Home Audio cables for Car?

brettw22

Rather than ask this within my other thread on my system I'm putting in soon, thought I'd ask seperately......

I'm just curious how common it is to use Home Audio cables in a car application. Are there any disadvantages (not as shielded for the extreme climate changes, etc) to them or not really? I'm sure there are arguements with cables as to if they make a difference or not, but I just want to know y'alls thoughts on Home speakers.........

Muchas Gracias.....

neomagus00

i dunno... i suppose that they're built to do exactly the same thing... only thing i can think of is diameter and flexibility... in a car, you need a small, flexible cable, whereas a home cable needn't be either... climate shouldn't impact either, they should both have plenty of shielding...

PolkThug

You can use them, but big bulky "audiohphile grade" interconnects are difficult to install in a car due to the tight spaces that you have to route them along.

Jstas

Not a good idea. Home interconnects do not always have the same insulation materials. Cars are hostile environments for electronics and those electronics need to be protected. many car audio interconnects are sheathed in urethane insulation that is inert and doesn't react with the chemicals found in cars. It is also not as affected by weather and temperature changes. It doesn't cut so easily either.

The cables will rub and move around in the car. They rub against metal, carpet backing and rubber washers and such. The urethane will not wear off the way some other materials will. Home audio cables are often made with different and softer materials that will dry out, crack and just wear off where car audio cables won't.

There are many home audio company cables out there that will work just fine because they have the same kind of properties for withstanding the elements too. However, the majority of cables that I have seen for home audio won't really cut it in an automotive environment.

If you want good cables that won't be a problem, check out Streetwires. They aren't all that expensive and they will work just as well if not better than even some home audio cables. Hell, I'm using old Streetwires interconnects in my home rig right now.

brettw22

I've been looking at the Streetwires stuff, but started this thread because PoweredbyDodge recommended some Esoteric A5's in my "what to get" thread......

I thought it might have something to do with the build quality and the completely different environments, but wasn't sure.....

Jstas

He might mean a different Esoteric Audio. There used to be an Esoteric company that made excellent interconnects. I don't think they are the same company because Esoteric Audio was bought by Mitek which are the makes of Xtant and MTX and Streetwires for that matter. I don't know what happened after that but the Esoteric Audio name has been retained. You can hit the Factory Outlet store here:

http://www.mitekfactoryoutlet.com/products/brand.cfm?brand=8

That link also has the factory outlet stores for every Mitek brand. It's worth looking through.

brettw22

He did link to that site for the Esoteric cables, but the prices for the Streetwires that I was looking at are being sold for retail prices compared to the discounted over at Car Domain....... The one's that he specified are for Home Audio though......

Jstas

Not really. That Esoteric Audio is essentially the Streetwires line of interconnects with different colored insulation and gold plated ends. They will work fine in the cars too. However, the Streetwires ZN6's (ZeroNoise 6) are probably a better cable than the Esoteric Audio A5's. Unless of course the Esoteric Audio A5's are modeled after the old Streetwires ZeroNoise 5 cables. If so then go for the A5's because they will have inductors in one of the ends to cut back drastically on interference. The ZN6's are nice cables without a doubt but I've never heard a set of cables run as cleanly as the ZN5's. Hell, I haven't heard a better interconnect than the ZN5's.


As far as price, the Mitek Factory outlet isn't necessarily discounted unless and item gets discountinued. Otherwise, they are selling stuff at retail so they don't hurt thier dealers. The nice thing is that the Factory Outlet has stuff that is hard to find. that is the benefit to the outlet.

faster100

all this high end gear in what? a Lease vehicle.. do you plan on paying the balloon off at the end, what a pain to tear that stuff out after a couple years.. just curious

MacLeod

Nah, no need for that. This is going to be a simply "drop in" installation so when its time to return the car it wont take more than a couple hours to return it to stock.

I have been using home audio RCA's for years now without any problems. I use Monster Standard cable at $.70/ft and have never had a problem with it coming apart or anything like that.

As far as standing up to the elements and such, John has a good point but in most new cars, there isnt going to be many issues with moisture, rust or whatever. And there wont be too much moving around either if you install them right.

Its not a bad idea to buy car cables as they are smaller and easier to use and they are built tougher and will last longer probably but if youre set on home cables I see nothing wrong with it.

PoweredByDodge

the esoteric audio cables i was referring to are NEW esoteric audio - now owned by mitek along with streetwires - but they're new product.

the A5's obliterate any other interconnect i've ever seen in my life.

they completely outdo the zn6's -- they outdo the old zn5's as well.

the A5 is built like a tank.

at the core you have a virgin copper conductors... twisted pair obviously, but even tighter than the usual -- esoteric/streetwires hypertwist is a more tightly wound twist, giving you more twists per inch, which is to say more noise rejection - that is then wrapped in a sturdy Teflon dielectric jacket. over that is class 3 braided shielding. over than is a flexible plastic innjer jacket, giving a "bulletproof vest" kind of rigidity to them... and finally - they're topped off with a polymer outer jacket.

they are also directionally shielded - so don't go hooking them up backwards.

I am currently using A3's in my truck, which are the same as the A5 but shielding is class 2 instead of 3, and they lack the "bulletproof vest" inner jacket. also the copper is simply OFC not OFC virgin copper... and the connectors are not serpentine cut but straight cut - with split pins instead of quad split pins.

I have never been in favor of using home audio cables in cars until i came across the new A series... the A3's are the closest thing to the old ZN5's that i have seen to date -- the new ZN6 are of a lesser build quality than the ZN5's were.

they're not cheap - but they're damn good. you could wrap the **** around a 220 line and probably not have any problems.

when i built the truck, there was no room in the budget for 200 dollar interconnects per line... so i went with the A3's -- less money - but still high dollar --- still well worth the investment.

thickness is about 25 to 30% thicker than the old ZN5's -- but i hooked the truck up with both when is started out with this system - to do an a/b test... at mid- to high volume, there was no audible difference whatsoever... however at very low to low volume - the level you would listen to it at if you had other people in the car you wanted to talk to the - but still listen to the radio -- at that level, my previous "background hiss" was gone. the interconnects had eliminated a very minor amount of noise that had been driving me crazy in previous installations (all using the zn5's). not to know the zn5's though -- couple years ago in my 99 ram - i tried them up against some monster cable rca's -- they proved then that they were well worth the investment. i lvoed the 5's -- now i love the A series.

PoweredByDodge

oh - side note -

normally i blow a fit over solid core wire for use with AC signal... however, the core on these interconnects is THICK - surface area for conduction of current is equal to or greater than that for a normal set of RCA's with much thinner stranded wires.

home audio people have this attachment to solid core wire (i don't know why - i don't agree with it) -- and the only way i will ever endorse anything solid core is if the wire gauge is markedly thicker than the same product with stranded wires... thicker enough to post surface area for conduction of similar numbers to the stranded.

neomagus00

yeah, but then your bass will go through the center, and it'll get there sooner... you'll get a delay in your highs... duh...


(i didn't make this argument up, btw)

brettw22

faster100 wrote:

all this high end gear in what? a Lease vehicle.. do you plan on paying the balloon off at the end, what a pain to tear that stuff out after a couple years.. just curious

Car is paid off and purchased.....Surely you figured I wasn't dumb enough to pull the trigger on all this stuff on a car that was going away immediately......(though the plan is only to keep it for between 1 and 3 years)

PoweredByDodge

ouch - audio in a lease vehicle is like buying a girl dinner when she ain't sleepin with you.

PoweredByDodge

neomagus00 wrote:

yeah, but then your bass will go through the center, and it'll get there sooner... you'll get a delay in your highs... duh...


(i didn't make this argument up, btw)

only 0 hz, true DC would travel any more efficiently through the center.

f(low) most amplifiers is 20 Hz... well above 0. no where near mistakable for DC.

regardless... its not a matter of what gets there first. bass, trebble, mid, everything gets there at the same time. you have a waveform -- the waveform is a compliation of various frequencies. whatever the waveform is at t=X seconds is transferred to the other end of the line in tact. assuming a wire with no inductive or capacitive properties other than its own natural ****, the wire itself will not and can not cause any time delay for one freq over the other. any transmission line has a tiny minute abismally small propogation delay, but it is equal for all frequencies right down to 0 hz DC.

DC will simply conduct better through a solid core than AC will. the result is the ability to run (just random number here) say 20 amps DC through the same diameter solid core cable as you would only be able to run 15 amps AC through. i do not know how much of a difference there is - i had to do the math at one point... but i'm honestly completely forgot it -- it varies greatly by wire gauge.

faster100

I was under the impresson that you were a leaser of vehicles, didn't know you owned the car.. was just curious.

PoweredByDodge

if you lease it - you're right - you don't own it.

some dude's just buy and sell cars every few years though. my idiot friend whom i love to death is like that -- he'll buy a car trick it out - sell it 2 years later and get another one - trick it out - and then sell that one too.

brettw22

I was leasing this car, and was going to be purchasing a new one in August when the lease was up, but when I drove 10k miles in the first 10 weeks of my living here, I decided that I didin't want to get a new car and put that kind of mileage on it so I paid the car off and am done with payments on this car. I'm only planning on keeping this specific job for a few years (thus the 2 years or so limit on the install) and when i do sell it i will be pulling out the audio equipment and installing it in the new car at that point.

neomagus00

eh, sounds like a plan to me...

pbd - I knew that, it's the home audio people you should be educating

go here, look up "time correct", and be very very afraid...

Jstas

brettw22 wrote:

...and when i do sell it i will be pulling out the audio equipment and installing it in the new car at that point.

Provided it all fits properly. It's a noble thought but many times, unless you are buying a vehicle from the same manufacturer of which you already own a vehicle that teh audio equipment is in, fitment problems can abound. Usually it's with speakers though but lately, with these over-styled interiors, fitting a head unit that fit your old car into a new car can be next to impossible without custom work.

As far as the Esoteric Audio cables go, they are built just like the Streetwires cables. Same design of ends, same urethane jacketings, they will stand up to an automotive environment as well as the Streetwires cables. At least the ones I have seen are similar in construction, just different materials on the inside.

MacLeod

neomagus00 wrote:

pbd - I knew that, it's the home audio people you should be educating

go here, look up "time correct", and be very very afraid...

That is the stupidest and I mean stupidest, most insulting crock of snake oil bull **** Ive ever heard in my freaking life!!!!

Lets look at this logically shall we.

The signal travels at the speed of light, 186,000 miles per SECOND!! At that speed the signal can orbit the entire earth 7 times in a single second. Thats 98,357,100,000,000 FEET per second. Even if they were somehow able to isolate certain frequencies to a certain part of the cable and then lengthen it say 5 extra feet, it would take the signal about 5 trillionths of a second to travel that distance! You realize how big a trillion is? If you were to count one number per second it would take you 30 years to count to a trillion, and 5 trillionths means it would 1 single second for it to make the trip 5 trillion times! Not only are we incapable of hearing a delay that minute but the speakers would be incapable of even playing it!

Man, the home audio cable manufacturers are worse than politicians. Whats even worse is I guaran-damn-tee ya there are a bunch of people out there that will believe this crock.

Hell I had a Best Buy salesman tell me once that if I didnt run my speaker wires down the center of the truck and at equal lenghts that the delay from the extra length would skew my stage.

All I can say is

brettw22

Actually, the one thing that's not going in the new car is the deck. I'm planning on keeping the stock system and getting one of those JL Clean Sweep boxes that basically cleans up the signal as if it were an aftermarket deck.......but allows me to keep the stock unit in place.......the speakers and amp can be relocated though......

MacLeod

Thats an excellent idea. Using the stock h/u is becoming more and more necessary these days and the Clean Sweep is a great tool to make it work.

I think Polk should look into developing something like that.

neomagus00

i've heard many many great things about that clean sweep... good choice...

MacLeod

Gawd, I just cant get over that Monster BS! Hearing people talk about it is one thing but for a major manufacturer to put it in their literature is mindblowing!

PoweredByDodge

direct copy - monster cable.com

"In interconnect cables we correct these time domain distortions by creating a longer path and higher impedances for the higher frequencies. We cannot speed up the lows, so we must delay the highs. By winding the high frequency conductors to create inductance at those frequencies, we delay them in time to pass through the cable at the same time with the slower lower frequencies. This develops the ability to capture lost phase-related information such as dimensionality, soundstage, imaging and depth."

1- longer path, higher impedances for the high frequencies... so they're saying that they have a crossover network built into each interconnect that divides the lows and highs and then sends them through different cables. At the other end they are somehow re-integrated into a single signal. ya... uh huh... what's the diameter of the ends on these cables? 5 or 6 inches? do the terminals look like softballs? where does this magical separation of frequency device go?

2- winding the high frequency conductors to create inductance at those frequencies. um.... um.... errrr um... no. no... and um, no. inductance at a given frequency creates a low pass crossover at that frequency - its not slowing down the high's - its blocking them.

those guys are on drugs, seriously. drugs.

neomagus00

i'm thinking ketamine, specifically... monster be lost in the k-hole... perhaps a few too many speedballs?

i think they're trying to do some magical hand-waving to invoke the skin effect, saying that the high frequencies will naturally 'choose' the smaller, longer wires on the outside of the thicker core... i think...

PoweredByDodge

neomagus00 wrote:

i think they're trying to do some magical hand-waving to invoke the skin effect, saying that the high frequencies will naturally 'choose' the smaller, longer wires on the outside of the thicker core... i think...

it's frightening... absolutely frightening... that they speak that way.

those people need professional psychiatric help...

more so than i do, which is really bad.

MacLeod

Monster knows that is a bunch of ****, its the home audio and even some in the car audio world that buy into that kinda stuff.

Just browse thru your typical HA forum or talk to your typical HA enthusiast and see what they say about cables and all the wonderful characteristics they have. Monster is just playing along. And dont even get them started on "burn in"!

exalted512

MacLeod wrote:

Just browse thru your typical HA forum or talk to your typical HA enthusiast and see what they say about cables and all the wonderful characteristics they have. Monster is just playing along. And dont even get them started on "burn in"!

Im posting this in the clubhouse
-Cody