I had a look in my local revamped store last night to have a good laugh. I pay 50p for 2 metre ethernet cables and a standard power lead is about £1.50.
Guess how much PCWORLD charge?
£10 for a 1 metre ethernet cable
£20 for a power lead
£35 for a 15 meter ethernet cable - I usualy pay £5 for twenty metres
Now I know PCWORLD is a conveience and I don't expect them to be as cheap as Microdirect but who in their right mind pays these prices? Do DSGi not realising they are loosing a lot of business because people are walking out laughing?
I remember when I worked for them some people would come in wanting to pay £15 for a micro filter, I had to sell it them but it annoyed me knowing the same item is £2 normally.
About a year ago or so they did some decent prices if you pre order on the web but now even those prices are too expensive to make it worth the bother.
I suppose in some ways it is brilliant, buy a £500 telly from us and we will sell you a cable for £50 which should cost £5.
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Last year I bought a 500gb seagate external usb drive fomr PC world for £49.95. I could have easily got it for a fiver less, but I needed it urgently. It was OK in my book on that occasion.
your 2m ethernet cable ( i assume with plugs on the end?) is either second hand or crap quality. The trade price for good ethernet patch cables 2m is about £1.30
Last edited by: Zero on Thu 1 Jul 10 at 15:47
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Yep it can be ok for the big ticket items like printers or even monitors. It is the cables etc which are stupidly over priced. Last time I checked USB cables were £15, I pay £1 for them.
As I said I always expect it to be more expensive than say Microdirect but the prices differences can be staggering. It would be like Halford's charging £35.00 for a bog standard air filter for a Ford Escort.
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a distress purchase will always make a vendor a good mark up
those that think first pay less
those that pay more dont think
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I suppose people don't know how much items cost. They may only buy one or two things for their pc per year if that. I don't think they will worry too much about the cost, if they even know it is overpriced. I didn't, I would have a clue where to buy cheap parts from, me like many people haven't a clue about computers.
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My experience too.
Needed a large can of that foaming anti-static cleaner for cases keyboards etc. PC World (& Staples) only sell it in 150ml quantities as part of 'cleaning kits' priced at £10 upwards.
Got a decent sized can on Maplin for £3.99.
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Maplin is quite handy for that sort of thing when I am in a bit of a rush. They sell some obscure PC parts too (such as a cheap PCI sound card) which can be hard to get in other prices.
Maplins cables are still expensive but they are more than half the price of PCWORLD.
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Maplin is one of my favourite shops - ours is a barn of a place selling the whole range. Like Rats I've found stuff there that's long gone from PCW - in my case a PCI WiFi card.
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I needed some DDR3 memory in a hurry. I bowled into Maplins and they said, "oo no, we dont stock that"
However, every man should have a current copy of the maplin catalogue and the screwfix catalogue.
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>> and Machine Mart
>>
>> JH
>>
>>>>>>>>>> i only buy from there as a last resort
i bought a pack of high speed drills from them and they were all bent like bananas,i kept them these last three years and have only just thrown them out
dangerous rubbish.........
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But Argos sell all thos things for a 1/3 of the price of PCWORLD, Argos is still over priced but it is probably what you would expect to pay on the high street.
If I was in charge of DSGi focussing on customer honestly but my my numer one thing. No more silly prices for cables and would introduce fairer extended warranties.
Some of their repair prices are really high too but I suppose that is to be expected.
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If I was in charge of DSG, I would be doing whatever I could to make fat profits. Indeed as CEO of a company I have a legal duty to do so.
Last edited by: Zero on Thu 1 Jul 10 at 16:12
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But surely if they got more people through their doors they would make money? There is always a lot more people through the doors at Microdirect than at PCWORLD for example.
Maybe I should write to which and I suggest they do an article warning consumers how much margin high street shops get for cables. In some cases the markup is over 1000%.
To be fair there is one guy at my local store that does know his stuff but it is a rarity. I remember selling TVs at curry's and I didn't even know what 1080p meant at the time!
I also had to sell cameras when I knew less about them than half the customers which came in!
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>But surely if they got more people through their doors they would make money?
Nope, and cheap cables wont attract them. People buying cheap cables dont buy big tickets items. There is no profit on selling cheap cables from a shop
>There is always a lot more people through the doors at Microdirect than at PCWORLD for example.
I dont have a microdirect near me, so No. PC WORLD and Microdirect meet compeltey different sets of consumers.
You can write to which about markups if you wish, but just bear in mind they employ a lot of people and the dividends from profits feed a lot of pension funds.
You have a very naive knowledge of commerce rats,
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Whilst overpriced items like cables etc may annoy, the public can choose to pay or not. What I dislike about PC World is the average knowledge of staff.
The time before last when I was in, there was a staff member talking rubbish to an oldish woman who knew what she wanted and he couldn't help steer her to the right computer. I couldn't help but get involved and advise her a bit and he walked off. I think she bought something in the end so I didn't try putting her off totally from PC World.
Last week looking at new TV stands I went into the Currys (and PC World).... the same chap was now in Curry's. Talking rubbish again. A family were interest in an iMac and wanted to know if they could open their old Word documents etc and he told them no. Then said they would buy office and could create new ones but not open old ones! I told them they could get OpenOffice for free.
They were certain to spend near £1000 on a Mac and he was doing a pretty good job of not selling them anything.
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Different items are cheaper in different stores, be it electronic items or grocery.
Among high streets, I find Maplin most expensive. DSG, Comet etc. are at par. Staples is often cheaper (and they do price match).
>> Do DSGi not realising they are loosing a lot of business
For some items, no, they don't realize it as profit-loss analysis shows only what people bought from their stores, not what people didn't buy from their stores as they found them cheaper elsewhere.
For other items, they intionally jack the price up because they make more profit on per unit sold (even though lower number compared to what they have sold with lower prices).
For small electronics items, I find Amazon, Pixmania, Play.com are much better.
For larger items (fridge, washing machine) I still prefer to buy locally (they often match internet price anyway).
>> If I was in charge of DSG, I would be doing whatever I could to make fat profits. Indeed as CEO of a company I have a legal duty to do so.
Often CEO alone can't take such decisions without approval from board of directors and other influential shareholders/investors.
Companies frequently sacrifice long term gains in favour of showing better balance sheet in next quarterly report.
That is one of the reasons why so many stores are closing down recently.
Last edited by: movilogo on Thu 1 Jul 10 at 16:20
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I was only thinking this morning about what King Rat posted.
I wanted a rotor arm...I knew who'd have one, a very long established auto electrical...not far away. Sure enough...£1.43. there.
While there I'd intended to go to B & Q for a new for a new tube for the garage lights.
Expecting to pay about a tenner, I remembered a trade electrical place just up the road and called in........£2.40.
Both jobs sorted under £4. for both....mind you, the rotor arm didn't solve the problem !
At least I've got a spare.
Ted
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Could be said that they were taking the PC...
I am not a frequent customer of such places. I remember PCW as being garish, expensive, with a poor range of goods and useless assistants. There's a better place at the bottom of Queensway, can't remember its name but prices not so bad, most things available and one or two quick knowledgeable chaps behind the counter.
Still, like PCW, it's the equivalent of a car accessories shop like Halfords (there are many worse), the sort of place we tend to go to for bits because they are easier to find and there are more of them than there are real motor factors and specialists in things like car electrics, injection pumps and so on.
If we are being serious we go to one of these last. Computer nerds who are serious, like the Sheikh, go to the nerd equivalent of a motor factor. Or so it seems to my simple little mind.
Comments Sheikh Rattleandroll? I guess Zero will need little encouragement.
Last edited by: Armel Coussine on Thu 1 Jul 10 at 17:04
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I don't think they're losing (sic) a lot of business through premium pricing their cables.
1. If I want a cable cheaply, next week, there's always eBay.
2. If I want a cable NOW, I would go to PC World as I wouldn't have the foggiest where else to go. And anyway, it's a tenner for a mini USB cable - and eBay is £4.
3. OK, I've actually checked the prices. eBay £1 - but it might come from Singapore and take two weeks; PC World an eye-watering £16. But I want it now. Perhaps I can wait that fortnight.
Yes, possibly they've lost a sale, and would have won it if it had been £8. On the other hand... I might buy it anyway as I need it now. And realisically, theirs is nicely wrapped in a box, has been put on the shelf by a stacker; and is sitting in expensive retail space; they might not make anything on it at that price.
I'm going into PC World to buy myself a computer. They're pretty competitive on those, I think, so £600 will see me straight. Oh yes, and I'll need a couple of extra cables, oh what's an extra £16 on the bill. Or even £50 for the example you quote.
And I'll buy a warranty for £150 that costs the shop £50. That's probably more than the profit they made on the computer. And MS Office for what £200?
In selling white goods, the profit is to be made on the extras, not on the white goods.
Last edited by: Mapmaker on Thu 1 Jul 10 at 17:37
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Jessops seem to be doing the same thing with camera equipment. Looking at a hoya polarizer. £60 ish on Jessops. £23 on amazon including delivery!
Got a challenge for you Rattle. How would you make a wired webcam wireless? Need to get a dlink one in such a location that doesn't realistically have anything other than wireless access. A decent wireless one is £150 (records to sd card which would be v useful) but don't want to pay out the spondules for that.
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you cant "covert" a usb webcam to wireless.
But decent wireless cameras are not 150 quid, 100 quid is nearer the mark.
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Sorry it's an ethernet ip camera not a usb camera.... tend to call it a web cam as it has its own webserver built in. Not the most correct way of describing it :-)
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I bought a camera the other week which for a while was over £100 cheaper than Jessops. But Amazon was even more. By getting an instore 'demo' I also got a three year warranty thrown in so worth the trip to a camera online retailer near Bolton.
As for your camera, you could use Ethernet over powerline adapters but you say only wireless possible. What about power for the camera itself? If it can be powered via mains then that's an option. There's fairly cheap wireless IP cameras here:
www.scan.co.uk/Shop/Computer-Hardware/All/Cameras/Network-IP-Cameras
But is the Dlink model one that will store image to a NAS or similar.
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ah yes if its an ethernet wired camera then the powerline thing is the way to go. It will need mains anyway as rtj says.
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But a wireless camera may be cheaper than two powerline adapters. An alternative could be to use a wireless access point as an extender to the wireless network and plug the camera into a port on the switch on the access point.
Apple do an Airport Express which should be able to extend the wifi network and let you plug something into the Ethernet port on the Airport. And the Express lets you stream audio from iTunes to a 3.5mm jack on the Express as a bonus. I'd have to check you can plug something into the Ethernet port on the Express in this way though.
Last edited by: rtj70 on Thu 1 Jul 10 at 18:11
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Focal length will be wrong with that probably. I did try poking a usb web cam on the off chance at the window but it just had the window in focus....
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>>
>> But is the Dlink model one that will store image to a NAS or similar.
>>
Images were stored on the mac that had the security software running on it. The ones I had been looking at would upload via ftp or record onto an SD card so no need to have anything else running.
Not sure about ethernet over mains. Will investigate that.
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>> The ones I had been looking at would upload via ftp
So could upload to a NAS then via FTP.
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Yes. If I had a nas :-) I'm into cloud storage at the moment....
Checked out ethernet over power lines and it seems to cause problems with hifi and also interferes with certain radio frequencies so I'm off that...
Someone on another forum did find a £20 doofer that was a wireless gaming adapter that might do the trick.
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I noticed this with Jessops when I was looking for my new lens the other week. Amazon was far cheaper..
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I've found Argos to at the very least match - and more often beat - prices for branded products.
In fact I got a real bargain there a few weeks ago when I spotted a Pulsar Kinetic day/date watch water resistant to 100m for just under £70. Cheapest price I could find elsewhere was more than £100; fortunately one of our two local Argos stores had one in stock and I reserved it on-line.
Normally you would only get a normal automatic Pulsar for that price or a bit more.
As for PC World I wouldn't even bother with them or its high street competitors' rip off prices.
Went into Staples about six months ago for a replacement ADSL splitter/microfilter and found the price was £14.99 for the bog standard Belkin model in stock. The assistant couldn't understand why I wouldn't pay such a price, even though I pointed out I would expect to get at least two for that amount elsewhere.
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At a slight tangent, but in case it helps anyone. There are a couple of apps for iPhones that grab the barcode from a product in your hand and look it up online there and then for you, telling who is cheapest. Ideal when you're in PC World or wherever.
I use RedLaser but I think there are others, and probably the same thing on Android phones for all I know. Useless on food items though, be warned.
Like garlic bread, it's the future.
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I fail to see the point of lecturing Rattle on his grasp of commerce.
All he is saying is that PC World is often dear for the little bits.
He's right.
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It was aimed at the idea of moaning to which about markups.
It wasnt a lecture, it was a comment. And frankly DSG makes more money than Rattle does, so I would guess they know a little more, dont you?
Come to think of it, how much do you know about turnover, stock and sales per square foot?
Last edited by: Zero on Thu 1 Jul 10 at 18:36
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...Come to think of it, how much do you know about turnover, stock and sales per square foot?...
I'm a customer, I'm not the least bit interested.
Same as I'm not interested in their mark-up, the cost of the shop, the electric bill, the insurance, the rent, the wages, loss through theft, cost of marketing...etc etc.
All I'm interested in is their offer to me.
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Ok the offer is this, They dont want to sell you cheap carp like 50p cables, buy them elsewhere. OK?
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PCW are presumably, and correctly IMHO, more focussed on margin than volume of sales. Maybe now they charge 15 quid for a USB cable and make 14 quid profit on a 1 quid cost item. If they drop the price of USB cables to 2 quid are they going to sell 14 times as many, to make the the same profit? no way.
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talking maplins as we werent
im not keen on them anymore now theyve gone down the road of a shop on every retail development as they seem to have gone to selling lots of overpriced twaddle
my little sojourn to their leeds shop to see what was new used to be a trip to look forward to as was spending hours sat on my toilet reading their catalogue which was thick enough to choke 2 donkeys
internet killed the thrill so i dont buy the catalogue anymore just like it killed the radio star
i buy my gadgets via the internet these days and love waiting for the parcel s from china mainly
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>> talking maplins as we werent
>> i buy my gadgets via the internet these days and love waiting for the parcel
>> s from china mainly
>>
Yes, unfortunately Maplin have realised there's more money in flogging bluetooth calculator tie racks or whatever than useful stuff and so largely sell tat now. I too cut out the middleman and buy direct from China as often as not, on low value stuff non urgent stuff anyway.
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>> Yes, unfortunately Maplin have realised there's more money in flogging bluetooth calculator tie racks
OOo must have one of them.
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I would never expect PCW to sell a USB cable for £2 as that is almost trade price, I realise they need high mark ups. £6.99 would still be a 700%+ markup and I bet then they would sell a lot more.
I rarely use Maplin for anything electronic now. I get any electrical stuff from RS Components (there is one near where Rob lives) but its been ages since I have done any electronics it is a dying hobby.
I fully understand DGSi's business model and why they do it I just think it is unfair and plays on the innocent.
Microdirect also do this a bit, I get much bigger discount on cables than I would for say memory. My discount is just a percentage of their margin. I could buy £100 of memory and get £5 discount, if I bought £100 worth of USB cables I would probably get £30-£40 discount.
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i would expect pc world staff to be on commission and minimum wage so why would you expect them to sell £2 items anyway
i remember when we had to write down everything we sold so as to get our 1% commission and when guys used to come in on a saturday morning (our busiest day) and order one 2uf microfarad cooling tower and one 33 watt resister the 34pence sale price was not worth writing down in your sales ledger to add up at the end of the day, especially as my sinclair calculator was a pain to push the buttons on and usually turned itself off halfway through the additions
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They scrapped commision when I was there. We got bonuses based on how well the store did instead. A load of people left when they did that, me included.
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Small businesses would worry less about a few quid more and would go to PCW for more peace of mind. I only buy there in emergency, or when someone else is paying, or a couple of times when they had things which were ridiculously cheap. It's the same for everything though isn't it? Drivethedeal sell cars cheaper than dealers, but people still buy in dealers. Aldi sell fruit cheaper than Waitrose but Waitrose is still busy.
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I suppose but then I am a smart shopper so I assume everybody is. I have more time than money so I would rather get my veg half price at the green grocer than pay the high super market costs.
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>> talking maplins as we werent
Am I the only one to miss Tandy stores? I've still got a Radio Shack 200 in one electronics kit in the loft somewhere that was bought for me during my teenage years.
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Yes. One of those shops that always wanted your name and address. Buying the most minor item was a right clart on. And it was tat.
JH
Last edited by: Tooslow on Thu 1 Jul 10 at 21:26
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I miss them as I spent all my childhood in there when my parents were shopping. I used to buy their books which were all hand written.
I did dislike their 99p per LED packs though! Maplin was quite a bit cheaper at the time and was a real electronics shop. Maplin is now just what Tandy was.
There still is a Tandy (or rather Radioshack) in St Annes. Tandy was just their main UK franchise and it went bust but anybody can still setup and operate a Radioshack in the UK under licence.
I would love to run a little electronics shop like that.
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>> In selling white goods, the profit is to be made on the extras, not on the white goods.
Right. Companies sell printers at a loss but inks at huge profit.
>> How would you make a wired webcam wireless?
If you have a smart phone (capable of shooting video) you can use it as a wireless camera (if Symbian phone, you can use Bambuser etc.). Whatever you shoot with it, can be made publicly visible in realtime thru a website broadcasting that.
Last edited by: movilogo on Fri 2 Jul 10 at 09:36
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Thread drift alert! Why are HDMI cables so expensive? I was in Currys digital the other day and they had cables which were only just cheaper than a 19" flat screen, freeview, HD ready TV!
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depends where you look, they are cheap on Amazon,
Dont know why people spend a fortune on HDMI cables, some even pay more for "HD" ones,
The point is, HDMI is digital, they dont need to be superb quality.
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Never understood why HDMI cables are overpriced, but Maplin is more expensive than Currys for HDMI cables and both are more expensive than Jessops of all places.
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Maplin's cables seem to be mostly 'premium' types branded Nikkai or similar. Got a perfectly good peritel lead from Homebase for under a fiver.
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I wonder if we're all laughing at HD HDMI cables when they should have been described as High Speed (i.e. intended for 1080p/2560p and not 720p/1080i).
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>> Why are HDMI cables so expensive
Because there are a lot of foolish people willing to pay that sort of money thinking they get a better cable. It either works or does not. And as said by one, some pay more for HD ones ;-) when HDMI stands for High Definition Media Interface.
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I have paid more for decent quality cables in the past, they do make a difference to my HIFI and its not just placebo. However with HDMI cables as its digital the difference is a lot less. Cheap cables can still produce a poorer picture due to jitter but it won't really be noticable.
I always just get the cheapest HDMI cables for my customers and they are always amazed at how cheap they are even if I had on a tiny markup.
When I open my new little shop I shall be stocking all the basic cables and may sell them almost at cost as a way to get people in.
Last edited by: RattleandSmoke on Fri 2 Jul 10 at 17:11
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>> When I open my new little shop I shall be stocking all the basic cables
>> and may sell them almost at cost as a way to get people in.
>>
Can I suggest you keep the prices at about Maplin level (£10-15) and just offer to throw them in free with larger purchases? No one objects to paying £10 for an HDMI cable, but it can seem like quite a good deal if it comes free with a DVD player or summat with minimum cost to you.
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>> and may sell them almost at cost as a way to get people in.
I would think you'd get some customers coming in for cables who would normally have got them from ebay, but allot of people who pay PCWorld prices think those prices are normal and wouldn't look elsewhere.
A new standard that's being supported by Sony, Samsung and LG is HDBaseT, all the cables will be Cat5e/6 with RJ45's. If this takes off how long before someone starts selling gold plated versions?
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The cable thing was a half joke as it won't be open as a shop as such anyway.
HDBaseT so I am assuming this is just a way of using ethernet to deliver a high bandwidth video picture?
Also some audiophiles use CAT5 cables as HIFI speakers. I tried it once but found them to be far too bright.
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>> HDBaseT so I am assuming this is just a way of using ethernet to deliver a high bandwidth video picture?
More likely just using CAT5e/CAT6 cables and nothing to do with Ethernet. There are a lot of inefficiencies with the protocols over Ethernet. But they were designed about 50 years ago.
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www.hdbaset.org
Not that much info on the site yet but what I think is that it can carry ethernet as well as video, not video over ethernet. What I have just read indicates that it's ethernet capability's are 100Mbps scalable to 1Gbps.
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>> The cable thing was a half joke as it won't be open as a shop
>> Also some audiophiles use CAT5 cables as HIFI speakers. I tried it once but found
>> them to be far too bright.
And far too thick.
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HIFI speakers have massive binding posts on them, CAT5 is quite thin compared to some speaker cable.
This is the stuff I use at the momet and it is cheap end stuff at £6 a mettr.
www.ixos.co.uk/us/ixos-products-detail.asp?PROID=122&Category=5&SubCat=13
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That stuff is like putting third rate petrol into a Ferrari. There is a big differnece between the cheap stuff and say stuff at £5 a metre. I don't agree with the £100 a metre stuff as that is getting silly but when you spend say £500 on amplifer using bell wire is madness.
The cable just does not support enough bandwidth for all the music to bass through it. It robs the music and you just get a mess. On cheap systems it will make no difference.
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£5 a metre? This is what I used for a year when I was a student, free and great sound quality.
tiny.cc/slu3l
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Of course it will let music through. Its only about 5 yards for each channel max. All this talk about special cable is just that - talk.
Do you know the working frequency repsonse of the average human ear?
Last edited by: Zero on Fri 2 Jul 10 at 18:09
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Good quality speaker cable makes a big difference to a separates system.
How much to pay is a thorny question, but multi-stranded cable at under £1 a metre from the likes of Richer Sounds is a good bet.
Shorts runs are also important, whatever the cable.
The ideal is one metre either side of the amp, so the speakers are about two metres apart.
The listener sits centrally - at the apex of an imaginary triangle.
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Yep which is the how mine is setup. It is also impotant to try and get the tweeter to be level with the listeners ears but that can be quite tricky to do. My system is fairly cheap (you would get a bit of change out of £1000) and I have heared more expensive systems which sound worse because they have not been setup properly.
The usual rule with HIFI is to spend about 10% of your budget on cables but does that mean if you spent £10k on a CD player and amp you need to spend £1000 on cables?
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...if you spent £10k on a CD player and amp you need to spend £1000 on cables?...
It's the law of diminishing returns, isn't it?
That £249,500 convertible Roller in the other thread is a lovely car and much better than my CC3, but is it 20 times better?
As regards the dream system, I reckon room acoustics would play a bigger and bigger part the more money you spend.
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>>I reckon room acoustics would play a bigger and bigger part the more money you spend<<
10/10 tovarich.
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if, if your speakers are 2 metres apart then, by the time your cable has run from the amp, down the back of the rack, along the floor and up the speaker stands, you'll have to at least double that. Unless it's splashed across the wall like a bunny on a speeding radiator grill.
I don't think a few yards is going to do any harm. My Cyrus kit is off to one side with equal length cables, 4 - 5 yards ish to the Dynaudios. And it sounds utterly cracking!
JH
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...if, if your speakers are 2 metres apart then,..
In the ideal example, the cables runs horizontally, with the amp located at listening level.
Realistically, two or three metres either side would give you plenty of slack and make no discernible difference to sound quality.
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Most sources say 20Hz to 20kHz, hence the focus on this frequency range by hi fi manufacturers. Some people rabbit on about harmonics of higher frequencies but they probably wear sandals with socks, a beard and worry that their oxygen free copper cable is connected "the right way round" - and they're not talking about phasing.
One thing - I am slightly puzzled by the heading "PCWORLD - things can only get worse". Anyone who has ever been through the gates of hell, cough, sorry, I've told myself a million times I must stop exaggerating, knows that it is very difficult to go down from the position that PCWorld occupies in terms of service and (usually) pricing. They are Dixons/Currys after all. Of course there are some very (un)talented people about ready to take up the challenge.
JH
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Some speaker cables are indeed directional :). My speaker cables are directional (e.g they flow one way) but I have never tried to reverse it to see if there is a difference, I doubt it will make little difference.
The thing with HIFI its not just about science, specs mean nothing in terms of how a product will sound. A CD player for example has a much higher frequency responce of a vinyl record but I still think vinyl soudns better.
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Rattle, I'm afraid I put that claim in with holistic medicine, it just defies the laws of physics. Be a devil, swap 'em round. I bet it makes no difference. Better still, get a mate to swap one round. Or did he...?
JH
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>> Some speaker cables are indeed directional :). My speaker cables are directional (e.g they flow
>> one way)
Dont be rediculous, How can AC voltage or current flow one way in a conductor.
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They work both ways but they say it sounds better if it is connected the correct way. Remember expensive speaker cables are not just a striaght line of copper they are built very much like a twisted pair ethernet cable.
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Rattle you know you can connect an eithernet cable either way. Twisting it does not turn it into a diode.
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20 -20khz is for a healthy young human just post puberty. In truth most average middle age people are comressed into much less of a harmonic range. Late middle age its about 20 - 8 Khz
Yes 8 - 12khz if your lucky.
Anyway, 5 meres of bell cable is easily capable of taking a fairly large current, and over 5 metres will not attenuate ANY of the frequency response of the amp.
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It does make a big difference though, with the cheap cable you get so much boom, with better cable you get much tighter bass and clearer vocals. Remember with cheap cable you get all the radio frequencies traveling down it, the more expensive cable is designed to avoid that.
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"with cheap cable you get all the radio frequencies traveling down it, the more expensive cable is designed to avoid that. " Huh? I've been into hi fi for donkeys years and I've never heard that one. A chunkier cable is preferable, no doubt. This is because current is conducted on the surface of the conductor so chunky, multi stranded copper wire offers a bigger surface area. But it's all carrying electricity for goodness sake. Where did the "radio frequencies" spring from? If you're saying it's acting like an aerial, that may be so, but;
old fashioned AM aerials are a chunky piece of ferrite core (iron to you & me) with a coil round it. The chunky cable will pick up just the same as the thin stuff.
any such current picked up will be utterly minute compared to the tens of watts your amp is pumping out.
short of sticking electronics into the cable it's not going to filter anything!
Reminds me of the dingbat who asked if some cabling was Millennium compliant.
JH
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Speaker cable sound is down to cable material and what the dialectric is that is used. Most copper cables sound the same - boomy in the bass and cut off in the treble. I have the extreme luck/misfortune to still be able to hear high frequencies in my dotage.... electronic mosquitos and pest repellers drive me bonkers.
Different cables do alter the sound but I found years ago that Maplins solid silver and silver plated copper were pretty much the best sounding thing around. There are some right cheaters out there though. Some cable demos are done with obvious tweaks to the volume.
I can hear the difference in some cables but not others and with some systems but not others. You have to be careful about volume matching as I think that is where a lot of the perceived difference comes into play. I also read that identical cables were tested, differing by colour only, and some listeners claimed they sounded different....
If you have cheapish hifi, cables don't really show up any difference. Like B & W speakers - they sound the same no matter what you connect to them!
An electronic engineering friend of mine believed bell wire was all you needed. Til he heard the maplin stuff.....
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>> The cable just does not support enough bandwidth for all the music to bass through
>> it. It robs the music and you just get a mess. On cheap systems it
>> will make no difference.
>>
Riiiigggghhhht....
My personal opinion is that 99.9% of people couldn't tell the difference between mains cable and £50/m speaker cable in a blind test.
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Well I volunteer my myself for that test any day. I can easily tell the difference. Spotting a £10 cable and a £100 would be a lot harder though.
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You pays yer money and you takes yer choice.
And please don't think the dingbat comment was in any way aimed at you R&S.
JH
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rattle i got a roksan kandy l3 combo a cd player and amp, i agree about cables, for my speaker i got qed silver £5-6 per meter, ixos cable for the cd player fabolous sound makes a difference to bell wire
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A hi-fi shop I visited years ago rigged up a demo to prove the benefits of good speaker cable.
They had 10m of bell wire hooked up to one channel of a stereo amp and 10m of quality cable hooked up to the other.
The sound from the quality cable was pretty good, but barely anything came out of the speaker attached to the bell wire.
No one would use that length of cable in reality, but the rig made the point.
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i sold hi fi for a fair time when hi fi was hi fi ie the golden years 95/97
bellwire isnt good enough
you need 5 amp lighting wire
you dont need anything more or less
you dont need gold plated anything on phono leads or hdmi leads
its marketing speil
you dont need bi wire
you dont need special plug leads with biamp filters in them
its all twaddle
anyway what does it matter as zero says once you get to 28 you cant hear above 12k
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I'm well past 28 and I can hear above 12k!
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I used to hear bats squeaking. Then for many yars, until quite recently, I used to hear their cries as a sort of clicking.
Haven't heard one at all for several years now, but then I haven't seen many either.
Of course I am talking about our small British bats, not huge furry chattering squabbling chortling Australasian and African jobs.
I used to be able to see Mizar - the double star at the point where the handle of the Plough bends - clearly with the naked eye. Bedouins use it as a sight test. I can still sort of see it, but probably mainly because I know it's there.
Last edited by: Armel Coussine on Sat 3 Jul 10 at 01:45
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"I used to hear bats squeaking. Then for many yars, until quite recently, I used to hear their cries as a sort of clicking."
Richard Dawkins devotes several chapters to bats in one of his books, possibly The blind Watchmaker.
Fascinating stuff. In echolocation, they send out 30 clicks per second in normal flight. These clicks are so loud that their ears would be destroyed so they have a mechanism that disconnects the ear for the powerful outbound click and reconnects in time for the much softer incoming echo. When it homes in on a moth the click rate increases to 200 times per second. Dawkins suggest that the bats can build a mental picture of their world as good as our vision in daylight and even goes so far as to say they can probably detect some colour hue from the way that sound is reflected off a surface. Something to think about when you're watching Scooby-Doo.
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It isn't bandwidth. It is a question of filtering. Some cables filter out more than others. There is some discussion on whether single core or stranded is better as different frequencies are allegedly supposed to travel through cable in different ways. I've never seen actual physical proof so have to make do with me ears.
I'd hope a sufficiently sensitive frequency analyser could solve the argument. I always wondered about making a loop with a soundcard and comparing what went out with that what came in with differing cables with something like audacity.
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the path ends with a bit of compressed cardboard with some copper wire round the voice coil teabelly
i too till a few years ago had perfect hearing,im still good but most people havent got a clue which is why mp3 lives
you are in a minority if you can hear the full spectrum but 5 amp wire will still fill your perogatives and leave money for a bottle of decent wine to hear it with
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At work, we've spent the last 6 years or so designing and building a very sensitive instrument. The instrument takes in a number of weak signals and measures their magnitudes and phases. It does this with incredible sensitivity. We have taken great care to make sure the resistors have very low noise, that temperature changes don't affect the behaviour of the filters, we've bought in and tested a range of analogue to digital convertors to make sure of their noise performance, we've spent a lot of time optimising the layout of the parts, we've seperated the analogue and digital functions as much as possible, we've tried a number of solutions for the provision of grounding planes, and the taken great care in the detail of the mechanical design of the box to minimise any EMC problems. In it's function, this piece of kit is state of the art, and it pushes the boundaries of what is currently possible.
As a bit of fun, during this design process, I once mentioned OFC and directional cables to our head of electronics, and he had a really good laugh about it.
I think BB has it about right - use some decent sized cable, but don't go silly.
My speakers? bell wire!
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When you get your new business premises and have to factor increased overheads into your prices, people will probably start saying "Rattleandsmoke ~ things can only get worse"!
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The only think anyone needs to know about economics is that the right price is what some other poor sap will pay. PC World and other stores like them wouldn't still be in business if they hadn't grasped that principle.
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Best place I've found for excellent HDMI cables at very reasonable prices (including p and p), along with a comprehensive selection of other computer/photography etc products, continues to be 7DayShop:
7DayShop.com
Backed up by first class after sales and service if it is ever necessary.
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I got myself a ridiculously cheap HDMI cable from Amazon, this one tinyurl.com/2bdvhrn
It does exactly what it says on the tin, no need to pay a penny more. Looking again now I see you can get even cheaper ones than this which I'm sure are just as good. An HDMI cable either works or it doesn't!
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Virgin engineers seem to freely give away HDMI cables at install time, but often only if you ask.
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>> Virgin engineers seem to freely give away HDMI cables at install time, but often only
>> if you ask.
>>
i stopped one on the local dual carriageway tonight and i can assure you he never offered me any free cables :-(
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>>An HDMI cable either works or it doesn't! >>
That's why I buy them at 7DayShop...:-)
Some info on why you don't need to spend too much:
reviews.cnet.com/2719-11276_7-226-1.html?tag=
There are several specifications for HDMI cables including the latest, 1.4.
Official HDMI website is at:
www.hdmi.org/manufacturer/hdmi_1_4/index.aspx
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NC>>very expensive machine
Time, I think for you to publish a paper debunking (or otherwise) these myths. Just the thing for the Christmas edition of New Scientist; get going.
Tooslow>>one. A chunkier cable is preferable, no doubt. This is because current is
>>conducted on the surface of the conductor so chunky, multi stranded copper wire offers
>>a bigger surface area.
According to Wikipedia, the "skin" depth where current is conducted is 8.5mm deep. Only the cables running between electricity pylons have to be stranded.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skin_effect
I have 1.5mm T&E on my speakers, because that was to hand when I wired them in. I think bell wire is probably rubbish in comparison. Otherwise, it's just a salesman's dream.
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"8.5mm" well I never knew that M, thanks. I think my old physics master told the class that, back in the last century.
JH
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When I first got a V+ box I got offered an HDMI cable. I didn't have a TV with HDMI (or even an HD TV*). So I said no... another cable to store/lose.
I did get an HD TV eventually and had to buy a cable (not a big sum).
* When I first got V+ I got the benefit of the V+ service and it saved me about £10/month and eventually £20/month. We had other V boxes so we got a discount on them, i.e. get the better V+ service and save money... a no brainer.
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PCWORLD - things can only get worse - Zero
