Measurements and Conclusion
Contents
We hooked up the Van den Hul – The Nova to our Sourcetronic LCR to get some insight into its characteristics. We measured Capacitance (open measurement), Inductance (end shorted), Impedance (shorted), Resistance (shorted and point to point) and Conductance (point to point).
What is immediately noticeable is the insanely high conductivity: 425 Siemens is really very high, especially if you consider that this cable is three meters long and that we are measuring the connectors as well. Not entirely surprisingly, the resistance is therefore very low; conductance and resistance go hand in hand. Impedance also remains very low: we just hit 1.2 Ohms at 300 KHz. That’s impressive. We have measured cables that go towards 8 Ohm. Many cables reach 3 to 4 Ohms there. In short: this is a very low-resistance cable. And that’s good for a speaker cable.
The capacitance of the cable is on the high side if you look at competitors. Inductance is again very low. The question is still: what is better? Too low capacitance can make amplifiers oscillate. Too high inductance gives coloration. It is often a choice that manufacturers have to make. In fact, they are also connected with “ordinary” cables. With non-metallic conductors, it is quite different again. But we’ll come back to that another time.
