So, What about all the wire inside a product or device? Does anybody like to open things up and turn around all the internal wiring to see what sounds best? Or, is it only something that makes a difference to the sound if it is quick and easy to swap around?
Like for instance guitar cables, why stop at turning around only that wire to see what seems to sound best, why not turn around all the wiring inside the electric guitar, effects pedals, and amp?
Dan, maybe you could provide some illumination on this puzzle? Right now I am left the impression that only wires with plugs are thought by some to be directional, is that right?
Also, for my electric guitar, I have lots of short little jumper cables between the effects pedals. They are only about 1 foot long? Do you try turning around every wire you can find with a plug on it, or is there some helpful rule of thumb you would recommend?
Like for instance guitar cables, why stop at turning around only that wire to see what seems to sound best, why not turn around all the wiring inside the electric guitar, effects pedals, and amp?
Dan, maybe you could provide some illumination on this puzzle? Right now I am left the impression that only wires with plugs are thought by some to be directional, is that right?
Also, for my electric guitar, I have lots of short little jumper cables between the effects pedals. They are only about 1 foot long? Do you try turning around every wire you can find with a plug on it, or is there some helpful rule of thumb you would recommend?
Here's my version for this answer.
Consider an ideal cable with the length comparable to the wavelength of the signal it propagates (from audio to microwave, the situation is the same). For such a cable, imagine you could walk with a voltmeter with infinite impedance, measuring the voltage along the cable length.
If the cable is properly "terminated" by connecting at one end a resistance ("load") that is equal to the source output resistance, then the voltmeter will show a constant voltage along the cable, that is half the voltage measured at the source, without a cable or load (since the source resistance and the load resistance are creating a 0.5 ratio voltage divider).
Now, if the cable end is left floating/open (no load) the voltmeter will show maxima (up to 2x the source voltage) and minima (down to 0V), depending on the position along the cable, and the frequency of the source signal. If the input signal is a sum of multiple frequencies, then at each position along the cable some frequencies may be boosted and some may be completely missing from the output. Certainly, not something that would be enjoyable for listening to "RF music". The bottom line is that what you get at the (floating/open) cable end depends dramatically on the cable length.
If the cable length is much shorter than the signal wavelength, then nothing of the above will ever happen. The voltmeter will show a constant voltage along the cable, even if the cable end is left floating/open. As usual in physics, "constant voltage" is an idealization. Even a short cable at audio frequencies will have some extremely weak drop along the cable length, due to the audio signal propagations; if you are in the team that claims humans can hear 140dB of dynamic range, then the amount of drop can be exactly calculated and you would need to properly terminate the cable to avoid those nanovolts propagation drops (BTW, which are anyways orders of magnitude lower than the voltage drop due to the cable finite conductance).
Note1: 20KHz is a wavelength of about 15Km. The RF rule of thumb is that any cable shorter than wavelength/16 can be usually safely ignored from a propagation perspective, so unless your audio cable is longer than 1Km, forget about it.
Note2: if the source and load impedances are complex, the situation needs a little discussion, there are slightly different matching conditions for the minimum reflection along the cable and maximum power transfer at the load end. You would need to have the source, load and cable characteristic impedance all equal to satisfy both conditions, at all frequencies. You can also safely ignore this condition for less than 1Km long audio cables.
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Yes, see what they're made of, open the plugs, see how they are connected, take some pictures and post them here
There are two definitions at play here. There is commercial crap and there is commercial good.
Belden makes a good cable.
Rojone makes a good cable.
Monster does not make a good cable.
If you use twine or steel for your shield you are going to make a crap cable. If you don't use enough copper in the shield you are going to lose shielding at higher frequencies. If you don't use a thick enough gauge of copper wire you are going to get a fragile piece of ****.
I don't know where you got the idea that there are no differences between commercially made cables from. There probably isn't any difference between competently made commercially made cables. But there is definitely a difference between incompetently made cables and competently made ones.
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Who said this? There are $5 commercial audio cables and there are $20,000 commercial audio cables.
A $5 audio cable can be good (95% copper braid with a stranded copper core and and low dielectric insulator), or it can be bad (steel 75% braid or less, copper coated single strand core and cheap high dielectric insulator.
Likewise, a $20,000 commercial audio cables can be of good construction and design, or can be ****.
Either way, I see no reason or justification for the $20,000 audio cable which affords no real engineering advantage at audio frequencies, over the good lower cost cable.
Other than status. This is an emotional issue, not an engineering issue.
Likewise, a $20,000 commercial audio cables can be of good construction and design, or can be ****.
Either way, I see no reason or justification for the $20,000 audio cable which affords no real engineering advantage at audio frequencies, over the good lower cost cable.
Other than status. This is an emotional issue, not an engineering issue.
Nope, I have no audio cable porn dreams, I'm only dreaming about those $20,000...
I had a friend visiting one of the magazine reviewers and he swapped the speaker cables on one channel with ordinary zip cord and concealed it well. After a week of occasional listening without issues he told him and he said, "Oh I knew something was wrong".
Go for it.
Short term and extended listening both will show the difference.
Go for it.
No.
If the jumper cables are all from the same batch you could use the cable lettering to assign a direction and go from there.
Listen for bass 'ease' and lows extension versus diminished bottom bass and slight 'boominess', and similarly changes in 'harshness' in mid/highs.
Dan.
Where can I buy a $5 audio cable that has good copper shielding and a low dielectric insulator? I will order some as soon as possible.
For the record, Monster has devolved over the decades. It used to have some fairly interesting designs, the first designed by Bruce Brisson. It was not a $5 cable, but it did sound somewhat different. I have a few around my lab, today. Later, I think they gave in to whatever was offered from offshore. You might check with Demian Martin, who is a member here, as he has worked with Monster over many years. He could probably give you more accurate info on Monster cables, than almost everybody. Of course, hi end cable pricing is ridiculous, and that is a marketing defect, where they are trying to get audio dealers to sell their cables by giving the majority of the % profit to the dealers themselves. I wish they would stop this.
For the record, Monster has devolved over the decades. It used to have some fairly interesting designs, the first designed by Bruce Brisson. It was not a $5 cable, but it did sound somewhat different. I have a few around my lab, today. Later, I think they gave in to whatever was offered from offshore. You might check with Demian Martin, who is a member here, as he has worked with Monster over many years. He could probably give you more accurate info on Monster cables, than almost everybody. Of course, hi end cable pricing is ridiculous, and that is a marketing defect, where they are trying to get audio dealers to sell their cables by giving the majority of the % profit to the dealers themselves. I wish they would stop this.
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