Surprisingly, that can work in the other direction as well- in my last Linear Audio article, I showed a graph of the response changes of an Audio Technica 150MLX when going from 150pF to 500pF- a significant lift in the brightness range.
And I'm still chuckling over Pano's test showing that participants couldn't distinguish copper from mud.
This is an unquestionable fact.
Well, a speaker system with a highly variable input impedance will indeed work better ( i.e. more as it was intended to function ) with very low resistance speaker cables.
True, it should look pretty much like this:
Audio Technica ML150: It`s all just Physics , Articles , Die Homepage der Firma SAC, Special Audio Components.
Audio Technica DR 500 LC: It`s all just Physics , Articles , Die Homepage der Firma SAC, Special Audio Components.
Shure V 15 V x MR: It`s all just Physics , Articles , Die Homepage der Firma SAC, Special Audio Components.
I am sorry, I can not follow your theory.
Any speaker (woofer) when is used at it max of it specification (at full volume) it is a plain electric load.
One super cont active cable it would just minimize the portion of energy that is wasted due the cable as thermal loss.
I can fight that by using a larger in diameter cable.
I am a professional electrician 45 year old with good knowledge about sound, even damaged my own right ear drum at the age of 27, by my own marvelous three way 150W speakers placed in a 25 square meters room.
The damn sound was so undistorted even at high volume which I thought that was a harmless pleasure to my ears.
In conclusion, as long its not healthy listening music at extreme volume, why to bother if your cable wastes one or two Watt of power from the 100W in thermal loss?
I am frequently disappointed to find that people still assert the difference when circuit theory, material science and unbiased listening tests say no.polyglot said:
Circuit theory answers your question. A domestic audio interconnect cable is (part of) a potential divider between the source and the load. It is trivially easy to convince yourself that the tiny series resistance and not too high shunt capacitance of a typical cable cannot do any harm, therefore no 'better' cable can do any good.
However, some expensive cables can do significant harm to the signal by allowing in more RF interference etc. The resulting sound difference is sometimes misinterpreted as extra 'detail'.
Power wastage is not the issue. If a speaker has a very variable impedance across the audio spectrum (which is quite common) then a significant cable resistance causes a lumpiness in frequency response as the cable and speaker act as a potential divider. This is just circuit theory. Very poor damping factor causes the same issue. However, avoiding it is not too difficult so it should not be a major problem.Kiriakos said:
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A guy makes my cables, with in this case normal screwable rca's higher grade microphone cable and an semi symmetric shieling... perfect build... about 40 euro a set. Those other cables from 400 euro are for fools. If there ain't no graph, it's nonsence. At the university a prof also say that's a rippoff and 0'99% of is only meant for 200 degrees celsius below zero. Those hifi brands show of with far too nice looking and words. Let them make ugly cables and oyaide with their mains gear sells nothing. What do you buy when it comes to a car, the ugly or the great looking car with the same specs.... And most cables don't even have specs. Just google at ofc copper and the little difference it makes...,the carbon and shielding makes some sense and a mass made 15euro pair interlink cable , sounds less then the handmade cables, but above that there is no improvement anymore. Only in the mind of the buyer. And if it ain't measurable, why do hi-fi stores to make your room the best for audio use. All of a sudden it's measurable.
Most hifi stores are runned by commercial peoples, that's the fun. And i don't see cables with a certificate from a university, that they're real better... just a scam.
Most hifi stores are runned by commercial peoples, that's the fun. And i don't see cables with a certificate from a university, that they're real better... just a scam.
With out having in mind to send in to the trash bin, scientific explanations about this and that, when a customer of my needs a speaker 30 meters away from the amplifier, some how, this speaker it must be connected by the use of a cable.
By having wire up from sound studio up to dancing clubs, I am now familiar with the description as .. accepted loss and unaccepted loss.
And as last word in this subject I would say that I care more for the factor as cable length/ cable diameter to be in perfect balance, because everything else it can de compensated by an equalizer.
Naturally some folks they do pull their hair just by listening the word sound equalizer, because they seeing it as unwanted distortion which will negatively affect the clarity of sound.
Either way, the one who worrying that much about what capacitance in cables can do? he should check more regularly the condition of the capacitors in those crossover.
This has far more direct impact to high frequencies than anything else.
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You should read a bit before bitching like this. It is a well known phenomenon and anyone can measure it, just stick a coax on a high-impedance scope input and twist it.
Fortunately tribo, piezo etc result in a charge being generated, not a voltage. This charge will translate into a voltage high enough to be annoying only if the cable is not driven by a low enough impedance. So if your cable is connected to a low-impedance output like a preamp, usually it does not matter.
For example check out these scope shots. Here we have a coax that I hit with my finger. It delivers about 20mV pk into the scope's 1Megohm input. Of course this means it would deliver something like 2µV into a preamp's 100 ohm output impedance. This cable would be very bad for a microphone, if someone steps on it, THUMP. Fortunately this is not a problem in practice since everyone who has setup a microphone on a stage knows that you're supposed to use the kind of cable that doesn't THUMP when someone steps on it.
If you got very low-level signals and/or high impedances, special measures are needed. Balanced microphone cables have cotton filler to prevent rubbing, and you can find low-noise cables for medical (ECG...) or vibration sensing applications, which have conductive layers (usually graphite) at interfaces to neutralize triboelectric charges.
Naturally in the realm of home hifi where you get short cable runs of a few meters, a few more bucks spent on enough copper to get a low enough cable resistance is much cheaper than using an equalizer...
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très difficile à comprendre ...
You just said a story in which you did mentioned the problem and the answer.
Therefore never connect a microphone to your oscilloscope by using an Oscilloscope probe as extension cable.
Thank you for clarifying that. An electric guitar has a relatively high output impedance; hence the problem.
Just for clarification I would say that there is no problem, except if you manage to replicate it, at normal conditions, and with normal use.
The probe of the Oscilloscope is a very special item, and is designed to operate at one million ohms as impedance.
There is no comparison with any sound application, microphones is at 600 Ohm.
Do not bother with this hilarious theory that is distributed mostly in YouTube, so kids to keep their heads busy with one phenomenon that happens only to oscilloscope probes.
And it happens because they have a capacitance adjustment pot on them that causes this recorded anomaly because the plates of this adjustable capacitor are moving due the impact.
We are talking for just 12-18 Pico Farand here, which for an Oscilloscope it is an significant amount as capacitance.
So all these reputable companies making low noise microphone cables are just wasting their time by solving a non-problem?Kiriakos said:
So it is not the cable being hit, but the sound travels up the cable to the 'scope probe and affects the capacitance preset? Implausible. Easily disproved by connecting the cable straight to the scope with no probe.
Would it not be easier and simpler to just accept the known fact that microphone cables need to be made in a specific way in order to reduce handling noises?
Anyone who has spent any time doing high quality recording or performing has had cables that "talk." Low noise cables, from companies like Belden, Carol, or other "mainstream" manufacturers are inexpensive and effective.
BTW, as mentioned, the above traces were taken from a bare BNC to BNC cable, about 1m long, RG58 I think, not a scope probe cable, just a cable that was laying around on my bench.
I did not take the cable from the box where I put the high noise ones, that I really don't want to use for LF analog stuff though (that would have been too easy).
Also my scope probes don't seem to generate spikes when I handle the cable. Maybe the manufacturer did their job, who knows.
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