About Cables and Interconnects  Most people know that cables and interconnects are necessary to connect all the different pieces of equipment in a home theater together, but few realize how important the quality of the cables is. We learned this lesson long ago because having been in the the custom installation of A/V equipment for many years, we have had many installations sabotaged by inferior cables. We now know that a high level of cable quality is mandatory in a home theater installation or you are bound to get troubles. And this level usually excludes the standard cables that are given to you "free" by a manufacturer when you buy equipment. The first thing we do when doing a professional home theater installation is to discard those freebie cables and use ones of a higher quality. (Note: there is a good reason why those cables and interconnects are free. They cost the manufacturer very little to include.) Just in case you think we are constructing an argument to sell expensive cables, let us reiterate a frequent question. If inexpensive cables cause so many problems, why do manufacturers bother to include them with their products? Answer: because in 90% of the installations out there (i.e. those involving small, 27"-50" televisions) lower quality doesn't matter, because you can't see or hear the cable's imperfections. Now use some of these inexpensive cables and interconnects in a 100" home theater installation and you may see lots of interference in the picture and hear hum in the audio. What we have done in assembling our line of wires and cables is to offer what we feel is the best cables in two price ranges. Our first level of cables we sell under the CinemaSource brand name. We have personally tested these cables and feel that they are perfectly satisfactory for 99.9% of the installations out there. However, if you have "Golden Ears or eyes", or just want absolutely the cleanest audio and video that you can buy, then consider our high-end line. We have chosen this line from a number of manufacturers and you will find that they provide excellent performance without the excessively high cost of most high end interconnects. When you are constructing your home theater and you find that you need wires and cables not listed in this catalog, give us a call. We have many "Off-Sheet" quality cables for special applications, such as computer interfacing, etc. What kind of distortions can occur with poor quality cables? A cable or interconnect should be "transparent" to the signal traveling over it. It should pass the signal along in it's pure, unadulterated, original form. In our experience, the most annoying tendency of inferior cables is to allow local interference distortion to leak in. Secondary to that are more subtile effects involving frequency, phase and termination distortions. Let's look at each type: Local Interference Distortions The cables and wires used in a home theater system are in essence, long pieces of wire, and long pieces of wire act like antennas to various noise sources. The two most common noise sources in the average home are local broadcast stations and 60 Hz AC power wiring. Local broadcast stations can be a number of different types. The most common are local television stations, AM and FM radio stations, Ham radio and other RF (Radio Frequency) sources. These sources of interference can be very powerful and can easily radiate into your A/V system to cause wavy lines throughout the video picture. House AC power wiring, on the other hand, can induce "60 Hz Hum " throughout a A/V system, which you can see in your video picture and hear in your speakers. We find 60 hz Interference plagues many home theater installations. The solution usually is to replace poorly shielded cables and interconnects with higher quality ones. Frequency Distortions If you analyze the physical construction any cable you find a textbook example of a passive filter network. The diagram above illustrates this. The effect of having a filter network in line with an electrical signal is to attenuate (reduce) the different signal frequencies in differing amounts. For example: with an video cable; the video image would lose sharpness because the higher frequencies are reduced. With an audio cable; you would lose the higher frequency sounds. (Note: it is often said that cables act as "tone controls" in an audio system. Frequency distortion is the reason for this.) Unfortunately, there is no way to eliminate these effects entirely, but through proper engineering the frequency attenuation effects can be reduced to imperceptible levels.   Phase Distortions Because cables act like passive filters, they also impart phase (time) distortions. What happens is this; because signals of different frequencies travel through wires at different speeds, the effect is that higher frequencies actually arrive at the end before lower frequencies do! There are two fronts on which to attack this problem. First, engineers can design the cable so that the values of R, L and C are as low as possible. Second, they can construct the cable with wires of multiple gauges so that the higher frequencies are transmitted slower and thus match the speed of the lower frequencies. This is what is done with most high end cables. Termination Distortions All cables have a certain impedance (resistance to current flow.) For example, the impedance of RG-6 coax cable is supposed to be exactly 75 Ohms. The manufacturers of Audio/Video equipment design their units to match the impedance of the cables connected. The problem is that some cables are "not to spec" and do not match the 75 Ohm equipment impedance. The result is a signal "reflection" that appears as ghosts and other nasty distortions in the video picture. Another way that termination distortions can occur is when interconnect plugs oxidize and "non-linear effects" occur. That is why the best cables have 24 karat gold plated connectors.