Low capacitance cables

Loheswaran

Well-Known Member
Dec 19, 2014
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My amp likes low capacitance cables. At present I have gone back to DNM after some Nordost.

Do you have any suggestions for good low capacitance cables?

thanks

Lohan
 

Speedskater

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Sep 30, 2010
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Speaker cables or interconnect cables?
Low capacitance speaker cables means that the cable has high loop inductance. So high frequencies can be rolled of with some speakers.
 

Sablon Audio

Industry Expert, VIP Donor
May 22, 2015
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My amp likes low capacitance cables. At present I have gone back to DNM after some Nordost.

Do you have any suggestions for good low capacitance cables?

thanks

Lohan


Look for designs with a fair amount of spacing between polarities and relatively small gauge. Not that they will sound better mind......
 

DaveC

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Nov 16, 2014
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My amp likes low capacitance cables. At present I have gone back to DNM after some Nordost.

Do you have any suggestions for good low capacitance cables?

thanks

Lohan

What amp + speakers?
 

Empirical Audio

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Oct 12, 2017
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My amp likes low capacitance cables. At present I have gone back to DNM after some Nordost.

Do you have any suggestions for good low capacitance cables?

thanks

Lohan

The cables I used to manufacture (ICs), had capacitance of 3.8pF/foot, lowest in the industry. I am selling my cable business and I have a couple of interested buyers, so they may be available again soon. You could look for them used on Audiogon: called "holophonic-PC. They are very good unshielded silver cables.

The thing to understand about capacitance, is that it is always important in interconnects, but particularly critical when driving from most DACs, because the output impedance of most DACs is much higher than the typical SS preamp. A quick back of the envelope calculation will show that even 10-15 pF/foot in a cable will result in roll-off at 20kHz with a DAC and the more typical 50pF/foot is really bad. I would beware the manufacturer that does not publish the capacitance per foot in their product specs.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
 

microstrip

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May 30, 2010
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The cables I used to manufacture (ICs), had capacitance of 3.8pF/foot, lowest in the industry. I am selling my cable business and I have a couple of interested buyers, so they may be available again soon. You could look for them used on Audiogon: called "holophonic-PC. They are very good unshielded silver cables.

The thing to understand about capacitance, is that it is always important in interconnects, but particularly critical when driving from most DACs, because the output impedance of most DACs is much higher than the typical SS preamp. A quick back of the envelope calculation will show that even 10-15 pF/foot in a cable will result in roll-off at 20kHz with a DAC and the more typical 50pF/foot is really bad. I would beware the manufacturer that does not publish the capacitance per foot in their product specs.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

What values are you using for your calculation?
 

Empirical Audio

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What values are you using for your calculation?

try 1K ohms output impedance for the DAC. 2 meters of cable. 100pF/foot for the cable. Destination is 50K input impedance. 10% loss at 20kHz

100 ohm output impedance gives 1% loss at 20kHz

Steve N.
 
Last edited:

Empirical Audio

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Low capacitance is only interesting for interconnects. For speaker cables the inductance and resistance should be as low as possible, within limits of what your particular amp can handle. Some speaker cables that are two flat ribbons laminated together can create too much of a capacitive load for some amps.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
 

microstrip

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try 50 ohms output impedance for the DAC. 2 meters of cable. 50pF/foot for the cable.

Steve N.

This will give a cut off around 1 MHz for a 2 m cable. How can it affect the audio signal audibly using classical models of audibility?
 

Empirical Audio

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This will give a cut off around 1 MHz for a 2 m cable. How can it affect the audio signal audibly using classical models of audibility?

What kid of a metric is cutoff? I can hear 1dB of roll-off. See my updated calculation above.
 

twitch

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Jun 17, 2010
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Low capacitance is only interesting for interconnects. For speaker cables the inductance and resistance should be as low as possible, within limits of what your particular amp can handle. Some speaker cables that are two flat ribbons laminated together can create too much of a capacitive load for some amps.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

not completely the case Steve, electrostatics benefit from lower capacitance cabling.
 

Uk Paul

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Empirical Audio

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Oct 12, 2017
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not completely the case Steve, electrostatics benefit from lower capacitance cabling.

That may be the case. Does the OP have electrostatics?

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
 

DaveC

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It's trivially easy to make low-C cables, but other more balanced approaches work much better ime.
 

microstrip

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It's the 50K input impedance that counts, not the 1K ohms output impedance.

No. Both count. To calculate cut-off you must apply Thevenin theorem. The output impedance is equivalent to referring to an ideal source in series with the output resistance, so the output resistor is grounded and appears in parallel with the input resistance.

If the output impedance is zero cut-off is at infinitum - it does not exist.
 

Empirical Audio

Industry Expert
Oct 12, 2017
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It's the 50K input impedance that counts, not the 1K ohms output impedance.

They both matter. It's a voltage divider.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
 

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