I discovered a fairly cost effective upgrade that surprisingly gives you a noticeable improvement bang for your buck. I figured it’s something we never talk about in here as an “upgrade” and normally there’s not too much exciting to say about them, they are just RCA cables, but good ones are undeniably better than cheapos so I figured I’d bring it up since these really do make a fairly big improvement instantly upon installation.
The cables I just bought (one for each turntable) are a high quality “coax-like” cable
3' Belden 1505A High Quality/ Studio Grade Analog RCA Stereo Cables. I bought
THESE from Ebay seller “Complete Cable Concepts” who has great prices and great service BTW. At only 20 bucks a pair, in comparison to other cables of about that same quality that usually go for 30 a pair at
www.bluejeanscable.com.
So what makes them so special?
Most importantly the thickness and caliber of the cables themselves along with shielding, shielding and more shielding. Wanna kill some quiet but still noticeable bleed thru noise of other electronics even though you have a good ground? Want to hear no low level hum, high pitched white noise or external interference at all even at high volume. Want to hear crisper highs and cleaner lows? That shielding with this cabling does that for you.
The RCA Jacks themselves are also of high quality parts that get a nice tight contact. They are short, only 3 feet long, because the shorter the better and the less likely noise is going to effect the cables themselves.
I noticed an substantial improvement comparing these RCA cables to my stock cables that came with my decks (which I thought were pretty good before I tried these).
This is especially noticeable on classical records where there are quiet parts that are now very clean. I like to crank my classical and if you crank it too high before these I’d hear faint but noticeable noise or even a slight white noise sound, now that is gone and I can truly crank it and hear none of that. All I hear is the record.
The only drawback to these is that they are fairly rigid so they don’t hide as easily, instead of tucking them easily they make long arc turns. I’m ok with that, I think that is a small price to pay with such a big reward on audio quality improvements.
This is highly recommended to people who like to crank it loud looking to get rid of any low level noises at a fair price.
Available at Ebay (Link above) or also available for a bit more at www.bluejeanscable.com. Bluejeans Cable can be customized by length and are made to order so that's why they are more but they are also HQ cables.
BTW: Record shown above is Rimsky-Korsakov - Scheherazade LP with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra on Angel Records
“Lesser artists borrow... great artists steal.” - Igor Stravinsky
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