Audio Cables Maximize The Home-Theatre Experience

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Connections Tips by Noel Lee

These articles are an excellent read for Home AV enthusiasts who want to take their system to the next level. Written by the Head Monster - Noel Lee.
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Audio Cables Maximize The Home-Theatre Experience

Throw away those cables that came in the box! They aren't suitable for home theater. The audio cables included with A/V components today represent the worst possible connection you can make when hooking up your home theater components.

Let's put aside the performance improvements possible with high-quality audio cables for a moment. The lack of mechanical integrity and long term corrosion problems of nickel-plated connectors are sure to degrade your signal. Cheap connectors also mean loose and intermittent connections. And how about those wispy wires? Skinny coax interconnects and lamp cords doubling as speaker cable were obviously not designed with your audio/video components' performance in mind. There's a reason why those wires are free!

Among audio enthusiasts, improved sound from high quality interconnect and speaker cables is overwhelmingly accepted to the point where dedicated audio listeners would not even think of hooking up their systems with cheap patch cables and "zip cord". With home-theater systems, properly designed cables are even more important-from both a sonic and system-design viewpoint.

In a home-theater system, there are an incredible number of connections, some of which travel long distances. Your home is a hostile environment for audio cables, which are prone to picking up noise from electromagnetic fields (AC power lines inside and of walls), dimmers, and equipment racks. The lengthy audio runs encountered in home theater require the lowest loss cable one can afford for the best performance.

Home-theater speaker cables should utilize performance technologies and be of sufficient gauge for low loss over long runs.

What About Sound?

Movie soundtracks place greater demands on an audio system than music-only reproduction! Here are the reasons why. Unlike music, there are three kinds of sounds to reproduce in a movie soundtrack: dialogue, sound effects, and music.

Dialogue is what we hear most of in a movie. Much of it is created through "dialogue replacement" in high-quality recording studios. In addition, animated feature films like "The Iron Giant" or Disney's "Tarzan" have 100% of their dialogue recorded in a studio and need to be reproduced with all the accuracy, depth, and natural sound of a fine vocal recording.

Cable-Buying Hints:

Use "balanced" twisted-pair cables, not coaxial. Balanced cables are commonly used in recording studios. They have two signal-carrying conductors, plus a separate shield. They should use high-quality twisted-pair construction to reject interference from sound-polluting AC power lines and other sources of hum.

Look for a high-quality fit and finish in RCA connectors. Simple gold plating is not enough. Because of the sheer number of cables in a home-theater system, cheap connectors make accidental disconnections easy and all too frequent.

Use the highest-quality speaker cable possible. This is especially important for your front channels and subwoofer. With discrete surround systems like Dolby Digital and DTS becoming increasingly popular, it will pay to run the same high quality cables to the rear channels at the same time. Though heavier gauge wires are necessary for longer runs, don't look at only the cable size. There are special technologies developed for carrying high-current speaker signals that actually improve sound reproduction, regardless of gauge.

One final consideration; hooking up even a simple home-theater system properly is the most tedious and time-consuming task you are likely to encounter in consumer audio. Take the time to do it right the first time, and you will reap the benefits of a Monsterous sounding home-theater system.

Happy Listening!!