bob123 said:
of course it is , why would you even,...
cable sound, mathematicly proven,over 21 years ago-
www.stereophile.com/reference/1095cable
janneman said:
soongsc: " ... "Do speaker cables make any difference?" It seems we just agree they do. If a system is well designed, in my experience, the better cables are always consistently better. ..."
Absolutely, whether subjectively, objectively or simply DIY building satisfaction and cocktail party talk ...
anatech: " ... unless they interact poorly with the amplifier. ..."
I suppose this might happen.
....
DIY tip: When using both cheap dipped and gold plated connections together, similar results to gold on gold may result = better results than without. The interaction between gold connectors and the El Cheap-o connectors are improved making a better audio connection ... In otherwords, no need to replace both.
😎
Absolutely, whether subjectively, objectively or simply DIY building satisfaction and cocktail party talk ...
anatech: " ... unless they interact poorly with the amplifier. ..."
I suppose this might happen.
....
DIY tip: When using both cheap dipped and gold plated connections together, similar results to gold on gold may result = better results than without. The interaction between gold connectors and the El Cheap-o connectors are improved making a better audio connection ... In otherwords, no need to replace both.
😎
"...cables do not have a sound of their own.In fact I would say that there are no good cables,only less bad ones."
These two sentences come close to contradicting each other. It would appear to be difficult to specify how some cable is consistently less or more 'bad' than another one without being able to attribute some identifiable sonic character to it.
To judge any sonic character of a cable, it must be distinguished from interactive effects and other sources of coloration in the system used for evaluation.
These two sentences come close to contradicting each other. It would appear to be difficult to specify how some cable is consistently less or more 'bad' than another one without being able to attribute some identifiable sonic character to it.
To judge any sonic character of a cable, it must be distinguished from interactive effects and other sources of coloration in the system used for evaluation.
From the conclusion of Stereophile article: "For me, the most striking observation is the slow, frequency-dependent velocity of a wave traveling in a conductor. "
The electrons travel slowly, much less than speed of light, but the EM waves travel fast, near speed of light, depending on dielectric constant.
I'll study that physics treatise more for flaws.
The electrons travel slowly, much less than speed of light, but the EM waves travel fast, near speed of light, depending on dielectric constant.
I'll study that physics treatise more for flaws.
anatech said:
Of course! And on concrete...and no where near any ferrous materials
anatech said:
I clamped them together in a gold plated banana plug that had a "thumb screw" clamp where you fit the wire in. All wire ends were "tinned" with solder, and Cat 5 had all solid color leads twisted together for "+" and striped leads twisted together for "-".
anatech said:
I'm not sure what the current would have been, but it would have to be very small as the LMS device is not high current. LMS is made by the same company, Linear X, as LEAP, which is the design software I use.
anatech said:
I don't see the resistance as "similar". Unfortunately I don't have the original data handy, but I see .25 ohms for 12GA, and 1.5ohms for the others, that's 6x the resitance for the equivalent test length.
As for Cat5 etc. I'm a backbone network technician...
If you want to reduce the DC resistance, run parallel cables ..run as many as you need for current carrying requirements. For amp to speaker lengths or interconnect you don't need much, for long runs you need more. In most cases I'm recommening it's use for small "sattelite" type speakers that will be augmented by a powered sub. However, 4 cables braided together for a 2 meter speaker lead works well for your typical full range tower
anatech said:
Not a problem. As part of the LMS calibration, the aligator clip leads are part of the calibrating function, so their influence is negated. Also, the wire to resistor connection is removed when the "resistor only" data is inverted and applied to the DUT data. However, I found that connection resistance appeared to be negligible. Reactance of the connection interface may have been significant, but it would be a constant, and also removed as mentioned above.
anatech said:
No problem, it was a bigger test to try and remember the details!
Re: Cable as an audio component
Did this too as part of my freq vs phase testing of Cat5. The frequency response of all of the cables was perfectly flat (of course). It was the phase response as a function of impedance that changed.
Is this audible?......nope!
Would it mess with my measurement data when I'm testing X-overs and drivers? Possibly...so I wanted some wire that wouldn't do that.
The point of the graphs was to answer "is there a difference?", the answer is "yes". The significance of the difference is up to you.
koolkid731 said:
Did this too as part of my freq vs phase testing of Cat5. The frequency response of all of the cables was perfectly flat (of course). It was the phase response as a function of impedance that changed.
Is this audible?......nope!
Would it mess with my measurement data when I'm testing X-overs and drivers? Possibly...so I wanted some wire that wouldn't do that.
The point of the graphs was to answer "is there a difference?", the answer is "yes". The significance of the difference is up to you.
koolkid731 said:
From what I recall of electron theory, this is essentially true. In fact the electrons barely move at all down a wire. Their "speed" is in the order of mm per hour.
Think of that clacking ball desk toy where the outside two balls in a row of 6 or so are the only two moving, the energy (wave) is transported from one end of the row nearly instantly to the other and the balls in the middle don't move at all.
Thoriated,by not a sound of their own I mean that cables in order to show yheir ''sonic signatures,, they must be a part of a system.There they start to create usual problems as no cable is prefect.In comparisson with a second cable its easy to hear which of the two makes less damage so is the less bad one.In a system though it is not always the technically better cable that halps to a better system sound.More later as I have to go to work now. Cheers
Thoriated,one more thing before i go,for me to say about a cable's sound I must have a clue how the perfect cable sounds.We know there is no such thing so two must be compared in the system they will finally be used.One will be less bad.Is my comment clearer now?We talk later.
anatech said:
A single strand of CAT 5 is 24 g. 24g of very pure copper. Cryo treated (i don't know how much, if any, that last makes).
Of late primarily an RH84 driving a variety of fostex FR speakers (sometimes a miniA, sometimes a PP Class A EL84).
Budget wire of the century.
My other wire is broken, but it is/was pretty good too. 2 rolls doubled sided sticky tape, some packing tape, and a donor Jensen copper ribbon choke.
dave
Attachments
First, I must say I love this thread.
In one corner we have the practical guy, claiming that he hears a difference.
In the other corner we ha the theoretical guy, claiming that he cannot measure any difference.
- I guess they could meet, but they like it in the corners... 😀
I wonder about one thing:
- Does bi-wiring make any difference?
I mean, technically it is just a change in the cabling, right?
/Erland
In one corner we have the practical guy, claiming that he hears a difference.
In the other corner we ha the theoretical guy, claiming that he cannot measure any difference.
- I guess they could meet, but they like it in the corners... 😀
I wonder about one thing:
- Does bi-wiring make any difference?
I mean, technically it is just a change in the cabling, right?
/Erland
eleson said:
I recall there is a measured difference from one that has probably also heard a difference?
Also there is one member that tells there is s difference by theory explaining it in delays and ITD and that stuff.
One more and we need a pentagon.
No experience with bi-wiring, but a sales mentioned to me, "If you don't have by-wiring for your speakers, people think that it's cheap." If someone has any ideas how to do that with series crossovers, I would be interested.
Bi-wiring is not very useful, IMO. Bi-amp with crossover is. It doubles the headroom. The math: 2x100W when bi-amped => 400W. To be honest, one can read about this "paradox" at ESP (Elliot Sound Products). It was an interesting read for me.
soongsc said:
My math teacher once told me:
"I envy the physics guys, they use formulas for hundreds of years because the know they work, long before we can prove they do."
- That is a matter of thrust.
I tend to be closer to the practical corner, if I can hear a difference I don't care if understand why.
Interesting though that PCB layout is important (which is cabling on a smaller scale) but speaker cables doesn't.
And, yes, I know bi-wiring has a marketing side...
eleson said:
All the great physicist started out by knowing a difference, and tried to find ways to repeatably predict the difference and the results. They have my respect.
planet10 said:
Off topic alert:
Hi Dave, that looks like waxed paper. Have you tried the plastic film used to laminate paper? It's the heat-sealing stuff available in sizes up to legal at places like Office Depot, etc.. When used to hold wire it doesn't have enough shrink to completely encase it. The result is it holds the wire in place around roughly 20% of the circumference and surrounds the rest with air. Fun, easy experiment for wire hackers. 😉
Now back to the regularly scheduled flame-a-rooney.
anatech said:
According to the TNT Audio wire guage spreadsheet, a single run of 24g cat5 = 18g. So, yes less than 16g.
Max
The first person to post a differential frequency response curve wins a prize. 'Till then I'll stick with my Radio Shack "premium" cable (I splurged for the premium because it was more flexible! 🙂 )
Seriously, the way I weigh things like this is in comparison to the bang for the buck argument. I would NEVER pay for multi-thousand dollar cables until I have the absolute best drivers I could possibly buy, even if I COULD hear a difference in wires (which, btw, I can't but that may just be the limitation of my system) The price vs sound improvement per dollar isn't even the same order of magnitude. Until you have perfect speakers, I would concentrate on them since they will give you a MUCH better sound improvement per upgrade than cables.
Just $0.02 from a guy who measures stuff all day. . .
Seriously, the way I weigh things like this is in comparison to the bang for the buck argument. I would NEVER pay for multi-thousand dollar cables until I have the absolute best drivers I could possibly buy, even if I COULD hear a difference in wires (which, btw, I can't but that may just be the limitation of my system) The price vs sound improvement per dollar isn't even the same order of magnitude. Until you have perfect speakers, I would concentrate on them since they will give you a MUCH better sound improvement per upgrade than cables.
Just $0.02 from a guy who measures stuff all day. . .
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