sweetask1ng

iTrader: (2)

Hey guys, my alternator whine sounds like a siren... I'm pretty sure it's the RCA cable just being a POS. Every time there's whine and I press in on the RCA cables it goes away and comes back a few minutes later.. I had good RCA's before but the box moved and broke them. I replaced them with a set from a shop near me and it sounds like $hit now. If I'm mis-diagnosing this problem let me know, otherwise I need to know the name of a good brand of RCA cables.

Thanks guys,
Justin

dragonrage

They're all the same.

fredmr39

Did you damage them accidentally while installing?

MikeFbody

iTrader: (2)

yep, my guess is that the audio ground in the cable is broken.

mike

you2slo

I will agree to disagree. A $2 set of RCA's has the same overall tonal qualities of a gold-plated OFC shielded high-quality RCA?

MikeFbody

iTrader: (2)

same tonal quality, yes



now, is the $2 set going to be as durable and hold up to being pulled through a car, and possible removed and reinstalled a couple times ?

no.

sbusby

Wait one sec. $2.00 rca's are same as good ones?


NO NO NO NONO NO, there are reasons that there are $100 RCA Cables and $2.00 RCA cables. If you have a high end stereo, you can loose quality dramatically through crappy RCA's. Some rules of thumb are, don't run the power and rca's together. If you have power running next to a ground, have them running opposite ways (The curves in the power going different directions), this disables both electrical fields that are being emitted and cancels some noise. The quality of signal is only as good as it's weakest part. If your deck puts out a crappy signal and good rca's, then the rca's won't matter... but if you have good deck and shitty rca's, then the quality is bottlenecked there.

Bacardi151

Just like network cables (cat5 ie 'twisted pair'), the higher priced cables use a twisted pair design to reduce interference from ouside sources. In network cables, the difference between Cat 3 and Cat 5 is the number of twists per foot. more twists = less interference = higher speed. cat 3= 10mb/sec cat5=100mb/sec. Your $2 Radio Shack RCA cables will probably sound just as good as $40+ cables, until you actually run them in the car. I have 3 different RCAs in my build cause I am cheap. $10 cable fro the sub, $20 cable for the sail panel woofers (though the $10 cable would work fine because I have the corssovers set low), and $49 cable for the front component speakers. The $10 or just normal cables like you have used in your home stereo for years. The $20 ones are shielded. The $49 are twisted pair. HUGE difference in all 3 as for alternator whine when connected to the front speakers. Because the whine is at a higher frequency, it does not matter for the sub. Try it yourself and see. By cheap, medium, and expensive and try all three and see if it makes a difference in your setup. Then return what you dont need.

MikeFbody

iTrader: (2)

can be..

first, let's take noise out of the picture, like we are installing the cables on a home system. In that case, what is it about the expensive cables that make them better ? All you need is a conductor of the proper gauge to conduct the signal. We are not even talking about complex signals here. Audio is very low frequency compared to whats used in general electronics and computers.


now, add the car enviornment, and I'll admit that some cables may reject noise better then others, but it's not going to make the system "sound better" if there is no noise to begin with. Some cars and installs are noisier then others. Some people may get lucky and have a quiet system with the cheapest of the cheap cables, while others may need a better shielded or twisted cable.

In my experience though, every noise issue I've troubleshooted came down to either the rca cables being damaged, or a poor ground.

mike

dragonrage

As far as sound quality goes, yes. What do you really think the difference is? Shielding? That's for radio frequency, which we can't even hear. At all. Durability? Yes, there can be a difference in that, be it in the jacketing of the cable or the plating on the connectors or whatnot. But I've never had RCA cables corrode on me, cheap or not. The resistance, capacitance and inductance (our powers combined, we are... impedance) are all negligible because they're so absolutely small compared to the impedance of the input of whatever device they're connected to.

If you don't disconnect and reconnect your cables hundreds of times over their lifetime, and you don't put much physical strain on the wires, there's very rarely a difference between $2 cables and $100 cables other than appearance.

Bacardi151

BTW My post above only deal in the noise area. Actual difference in sound between the 3 cables is inaudible to me. But the $10 cable has way too much whine like th OP describes. The $20 set is liveable, noticeable at really lo volumes, but not at listening volumes. The $49 set is light enough that it is barely audible with the volume at zero and is imperceptable any music playing. I am intersted in seeing if a $100 cable would reduce it entirely, but I am too cheap to try it.

sweetask1ng

iTrader: (2)

I'm not even sure what that looks like.. There is just the usual black and red parts that plug into the amp. A little bit below them there is a thin, third wire that has been cut. Is that the audio ground cable?

sbusby

I disagree.... my agrument is this


I just sat down with an expert installer in my area. He just finished installing the following:

1 set) Focal Utopia Beriliyum 6" 5 1/4" and tweeter - $5,000 speaker set
3) 13'' Focal Utopia Subs - $1,000 sub
F1 Status Alpine deck
and two rediculously priced audison amplifiers... can't remember the stupid model numbers

For sound check purposes he put a regular $15.00 rca cables from the deck to the amplifiers. Hooked them up and listened. Everything sounded pretty good. Later that day the Platinum coated RCA's showed up, pluged those in to test new rcas.. it didn't sound good, it sounded AMAZING. Vehicle was on a car charger so the battery was being depleated. Those RCA's were the only things that were changed and there was an exteremly noticable difference.

When you have a set volume on a stereo it sends a certain signal to the amplifiers to process... when you turn that volume up, the signal does change. The method that signal is being sent through a medium is going to change. Thus sound quality is going to change.

dragonrage

While I can't definitively call BS on that, I will say that it was most likely (IMO) in your head and a double blind ABX test would be required to prove it.

you2slo

At some point the return isn't worth the cost. In a car, a $50 RCA is usually fine. There are too many other noises (road, engine) that will keep you from noticing a difference when switching from a $50 cable to a $500 cable. In home audio, where there are room treatments, vibration isolation, and equally expensive equipment ($50,000+) there is a noticable different in the sound between cheap and higher quality cables.

MikeFbody

iTrader: (2)

agreed... the placebo effect is very real.

My Firehawk used tweeters from a $3,000 home speaker from Infinity, and the midrange from the $100,000 JBL Synthesis home theater system, and a prototype processor that you can't even buy yet. But it's all connected with basic wireing from partsexpress.com .

mike

greendrazil

iTrader: (3)

I can honestly say that I was able to hear an audible difference in my car when I switched to some good Rockford rca's, but there is still engine noise. I will be trying Monster xln404 and sub rca's as they are supposed to be the best noise canceling rca's around. They look pretty good too.

Dal1as

Cable is cable. If you go to extremes yes it can cause tonal issues with analog signals. By extremes I mean using a 40 foot rca cable of like 24 guage and comparing it to a decent cable. Compare any decent mid or high priced cables and they will sound the same.

What really cracks me up are the audio nuts who think high end digital cables make a difference. (rolls eyes)