I don't believe cables make a difference, any input?

[fdegrove]

Hi,

There are electrons throughout the conductor. What do you mean they don't penetrate deeply? And if part of your surface is oxidized, so what? That just means you have a little less conductor. If you're worried about losing a few atoms' thickness of conductor, just use a slightly larger gauge conductor.

Ah, and you think it works like that?

Sorry to say so but going for a thicker wire gauge isn't going to be any good at all.

Electron penetration depth is said to be frequency dependent.
Most of them travel at the surface of the conductor.

Than there is other phenomenon that occurs called current bunching as well...

Or are you trying to get the engineers at Phelps-Dodge to do YOUR dirty work for you?

They do get paid at the end of the month so they'd better do as they're told to.

Cheers,

[Circlotron]

Originally posted by Steve Eddy
Well, I suppose one could argue that while you've eliminated a loudspeaker cable, you now have to make up for it with a much longer interconnect cable.

So I guess it would depend on which of those two cables one feels is the most important.

Seems there's nothing new under the sun.
This is how they solved the problem in the old days.

[mcp]

Steve,

If one is going to make claims regarding objective physical realites, then objective physical evience is what's required to substantiate them.

It's not about subjectivism versus objectivism. It's about those who try and pass the two off as if they were both one and the same.

What is this, an AES forum? A Law Institution? Medicine, where lives are at stake?

When is sharing an opinion in a diy forum making a claim of fact. And when is something that has not been scientifically proven must therefore be false.

Before Newton formulated the laws of gravity, does it mean gravity does not exist. And since I cannot show God to anyone, does it mean there is no God. There are millions of devotees world-wide, from Christians to Hindus to Buddhist, to name a few, who have not have the grace to met their diety or Maker. Am I to say they are wrong?

But that's just a subjective evaluation and we may as well be talking about freezing photographs. So let's stick to physics.

For your information, we do freeze photograph. Check with Eastman Kodak on "The Preservation of Color Prints and Transparencies for Archiving".

[analog_sa]

A rather unfortunate example which will surely be used by 'the other side'

And since I cannot show God to anyone, does it mean there is no God. There are millions of devotees world-wide, from Christians to Hindus to Buddhist, to name a few, who have not have the grace to met their diety or Maker. Am I to say they are wrong?

Lets not turn cables into a religious debate. For God's sake There happen to be atheists who can actually hear without believing.

[Brett]

Originally posted by analog_sa
There happen to be atheists who can actually hear without believing.

Atheism is merely another beleif system.

[janneman]

Originally posted by mcp
[snip]Take a high-end speaker cable and use it on a mini-compo, no difference. Install the wrong cable in a $100,000/- system and it can sound worse than a $10,000/- system. As a system gets better, the effects of cabling becomes more pronounce, interconnects as well as speakers side. This is due to the resolving power of the system[snip]Regards

Hi,

I just jumped in the middle of this thread and admit I haven't read it all, but this upsets me. Am I to believe that the qualities of a 100.000$ system can be trashed by a "wrong cable"? I my opinion, such a system isn't worth 100$!

If I pay that much for a system, I want it to be insensitive to whatever cable I use, as long as it is of reasonable quality, for instance speaker cable less than .1Ohms resistance, less than a couple of 1000 pF's etc. Similarly for interconnects. Not too high capacitance and reasonble EMI shielding should do it. That has nothing to do with resolving power.

Jan Didden

[analog_sa]

Brett

Atheism is merely another beleif system.

It's easy to be smug from paradise



Jan

Paradoxical as it may seem, the sound of a very high quality system is very easy to destroy. It takes weeks (months?) of work to produce really nice, pleasant sound out of very expensive and high quality components. The smallest mistake and all synergy is gone. If you want to have it nice and easy stay with mid-fi as i do. Disappointment with the high end is really very common. And a wrong mains cable or a silly stand is all it may take. $100,000 sytems that can't play music to save their lives are plentiful, yet the components which make them may be quite good in different setups.

cheerio

peter

[Steve Eddy]

Originally posted by Kuei Yang Wang
Well, I have to take your word. If you are familiar with HFN and Ben Duncans work than perhaps you can explain better than the concept of "milli/micro-volt diodes" what causes the various effects he documented in cables?

My problem with Duncan is that he seems more interested in proving his pet theories than getting at the truth and doesn't always do a very good job of considering OTHER explanations that "fit observed fact." Rather like the creation science folks who pick and choose only that which they can fit into their preconcieved dogma while ignoring other explanations.

An example of this is Duncan's claim of current-dependent phase shifts in audio cables in the three part "Great Cable Test" series in the July, August and Sepember 1999 issues of HFN&RR.

Dr. J.C.G. Lesurf at the University of St. Andrews showed that this "observed fact" could be explained by the different load impedances Duncan used for the low current and high current tests.

I remember one particulary interesting test where a 5m single loop of cable was measured using a comprator system and wideband noise (output from the cable minus the input to the cable, adjusted for the RLC parameters of the cable in situi) and the subtracted signal showed, depending upon the cables (all commercial units) anything from -100db to -70db, or translated into percentages 0.001% to 0.03% distortion, this distortion BTW being not present with a simple sinewave when measured as timple THD.

Which issue was this in?

I have to go with Baker Street Resident SH/CD - "The explanations fit observed fact".

Where did Holmes say anything like that? Or is this another myth along with "Elementary, my dear Watson" and the Calabash pipe?

What Holmes was fond of saying was "Once you've eliminated the impossible, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truth."

And if course you can't even get to this point until you've first considered all possibilities.

se

[ThorstenL]

Koinichiwa,

Originally posted by janneman


I just jumped in the middle of this thread and admit I haven't read it all, but this upsets me. Am I to believe that the qualities of a 100.000$ system can be trashed by a "wrong cable"? I my opinion, such a system isn't worth 100$!

If I pay that much for a system, I want it to be insensitive to whatever cable I use, as long as it is of reasonable quality, for instance speaker cable less than .1Ohms resistance, less than a couple of 1000 pF's etc. Similarly for interconnects. Not too high capacitance and reasonble EMI shielding should do it. That has nothing to do with resolving power.

While this MAY seem reasonable enough to start with, you have a few basic problems with your demands. Sadly, the commonly defined "voltage" interfaces between source and receiver (be that CD-Player and Preamp of Poweramp and Speaker) are sensitive to impedance variations (and other factors) in exactly the way the Analogue Telephone current driven system is not, hence your ability to actually phone around the world on twisted copper pairs in the 1940's.

So, if you wish to make a HiFi System independent from cable issues you must define a current interface. Doing this for speakers has of course many other advantages, but it means you need to supply a full system that is completely incompatible with about everyone elses gear. This tends to be sadly not particulary conductive to sales outside the sub $ 1,000 all in one plastic boom box market.

Sayonara

[Stew320]

The original poster is right I think, Cables/wire don’t actually change the sound. They do however change how one perceives the sound.

They can change how your mind decodes the sound.

This is a quote from a guy on another forum which summed it up perfectly to me.


"One thing people should keep in mind about these types of things is that, while it may not change the sound at all, it can still change what you hear.How does that statement make sense? Simple - the brain. What your ear drum picks up - the acoustic signal - is not what you hear! What you hear is the brain interpreting what the ear picks up. As such, it can be colored or fooled. What you experience as sound is not necessarily what you hear.Want proof? Check out the Franssen effect. A click starts off the test tone, in one speaker (for example, the left speaker). Then the tone immediately jumps to the other speaker only (the right speaker). However, because of the way our brains interpret precedence and timing, you will hear the tone coming from the left speaker. You can go and disconnect the left speaker, and it will still sound like it's coming from the left speaker. It's an old audio trick, but one that is very good at showing just how the brain can be fooled.Likewise with audio stuff like high end cables and blocks of wood. If you believe it will make your system sound better - or even sound different - there's a good chance it will. Regardless of what a test meter will show. This is because the human brain will color what it interprets - knowledge of the event ahead of time will affect what you hear. And it's not even know what the change is supposed to be, just knowing there is a change is enough to cause your brain to expect a change, and thus create a change.So, does that mean the gear actually works? Well, on a physical level I'd say no. If it can't be empirically measured, then it doesn't physically work. However, I would say it does change what you hear, because it works on the psychological level. You are expecting to hear a change, and that expectation can make your brain create the change.All in all, with high-end stuff like this that I really don't espouse, I'm perfectly willing to agree that some people will hear the difference - because they are expecting to hear a difference, and they know what's going on with their gear. Is it a physical difference? Ninety nine times out of 100, no. But it is a psychological difference, and that ultimately makes it a real difference for that individual. That is not to say that you can't fool them by swapping out the megabuck stuff for low-end cable, etc. Sure you can. But the fact that they keep hearing the difference (until shown the changes) is proof that there was a difference; just happens to be in their minds, not in the physical world. And ultimately, what we hear and experience is a mental thing. So what someone believes they hear is what they really hear. Is it what everyone hears? No. Is it an accurate representation of the physical world? Maybe yes, maybe no. But within their perceptions, it is accurate, and that is ultimately what is important (especially with experience of art, which music is)."