Do speaker cables make any difference?

[anatech]

Hi Dave,
How were those cables terminated for your test?

-Chris

[planet10]

Originally posted by anatech
Hi Dave,
How were those cables terminated for your test?

-Chris

Not my test... one of the local guys at Shaw cable (& measured using some of their test kit)... the web page is fairly explicit as to how the test was conducted.

dave

[Panicos K]

As I said to Johan,my english is not as good as yours so can SY,poobah and burnedfingers explain to me the joke with the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and Heisenberg's dog please?

[phn]

I think Poobah summarized it best: "The problem with the uncertainty principle is that it's only correct if and only if you don't understand it..."

Heisenberg and Bohr would insist the cable only exists when being measured.

"The concept of the path of an electron between two successive measurements is meaningless."-- Heisenberg

I'm sure Poobah and Co have more to add.

[SY]

Terminated with 0.22 ohm. That's designed to show up differences which are insignificant with real-world loads. If you made the load a speaker, those curves would overlay each other pretty closely. The differences due to L and C show the most effect in the top octave where spekaer impedances are generally rising. No info was given about a crucial variable, the way the cable was laid out (i.e., loop or straight line).

PK, my bad joke was in reference to Schroedinger's Cat, a famous "paradox" that really isn't, with a reference to controversies in early quantum theory between Heisenberg (matrix methods) and Schroedinger (diffusion equation). The target is the silly stuff that the cable peddlers throw out there to explain why their bazillion dollar cables work so much better than cheap stuff despite no-one being able to hear the differences in any sort of controlled testing.

It really is just R, C, and L. Magic is fun to believe in but must be left to the imaginations of our children for us to be allowed to concentrate our efforts in useful areas.

[Johan Potgieter]

Panicos K,
No, no, no! No offence taken by me or given by you! To be "saddened" simply meant that I thought I explained (in this case) universal principles, not my particular opinion, and that I was perhaps not successful. It could also have to do with my perhaps inadequate explanation. Anyway, your post is most welcome, and do not bother about the language - I cannot speak yours at all!

Planet 10,
I am not here to criticise or above all to knitpick (heavens forbid!) But the neat graphs given by you and the explanation in the original script can serve as an example to illustrate.

Firstly, for the reasons given (if I understand correctly) the author used 0,22 ohm as a load. Make the load small enough and, if the generator can cope, at some time any cable will present a counting series impedance. But calculating back, I found the inductance that gave rise to the shown increased series impedance (blue trace) to be about 1,8 uH. That is nothing abnormal for loudspeaker cables, and in an 8 ohm system will not matter until well into the hundreds of KHz, if not MHz. (I did not see a generator impedance; it could not have been zero.) Similar re phase shift; our speakers are not 0,22 ohm.

Furthermore characteristics at 100 MHz is mentioned, where cable length and characteristic impedance comes in - what is remotely the relevance to audio? Etc. - I do not want to dominate the thread.

Regards!

[poobah]

SY,

Wasn't it ultimately decided that Shrodinger's cat was a mess of sillyness? Wasn't the resolution in having many cats in many boxes and finding half of them dead?

[SY]

The better resolution is understanding that even with an inanimate particle counter, the quantum state collapses since a measurement has occured. No human intervention is needed.

[jackinnj]

I still think that the orange speaker cables from Home Depot are the best -- particularly for Class D.

[poobah]

To paraphrase Steven Hawking, "When people bring up Shrodinger's Cat, I reach for my gun".