Then there's the fact that some makers of expensive product marketed as "speaker cable" intentionally add large amounts of inductance and capacitance to the cables they make. Thus they sound different, thus it's easy for the consumer to assume and believe they "must be better" than other cables.
Usually noise is lumped with distortion as a THD+N measurement. Cables are subject to influence by electromagnetic fields and add noise to the signal they are passing. Proper screening of cables is not trivial, nor is the need to correctly drain noise currents from cable screens in a way that does not contaminate the signal path.
Cables are certainly not time invariant either. Cables are physically moved by things like air pressure variations (AKA sound). The electrical parameters vary and the signal going through them varies. It is called "microphonics" when external pressure variations modulate the audio signal.
Microphonics are par for the course with tonearm wiring and turntable cables. The 'distortion' caused is correlated to the signal going through, so not necessarily offensive, but nevertheless causes different tonearm and interconnect cables to sound different. To be time invariant the mechanical construction of the cable must prevent the geometry of the conductors varying as a result of mechanical stress.
Cables also produce their own mechanical forces which can alter the cable's geometry, particularly speaker cables due to the current flowing in them, the magnetic fields thus produced and the forces generated when the fields interact with each other and/or environmental objects nearby.
Of course YMMV, but I think proper cable (not necessarily hifi branded cables) are by far the cheapest means to substantial system improvements. No matter what the retail price, the manufacturing price of cable is dominated by the metal content and to a much lesser degree the plastic content, not by the glossy high end brochure claims. Decades ago when I managed a large sound production facility with national tours and festivals, I paid for cable by the kg of copper content regardless of what type of cable it was.
Cardas Clear Tonearm Wire is a great tonearm cable due to how the conductors are constrained from moving relative to each other, without being too stiff. Canare RG6 is a cable specifically designed for low noise and low microphonics and measures typically >20dB lower noise than most expensive audio interconnects when terminated with Canare RCAP connectors. Properly jacketed star quad speakers cables (e.g. Canare 4S11) are significantly superior to the same amount of copper in figure-8 zip cord; the differences in sound are quite unsubtle. This is all basic physics, not the application of secret voodoo pseudo-science.
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Reminds me of James Randi's (RIP) challenge: he offered $1,000,000 for the first person who would demonstrate audible cable differences.
I understand that Pear Cable initially took the bait, but later retracted when he learned that the test would be double blind.
Pear Cable Chickens Out of $1,000,000 Challenge, We Search For Answers
The prize was never claimed. So much for cable peddlers confidence in their own products.
Jan
I understand that Pear Cable initially took the bait, but later retracted when he learned that the test would be double blind.
Pear Cable Chickens Out of $1,000,000 Challenge, We Search For Answers
The prize was never claimed. So much for cable peddlers confidence in their own products.
Jan
Snake oil. Hit your speaker wire with a hammer, hear any difference? Didn't think so.
Since his name has come up in a recent post in the In Memorium sub-forum, this might be an interesting read. While not directly addressing the exact question posed by OP, I do t think it’s be time wasted.
Speaker Wire
Gordon Gow famously conducted blind speaker wire comparison tests “back in the day”, and as the fundamental laws of physics haven’t changed in the past half century, the conclusions should still be valid, n’est-ce pas?
Speaker Wire
Gordon Gow famously conducted blind speaker wire comparison tests “back in the day”, and as the fundamental laws of physics haven’t changed in the past half century, the conclusions should still be valid, n’est-ce pas?
Perhaps the implications of the physics of cable properties weren't understood well enough in days long ago, or perhaps todays higher resolution systems are more revealing. The quote "When confronted with the truth, believers do not want to hear about it" cuts both ways of course.
The cost of the cable is not the important factor, the electromechanical construction of the cable is, and that's just a plain consequence of the same garden variety physics we have always had. I spent time with John Dunlavy looking at the effects of speaker cables to the signal at the speaker system terminals with his FFT setup in the 1980s, and it was pretty obvious that speaker cable design makes a difference to the signal at the speaker terminals.
As Roger Russell points out auditory perception is time domain based - ears are not spectrum analysers (my words, not his). Yet the arguments against differences in speaker cable are derived from steady state frequency domain measurement, which do not represent how sound is perceived even remotely!
I still have a blind comparator test setup for comparing speaker cables that I built around 2000 when working as a electroacoustic engineer for a speaker manufacturer. It is very easy for people to hear differences between speaker cables with that blind test system, and the only way to know which cable is in use is to unplug one. There is no possibility to fool oneself or be tricked by the operator. In my experience HiFi brand name cables do not perform particularly well compared to speaker cables from some professional audio cable manufacturers.
The precision required to fix level shift would be difficult to implement. A 3 meter (10 foot) 18 gauge cable will drop level by ~0.1dB or less compared to zero resistance cables.
If you believe speaker cables make a difference, then response variations are fixed by using a better cable; if you don't believe speaker cables make a difference, there is no response variation to fix.
For the record I have generally used the comparator for realistic cables with lengths in the range 2 - 4 meters (6 - 12 feet) with cables of 16 gauge or larger conductors.
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SSI Cable Technology - Morrow Audio
Morrow Cables claims that there are three kinds of distortion from cables:
1. Cables That Use Stranded Wire - induced by mechanical vibration.
2. Cables That Use Large Gauge Wire - caused by variation in skin depth.
3. Cables That Use Heavy Insulators - caused by dielectric material absorbs and release energy.
Morrow Cables claims that there are three kinds of distortion from cables:
1. Cables That Use Stranded Wire - induced by mechanical vibration.
2. Cables That Use Large Gauge Wire - caused by variation in skin depth.
3. Cables That Use Heavy Insulators - caused by dielectric material absorbs and release energy.
Ultimately for a cable purveyor it's all about having a marketable point of difference, not science. There's a lot of half truths and mis-appropriated science sounding gobbledygook used for marketing. For example, lumping all different dielectrics together without mentioning the very significant differences in electromagnetic properties of polar and non-polar dielectrics, or not mentioning the effect of cable length, which is by far the most significant variable - doubling the length doubles (or more) the "distortion" regardless of mechanism. At audio wavelengths in typical domestic situations, cable length dominates the degradation of signal significantly for a given construction of cable.
The science for all this audio signal propagation over electrical cable stuff goes back to the 1800s and became significant with audio transmitted across continents and intercontinentally through undersea cables, especially phase and timing errors. Physics hasn't changed since then, which is not to say that technology hasn't got better, just that claims of a "new understanding" of the science are usually pseudo-scientific claptrap.
The elephant in the room is that the electrical properties of an interconnecting cable is only one of three components that shape the transfer function between two devices, the other two being the frequency dependant output impedance of the source and the frequency dependant input impedance of the receiver. Without including the effect of these two properties a discussion of cable effects is meaningless.
For any cable that is bad enough to cause audible degradation, that degradation will be largely system dependent. Purveyors of cable use this fact to their marketing advantage - if a difference can be heard it must be better - right? Actually no, that's most likely wrong!
And NO, I am not saying cables don't make a difference! IMO properly designed cables suitable for each purpose are often the cheapest upgrade available to an audio system. Because the copper (or silver) conductor is the most expensive input component of a cable, not the dielectric or construction method, good cables cost very little more than bad cables.
The science for all this audio signal propagation over electrical cable stuff goes back to the 1800s and became significant with audio transmitted across continents and intercontinentally through undersea cables, especially phase and timing errors. Physics hasn't changed since then, which is not to say that technology hasn't got better, just that claims of a "new understanding" of the science are usually pseudo-scientific claptrap.
The elephant in the room is that the electrical properties of an interconnecting cable is only one of three components that shape the transfer function between two devices, the other two being the frequency dependant output impedance of the source and the frequency dependant input impedance of the receiver. Without including the effect of these two properties a discussion of cable effects is meaningless.
For any cable that is bad enough to cause audible degradation, that degradation will be largely system dependent. Purveyors of cable use this fact to their marketing advantage - if a difference can be heard it must be better - right? Actually no, that's most likely wrong!
And NO, I am not saying cables don't make a difference! IMO properly designed cables suitable for each purpose are often the cheapest upgrade available to an audio system. Because the copper (or silver) conductor is the most expensive input component of a cable, not the dielectric or construction method, good cables cost very little more than bad cables.
Agree the answer is no but it's because cables aren't used like amplifiers. They interconnect entirely different devices with their own grounding schemes, RF susceptibility, isolation from power source, etc.. The topology of looping between the I/O of a single chassis Audio Precision tests interconnects in a way they are never used. Not claiming different approaches will reveal anything earth shattering, just that the 'standard' test protocol appears questionable from square one.
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