimeter, the closest we could get them in their Rycote shockmounts.
We then go from the microphones to the preamplifier, a Grace Design m801mk2, each time using two different pairs of microphone cables — we’ll get to those a bit later. The preamplifiers we use have a frequency range of 3.2Hz to about 500kHz and a noise and distortion figure of less than .0004%. Each channel is matched extremely precisely with the rest of the unit, so we get as little discrepancy there as possible.
The preamplifiers then go into the A/D converters using a custom-made high-end multicore. Speaking of A/D converters, these are the Merging Technologies Hapi MkII running in DSD256. Why DSD256? Well, we found out that through recording in DSD256 and then converting into the different PCM sample rates using Weiss Engineering Saracon, we’re able to squeeze just a little bit more of a transparent sound out of this converter.
The resulting DSD signal is then recorded using Merging Technologies Pyramix, converted to PCM formats using Saracon, and bit-perfectly cut to length in WaveLab Pro. All metadata was removed as to give a true blind A/B comparison, without the listeners knowing which sample is recorded using which cables. The right and left pairs were also randomly shuffled, as to make sure people don’t just prefer one array over the other, or A over B or vice versa.
Belal Alkhatib (right) and Rebal Korkmaz (left) in the Evangelisch Lutherse Kerk in Haarlem, the Netherlands. Here, you’ll also see the microphone positioning.
On the musical side of things, we’ve got Belal Alkhatib and Rebal Korkmaz, a duo from Syria performing a song called Mahbob Kalbak. Many thanks to Belal and Rebal for their patience and beautiful music. We recorded the song in its entirety too; the single should be out very soon from now!
The featured cables
So here comes the fun part. You’ve asked us over and over which cables we compared in the test, and we’re finally ready to introduce you to our contenders. All of these are balanced XLR cables, made or at least suitable for microphone signals. All cables were exactly 10 meters in length, and matched to their stereo companion by less than half a centimeter.
The cheapest from the bunch is the Procab CAB901; a run-of-the-mill microphone cable using the Procab-branded MC305 cable and VC3MX and VC3FX connectors. Priced at about € 39,- for a pair if you buy them complete, or about € 17,- if you’re willing to solder them yourself.
Grimm Audio TPR with Neutrik XLR connectors.
Next up is the TPR XLR cable by Grimm Audio. Built in our home country of the Netherlands, they use Grimm Audio’s own TPR cable with Neutrik NC3FXX and NC3MXX connectors. Assembled by Grimm Audio, a pair of them will run you about € 244,- or about € 212,- if you’re willing to build them yourself. At this price, you’ll get a cable that’s designed focusing on high RF immunity and low microphonics, thanks to a special interface layer under the shield, along with some other construction details.
The next step is the cables you might have seen from our behind-the-scenes pictures — we’ve been daily-driving these custom-made Furutech cables since 2019 already and have been really happy with them. They consist of Furutech’s FA-aS22 cables with CF-601M and CF-602F rhodium connectors. Ours were made by Furutech’s own engineering team, but if you’re willing to build them up yourself, a pair of them will set you back about € 1.921,-. At this price, you get a pair of cables using PCOCC copper at a purity of greater than 99.99998% housed in a sheath that contains damping carbon particles.
Furutech DAS-4.1 with CF-601/602 NCF connectors.
Our fourth contender was graciously provided by Furutech and their Dutch distributor XFI; the recently introduced DAS-4.1 cable. It consists of cryogenically treated, demagnetized PCOCC and DUCC copper (10 times the purity of the FA-aS22 I mentioned before), housed in a special carbon and nano-ceramic compound that, according to Furutech, is supposed to help with interference as well. The cables are terminated with Furutech’s new XLR connectors with NCF materials, a proprietary technology using nano-sized ceramic particles and carbon powder Furutech claims eliminates static, converts thermal energy into far-infrared, and is the ultimate electrical and mechanical damping material. It’s a whole bunch of technical jargon I’m not going to pretend I fully understand since I’m just a simple recording and mastering engineer, but a pair of these top-of-the-line cables will set you back about € 7.656,- if you’re willing to solder them yourself.
Purecable Optimus Link, pictured here with their default ETI connectors. The microphone edition of these cables feature the same NCF XLR connectors by Furutech as seen above.
For our last cable in the comparison test, we wanted to see how two ultra-high-end (and highly expensive) cables would stack up to one another. Is there a limit after which any cable is just “good enough”? Therefore, these last cables in the test are another Dutch product, the Optimus Link Microphone Edition by Purecable. Using a proprietary (and secret!) twisting technique and construction with PC-Triple-C copper, a type of copper where the crystals are longer and more uniform through a special forging and rolling process, which increases the density of the material and reduces the amount of oxygen even more. They also use pure silk as a dielectric. These cables will cost you an absolutely eye-watering € 7.797,- for the pair. However, that does include expertly terminating and finishing the cables, so you don’t have to do that yourself. Ours were graciously provided by the Purecable team to try out for the test.
So, with an almost thousandfold difference between the cheapest and most expensive cables of the bunch, we think this gives a pretty decent range to try out. And try out you did!
What we asked of you
To the almost 100 of you who have already done the listening test and filled out the form, this next section should come as no surprise. But to those of you who didn’t, here’s what the test looked like.
Before starting, we asked in what sector you work, simply because we wanted to see whether people who work with music or audio for a living would be able to hear more subtle differences than people in other fields. Also, we wanted to understand if the way you work with music (as a musician, as a producer, in sales, or otherwise) would in any way make you able to hear more details, if at all. We also asked for your age, more or less for the same reason; if there’s a difference between different cables, do only young ears hear them, or does everyone? Furthermore, we asked you what kind of system you use to play these files. We asked some experts in the field of pro audio and hi-fi to rate the systems’ subjective transparency from 1 to 5, in order to perhaps understand any correlation between hearing differences and transparency of the listening setup. Lastly, since anything in audio and especially cabling is so extremely subjective and placebo effect plays a huge role in it, we asked you whether you expected to hear any differences at all, and what differences you expect. This was then paired with a question at the very end of the test, where we asked you how the test matched your expectations.
For each blind A/B test, we asked three simple questions: 1- do you hear no difference at all, a subtle difference, or a big difference? 2- can you describe the difference you hear? And 3- which sample, A or B, has your preference? The first question has a bit more to do with how the second question was interpreted; some people like to talk in superlatives whereas some people are more subtle in their descriptions. The results of the second question, to describe the differences you hear, were divided into four main categories based on keywords that were used throughout the test: Timbre, Detail, Soundstage, and Miscellaneous. I want to reiterate these comparisons are blind A/B tests, with all metadata stripped from the resulting WAV files that were compared. The listeners did not know which take was which cable or even which was the more expensive one (not that cost seems to matter too much anyhow).
Now that we know our categories and the way the results were interpreted and catalogued, let’s have a look at the results, shall we?
The results
Let’s start with the Procab CAB901 and Grimm Audio TPR. Overall, about 68% of you said to hear a difference, of which a small majority of 57% said to prefer the CAB901. Dividing the results into the four sonic categories, those who described the difference as timbre and detail voted more towards the Procab’s offering, those describing imaging and miscellaneous generally preferred the TPR by Grimm Audio. We didn’t find anything significantly different between listening setups — more on that later — but interestingly, out of all listeners working as a professional musician, everyone claimed to hear a difference and almost 75% voted for the TPR. About 70% of respondents not working in the field of music, pro audio or hi-fi preferred the CAB901.
Moving up one step on the ladder, comparing the Grimm Audio TPR with Furutech FA-aS22, 77% of all respondents claimed to hear a difference (especially those with more transparent playback systems), with a tiny majority of 52% favoring Furutech’s offering over the Grimm Audio one. When it comes to timbre, about 57% of people voted for the FA-aS22, whereas the TPR won ever so slightly in the imaging department. In detail and miscellaneous categories, it was pretty much a tie. Also a tie: preference towards Furutech or Grimm seems to be spread pretty evenly across professions, but those in the recording industry seem to have a slight preference of 60% to the TPR. Interestingly, from all the engineers that have filled out the forms, the ones of which I know use TPR cabling throughout their studio almost unanimously voted for the TPR.
Moving up another step means we’re comparing Furutech’s previous top-of-the-line FA-aS22 with their new top-of-the-line DAS-4.1. Since both are already extremely high-end cables, I expected not a lot of people would be able to hear a difference, and I think I was right; about 61% of you claimed to hear a difference, and around another 61% of that 61% prefers Furutech’s latest and greatest. In timbre, there seems to be a slight leaning towards the FA-aS22, but in detail, imaging and miscellaneous, an overwhelming majority chose the DAS-4.1. For example, almost 70% of you described the DAS-4.1 as having a better soundstage/imaging, and over 80% says it sounds more detailed. I honestly didn’t expect this! Also, when we divide our listeners up by profession, we see that professional musicians, recording producers and people in the hi-fi industry have a strong presence (100%, 70% and 80% respectively), but for all other professions this is more of a tie.
Going up another final step, we’ve compared Furutech’s top-of-the-line DAS-4.1 with Purecable’s Optimus Link, again, two extraordinarily costly cables, to see if there’s any difference at all. And 71% of you claim there is — according to those who did the test specifically in imaging and timbre (32% and 30% respectively), less so in detail (25%) and others (11%). As expected, these differences claimed to be heard seem to be mostly by people using more transparent systems; systems ranked “medium” to “very low” in transparency did not seem to hear a lot of difference, only about 30% (medium) compared to 90% among those listening through systems ranked “very high” in transparency. More on that in the conclusions section of this blog post and video. Divided into subjective sonic qualities, we don’t see many significant differences except for imaging, where 71% of you voted for the Optimus, and detail, where 55% of you voted for the DAS-4.1. Grouped into professions, we see things even out even more; amongst professional musicians there seems to be a slight preference towards the detail of the DAS-4.1 and soundstage of the Optimus, whereas people in the hi-fi industry and other professions seem to have a slight preference for the Optimus. Overall, we see that generally people prefer the Purecable over the Furutech for soundstage and imaging, and Furutech over Purecable for detail. That being said, the differences are so small, it’s a little difficult to say anything conclusive here.
Lastly, we were really curious whether there was any audible difference between our cheapest cable of the lineup, the Procab CAB901 at less than € 20,- a pair, and the second-most expensive of the bunch, the Furutech DAS-4.1 at almost € 8.000,- a pair. Here, we see 79% of you responded you hear a difference between the two, with about 61% of those preferring the latter. Now, I hear you say, “that’s not really worth the 400 times higher price, is it?” Well, it depends on who you ask. If you ask professional musicians, according to our test, everyone will prefer the DAS-4.1, unanimously. If you ask professional recording producers, over 90% of them will prefer the DAS-4.1. Only people from the hi-fi world and other professions have a slight preference for the DAS-4.1. We also see a big difference when we group our test subjects by the transparency of their system: those with a system classified as “medium” to “very high transparency” will have an over 70% preference for the DAS-4.1; “low” to “very low transparency” systems have a more even distribution of preference. Lastly, dividing up the results in subjective sonic qualities, our biggest categories are imaging (38% of respondents, of which almost 70% voted for the DAS-4.1) and timbre (24%, of which roughly 65% voted for Furutech’s latest).
Some conclusions, if any
The night before we recorded this cable comparison, I went around our team and asked what percentage of people, if any, they think will hear a difference between these cables. Our recording team of three people were a bit skeptical; I for one said I’d be surprised if more than 10% of people would do so. My business partner, who has worked in the hi-fi industry for nigh-on a decade, guessed about 80% of listeners would hear a difference. We were both extremely surprised, to say the least: on average, roughly 70% of respondents claims to hear a difference between comparisons. Of these listeners, about 42% describes the difference as something regarding imaging or soundstage. About 29% says the difference is in timbre. Detail accounts for 17%, and the rest is other subjective qualities we aren’t able to put in the previous categories.
When we group our respondents based on the transparency of their playback system, we see a gradual decline in responses hearing differences; listeners with systems rated “very high” in transparency, 86% hears a difference. Those with “high” systems will hear a difference about 76% of the time on average. “Medium” ranked systems respond with a roughly 50% being able to hear a difference, whereas “low” and “very low” systems’ users report 52% and 41% respectively. My personal take is that, if anything, these differences are so extremely subtle, you can’t hear it as well on less transparent systems. Also, since — at least in my view — our recording and your playback are part of one system, in a lot of cases, these cables aren’t really the bottleneck in your system. The same goes for the work we do at TRPTK; it wouldn’t make a lot of sense getting the best of the best (and most expensive) cabling there is, if there already other bottlenecks in the system.
Dividing up per profession, about 90% of all musicians on average responded they heard a difference between the cables tested, as well as 78% of the recording producers who filled out the form. 80% of those in the world of hi-fi did, too. Other professions scored a bit lower, on average claiming 61% of them to hear any difference at all. I think this has to do with the way musicians and recording producers are trained; we as a group tend to concentrate on the extremely subtle — but to us extremely important — minute details. These details help us getting better at what we do. The same goes for those in the hi-fi industry; if you’ve spent the lion’s share of your life dealing with tiny differences in sound, you tend to pick up more of these details in tests such as these.
In conclusion: do microphone cables make any difference at all? Well, it depends on who you’re asking.
Thank you so much for reading the blog or watching the video. We already have big plans for a more comprehensive and scientific test for the future, so if you’re interested in that sort of stuff, be sure to subscribe to our newsletter, our YouTube channel, or our social media pages. We’ll see you in the next one!