Cable whose diameter increases along its length?

[Hardy Heinlin]

I have a one year old beyerdynamic headphone and today I noticed this: Near the headphone the cable is circa 5 mm thick. Half a meter down the line its about 4 mm. One meter from the headphone and for the remaining two meters its circa 3 mm thick. The variation is gradual, not stepwise.

Now I wonder if this is a design feature to make the cable near the body area more robust, whereas the rest of the cable usually just lies on the floor or desk without any motion, and therefore doesn't need to be more robust.

Or it's a chemical effect that developped over the past year :-)

Has anybody else ever seen this on any cable?


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[Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers]

Don't rule out that it is a design feature to impress audiophiles. In the same category as wires that have been optimized for electricity flow in a specific direction.    :-)

I guess it is indeed mechanical. Dark magic R/F effects only appear at much higher frequencies, as far as I know. Also, it may not at all be the copper core that is thicker, it may be just the isolation, which makes a lot of sense. Moulding it into the cable itself is much nicer than the usual over-the-cable last 5 cm of reinforcement.


Hoppie

[Hardy Heinlin]

Yes, I meant the isolation, not the copper.

It's really interesting; I think it saves a lot of PVC. Just the critical section near the human body needs to be thick. No need to waste so much PVC on the remaining section.

If a modern production machine can do this gradually, just do it :-)


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