QED Performance Audio Cable 1 m Graphite

Does spending more on interconnect cables really improve the sound heard? Well, I've always been in the 10% of your equipment value should be what you spend on cables and I feel its served me well over the years. I recently purchased a secondhand CD player, wanting to play the many 100's of CDs I own. So applying my own rule of 10% would mean £9.50. So purchase a £9.50 cable and it sounds fine. It doesn't sound open, spacious or give a detailed sound I know the cd player is capable of producing. When new the player new, the cd player retailed at £400. I decided to not spend the 10% as I'd already spent £9.50, so decided to try 20 -30 spend and saw the QED performance graphite. I've used QED in the past, they make a fine cable, but I found they had lost their sparke of the last few years. Anyway, order was placed and item arrived next day. Nicely packaged in a printed box with 2 velcro cable ties holding the cable. In the hand, the cable feels nice and well made. The quality extends to the phono connectors at each end of the cable. Plastic tabs below them showing positive or negative connection. The metal connectors are finished in gold and feel as if they have a amount of coating upon them. I couldn't see any arrows on the cable to show the connection direction (some cables do and must be connected according to the arrow.) Once installed, I inserted London Grammar CD and the track Hey Now started to play. This track has a massive bass and beautiful haunting vocals. The QED has opened the sound stage wide, the vocals have a sweet, delicate echo, floating at the centre of the soundstage. I can hear instruments clearly and hear what each one is doing. The cable appears to be working well with the CD so I load up Tool 10,000 days CD, an album I know inside out. Jambi, the second track is a tour de force of guitars, drums, bass and vocals which with the old cable, got lost. Not so with the QED. The soundstage is massive, spacious creating a wonderful wall of detailed noise. In this track is a huge bass roll off and old cables have not been able to communicate it well, no so the QED. When the bass roll off arrives, it rumbles deeply and heavily as it should. After Tool, Jeff Buckley Grace and the QED impressed me again with how open, spacious and detailed it is.Now, it could be said that cables do have a placebo effect so I gave the cables the ultimate test, the wife. I played one track twice, once with the £9.50 cable then with the QED. I didn't say what I was doing, I just asked to say which one she preferred and why.The track was chosen by her, ABBA Dancing Queen. After listening twice, asking why she couldn't hear the next song and some tutting, she said she preferred the second listen as it sounded better, the voices were clearer and remarked she had never heard "that guitar thingy" before. I rest my case.Should you buy this cable, that's for you to decide and I hope my review will help you to make they choice. That being said, for the money, it's a brilliant cable and the wife heard "guitar thingy" in Dancing Queen so that's high praise indeed.

Higher quality than the QED budget range while remaining affordable.Nice firm fitment of the rca plugs with attractive and sturdy thick cable with heavy metal terminated rca plugs, premium feel without the premium price tag.Works well and sounds fantastic. Thank you QED.

Overall high quality materials, fit and finish.Connections feel positive to use, sound is as transparent as you could expect at this price point.

I was looking for a reasonably priced cable to replace one of the standard "free" cables that are supplied with a lot of hi-fi equipmentThis cable fitted the bill, and the brand is well known and admired. At less than £30 per metre it was a bargain so I ordered one.The cable comes well packaged and is very smart looking. This may seem a trivial point but many people prefer a good looking cable.I installed it between my Phono pre-amp and my amplifier and it did seem to sound a little better. I really need a new amplifier tbh, so it may only be then that I see (or rather hear) the benefitI need more interconnects so I may well buy more of these as they are well priced

I am one of those people who thinks all this fuss about cables is a bit of 'smoke and mirrors' in that people rave about this that and the other when there is little noticeable difference from one cable to another. However...I recently connected my 20+ year old Marantz CD player (with its 20+ year old cables...) to my new Denon amplifier and was rather disappointed with the sound. Ordered these QED cables and have just fitted them - the difference is SIGNIFICANT both in terms of volume and clarity. Not ridiculously expensive, very good quality and may well have changed my views on cables generally...

These cables were bought originally to go between a pre and power amp pair before a later equipment change necessitated balanced cabling. They were repurposed to link the phono pre with the preamp, for which they work very very well. Sonically they're an excellent, transparent, neutral-sounding cable that offer great resolution, at least with a vinyl source.One fitment issue to mention is that the cables are very well constructed, and are reinforced, about 100mm in from each end, with a moulded restraint between the left and right, the rest of the cable length between these moulded restraints is joined. This became a problem only as the power amp is a dual mono design with the input RCA jacks approximately 150mm apart and there was no way these siamese cables could be used in such an implementation. This one fitment constraint aside, the connectors are high quality and snug fitting, the cabling is very well shielded and seems to very transparent. Recommended!

Connection too loose, kept popping out, sound quality hit and miss,

High quality construction. It's really not worth risking using the poor quality cables that sometimes come with devices, you're doing your hifi a disservice. Always been happy with QED and had trouble finding something that wasn't crazy expensive in a brand I'd actually heard of and had previous experience with. The only time I had a (slight) disappointment with a QED cable was a PS3 HDMI cable, I think the little metal tag with the logo on it came unstuck from the cable. The cable itself was fine though.It's hard to find phono / RCA cable these days, especially quality ones. I bought it for a friend who wanted to connect their all-in-one record / cassette / radio / MP3 player that already has a built-in amp to their new Denon amp / 5.1 speakers combo, from the left / right stereo outputs. This wasn't un-amplified "phono" like you usually (or at least used to) get from record players / turntables. It was to replace the mono (?) built in speaker(s?) of the record player.Just the job. Don't skimp on your cables folks (but don't spend hundreds!)