For years it has been well understood in home audio that cables
can have a tremendous impact on a sound system, both good and
bad. Choose the right cables and you can expect a system to come
to life. Choose poorly designed cables, and you may forever be
wondering why you can't get your system to come to life.
Car audio however, has been a different story. While many
companies still offer coaxial interconnect cables, most have
come to realize that the basic twisted pair design offers far
better noise rejection in a vehicle. And then... Nothing. That's
it. Innovation seems to have hit a brick wall at the shielded
twisted pair interconnect in car audio. This begs the question;
Should Cars Have High End Audio Cables?
To begin with, let's briefly go back to home audio. After many
years of fighting an uphill battle, the idea that cables make a
difference has become a mainstream ideology amongst audiophiles.
But it isn't just audiophiles who can hear the difference. In
fact, in our own testing, the differences can be heard by just
about anybody, even on very modest audio systems. It just takes
a willingness to discard any preconceived notions and actually
listen to some music.
So, if cables make a difference in home audio, is there a reason
why it shouldn't matter in car audio? The quick answer is no.
The following outlines some of the reasons why cables matter
just as much, if not more, in car audio.
- Cable Length - Longer Cables Generally Do More Sonic Damage
Many people are under the impression that car audio uses shorter
cables than home audio, and therefore does not need to bother
with high fidelity cables. This is completely incorrect. While
the typical interconnect length in a home audio system is about
1 meter, vehicles will frequently use 5 or 6 meter interconnects
to put amplifiers in the trunk. In terms of speaker cables, car
audio almost always uses cables longer than the 6-8 feet used in
most home audio setups.
- Environment - Cables Are Affected By Their Environment
Vehicles represent a far more challenging environment for cables
than home audio systems. Two typical sources of noise in cables
are Electro-Magnetic Interference (EMI) and Radio Frequency
Interference (RFI). In vehicles, the entire chassis is
frequently used as the ground return path. This allows noise
from car components such as the alternator to be inducted into
the audio cables via EMI. In terms of RFI, unless proper
shielding is used, the longer cables in cars will act as
antennas and pull in more noise. A third source of noise in a
vehicle is vibration. This is of course far worse in a vehicle
than in a home system. Pear Cable is the first company to bring
out a car audio cable that virtually eliminates the noise caused
by cable vibration. The TRIBODeadÔ technology present in the
Comice Silver Interconnect is an electrically conductive plastic
layer that prevents static electrical charges, caused by
vibration, from building up in the cable.
- Is Quality Sound Just for Home Audio or does it have a Place
in Car Audio Too?
Some people feel that a car audio sound system will never be as
good as a home audio system, and therefore high fidelity cables
are a waste of money in a car. This is a faulty conclusion. The
experience of listening to music in your vehicle while driving
down the highway is unique and cannot be replicated in the home
audio environment. The bottom line here is that many people
spend more time listening to their car audio system than their
home system, and they want it to be the best that it can be. The
characteristics of bad audio cables (listening fatigue, poor
realism, overly bright treble, or general noise) will all still
be audible in a car audio system. Just like home audio, the
wrong cables in your vehicle will kill the listening experience.
At the end of the day, many people want quality sound in their
vehicles. If you are installing an aftermarket system in your
vehicle and you care about sound quality, you need to care about
cables. If you are only interested in having the loudest car,
without regards to accuracy, then high fidelity audio cables
probably aren't for you. Otherwise, it simply doesn't make sense
to shell out good money on amplifiers and speakers, only to hook
it all up with mediocre wire. Car audio enthusiasts are every
bit as serious as home audio enthusiasts, and now there is
finally a cable company that is serious about serving their
needs.
About the author:
Pear Cable, Inc. http://www.pearcable.com
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