sjoko2
New member
barefoot said:Here we go again.
If you're talking microphones, that source very low currents and voltages which will subsequently be amplified by dozens of dB's, I'm certainly open to arguments that cables make a difference.
But if your talking speaker cable, NO. There is absolutely no evidence that normal lengths and gauges of speaker wire cause any audible effect. You often hear arguments from the audio mythology crowd about esoteric signal qualities like "microdynamics". Bulllshit.
The resistance, capacitance, inductance, skin effect, phase, ect. of 10 ft (2m) of 12 gauge copper speaker cable alters the signal (both dynamically and overall level) on the order of 0.02dB. This means there is a 0.02dB difference between using speaker wire and directly attaching your speakers to the amplifier. 0.02dB is more than a factor of 10 smaller than the absolute minimum difference threshold of audibility of 0.25dB.
Now if you want to compare the difference between two cables of the same length and gauge, regardless of the design, your looking at effects on the order of 0.0002dB. Speaker parameters are very dependent on temperature and pressure. Simply changing you thermostat by a degree or two Fahrenheit, or a low pressure zone moving into your area will cause responses changes orders of magnitude greater than this.
People always hate to hear this, because they think it makes them look foolish, but the biggest effect of wires on audio is the Placebo effect. The placebo effect is nothing to be scoffed at or ashamed of. It's very real and very powerful. Often in clinical studies of medicines the placebo effect is actually larger than the effect of drugs which are subsequently deemed as "very effective". This is why we always need to look at the numbers. Mathematics and test instruments aren't influenced by suggestion like the frail whims of human perception.
Try psyching yourself into believing that painting you zip cord with green magic marker will dramatically "open up the sound". Magic markers are a lot cheaper then MIT, or Kimber Kable.
barefoot
I'm sorry barefoot ..... but here you go again.........
You often come up with some very decent theory and design principles, but then you manage to counteract it with posts like this, which only proves one thing.......Theory is just theory, until its proven in practise. Until then, its worthless.
Your statements above are absolutely, catagorically not true. There is not just a, but a huge difference. Just a couple of examples:
For feeding a full-range signal to a speaker system:
different frequencies travel through wiring at marginally different speeds. The lower quality the cable, the longer the cable, the more this effect will occur. Simple fact.
A good example. Our 5 way crossover large concert (20.000 people plus) rigs had racks of amps for each frequency section. Each frequency section had its own gauge cable, the lowest frequency section cabling being 4 x the gauge of the high end.
Positioning of the amp racks was determined by the positioning of the subs, as the cabling feeding the subs had to be as short as possible.
In cases where acoustics determined the need for flown subs (often needed to function as a bass trap), we needed to fly amp racks with them, to keep cable lengths short.
NOT doing the above would mean different frequencies arrive at the drivers at different times = bad sound.
Very often in live systems this effect is counteracted by putting different frequency bands out-of-phase, which is by far from the right solution.
Please don't think we hauled 6 wheeled metal-and-canvas dollys with extremely heavy cables around for a placebo effect.......
Later we increased overall sound quality and 'tightness" of the sound even further by direct coupling the amps to the low-end drivers, which, by the way, increased efficiency by over 22%. From the latter, just conclude that efficiency was increased by 22% simply by NOT using cable - could that possibly mean that cable might make a difference?
Here, I have just replaced all the S/PDIF cables with new ones that have a retail value of $109.95 each, after choosing them from a blind test of 4 possibilites, tests with different sounds, 4 different cables, in different sequences. I identified this particular cable each time, and with great ease, because the sound quality was so much superior.
That was digital, in the analogue domain the quality difference is even larger. Take for instance the three top brands, Mogami, Monster and Zaolla, play the same line level through them and listen. You will find that only one out of these three displays a truely linear frequency response.
Cable data is normally provided in terms of resistance, inductance and capacity, measured over a certain measurement unit, from 20 to 20k. Equally, or more importand figures are hardly ever given, essential data such as the standing wave reflection and linearity. The reason these figures are not readily provided is simple, they are lousy but in the best cables available.
In the end barefoot, there is only one measurement. I suggest that one day you go into a real accurate listening environment, hook some cables up and listen to the characteristics of each one.
) a, you could say amplified example.
