How to Buy Interconnects

Interconnects, the cables you use to connect components in your stereo system, can influence the sound quality and accuracy of your system as much as any hardware component. If you're going to buy expensive components, it pays to buy good cables.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

Selecting the Type of Interconnects

1. Set your budget.
2. If you have limited funds, buy Radio Shack interconnects with gold-plated RCA plugs or similar Discwasher cables from a local consumer electronics store.
3. Consider models from AudioQuest and Straight Wire if you wish to spend less than $50 per pair.
4. Listen to Kimber Kable's PBJ cables if you plan to spend under $200 per pair.
5. Consider models from AudioQuest, Cardas Audio, Illuminati, Kimber Kable, MIT, NBS, Nordost, Straight Wire, Tara Labs, Transparent Audio, Wire World and XLO for high-fidelity audio reproduction.
6. Determine the lengths you need. Buy the shortest possible length of cable for each connection.
7. Check your equipment manuals to see if the manufacturers recommend specific brands or models of cable. Product literature and reviews sometimes tell you what the manufacturers used for internal wiring, and matching that usually works very well.
8. Check the Recommended Components lists in the most recent issue of "Stereophile" for both prices and suggestions of models worthy of auditioning.
9. Make a list of candidates.
10. Read reviews in audiophile magazines and at the "Audio Review" Web site to help you narrow the list.

Auditioning Cables

11. Check the selection at your local consumer electronics and high-fidelity audio specialty stores.
12. Buy or borrow several pairs of cables.
13. Connect a pair of cables from your CD player to your receiver, integrated amplifier or pre-amplifier. Connect cables with equipment turned off.
14. Play a song.
15. Repeat the process immediately with another pair of cables.
16. Compare the sound of your system, using the same recordings, with each of the cables.
17. Listen to each for at least an hour.
18. If a clear winner emerges, buy those cables.
19. If you can't find satisfactory cables in your area, consider mail order.

Tips & Warnings

• Interconnects cost from a few dollars per pair up into the thousands.
• Monster cable, sold by most consumer electronics stores, rarely provides better sound quality than comparably priced cables made by other manufacturers.
• Kimber PBJ cables provide great accuracy, especially for low frequencies, but they can be shrill in the lower treble frequencies, and their unshielded design may cause RF interference in your system.
• Cables are usually measured in meters, as opposed to feet.
• Some experts recommend using the same cabling, or at least the same brand of cable, throughout your system. Others suggest buying the best cables available for highest-fidelity components and what you can afford for the rest.
• While all cables have resistance, inductance and capacitance, and each metal has a different degree of conductivity, be wary of other claims made by cable manufacturers.
• Call the Cable Company, a mail-order cable supplier, at (800) FAT-WYRE for recommendations on the most compatible cables for your equipment. Pay the rental fee, which will be credited toward your final purchase, and two-way shipping charges with a credit card. Audition several pairs at a time.

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