I would suggest a USB soundcard, for ease of use. Doesn't have to be expensive for measurements like this.
REW (Room EQ Wizard) is a popular free software, as is HOLMImpulse. RightMark is also very useful, and there are others. ARTA is very nice, and you can use the free version that does not save files.
How much do you want to spend on a soundcard, and do you think that you will ever buy a measurement mic to g with it?
I was wondering if soundcard can make accurate measurement. I mean physically one has to run some wires from the sound card to the speaker terminals which in themselves can have unknown parasitic effects. Also one needs another pair of wire running from the sound card to the amplifier terminal which will affect the output impedance of the amplifier too.
I guess when measuring frequency response for xover design or speaker drivers parameter, it's OK because some of the transient may not matter much and you can do a lot of averaging to get accurate results.
Ideally you need some very good high impedance probes to get accurate measurement at the same time does not affect the DUT under measurement. These probes have very short leads otherwise they themselves can cause a lot of ringing. At the place I used to work for, if I remember correctly, these probes are not cheap.
At my currently place where I am working, we have some inexpensive scope and probes but they don't have enough bandwidth to get accurate measurements.
I guess when measuring frequency response for xover design or speaker drivers parameter, it's OK because some of the transient may not matter much and you can do a lot of averaging to get accurate results.
Ideally you need some very good high impedance probes to get accurate measurement at the same time does not affect the DUT under measurement. These probes have very short leads otherwise they themselves can cause a lot of ringing. At the place I used to work for, if I remember correctly, these probes are not cheap.
At my currently place where I am working, we have some inexpensive scope and probes but they don't have enough bandwidth to get accurate measurements.
In total agreement with that ... the perceived sound i get varies sometimes daily due to mood , tiredness and probably even the weather
In my early days of Hi-Fi i got sucked in by cable claims spending a lot of money in the process .Over the years i gradually learnt to trust my own ears not what i was told i was hearing .I do find cables make some difference , the biggest changes for me apparent between stranded and solid core.
Nothing can justify spending £120 k on a couple of lengths of wire , £ 5 per metre is my absolute limit now and my own " go to " brand being Van Damme in recent years.
As others have touched on one of the best " upgrades " you can do is simply cutting your cables back to expose fresh wire and re - connecting every few months this ALWAYS improves things.
Personally if i was lucky enough to be able to spend ridiculous amounts on a few bits of wire i would rather use my money to heip those less fortunate rather than pointing them out to visitors and saying
" See them ,120 k " .
Yes, and I have verified the accuracy using calibrated pro equipment. I wrote a seven part series in AudioXpress detailing it piece by piece with a minimum of handwaving and a maximum of data and analysis.
I agree that changing cables can make a difference which increases with length and yes it is madness to spend large on them, £5 per meter gets you as good as you need i recon. I was using Van Damme speaker cables until quite recently, i'm now using QED stuff QED Ruby Anniversary Evolution
Only 10 foot runs but it did make a small difference, it seems to have improved definition, bass notes are a bit tighter. It's not the easiest stuff to work with though.
I like to solder the connectors but it's still good to disconnect then reconnect occasionally to scrape oxidization off.
My system seems unaffected by by changing interconnects, as long as they are decent and kept short.
Only 10 foot runs but it did make a small difference, it seems to have improved definition, bass notes are a bit tighter. It's not the easiest stuff to work with though.
I like to solder the connectors but it's still good to disconnect then reconnect occasionally to scrape oxidization off.
My system seems unaffected by by changing interconnects, as long as they are decent and kept short.
You can purchase back issues from AudioXpress through their website. Audiomatica reprinted Part 7 of the series on their website, so you might be able to glean a few bits from it.
http://www.audiomatica.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/Yaniger-AXPress-December2015.pdf
It is seriously easy to do simple frequency response measurements (you only need to do electronic ones, not acoustic), but you have to have enough motivation to do some googling. It takes less energy than swapping wires!
http://www.audiomatica.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/Yaniger-AXPress-December2015.pdf
It is seriously easy to do simple frequency response measurements (you only need to do electronic ones, not acoustic), but you have to have enough motivation to do some googling. It takes less energy than swapping wires!
Excellent. Keep us in the loop, so to speak.He was, more or less, right.andy2 said:
Other things being equal, more inductance will reduce high frequencies. In most cases you won't notice, though.
You noticed a difference between two different 8in cables? Are you serious?
You want the cable series impedance to be similar to or less than the amplifier output impedance, much less than the speaker impedance, and not varying too much with frequency. An 8in length of almost anything conductive will do this. Similarly, you want the shunt impedance to be much higher than the speaker impedance. Almost any insulator will do this. Hence copper in PVC is fine for speaker cables; mains house wiring cable is about the cheapest way to buy this, but it is not very flexible.
Silver is certainly bright - when you look at it. When you use it as a conductor for audio frequencies it is remarkably similar to copper.
Very slightly higher conductance, so very slightly lower resistance - negligibly so. No difference in inductance and capacitance, as these are determined by cable geometry, not conductor metal (assuming not ferromagnetic).
Not possible in this universe, as we can't speed up light.
That is possible, although it would be a strange design.
I think if you actually do some sums instead of repeating old wive's tales gleaned from the internet you will find that short audio cables don't resonate at anything like audio frequencies so they can't cause the effects you describe.
Believing in good cables is a faith position based on internet chatter, not facts. Believing that one needs a high resolution system to tell the difference is a fundamentalist faith position, propagated to ensure that the faithful keep the faith.
You may be confusing the highly engineered and rather expensive RF probes used at GHz frequencies and 50 ohm impedance for things like wideband oscilloscopes and vector network analysers, with the cheap piece of wire you need for a short audio connection.
I recently renovated an appartment whose entire electrical installation had been done with stranded wires and cables thirty years ago... and it was not pretty. Building regulations make it mandatory to put solid core wire into the walls for a reason...
- Screws don't work on stranded wire. Some of the wall outlets were literally hanging by a few threads. Fire hazard! Screws loosen, too.
- Copper oxidizes and can be corroded by airborne contaminants. Stranded wire has a much higher surface area and is thus much more prone to corrosion. Also, oxygen and contaminants creep into the wire, allowing it to oxidize and corrode even inside the insulator. Some sockets in the kitchen and bathroom had the copper blackened greenish, strands prone to breaking... quite a lot of corrosion.
In order to make a reliable screw connection to stranded wire, either dip in solder, or use dirt-cheap crimp terminations.
All I am going to say is inductance and capacitance are not "real" impedance. They store and release energy.
The series inductance will store energy but when it releases it can potentially spike up to higher potential which will create higher harmonics at high frequency. The same principle is used to make up convert voltage regulator where you get higher output voltage than your input voltage.
While it's true that the series inductance and shunt capacitance will eventually form a low pass filter, but before it can get there, there will be ringing like overshoot and undershoot. And if these overshoots saturate or distort due to the non-linearity of the amplifier output, that will introduce higher freq. harmonics.
It seems like you're trying to be funny.
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I will take my Mod hat off for a moment.
Please respect the knowledge of those who are more versed in things than you. IOW, listen, it will do you a world of good.
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I agree with everything DF96 said above. End terminations/connectors are the thing to worry about. If the reactance of a speaker cable causes ANY audible difference (very long cable maybe), it's more likely that the power amp has a poor phase margin, and can't handle a small addition to the reactance of a typical speaker system. Not all EE's have a good handle on phase margin calculation or verification.
It's incredibly easy to fool yourself into thinking you hear a difference, when without realizing it you've convinced yourself ahead of time that there will be one. If one cable is slightly more resistive than the other, the ever so slightly louder one (lower resistance cable) will seem to sound better, even when you can't perceive the level difference consciously. It's not actually better, it's just a tiny bit louder. I feel that the expensive cable industry has made a mockery out of audio engineering in general. Engineers who really know their stuff, know this.
It's incredibly easy to fool yourself into thinking you hear a difference, when without realizing it you've convinced yourself ahead of time that there will be one. If one cable is slightly more resistive than the other, the ever so slightly louder one (lower resistance cable) will seem to sound better, even when you can't perceive the level difference consciously. It's not actually better, it's just a tiny bit louder. I feel that the expensive cable industry has made a mockery out of audio engineering in general. Engineers who really know their stuff, know this.
Although end connection is important, I don't think a good or lose connection will fundamentally change the sound. A good or bad connection can't change the sound characteristic like harsher treble, more sibilance, loose bass ...
You said cables don't make difference, then saying yes cables affecting how the amp controlling the impedance which ultimately will affect the sound.
A "bad" amp could mean a lot of things. A good sounding amp may be sensitive to cable impedance which you say is bad, while a good amp on paper may sound pretty "bad" to my ears. I suspect a lot of mass market Japanese receivers have pretty good specs on paper but we all know they don't sound very good.
Conrad Johnson preamps are known for being sensitive to high capacitance interconnects, yet we all know how good they sound.
You said cables don't make difference, then saying yes cables affecting how the amp controlling the impedance which ultimately will affect the sound.
A "bad" amp could mean a lot of things. A good sounding amp may be sensitive to cable impedance which you say is bad, while a good amp on paper may sound pretty "bad" to my ears. I suspect a lot of mass market Japanese receivers have pretty good specs on paper but we all know they don't sound very good.
Conrad Johnson preamps are known for being sensitive to high capacitance interconnects, yet we all know how good they sound.
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