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

[The Paulinator]

I like all the feedback this is getting, although I do not agree with Kevin Lee's statement that I am not as open minded as others on the forum. The whole point of my post is that it is open mindedness that I beleive will make a person doubt whether cables matter or not, and then cause them to really find out for sure. It was my closed-mindedness that caused me to automaticcaly assume they were better to the point that my mind played tricks on me.

[JoeBob]

Bob, how long are your speaker wires? For I am suprised to soo how switching from 16 to 24 would result in an increase in resistance enough for the change in Q to be noticable.

[andy_c]

I gave him a pair of 12-pair cables described in my post above.
He performed a BLT to his lecturers, comparing the original speaker cables (unknown type) to the 12-pair cables in the college mixdown studio.
All lecturers present much preferred the telephone cable, and so much so that it is now standard equipment in all the studios at the college.

Hi mrfeedback,

Sounds interesting! Could you provide a link to the post you're referring to or to the cable spec itself?

Thanks

[Ken L]

Thorsrr___ er KYW

sums this up prett well.

Cabling _is_ very system dependent so without question YMMV.

Also, while there _can_ be a difference, the differences are usually subtle.

Where in the system you're talkng about is another thing entirely.

I believe that you'll get more bang for the bucks in interconnects than in speakers.

I had the opposite experience than the starter of this thread. Doesn't mean he was wrong or that I'm wrong.

I made some changes and moved my system. I couldn't figure out why I had lost some sparkle and hi's. Got to looking around and had changed a pair of pure silver interconnects. Put them back and there it was.

However, I doubt that it's worth the effort we're putting in to post it. Usually everybody has their mind made up and isn't going to change it anyhow.

If you want to hear what I'm saying and believe it and at it to your database, fine.

If you don't want to believe it, that's fine also.

Enjoy the music

Later

Ken L

[chops]

I just posted this in another thread but I think it will fit in here as well.....




I know that different cables change the sound of a system. I have heard them in my own system plenty of times along with other systems. However, I do not think that it is the cables that are adding or taking away from the sound.

What I think it is, is that when you introduce a cheap, poorly constructed cable between your amp and speakers, your amp is having to work harder because it has to push the signal through an inferior conductor with a higher capacitance.

If the amp is working harder, it is also running hotter which induces more distortion, clipping, worse frequency response, etc.. making it sound strained and grainy with less power reserve.

Most amps always sound better within the first few watts of their output, with better frequency response, alot lower THD, better s/n ratio, and cooler running. If the amp can stay in this part of the output range, sending the signal through a more effiecent, conductive, less resistive cable, then that alone is going to improve the sound of the system quite a bit.

And that is what I think causes the improvement in sound quality. The same goes for interconnects as well.

It's kind of like an engine. If you replace the stock, restrictive airfilter and exhaust system with a high performance, free flowing set-up, the engine is going to perform better because it can "breathe" easier.





So in all reality, because of a better "flowing" speaker cable, the amp will sound better because it is not being pushed out of its optimum range of operation.

[pinkmouse]

I suspect cable variations, once you get to a certain level of performance are totally down to kit.

If you think of high end kit, it has been tweeked and tuned to within an inch of it's life, and issues such as stability have taken a back seat. Therefore cable choice and performance can make much more of a difference to final performance, as Bob noted above.

Ordinary low to mid level kit is designed to be robust and to perform into a variety of loads/systems before anything else, as this affects both the saleability and the number of expensive warranty returns, all of which effect profit margins. This means although cable changes will have an effect, it will not be so pronounced as on high end gear.

[stokessd]

The biggest change I've ever heard in my system with speaker cables is using Alpha core cables with my ESL's. That's capacitive cables driving huge capacitors.

The alpha core cables are like the straw that broke the camels back. My Heath W5M's sound really "reverb'y" and with an adcom 535 the amp freaks out and the protection lights glow slightly as the amp oscilates and screams.

Now that's a noticable difference in cables.

Sheldon

[Nappylady]

I played for a party once using hacked-up extention cable going into (get this) an adaptor designed for line-level signals, and I fed, I dunno, perhaps 20 watts through it (it was a small party) and while I didn't check to see if they got warm at all, the sound was as good as the speakers could produce... (the speakers had a very poorly rolled-off high end though... so maybe I would've noticed the difference using some better speakers.)

*shrug* Okay, maybe I don't have anything valuable to add to this conversation. (/hijack)

[fdegrove]

Hi,

Allow me to chime in:

Any speakercable/LS combination will sound different for the simple reason that a LS changes impedance with frequency.

As simple as that.

[Nappylady]

Oh wait, I do have something useful!

I was going to do biamping a little while back (ran out of chans on my amp... darnit!) and I was going to use 16-guage Radio Shack for the midbasses and Cat5 (ordinary stuff, not the stuff you spend three days braiding ) and when I tried it (because, at the time, I had enough ampage) it sounded WAY GOOD, and could suddenly play way louder, and that's just with the cheap cables... I don't know what it would sound like with the megacables, and I don't have a budget to find out. *shrug*