Do speaker cables make any difference?

[planet10]

Originally posted by quasi
Did I read it right. That the test was done into a 0.22 ohm resistance?

He wasn't measuring a speaker, he was measuring the cable... the 0.22R was used to shelve the whole works up, then it was normalized out. A cable with no resistance & no phase shift would then overlay the X axis.

dave

[classd4sure]

Damn you guys, I just cut up and stripped a 50 ft piece of cat 5...

[janneman]

Originally posted by planet10


Maybe, if damping factor is all you are concerned with and if your calculations were valid -- the wire here is but a small fraction of the voice coil impedance [snip]dave

Well, that's the point for me. For me, I don't want the cable to change ANYTHING as far as possibly. So I look for low impedance which means good damping, and I look for low L and low C. Ideally I would want thick buss bars of 1 inch length between my amp and speaker, but that is a bit impractical.

As I said, I can understand that other people look for cables that "complement" their speakers in that they change, subtle or not, the sound color or balance because they like it that way - fine with me.
But having different goals naturally we end up with different choices. One not inconsequential advantage of "my way" is that I can get nirwana on 3 $ a foot

Jan Didden

[classd4sure]

Jan, Sounds good to me, what's your way?

[davidsrsb]

Originally posted by panomaniac
That N. Pass table is interesting. The very low inductance cables are the highest capacitance, by far. Wonder if it makes any difference?

Capacitance and inductance are a trade off. Some transistor amplifiers (Naim spring to mind) used to blow if the high capacitance cables are used. These are the ones that were basically two metal tapes with an insulator sheet between them and were meant to be a reasnable impedance match to a speaker. The opposite extreme is the DNM Reson type which looks like a VHF antenna ribbon cable with an RF impedance of several hundred Ohms.

I suspect class Ds maybe less affected by cables because the output filter has to be very effective at RF frequencies and will act as a short circuit to any RF signals picked up. Most traditional amplifiers are not well designed for RF rejection.

[Pano]

Originally posted by davidsrsb
Most traditional amplifiers are not well designed for RF rejection.

Interesting point.

[GJF]

I have an older brother who has been there, seen it all and done it many times over who maintains that differences in the sound of cables cannot and do not exist and that measurement and science confirm this.
He then sits and listens when I change out cables only to shrug his shoulders when he too hears a difference.
The shrugging of the shoulders comes from hearing something he KNOWS can't happen, happen.
And of course the fact that to him that its such a small difference as to be inconsequential. He then goes home and listens on his all-in-one Sony system and don't give a damn, he just likes the music that comes out.
Must be a moral there somewhere?

[SY]

It's OK to tell your brother that even hard-core rationalists and engineering types accept that cables can make a difference. If he cares. The difference is that the hard-core guys don't believe (and there's no evidence to believe) that any of the differences are anything mysterious. R, L, C, noise pickup, amp stability, they're all well-known and easily dealt with.

The Polk cables mentioned earlier were notorious amp-killers. I suspect even your brother would admit that an amp with blown output transistors will sound audibly different.

[planet10]

Originally posted by janneman
Well, that's the point for me. For me, I don't want the cable to change ANYTHING as far as possibly.

If you redo the math... the change in damping from any of these cables is insignificant, but the phase effects in the top octaves sure aren't.... choose your poison i guess.

I can get nirwana on 3 $ a foot

Big Bucks... my cables run <10 cents a foot.

dave

[Portlandmike]

Polk did a speaker wire some years back where they actually did a 8 ohm wire. I suspect its the one mentioned by Pass in the chart a few pages back.

Matt Polk told me that it was just a mess, becuase the wires would blow up sometimes rather good amps. His conclusion was, hey, its a transmition line, and the reflections wack the amp out.
That's not a quote, but my summary.

I suspect that's only one affect wires can have.
I suspect that tube amps have pretty high output impendances and damp the affect to a large degree.
Solid state, A or A/B amps likely are most affected as the output isn't such poor input once your operating above and beyond the closed loop gain.

I don' t make any real claims about all this, just a hunch.

It still kind of amazes me that no one has really figured it out yet.
Hey, maybe someone did, I really haven't been reading to careful.
It seems a speaker wire should be terminated at high frequencies by series RC such that the R is the characteristic impedance, and the C small enough to be well out of audio, but large enough to catch any standing waves.

I think this is actually way more important in line level stuff though.

Regards,

Mike