What is the purpose of gold plating and does it matter???

[130T|_|L15/\/\]

I look at Monster cables, they are gold plated connections. Does it matter if the connections I use say S-Video will be any better if it is gold plated or not? If the gold is a better conductor, what will it matter if it is covering some bad conducting metal? Is it really worth to go all the way with the most expensive Monster cables? Or just get some other name brand type that is gold plated or not? Is it worth the extra money? Worth the trouble and effort?


-TIA

[sterno]

Gold is a good conductor. It's good for plating contacts because it doesn't corrode. But if you buy good cables there usually won't be any real difference, aside from the extra money you pay for gold plating. If you have a large investment in high-end A/V equipment the extra money isn't significant, and you might actually get a very tiny improvement in signal quality. Otherwise I wouldn't bother, unless it makes you feel good about yourself.

Oh yeah, and Monster brand cables are horrendously overpriced, I refuse to buy them on general principle. You could easily spend $200 in cables just for a basic TV/DVD/VCR/Dolby setup.

[snowmoon]

If you want some technical background search the http://www.avsforum.com/ they have had some great flamewars with actual audiophiles and engineers duking it out for the truth.

Actually it was fairly obvious that the engineers had it by a mile. Build quality and proper termination are hundreds of times more importand than gold plating ( but it doesn't hurt either ). Same thing goes for all wires, they are conductors and their proerties can be calculated, measured, and predictable. If someone uses terms like warm, full range, better sound stage RUN don't walk away. Audiophiles would like you to believe that science cannot measure how diffrent cables affect the overall "sound" of a cable.

Monster build quality can be bought for half the cost in any good chain store ( unless they are 100% monster ).

[snowmoon]

To show the stupidity of some people...

http://www.bettercables.com/1met328feetp1.html

"Gold plated"

Get reasy for it...



You really wont believe ....



Optical cables ??

You tell me how does gold plating make ANY diffrence in a cable that does not even carry electrical signals?

[Craig Tucker]

Thats pretty funny snowmoon

When I set my home AV system up I used good quality 4mm csa ofc speaker cable. One of my front speakers is about 3 feet away from the amplifier and the other is about 18 feet away from the amplifier, there is a similar difference in distance for the rear speakers. When I bought the cable the "Hi-Fi expert" behind the counter told me that I must use 18 feet of cable for each speaker or there would be a phase difference due to the signal having to travel further down the cable, I believe this is a common belief amongst audiophiles.

Considering that the signal travelling down the cable will be approaching the speed of light (186,000 miles/sec), I find this argument absurd and assume it is just so the shops can sell more cable to gullible punters. Doing some simple sums you can calculate the phase lage due to the different cable lengths.

There are 5280 feet in a mile

So the speed of light is 982,080,000 feet/sec

The difference in distance between the 2 speakers and the amplifier is 15 feet.

So the phase lag between the 2 speakers will be 0.000000015 seconds.

Is this really going to be distinguishable by the human ear ?

Considering sound only travels through air at about 770 mph, the distance of the speakers from the listening position is going to be a much more decisive factor. Even then for a difference of 1 foot between the speakers and listening position the lag is only going to be 0.00088 sec. And who gets a tape measure out to make sure that their head is presicely the same distance from both speakers.

After I explained to the salesman that this was the reason I did not need the extra 15 feet of speaker cable, his expression was something like this.

[MOVIEGEEK]

Caveat emptor.
Spend your money on a high quality Dolby Pro Logic/5.1 receiver instead.

[130T|_|L15/\/\]

My best bet is this is not something to lose sleep over. I do have a Reveiver. It is A Pioneer VSX-95 AUDIO/VIDEO STEREO RECEIVER. It has Dolby Prologic Surround when there are rear speakers, which i do have, and then there is Dolby 3ch Logic, for when there are no rear speakers. Anyone know what a good delay time is for the audio? Its 15ms-30ms on my reciever. And with the cable length issue, you could just change the ms delay, or stand up being bold by doing exactly nothing. Maybe you could use the extra cable for sewing, or maybe shoe laces, but I would doubt it would work well. My projector is a Pioneer PRO-107, a 55" screen :P Bigger than my neighbors wide screen which i bet is 16 x 9, not 16 x 10.7

Anyone one of The New Wide Screen 16 x 10.7 aspect ratio screens? Think they dumped that aspect ratio.

The Projector is
125 kg (275 lb 10 oz)
1276 (W) x 700 (D) x 1373 (H) mm
50-1/4(W) x 27-9/16(D) x 54-1/16(H) inch
830 lines of horizontal resolution

The Tuner is
16.1 kg (35 lb 08 oz)
459 (W) x 162 (h) x 421 (D) mm
18-1/16 (W) x 6-3/8 (H) x 16-9/16 (D) in

The CD CDV LD Player
17.0 kg (37 lbs 08 oz)
459 (W) x 452 (D) x 174 (H) mm
18-1/16 (W) x 17-13/16 (D) x 6-7/8 (H) in

Big compared to today's equipment?

What makes me wonder is how in the world did that projector get into the house. Makes me wonder if any walls were knocked out :P

[d4n13l]

Thats pretty funny snowmoon

When I set my home AV system up I used good quality 4mm csa ofc speaker cable. One of my front speakers is about 3 feet away from the amplifier and the other is about 18 feet away from the amplifier, there is a similar difference in distance for the rear speakers. When I bought the cable the "Hi-Fi expert" behind the counter told me that I must use 18 feet of cable for each speaker or there would be a phase difference due to the signal having to travel further down the cable, I believe this is a common belief amongst audiophiles.

Considering that the signal travelling down the cable will be approaching the speed of light (186,000 miles/sec), I find this argument absurd and assume it is just so the shops can sell more cable to gullible punters. Doing some simple sums you can calculate the phase lage due to the different cable lengths.

There are 5280 feet in a mile

So the speed of light is 982,080,000 feet/sec

The difference in distance between the 2 speakers and the amplifier is 15 feet.

So the phase lag between the 2 speakers will be 0.000000015 seconds.

Is this really going to be distinguishable by the human ear ? :-?

Considering sound only travels through air at about 770 mph, the distance of the speakers from the listening position is going to be a much more decisive factor. Even then for a difference of 1 foot between the speakers and listening position the lag is only going to be 0.00088 sec. And who gets a tape measure out to make sure that their head is presicely the same distance from both speakers.

After I explained to the salesman that this was the reason I did not need the extra 15 feet of speaker cable, his expression was something like this. :o

Heh, the salesman was barking up the wrong tree, but he was barking at least... :)
If you don't use identical lengths of cable, not only the resistance for each run will be different, but the capacitance (and less importantly, the inductance) will differ too. This will cause the speakers to sound unbalanced, especially in a stereo setup. However, if you don't think that you can tell the difference, then none of this matters.
I expect that the effect will be more noticable in a decent "vanilla" stereo setup, but as to how much extra cable on one channel it will take for a noticable difference to occur, I really don't know.

[Craig Tucker]

The resistance on the cable will be so close to 0 on such short runs of cable that I don't really see this as a valid argument. I understand what you are saying but I cant imagine such small differences could be distinguished by the human ear.

[d4n13l]

I would "guesstimate" that the difference between the left and right channels, with the cable lengths that you have, would still be less than one dB, which is more or less inaudiable. However, the greater the difference in lengths, the more the differing resistances will affect the signal. But like you say, I think the difference will be negligible in the lengths we are talking here. I should think that it would be more of an issue with lengths differing by about 25ft or more (or a difference of >= 0.05 Ohms - which is more than it sounds). Heh, I could do the physics but it's late... :D.