On Wednesday 05 January 2005 22:30, Eric Steinberg wrote: > Guys, guys! Don't waste money on "oxygen-free" cables or other scams. > http://www.roger-russell.com/wire/wire.htm > And: if you use balanced cables (most of the soundcards mentioned, e.g. RME > and Delta 1010 have balanced "tip-ring-sleeve" connections) you can have > very long runs with no audible difference. I regularly use microphone > cables in excess of 1000 meters, in my job as an audio mixer for broadcast > sports, and the sound is hum-free and good enough for broadcast. > Line-level audio signals will go even further- and if you can hear or > measure a difference you have golden Bat ears. > > -Steiny And lets blow away the importance of "Damping Factor" while we're at it... Consider that there is a voice coil in series with that cable and that it is made of comparatively fine ware and will have a real resistance of a few ohms! Obviously the impedance at audio frequencies is higher but at DC it will probably meter to 3-6 ohms or so (This is also highly variable as the coil heats up in operation). Now given that this is a resistance that is in series with the cable, and the output impedance of the amplifier, remind me how exactly any damping factor greater then about 20 is supposed to matter? Ok so there is (possibly) a crossover in there somewhere, but IMHO that is a detail. Regards, Dan.