It’s usually negligible. Ideally, you just want the impedance and capacitance to be as low as possible. Most cable is 0.04 to 0.02 ohms per foot, not enough to matter for most headphone cable lengths.
Also, the cable is in series with the headphone, so using your example, if you had a 10ohm cable and a 300 ohm headphone, you would have a 310 ohm load on the circuit. (Any cable giving you 10ohms better be 100’ long…) If you replaced that with a .5ohm cable (about 15 feet of Mogami quad), you’d have 300.5 ohms.
The difference in power delivered to the headphone is very small, and you may not even notice a change in volume between the two.
Does anyone have a good source and recommendation for the really good mini xlrs like ZMF? I’d like to try making a couple of Hart type interconnects. Handy little buggers.
Go to Markertek and search for 4 pin mini female xlr’s. If you are building pigtails, you will want to look for both male and female versions. Switchcraft, Rean (Neutrik) and other companies make them.
Best can be tricky, I like the way the Rean are marked and I have never had one fail. I have also used Switchcraft and Amphenol I believe and those are excellent parts. On most of my headphone cables I use pigtails so I can change out 1/4 inch, 3.5 mm, and four pin XLR connectors without having to disconnect from the headphones each time. I run a company and we have sent out thousands of custom cables using those three companies with excellent results.
The Furutech connectors are better made, easier to work with, and are more compact (thus don’t stick into your shoulder if you tilt your head with your headphones on).
But you do you. They are expensive, and I get why people may not want to go that way. The Rean are perfectly usable.
The only thing I don’t understand is why rhodium is built up so much. Wouldn’t having copper or even gold be better for conductivity?
Rhodium is very low in that degree
Rhodium (and other less-conductive than copper or silver materials) are used because a) it’s hard and b) it doesn’t oxidize (or at least, does so with such little reactivity that the effects are irrelevant).
Copper oxide, which forms naturally on any untreated copper surface over time is a much worse conductor (technically an insulator) than gold or Rhodium. So either you regularly clean your connectors, or fairly quickly the copper becomes a worse conductor at the point of interface.
That said, we’re talking about so little of it that as a plating on a connector it that the difference in conductivity is irrelevant.
Again, the practical effects on conductivity are largely immaterial. The change in resistance over a half inch, while large in % terms is actually meaningless (or at least lost in the weeds) when considering the overall assembly.
You want to see poor conductivity, look at the ratings for most common solders! (You’re talking 1/10th of that of simple copper).
How about using straight silver? Would that be hard? I didn’t know that it would not stop the conductivity by a lot. I always assumed it was a dam in a river having a lower metal in the connector
Silver is too soft/malleable to use for the connectors themselves and as a plating and will ablate quickly. It is also worse than copper in terms of oxidization.
Wires in parallel is another factor, I might use four or eight strand.
