The best audiophile stereo mini cable?
Hello Everyone,
I have been looking for a high end cable to connect my iPod to my stereo. Sounds simple, but I have high bit recordings and a very nice hi-fi setup. I want to hear from others if they have tried the audiophile grade cables. There are some contenders out there, I have found the following and wonder if there are those out there that have high demands on their audio quality and have tried any of these.
Monster iCable monstercable.com ~ $30
ShiftCable Mini shiftaudio.com ~ $50
Kimber Mini kimber.com ~ $80
[548 byte] By [
raj m] at [2007-11-9 22:16:05]
# 1 Re: The best audiophile stereo mini cable?
A good cable is a good cable. Ther is no need to spend $100's of dollars on viper wire or Monster M grade stuff (snake oil in my book). Any well shielded quality cable will work fine. Unless you are planning to run 100's of feet of cable between the iPod and your stereo, there won't be much difference. Acoustic research and Radio Shack Gold series are 2 good quality cables that are affordable. If you must have teh fancy stuff Monster makes good equipment as well (all be it a bit pricey for what you get). I will bet that in a blind listening test you wouldn't be able to hear the difference bw the $100 cable and a generic well shielded cable. The most important thing is to use teh dock to get line out that will make much more difference than any cable would.
# 2 Re: The best audiophile stereo mini cable?
Keep in mind that you are listening to a compressed format. (MP3 or AAC.) This degrades the quality of the music far more than any cable choice could.
Pick up decent regular cable and listen to you music in the new lossless compression format from Apple if you are worried about sound quality. Another thing to maintain quality is not to use the headphone out jack to run that audio cord from. Use the line out on the cradle, or the monster car adapter, or whatever you have....
# 3 Re: The best audiophile stereo mini cable?
Audiophile cables are mostly a waste of money. There are only two mild benefits they provide:
1) They are a higher quality construction so that they can with withstand more twisting, pulling, getting stepped on, etc. However, these kinds of things rarely pose a problem anyway.
2) They allow a signal to be carried over longer distances with less degradation. However, most people aren't running long enough cables that they would notice any difference, Also, how long could you possibly need a mini-to-stereo cable? 3-6 feet max. Over such a small distance, you would never hear a difference.
