In the interest of full disclosure, I have a set of his interconnects which were gifted to me.
Rather no reason given? Yes, that's better than fluff and so much more interesting. 😀 Oh, that's a great idea!
Much like cables, here's a similar example:
I'd gladly pay the going rate for a specific custom capacitor(s) to match exactly my production model# of amplifier; however, I wouldn't give a dime for a non-specific shot in the dark. 😉
Perhaps a cable custom/specifically made to match a given model of loudspeaker is worthy of consideration? Then the reason to purchase the cable can be simply: "It is made for this speaker."
Otherwise, if a custom part isn't made for a specific use, then why would I want it? I really don't know. Help?
Well, to take your capacitor example, there's lots of very specific information one needs to determine its suitability. Form factor, voltage rating, dielectric material, capacitance value etc. What I'd like to see is much more data on them, such as impedance vs. frequency of every model, value, and voltage rating so I can figure out their series resonant frequency and ESR at that frequency.
What I do not want to see is a bunch of poetic stuff regarding the "sonics" of the capacitor. That kind of stuff is usually pure baloney.
For, say, a coax cable, I'd like to see the capacitance per unit length and characteristic impedance, as well as any special features such as double-shielding and center conductor info (stranded vs. solid, conductor material, size, etc) and dielectric material. Unfortunately, cable vendors have taken to providing phony information about their cables having no relationship, or a false relationship, to their electrical performance. Things such as "an absence of strand jumping" come to mind. Many of these are total fictions bordering on outright fraud.
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Why is the sound of capacitor baloney? Have you listened to different Teflon capacitors in a known circuit before? I have no issue in hearing the difference between them. As a whole they do indeed sound more transparent than the better polypropylenes.
Question: Is "strand jumping" perhaps the same type of distortion faced by parallel amplifiers that are not precision matched? More than one path and one or more is different so there is a cancellation, not just upon the noise itself but also affecting signal that is similar? Does it apply to cables?
I don't need to measure this. It's clearly audible, I am surprised you are not aware of this.
"Strand jumping" is just a marketing thing thought up by one of the cable companies - can't remember which one. It's a fiction. The behavior of electrical signals in cables is described to extremely high accuracy to frequencies above 100 GHz by Maxwell's equations. These equations don't deal with discrete charges (electrons) or indeed anything at the atomic level at all, but rather continuous charge distributions, and electric and magnetic fields and waves. For this reason, Maxwell's equations are sometimes described as "macroscopic". In the microwave frequency range, one begins to see problems with stranded conductors and rough surfaces in general because the physical dimensions of the roughness become non-negligible when compared to the skin depth. You see high losses. It's best to use semi-rigid cable in the microwave frequency range for example. This consists of the outer shield, which is a solid copper tube, teflon dielectric, and solid-core center conductor. At still higher frequencies, one must use waveguide (no center conductor, just a hollow tube) with highly-polished surfaces. Understanding and modeling of all of this is done completely without consideration of what's going on at the atomic level.
I guess the audio cable marketing people realized that people thought of signal propagation in a cable as a bunch of discrete electrons running around like scrubbing bubbles or something. So they came up with a story to fit that misconception. "We scrub and rub and rub. So you don't have to!" 😀
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Oh goodie. If we can get away with calling someone that without invoking censorship from the net nanny, then I would like to call out the curmudgeon who deleted my post with the Audrey Tautou picture. Isn't she gorgeous!
My first real job after after HS turned into, amongst other things, wiring and assembling patch panels for RF broadcast.
The coax outer here is solid copper “rigid line” pipe, polished and lacquered. The inner conductor is copper pipe, with machined and silver-plated elbow joiners and spigots, all held in situ with internal teflon spacers and plain old hose clamps on split copper tube collars on the outside.
Attached below is one of the larger rigs they gave me a couple of weeks to put together – you’re got the basic blueprint for the ultimate speaker cables there 😀 In the lower photo you can see a trolley mounted $40,000 HP VNA on the right.
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The latest one Ive seen is that quantum tunneling between strands is a problem.
Heres a question for the believers. The most demanding situation for a cable is between a mic and a mic preamp. The cables are usually long, sometimes over 200 ft, and then the signal is amplified buy as much as 60db. Recording engineers will spend $5k to $15k on a mic but usually use mic cables on them that cost a few dollars a foot. Are they deaf morons, or are basic, solidly engineered cables all you need?
You might be overestimating the problem. Condenser microphones typically include a buffer and have reasonably low output impedance (I have a tube microphone with a balanced op-amp output, as cringeworthy as that sounds), plus the cables are balanced, so noise is not a significant problem. And 200' sounds very long for a recording environment.
Oh my. Well, here's what I think. . .
Well, it isn't a hose, and its solid, so the electrons aren't really running around in there anyway. Its a lot more like a punch conducting a force. Whack one end with the hammer and the "whack" appears at the other side, onto the nail, as the force has been conducted via the punch (a conductor).
Is that about right?
Please define "solidly engineered cables".
Most cables I've tried may be described as "solidly engineered", the best ones only more so.
Small details? Most amps* are designed way out wrong just because the designers do not know enough about this field.
* speakers & speakercables too
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