Using CAT5 as speaker wire

[ghpicard]

An amplifier-cable-loudspeaker-room-ear-brains system is a complex linear plus non-linear network of L, C, and Rs, plus some active elements too...
As thus, it has multiple resonant frequencies and dampings.
All cables will affect this. As all amplifiers will. As all speakers will, as any furniture in the room, as also the last time we were in a shooting range, a noisy street or a steel factory will.

Now... will we be able to hear that ?... ones says yes, others says no, by different reasons, that can be valid at the same time.

The questions that I think are underlying (and unspoken) in this thread are...

is it worth the kilobucks some illuminati try to exert from golden eared beings ?

How much will we pay to get this effect ?

Also, while many people talks horrors about crossovers... why do they pay so much for disguised inductors, resistors and capacitors ?

We also have to be aware that pleasure comes of very different compositions, and as there are people that get pleasure by making things themselves ( ) there are others that delight in telling others how much did they pay to get that system that was sooo well praised in this or that magazine.

Gastón

[planet10]

Originally posted by AndrewT
you don't need to go as far as causing complete oscillation for the load to force the ampifier/source to change it's output and impose an un-natural signature on the signal.

Certainly not... most of the time the amp going crazu is much subtler.

Did you guys go look at the article i posted the link too. Quite interesting.

dave

[dj_oatmeal]

While waiting for my 6L6 tubes to arrive I changed the cables out to 10FT of 28awg and again more bass and the clarity improved some more as well. I used SCSI cable and picked two colors that were on the opposite sides of the bundle from each other.

I did read the article Dave but even they didn't seem entirely sure of what was causing the effect. That said it clearly illustrates that changes are happening and the placebo effect is not to blame. I tried to reread it just now but it is not available(I get a 404 error). Maybe we generated too many hits

[patch]

I agree with many of the opinions in this thread concerning speaker cables, and especially that the cable itself can make a difference in the sound.

I also agree that in theory, and according to direct measurement of only the electromagnetics, a skin effect *should* make no difference in audio. However, my experience tells me that a skin effect (or at least a presumed skin effect) can be beneficially audible with a silver-over-copper surface in a stranded speaker wire.

In my comparisons, a silver surface on copper wire strands (in a speaker cable) is associated with a subtle brightening of the sound - with other factors being held as equal as possible, like length, stranding and cable design, driver sensitivity, crossover design. The difference can be discerned by anyone with good hearing, and in my experience, most listeners consider the brightening an improvement in sound quality - those who value music definition. The brightening effect becomes more pronounced compared against similar all-copper wire as the cable is lengthened.

It is possible that a silver effect does not pertain to a skin effect, that it is due only to the slightly lower resistance , maybe the adhesion of silver-on-silver that might impact capacitance, or somehow inductance...?

On the other hand, one bit of evidence for a skin effect is my observation that few individuals with high quality full-range loudspeakers use tin-plated wire.

Any other views on silver or tin surfaces and skin effect?

patch