Pudney Premium Gold Dolby 5.1 Audio Cable

An affordable solution for SACD

By Michael Jones

August 2005

Pudney Premium Gold Dolby 5.1 Audio Cable. $89.90 for 1m

Pudney 5.1 cable A digital transmission method for SACD and DVD-A audio signals from a player to an AV receiver makes perfect sense. The paranoia of music companies put the kibosh on common sense, effectively outlawing a digital method.

Instead, users of a SACD or DVD-A player need to run six analog cables between the player and a multi-channel receiver, equipped with multi-channel analog inputs (that's just about all of them, these days). This can create a mess behind the equipment rack.

Quality counts?

Plus there's also the issue of cable quality. If you're using SACD, then you'll want to use better cables than the cheap'n'nasties that came in the box. Yet, with the advent of very affordable universal disk players, such as the Pioneer 676, spending a fortune on cables doesn't make financial sense.

Enter Pudney and Lee, suppliers of cables and connectors found in most New Zealand hi-fi and electronics shops. As part of the revised Pudney Premium Gold range, the company came up with a solution for both the problems outline above.

The Pudney "Dolby 5.1 Audio Cable" (terrible name, guys) solves both the problems outlined above. The six analog cables are housed in a sheath, keeping the cables together. Plus the cable is priced at $89 for a one metre length (a bit more for longer lengths), making it very affordable for users of budget universal players.

But how does it sound?

Six degrees of separation

I made a few comparisons in stereo, using the Pioneer 676 into my Plinius 8150. Comparisons were made with Kimber PBJ, which costs more as a stereo pair than the Pudney six-channel cable. At the other extreme, the point of comparison was with the free cable that comes with many DVD players, with three cores for two audio channels plus composite video. I used this cable as two of them would make the ultimate cheapie 5.1 audio cable.

The Pudney cable was not as good as the more expensive Kimber. While the Pudney cable was fine on its own, the Kimber cable had more of everything - more ease to the sound, better defined bass etc.

But the Pudney cable was well ahead of the freebie cable, in many the same ways as the Kimber was ahead of the Pudney. Even with a low-priced universal player, such as the Pioneer, it's worth buying this cable.

So the Pudney 5.1 cable does its good and does it well. It sounds better than the freebie cable, eases the cable confusion behind the equipment rack and offers great value.

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