That was when the snake oil cable business really took off. AudioSource, Monster, Kimber, Polk(!), right off the top of my head, and I'm sure there were others. The gullibility quotient of hobby audio started a meteoric rise as the market itself contracted. I don't know who first came up with the biwire gimmick as a way to increase sales (or who came up with it in the voodoo set and gave the merchants something to jump on).
In the context of cables, I don't think the market was really there at that time. Some were being established then: Monster '78, Kimber '79, Audioquest '80 - but not exactly a pervasive enterprise at that point. (..could be wrong, but I don't think Polk did much in the way of cable sales (if any) at that point.)
Radioshack was pretty much the "go-to" cable resource for most of the '80s - even for HiFi enthusiasts.
..and back then I'd imagine Richard Vandersteen would have said - "go to the shack".
(..basically I don't think that Vandersteen's initial interest in bi-wiring was in-grained either into the public, or as a sort of lateral business-interest cronyism. I also think as time progressed that Great Brittan was into it a bit before the US was (and still is more into it).. and I don't think Vandersteen had much of a market over there back then, and might not still.)
..as a personal note: Monstercable is a freak'in monster. Trolling lawyers, slush-fund contributors, etc..
They near-enough have a monopoly on most "brick and mortar" chains with the resulting absurd pricing - yet somehow they manage to avoid all Justice Department scrutiny.
-repulsive in the EXTREME.
Yes they did. Their cables were notorious for making "high end" amps oscillate and release smoke. They ended up adding a Zobel before deciding that they'd stick to speakers.
I forgot to add Fulton to my list of late-70s-early-80s cable peddlers.
So many logical fallacies and ridiculous assertions in ONE thread!
The question is, of course, rhetorical but it illustrates of the dangers of ignorance and relativism. Where does it stop and start? You seem to be happy with "less dangerous" witchcraft but where is the dividing line and who set it and in what circumstances? Bi-wiring is harmless, isn't it, or is it an entre into ignoring real science and doing what you "feel" is right, such as homeopathy to treat cancer. I will probably be accused of taking an extreme position but this will only be another logical fallacy, maybe, ad hominem, strawman or even a couple of others.
Generally, I've found that people who prone to logical fallacies are incapable of actually seeing their error objectively and do not appreciate the problems and dangers of logical fallacies.
Thank you, I am aware of the term and the implications. I was referring, admittedly obtusely, to the supposed HF and LF currents. This notion is as silly as the idea of separating the HF and LF voltages. There is NO separate LF or HF signal; it is ONE instantaneous voltage that is separated at the crossover point and shifting the node as a source of an "improvement" is not something the voltage understands.
I'm done with this thread; I can't swallow any more snake oil; I'm gagging on it already.
So, is it fine with you if one of your loved ones decides to use homeopathy to treat their just diagnosed breast cancer, for instance (it affects both sexes so it is an unbiased question)? You know homeopathy is witchcraft but the person says "they are happy and they feel fine".
The question is, of course, rhetorical but it illustrates of the dangers of ignorance and relativism. Where does it stop and start? You seem to be happy with "less dangerous" witchcraft but where is the dividing line and who set it and in what circumstances? Bi-wiring is harmless, isn't it, or is it an entre into ignoring real science and doing what you "feel" is right, such as homeopathy to treat cancer. I will probably be accused of taking an extreme position but this will only be another logical fallacy, maybe, ad hominem, strawman or even a couple of others.
Generally, I've found that people who prone to logical fallacies are incapable of actually seeing their error objectively and do not appreciate the problems and dangers of logical fallacies.
Argument from Authority; another logical fallacy. Those making the claim have the obligation. I also think Vandersteen is smarter than many of the people who buy his products and, given it is audio after all, will believe the bi-wiring nonsense. Plenty of manufacturers cater to f**ls.
Not Absconditus Current? Surely you can't mean that the current named for me has been purloined by the unscrupulous?
Thank you, I am aware of the term and the implications. I was referring, admittedly obtusely, to the supposed HF and LF currents. This notion is as silly as the idea of separating the HF and LF voltages. There is NO separate LF or HF signal; it is ONE instantaneous voltage that is separated at the crossover point and shifting the node as a source of an "improvement" is not something the voltage understands.
I'm done with this thread; I can't swallow any more snake oil; I'm gagging on it already.
-what a good name!
Freak'n cable peddlers!
Were Polk cables really expensive back then (inflation adjusted when compared to today's cable pricing)? Or was it more like triple the price of the "shack"? (..you know, absurd pricing as opposed to glue-sniffing brain-dead obscene.)
I think I actually remember Fulton.. (..it's *very* murky though.)
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Can't remember (mine were free). But the rise of this market coincided with the inflation in the prices of high end amps, preamps, and speakers. Ten years earlier, a preamp might cost half a week's salary for a middle class guy; by the early '80s, it might be several month's salary. So what could the hobbyist be swapping out for entertainment that would represent a less crushing expense? The sellers realized this and this market segment blossomed. The magazines serving this market certainly realized which side their bread was buttered on, and helped cement the myths. By 1985, you'd see reviews of Distech, Livewire, Monster, Straight Wire, MIT, Randall Research, Peterson, Van den Hul, Kimber, conrad-johnson, Hitachi, Marcoff, PS Audio,Discwasher, Megacable, Fulton, Levinson... all described in pornographic detail by "creative" writers.
..but, but, it was the '80's man!
I remember Stereophile all throughout the '90s with Audioquest as its single largest revenue source for advertising. Look at the back cover - Audioquest. Look inside the front cover - Audioquest. A casual purchaser at the magazine stand might think the entire magazine was about Audioquest cables.
You are quite incorrect.
It seems that you are unaware of the well-known Fourier theories and tools. That's a pity. They are one of the key foundations of electrical engineering, and of many other disciplines, and are a mental delight. They enable us to both understand and physically manipulate almost any signal, as the sum of a multitude of different frequency components.
Of COURSE the high and low frequency components can be separated!
In the case of bi-wiring, the CURRENT is separated into two pairs of wires, one carrying the high-frequency components of the signal and the other one carrying the low-frequency components of the signal. (They basically get re-united in the air, after the speakers.) The crossover filters, themselves, separate the currents. That's what they do. And extending the wiring obviously has to extend the separation back to where the wires divide, since we're talking about current.
There was never any question of the validity of the two resulting effects' existences. The only question was whether or not the effects might be significant-enough to be audible and/or worth exploiting.
Being (so far) less-knowledgeable about this than some others here might be, my interest was in attempting to determine the answer to that question, in each case, either through research (finding published scientific or technical papers with the answers), calculations (possibly including simulations), or measurements; in other words, scientifically, with rigor.
Anecdotal evidence, such as Vandersteen's, and simply realizing that there is a physical behavior (based on knowledge of the physics) that at least "tends in the right direction", are often the starting points for such an investigation, and are perfectly valid, in that sense, since their influence ends with the decision to investigate.
As an engineer, I consider questions like that nearly every day. Most turn out to have no significant usefulness, when analyzed more closely. And that's fine.
There are some technical papers about bi-wiring for which links have been given. I simply have not yet studied them. So in MY mind, this whole thing might be over, as soon as I do. But not until at least then.
By the way: What is the word for the type of impropriety and/or invalidity involved in attacking the form of the tactics or logic of an opponent's arguments, rather than their substance?
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I am not advocating that bi-wiring works. What I said however is true. It's simple filter behaviour.
There may be HF and LF voltages on both cables however the crossover for the tweeter presents an increasingly higher input impedance at low frequencies. This is part of the mechanism of attenuation. The reverse condition exists for the crossover for the woofer.
This is simple fact.
It's the notion that the fields somehow interfere with each other (since both currents are flowing on the same cable) due to some mystical phenomenon or the non-linearity (passive intermodulation distortion anyone?) of a conductor that constitutes what could be the snake oil.
In the attached files R3 is the tweeter cable and R4 the woofer cable. Both see the same voltage from the source however the currents are very different. At the crossover frequency of 1kHz the current in each cable is about 120mA however a decade away at 100Hz the LF current in R3 is 10mA. That's what I am talking about.
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Since no one else wanted to take the plunge and actually measure, I've begun. Just finished a round of sweeps and dual tones with the normal one cable rig. The measurements were taken after the crossovers. I'm surprised who much crosstalk there is between sections.
I'll do some rewiring and measure again. We shall see if my rig shows and differences with one cable or two each speaker.
I'll do some rewiring and measure again. We shall see if my rig shows and differences with one cable or two each speaker.
If those are about 100-inch-long cables, you should also be adding about 2450 nH of self-inductance, in series with the 0.1-Ohm resistors. Then maybe you will see the second effect. Besides the fields, and the voltage induced across the parasitic resistance, the time-varying current will induce a voltage across the parasitic inductance, proportional to the time-rate-of-change of the current.
You can just change the resistor to an inductor and then right click on it and set the inductance to 2450n and the series resistance to 0.1. And set the two parasitic capacitances to zero. Or, leave the resistor and inductor as separate components. But in that case I think that you have to explicitly set all of the parasitics to zero, in the inductor, so that they won't default to some other value.
The next step closer to the real world is to replace the purely resistive loads you have for the drive units with non-linear elements.
True but the simulation showed the effect I was mentioning. With the addition of reactive elements to simulate real cable and drivers the same effect would manifest albeit with some additional variations with frequency.
Using an RLC network model of a two-way speaker and crossover from Rod Eliot's site, and my usual LT-Spice model of a Cordell output stage and a power supply, plus an RLC model of a 4-meter cable from Rod Eliot's site, i created a model with a power supply, amp, cable, crossover networks, and a woofer and tweeter. Then I copied that entire circuit and made an identical system, right next to the other one. I used two identical cable models for the second system and bi-wired it.
Rod provided models for three different types of cables, including one from Cardas, one from Jon Risch, and one that was just 12-gauge zip cord. I have only tried the zip cord model, so far.
I used one WAV file voltage source as the input for both systems, playing real music (AC/DC's "Highway to Hell").
I plotted the difference between the tweeter output signals and the difference between the woofer output signals, with the amps and power supplies set up for a max rated power of 100 watts into 8 Ohms.
I am not at my computer so I can't post the plots and schematics until about 12 hours from now.
But yes there was a difference, with a much larger difference between the tweeters than there was between the woofers.
If I am remembering correctly, the difference between the tweeter output signals had peak amplitudes that were about 1% of the peak amplitudes of each single tweeter output signal.
Rod provided models for three different types of cables, including one from Cardas, one from Jon Risch, and one that was just 12-gauge zip cord. I have only tried the zip cord model, so far.
I used one WAV file voltage source as the input for both systems, playing real music (AC/DC's "Highway to Hell").
I plotted the difference between the tweeter output signals and the difference between the woofer output signals, with the amps and power supplies set up for a max rated power of 100 watts into 8 Ohms.
I am not at my computer so I can't post the plots and schematics until about 12 hours from now.
But yes there was a difference, with a much larger difference between the tweeters than there was between the woofers.
If I am remembering correctly, the difference between the tweeter output signals had peak amplitudes that were about 1% of the peak amplitudes of each single tweeter output signal.
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No but I will try that tonight, although my first impression is that it would not be the correct reference, because nothing is paralleled in the bi-wire setup. There is no connection between the crossover filters, at the speaker end of the cable, except ground, which is modeled as an ideal wire in Rod's models.
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