I'll take the stand your honour.
Cal,
I see you're quite accustomed to courtroom procedure. Hmmmmmm...
Cal,
I see you're quite accustomed to courtroom procedure. Hmmmmmm...
If the connection is !@#$, you must acquit!
That's why gold plated terminals are popular. Gold is soft, so the two surfaces conform to each other forming a nice capacitance-free connection with no air gaps. Gold also does not oxidize like copper, And it looks pretty! It also helps to solder the wire to the terminal.
Less connections in the signal path (never a bad thing); also they don't behave in exactly the same way. Wire makes for resistance that varies with the load at the bottom end, whereas your average carbon / whatever resistor is generally [fairly] constant. Fostex pulled this one a decade or so back IIRC, with a solid tungsten wire loom. Worth it / enough of a difference to bother about? Make your own mind up. As far as I'm concerned, life suddenly becomes far too short when people start thinking too much about wire. It's wire. Not the most interesting subject on the planet. There again, since I'm a naval historian specialising in the period ~1870 - 1910, I'm not best placed to decide what falls under the definition of 'interesting'...
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'Wire makes for resistance that varies with the load at the bottom end, whereas your average carbon / whatever resistor is generally [fairly] constant. Fostex pulled this one a decade or so back IIRC, with a solid tungsten wire loom'
A bit like a light-bulb fillament then. A wire that dopes down the bass dynamics! But no need to solder anything. Sure winner!
A bit like a light-bulb fillament then. A wire that dopes down the bass dynamics! But no need to solder anything. Sure winner!
I wouldn't be quite as negative as all that. As I think I've stated three times now, I don't recommend it. Equally though, I don't automatically write it off. What I do say is that it is something that can be done, but like anything else, it should be done for a specific reason, and that you know exactly what that is, what you are doing, why, and the advantages / disadvantages entailed. Randomly stuffing high resistance of any kind into xyz is rarely a good idea. If you have an application where some is needed (not unusual in single-driver systems), then it is an option that may be assessed, and either rejected or explored based on circumstances and inclination.
Since you seem to be interested, back around the turn of the century there was a brief flurry of interest in the 'States for using 30ga magnet wire at speaker level, although I don't think anybody who tried it was really bothering to design specifically with this in mind, so it was purely for the sake of experiment / fun. As I recall, the general consensus was that the mids / HF were subjectively improved, as was bass gain. Hardly surprising, when you consider that the v. thin conductors couldn't handle much in the way of LF current demands, so its dynamic range was limited compared to the higher frequencies, making them seem more prominant; ditto the fact that the extra resistance had raised Re, lowered B*L, Qe, so changing the box alignment. The fad didn't last for long, given the physical impracticality of the conductors, & that you really need a v. high efficiency system to be trying this. A few went on to experiment with resistive wire in more practical gauges though, the aforementioned tungsten that Fostex used being one example.
Since you seem to be interested, back around the turn of the century there was a brief flurry of interest in the 'States for using 30ga magnet wire at speaker level, although I don't think anybody who tried it was really bothering to design specifically with this in mind, so it was purely for the sake of experiment / fun. As I recall, the general consensus was that the mids / HF were subjectively improved, as was bass gain. Hardly surprising, when you consider that the v. thin conductors couldn't handle much in the way of LF current demands, so its dynamic range was limited compared to the higher frequencies, making them seem more prominant; ditto the fact that the extra resistance had raised Re, lowered B*L, Qe, so changing the box alignment. The fad didn't last for long, given the physical impracticality of the conductors, & that you really need a v. high efficiency system to be trying this. A few went on to experiment with resistive wire in more practical gauges though, the aforementioned tungsten that Fostex used being one example.
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Having plenty of CAT5/6 cable available due to my previous employment..I thought that it would make sense to use it. It sucked the life out of my sound. It was beyond obvious to me upon listening to it. I substituted some nice, thick power cable from networking equipment...and the difference more obvious than expected.
What parameters of the cables changed most?
The inductance, or the resistance, or the capacitance?
I will suggest, no insist, that what you heard was the effect of those changed parameters on what the amplifier was able to output and the speaker was able to interpret.
You were not hearing the cables. You were hearing the changed performance of the amplifier and speaker combination when you changed the reactances between them.
The cable "sucked the life out of my sound". Rubbish. You changed the reactance that the speaker saw and the reactance that the amplifier saw. Just as my previous post pointed out.
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