I was accused for not being serious. Here my second attempt.
He was, more or less, right.
Master Jedi, you sure can read mind without knowing they guy.
Other things being equal, more inductance will reduce high frequencies. In most cases you won't notice, though.
I have dog hearing.
You noticed a difference between two different 8in cables? Are you serious?
They come in different color.
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.
I think the difference becomes more apparent after about 5in.
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.
Color alone can change the sound.
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).
Well you just offended 99% of the oxygen population.
Not possible in this universe, as we can't speed up light.
Yes, it's called dark energy.
That is possible, although it would be a strange design.
Audiophile is stranger than strange.
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.
Maxwell equations work all the way down to DC.
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.
"I am running on 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.
Where I come from, every in. matters.
He was, more or less, right.
Master Jedi, you sure can read mind without knowing they guy.
Other things being equal, more inductance will reduce high frequencies. In most cases you won't notice, though.
I have dog hearing.
You noticed a difference between two different 8in cables? Are you serious?
They come in different color.
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.
I think the difference becomes more apparent after about 5in.
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.
Color alone can change the sound.
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).
Well you just offended 99% of the oxygen population.
Not possible in this universe, as we can't speed up light.
Yes, it's called dark energy.
That is possible, although it would be a strange design.
Audiophile is stranger than strange.
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.
Maxwell equations work all the way down to DC.
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.
"I am running on 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.
Where I come from, every in. matters.
Yes, they do. They'll also tell you that at anything close to audio frequencies, nothing is happening. Flippant remarks like that won't get you far here. I'm a Physics grad, so I've derived the equations you refer to from first principles. I know what they are and why they work, and I know for a fact I'm not close to some of the guys you're talking to here.
Your observations are fine, when taken within their limitations. Limitation #1: you're human. So are the rest of us. As a human, expectation bias is a huge factor in deciding if you like something. Have you done any blind testing, to remove such biases?
Chris
you made me spit coffee on my keyboard
You write it as if they did not affect speaker frequency response
In a sense, that's correct, they are imaginary, though in a mathematical rather than colloquial sense (it's too bad that imaginary numbers were given that name, it confuses people; perhaps "quadrature" might have been a better term). Of course they affect frequency response.
Fred Davis and Dick Greiner pretty much covered all of this 35 years ago. There's no magic here, the boring old engineering answers are experimentally correct. The OP can measure frequency response and see if his wires are altering it in any significant way. If not, he can look for a psychological explanation if he's actually interested in what's going on.
You seem to know the words, but I am not entirely sure that you know what they mean. A cable cannot generate harmonics, unless it has very poor connectors on the end. Yes, inductance and capacitance are not (mathematically) real; they are (mathematically) imaginary and so just as (reality) real.andy2 said:
You may be confusing higher potential with higher harmonics.
It is true that in the approach to a filter corner frequency you get significant phase shift well before there is any significant amplitude change, but in a speaker cable (especially an 8in one!) you are nowhere near any corner frequency so there is nothing of any consequence going on.
I am being very serious, but in my own funny way.
Bad connections are about the only thing about a cable which can change the sound. OK, there is something else: a really bad cable can let in lots of RF interference and that can change the sound via intermodulation. To be this bad a cable has to be very very cheap, very expensive, or DIY. Curiously, some people actually like the resultant sound.
As a general rule, the more fussy an item is about cables the worse is its electronic design. This remains true however expensive or popular it is. Some people even believe the opposite: that cable fussiness is a sign of 'fine discrimination'! Of course, people who design bad circuits are happy for this misconception to remain popular; some of them may even believe it themselves.
Your sense of humour seems to work in a different way from mine.
We seem to be talking about internal wiring in the speaker cabinets, from binding posts to crossover and from crossover to driver terminals. Wire lengths mentioned have been 2 feet, 8 inches, and 4 inches. Let's assume worst case, 2 feet. What is the resistance/capacitance/inductance of the wire? Blue Jeans don't seem to mention the electrical characteristics of their "house brand" wire on their web site, though I'm sure they would tell you if you asked, but I see they also sell Belden 5T00UP. The data sheet for that cable says it has 0.15uH/ft, 26pF/ft, and 1.02R/1000ft. Now, what are the values of the resistors, capacitors, and inductors in your crossover network? What is the tolerance of those components? Would the lumped values of the cables fall within the tolerance ranges of those components? Assuming the components are exactly the value labeled, how much does the cable change the transfer characteristic of the crossover network? Now assume your wire has twice the R/L/C of the Belden cable, or half. Feel free to vary each of them independently; how much does the frequency response of the network vary?
Until you have answered these questions you are just guessing.
Until you have answered these questions you are just guessing.
I've actually observed on an oscilloscope the effects of a bad connection due to a mechanical connection device. Until there was enough current flow to clear (re-establish) the connection, to burn off the oxidation and molecular migration, there was a drastic dynamic range expansion effect. The connection was VERY non-linear in that way. That could cause a harsher or more sibilant perception of the sound.
In this case it was an inter-stage relay (just ahead of the power amp), but I think it's a similar situation. Once current flow cleared the connection, I would have to wait a day before it would do it again. This oxidation and migration would actually grow back in a day. The relay contacts weren't well sealed. It had a loose fitting plastic snap on cover, which apparently wasn't good enough, since the amp was used in the kitchen of a restaurant where various fumes and humidity varied all over the place day after day.
Bottom line: I went to the trouble of finding gold alloy Banana plugs I could solder wires to, not just use the set screw types (more common). And I use 16AWG AC line cord bought for 50 cents a foot at the hardware store. The cables are about 12 feet long. My Engineering background tells me this is fine, and should stay good for many many years. I may lose a few watts out of 120 watts driving my speakers, due to the resistance of the cables, and I don't care, because it doesn't cause any significant increase in distortion.
No matter what your personal perspective on speaker cables, anyone who believes that story of 'sneaking' long wire coat hangers into a system without alerting five blindfolded people in the same room is in the market for a cheap bridge.
Best way to lower a skeptic's guard is claim you're a skeptic.
We have relays in products which we specify a minimum load of 5mA. Less than that can result in oxidation and intermittent contact. If you are going to run low current, special plating alloy or gold is necessary.
I still have my 20' long 14AWG speaker wires from college. They still work fine with 96dB/W-M speakers and a 56W/channel amp. Loss is minimal into 8ohm nominal speakers.
I switched to 12AWG for my 100W/channel amp downstairs as it has lower output Z than the amp upstairs which is 35 years old. Although I can't hear any difference from the 14AWG wire.
I still have my 20' long 14AWG speaker wires from college. They still work fine with 96dB/W-M speakers and a 56W/channel amp. Loss is minimal into 8ohm nominal speakers.
I switched to 12AWG for my 100W/channel amp downstairs as it has lower output Z than the amp upstairs which is 35 years old. Although I can't hear any difference from the 14AWG wire.
I used to have a hard time telling differences from cables and interconnects until I was able to get a decent high resolution system in a proper setup.
If you can genuinely tell the difference between interconnects then this means one or more of the following is true:andy2 said:
1. some of the interconnects were faulty or so badly designed that they were failing as simple pieces of wire (N.B. tests have shown that even a banana is good enough to act as an interconnect, or was it mud (or both?))
2. the source is badly engineered and has too high output impedance
3. the amplifier is badly engineered and has no input RF filter
4. your system grounding has problems
If it wasn't double blind test, it's likely your expectation bias that caused you to think that you are hearing difference.
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