What puzzles me is why anyone would want to give the benefit of the doubt to MIT Cables, one of the biggest snake-oil cable companies in the world. Either he has no idea what's going on or has a business agenda himself.
But look at how many prizes they have awarded ! 
MIT Cables Awards - MIT Cables - Music Interface Technologies
MIT Cables Awards - MIT Cables - Music Interface Technologies
But look at how many prizes they have awarded !
MIT Cables Awards - MIT Cables - Music Interface Technologies
Awards from their business "partners"? Their symbiotic relationship looks so natural.
I'm only surprised the page doesn't keep scrolling down -they must pay enough in advertising to get them.
Absolutely, to a point at least, although Dr Crippen (for example) presumably felt there were certain downsides to an excess of publicity.
Personally, as I've said before, I've got a bit of a live-and-let-live take on expensive wire these days. Most people who buy it can afford to do so, so it's not an especially harmful industry, and since the majority of them believe it makes a difference, human psychaology being what it is, for them, it does. QED. And a lot of things like MIT products will likely cause audilble differences, or even something simpler, such as those selling widely spaced parallel feeder cable where the different LCR properties will in some situations cause some small differences.
What gets on my wick are the lies and / or misleading claims frequently trotted out. Many other industries are obliged to prove what they say. The wire industry? Very rarely. Many just keep cranking out rubbish in direct contradiction to the laws of basic electrical engineering. That's not good.
Scottmoose, I agree with most of what you say, but you are touching something that's almost impossible.
How do you scientifically prove that cable A sounds better as cable B.
We don't listen to frequencies but to music.
How do you prove an emotion like taste, that's almost impossible.
On the other hand, I don't understand why people believe so easily that all cables produce the same sound, whereas dozens of magazines are so positive about certain differences.
When you haven't had the opportunity to listen to these supposedly superior cables, having an opinion has absolutely no base.
Advertising may help to get a test in the first place, but getting awards year after year should mean something.
If not, the implications are that the whole audio business is one big fraud.
In defense of MIT, what I understand from their philosophy is that all over the audio spectrum the cable's property should be that 1/2LI^2=1/2CV^2, or in other words that the energy stored in the cable is constant over the spectrum which is definitely nor the case for a zip cord.
Their second objective is to prevent reflections at 1/4 wavelength.
To achieve this, they use several parallel wires of different thickness and a lot of termination networks to achieve their objective, called "poles of articulation".
So it's much more complicated than just a coil in a box.
Two things can be said: do they really achieve their technical objective and second is whether the sound will indeed be improved by doing this.
I'm not talking about price, just touching the possibility that they may have found a way to make a better sounding cable.
Because the test that JN has proposed has also to do with energy stored, I'm anxious to see what Pano will report.
Hans
How do you scientifically prove that cable A sounds better as cable B.
We don't listen to frequencies but to music.
How do you prove an emotion like taste, that's almost impossible.
On the other hand, I don't understand why people believe so easily that all cables produce the same sound, whereas dozens of magazines are so positive about certain differences.
When you haven't had the opportunity to listen to these supposedly superior cables, having an opinion has absolutely no base.
Advertising may help to get a test in the first place, but getting awards year after year should mean something.
If not, the implications are that the whole audio business is one big fraud.
In defense of MIT, what I understand from their philosophy is that all over the audio spectrum the cable's property should be that 1/2LI^2=1/2CV^2, or in other words that the energy stored in the cable is constant over the spectrum which is definitely nor the case for a zip cord.
Their second objective is to prevent reflections at 1/4 wavelength.
To achieve this, they use several parallel wires of different thickness and a lot of termination networks to achieve their objective, called "poles of articulation".
So it's much more complicated than just a coil in a box.
Two things can be said: do they really achieve their technical objective and second is whether the sound will indeed be improved by doing this.
I'm not talking about price, just touching the possibility that they may have found a way to make a better sounding cable.
Because the test that JN has proposed has also to do with energy stored, I'm anxious to see what Pano will report.
Hans
May be because against all odds I like it to be surprised, although being sceptical at the same time.
I never believed 44.1/16 could be improved and so far I think I was right.
I also never believed that the Bitcoin would take off, oh man was I wrong.
So my motto is, never say never.
Hans
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I don't. Setting aside any external RF pickup, speaker wire is a passive component so it does not have a 'sound' of its own at all, only losses and electrical properties that may affect the behaviour of the components it links. So from that perspective, and assuming I don't want to use the wire as a form of filter / EQ then all I am bothered about is ensuring the L and C do not have any significant impact in the audio range (not difficult) and voltage drop is minimised over the loop length. If RFI is an issue in some conditions, which is rare but can happen, I might consider a shield, or possibly a low pass.
Wire producers spend large amounts of money on advertising their products in magazines, who require advertising revenue to remain profitable businesses (I've been there, so I know of what I speak). Directly or indirectly, the incentive is there. In many cases that I have seen, large segments of magazine wire reviews merely repeat the advertising statements of the wire manufacturer without ever actually questioning it. Which is frankly appalling practice from people who are nominally paid to provide 'reviews' not simply parrot what they're told. But this is not entirely surprising: a good proportion of reviewers nowadays have very little technical knowledge, unlike in the days of yore when much of hi-fi was a DIY activity and both they and their audience were technically speaking somewhat better educated on basic physics and principles of electrical engineering. While there are exceptions, this is unfortunately the majority situation. I could even name a rather well-known instance of an editor who spent several years promoting the products of a certain high-price wire vendor in the pages of his magazine, and then went and took a job with that very company.
During the editor in question's time with that magazine (I will refrain from giving names, but you will either know who it is, or be able to work out those in question with minimal effort), they ran a large 'blind' wire test. Which it was, in fairness, and they also used two different systems. All well and good, but not one syllable in the entire process was given over to the basic properties of the wires and the effects these would have on the components / alignments. Nothing. And a good part of the purported analysis section was given over to finding excuses for one of the listeners preferring the cheapest wire in the group (about 1/100 the price of the most expensive), and the priceless statement, as though it were some incontrovertible fact that said panel member's results were undermined 'by the absence of stranded cable thump and smear'. Pardon?
Fast forward a year or so, and a 'group review' of products from the wire vendor said person shortly went to work for was performed. Astonishingly enough, the most expensive model was stated to have the best low frequency performance. Yeah. I bet. It had about twice the conductor cross section of the cheapest, which IIRC wasn't much more than about 18ga and completely inadequate over a reasonable loop length for a relatively current-hungry set of speakers if presented with material which had a large amount of LF dynamic range. Narry a mention of this minor point mentioned, but lots given over to the extra 'technology' said pricier offering had. Sigh.
No offense, but that is utter nonsense. The basic principles of electrical engineering, how loudspeakers & amplifiers interact, and the effects of wire gauge and geometry are very well known, and perfectly sufficient to draw general assessments of characteristics and viability. For instance, if you know your amplifier requires a wire with a certain amount of inductance for stability, you would be an idiot to then slap a low inductance wire on it.
Indeed it should. And to a point, it does.
Not 'the whole', but in this limited regard, commercial interest, ignorance and failure to contextualise (partly through ignorance, partly through lack of investigation) all unfortunately play a part. Some of the journalists no doubt do honestly believe what they are saying, and there is a very curious lack of interest on their part, and allegedly on the part of their readers, to ask basic questions.
Where did I say MIT use 'just a coil in a box'? I stated very clearly above that to the best of my knowledge, they use a number of RC and RLC shunts. (Transparent, AFAIK, mostly use a small series coil & a single Zobel). I also noted that these can be manipulated to provide equalisation.
The former is bordering on technical twaddle for audio purposes, but few would dispute adding passive circuitry can be applied and manipulated to produce different sets of results for well-known reasons. The latter depends on the system and what the individual prefers on a case-by-case basis, which is fair enough, but not necessarily a synonym for 'accuracy'.
They have provided a way to manipulate electrical characteristics (first researched by Bell Labs et all in the first decades of the 20th Century) that will interact differently with the rest of the equipment. Which is fair enough as a broad principle.
I can't say I'm 'anxious' as such myself, although it will certainly be of interest.
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True enough, but only if the idealized models used are sufficiently matched to the complexity of the physical system being modeled. How complex a model needs to be depends on the extent to which small 2nd or 3rd order physical effects are significant in the problem being studied. If there is evidence that people can hear things unaccounted for by a simple idealized model, then maybe the problem is with the model.
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That they can [if they want]. Speaking for myself, to date I've never heard any difference between speaker wires that didn't turn out to be caused by the usual LCR suspects, and occasionally connection losses in HE systems. As such, being a rather simple soul, I long ago came to the inevitable conclusion that if any minor differences from other means exist they are swamped in the majority of situations. A point rather well illustrated by Pano's example from some years back of line-level signals transmitted over wire, through mud, a potato etc., and in essence, no audible differences being apparent.
Are there other causes that may result in minor changes? Perhaps, perhaps not; my point is that before heading off down that particular route, it's generally a good idea to check the basics first, because nine times out of ten in the commercial market, that's never done. The example I gave above re a set of speaker wire having superior LF performance to its cheaper stablemate being a case in point. Lots of wittering about differences in plating, dielectrics &c. But narry a word about the fact that it had at least twice the conductor CSA, and the less expensive (these things are relative) offering was at best inadequate in that sense for a good number of systems, especially with longer loop lengths.
Are there other causes that may result in minor changes? Perhaps, perhaps not; my point is that before heading off down that particular route, it's generally a good idea to check the basics first, because nine times out of ten in the commercial market, that's never done. The example I gave above re a set of speaker wire having superior LF performance to its cheaper stablemate being a case in point. Lots of wittering about differences in plating, dielectrics &c. But narry a word about the fact that it had at least twice the conductor CSA, and the less expensive (these things are relative) offering was at best inadequate in that sense for a good number of systems, especially with longer loop lengths.
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I have also not felt the need to attempt the test, as my listening situations do not justify the concerns. I am either running my PA system indoors or outdoors on 100 foot #12, or in the backyard among friends where waterproof speakers are fed via landscaping wires. Neither are critical listening situations. As well, I have no skin in this endeavor since I neither design nor sell speaker cables.
My professional life however, entails working on magnetic systems which are horribly non linear, both in terms of magnetic field quality through a specific bandwidth, or the motion control of highly magnetic force systems using magnetic drive actuators (motors, either stepper, brushed, or brushless 3 phase. It requires extreme attention to details, as that is where the devil is..
Magnetically actuated drivers suffer nonlinearities that the speaker people have only started to scratch the surface of. A perfect example is, if you run an inductance scan on a driver in an enclosure, you see it has an impedance that varies with frequency. What I do NOT see done is, push the driver at a high excursion rate ABOVE resonance, and sweep the inductance vs frequency during that high excursion. You will find that the impedance of the speaker over the rest of the band has changed. If you are good, you will see that it changes when the other frequency is either aiding the excursion or subtracting from it. This is a simple consequence of the conductivity of the magnetic structure near the coil wires as well as the acceleration based magnetic spring constant of the system.
It dawned on me a few months ago that it may be possible to see this effect using an IMD test, and comparing low RFZ wires to high RFZ wires.
My 8 wire scenario from one amp channel (test developed 7 years ago in conjunction with the settling graph I linked to earlier) eliminates the amplifier as a cause of any change, mechanically splitting the zip in the middle of the test eliminates any connection integrity question, it eliminates any interchannel differences a stereo signal could introduce, and it eliminates the speakers as being the cause once the first part of the test has been run. It does however, utilize the end-use measurement equipment.....human perceptions.
If the 8 wire test I propose produces no discernable change, you are done..don't bother with anything other than a simple #12 zip.
If the test produces discernable change, further eval is needed.
jn
My professional life however, entails working on magnetic systems which are horribly non linear, both in terms of magnetic field quality through a specific bandwidth, or the motion control of highly magnetic force systems using magnetic drive actuators (motors, either stepper, brushed, or brushless 3 phase. It requires extreme attention to details, as that is where the devil is..
Magnetically actuated drivers suffer nonlinearities that the speaker people have only started to scratch the surface of. A perfect example is, if you run an inductance scan on a driver in an enclosure, you see it has an impedance that varies with frequency. What I do NOT see done is, push the driver at a high excursion rate ABOVE resonance, and sweep the inductance vs frequency during that high excursion. You will find that the impedance of the speaker over the rest of the band has changed. If you are good, you will see that it changes when the other frequency is either aiding the excursion or subtracting from it. This is a simple consequence of the conductivity of the magnetic structure near the coil wires as well as the acceleration based magnetic spring constant of the system.
It dawned on me a few months ago that it may be possible to see this effect using an IMD test, and comparing low RFZ wires to high RFZ wires.
My 8 wire scenario from one amp channel (test developed 7 years ago in conjunction with the settling graph I linked to earlier) eliminates the amplifier as a cause of any change, mechanically splitting the zip in the middle of the test eliminates any connection integrity question, it eliminates any interchannel differences a stereo signal could introduce, and it eliminates the speakers as being the cause once the first part of the test has been run. It does however, utilize the end-use measurement equipment.....human perceptions.
If the 8 wire test I propose produces no discernable change, you are done..don't bother with anything other than a simple #12 zip.
If the test produces discernable change, further eval is needed.
jn
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Scott,
You have made your opinion in this cable matter crystal clear.
May be you are right, but allow me to still have an open mind on this subject.
And I think the matter is more complex as just AWG size and whatever LRC parameter at just one frequency.
I have three completely different LS cable sets and since Pano does not have the time to test before september, I may do some testing with mixed cabling connected to one amp in the coming week.
Hope that my Amp supports driving two ESL speakers at the same time, getting a 2R load at some points in the FR.
Hans
You have made your opinion in this cable matter crystal clear.
May be you are right, but allow me to still have an open mind on this subject.
And I think the matter is more complex as just AWG size and whatever LRC parameter at just one frequency.
I have three completely different LS cable sets and since Pano does not have the time to test before september, I may do some testing with mixed cabling connected to one amp in the coming week.
Hope that my Amp supports driving two ESL speakers at the same time, getting a 2R load at some points in the FR.
Hans
I wonder why you are being so protective of MIT Cables. Are they your business affiliate or do you have any ties with boutique audio cable businesses?
Many just keep cranking out rubbish because the wire industry has not been made to prove what they say. As soon as that changes, the number of them cranking out rubbish will change too.
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