Melodika BSSC4500 Review: Are Thicker Speaker Cables Better?

Pick #6 of 13 in our Best Hi-Fi Accessories guide.

Speaker cables are the place where resistance plays the biggest role in loudspeaker systems. That's a signal path element where you can no longer hope that a balanced audio connection will do its thing and help you out with noise. There's usually no shielding or error correction, as it's a fully passive stage, so you just have to hope the signal stays high-quality through the entire road from your power amplifier to your speakers.

Recently I reviewed the BSSC3300 series cables from Melodika. But it's a great time for an upgrade. The BSSC4500 is a higher-tier model with a thicker diameter, more copper, lower resistance, and around 50% higher price tag. Let's see how it performs in comparison and find out whether thicker speaker cables are better, or not.

A thicker cable, best bought short

They come in various lengths, but as always, in most cases, you should get the shortest one that's just long enough to reach your speakers, plus some extra. In my case, that's 2.5 meters. That's a bit too long, and I would optimally aim for 2 meters, but that's what I'm working with today. It's important not to go crazy and have many meters of unnecessary cable being looped somewhere for no reason. It introduces unwanted resistance and other effects that are detrimental to good sound quality. Of course, it's no huge deal, but if you're trying to optimize your audio setup, it's better to do it the proper way.

They're also available in two connector variants: either bananas or spades. I have the version with banana plugs, which is the connection type I tend to prefer.

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The cables from Melodika I previously reviewed were just over 3mm thick in diameter. These however are 4.5mm. That might not sound like much, but even from a listening distance, you can notice it easily. That makes for a premium feel and adds some weight, which emphasizes this effect.

Spiral LITZ with a 0.85 mm² BassCore

It uses 6N purity OFC copper as a conductor.

It features their Spiral LITZ technology, which means that every single wire of this cable is individually insulated, so it doesn't make contact with the other wires, and they're all twisted, which results in greatly reduced skin effect and self-interference.

The cable features triple dielectric insulation with LDPE, which makes it suitable for in-wall runs and safe for situations where the cable is in contact with any conductive material, which can happen in HiFi systems.

Additionally, the cable is terminated with Solid Grip technology, which involves tightly pressing the conductors, eliminating free spaces between them, which makes for more efficient current transfer and lower losses in the places where there normally would be air gaps - and as we all know, air is an insulator, not a conductor.

Regarding conductors, lots of different diameters are used, from a thick BassCore that's 0.85mm² and is made for lower frequencies, to lots of much thinner internal wires that are great for the highs. This cable is a combination of elements that result in being great for every frequency range.

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What's nice to see is a 10-year warranty. While you're unlikely to ever need that, it inspires confidence in the product, as the company is committed to replacing it within 10 years from purchase, in case anything goes wrong.

Tighter mid-bass and clearer spacing

Watch this part (3:28)

Are thicker cables any better than identical thinner ones? It depends on a few factors.

The first of them is your system's resolving capability. If it's a pair of tiny speakers that aren't positioned well, a cheap DAC, and a mediocre amplifier without power filtering, no speaker cable is going to make your system sound good. There are lots of people who do not understand this very thing and are calling cables snake oil because of this fact. But if your system's got some serious resolving power and is dialed in just right, then thicker cables can step up your sound game.

In my experience, these bad boys delivered tighter, punchier mid-bass that my old cables just weren't able to. This is a clear upgrade over its little brother.

Dynamic range is one of the main things that makes a system impressive. When your friends come in, you want them to be wowed by your system - to feel the impact of the music and discover details they might have missed before.

Another thing that happened was seemingly more space between instruments and vocals. They didn't get disconnected at all - simply less blended in with each other, which made it a bit easier to listen to. Maybe that's because there are more individual conductors in the cable, and since it's a LITZ cable they're separated. Either way, the sound also got a bit more natural, ever so slightly warmer, and a bit more lifelike.

That's something I'm mainly chasing in my system: realism. Upgrading speaker cables got me just one step closer to achieving that.