I mean no disrespect but arguing about something without understanding how it ACTUALLY works IMO “falls into the Neanderthal category”.
The AES has many white papers on the subject with real data to back it up. There have been many double blindfolded tests as well.
For years I fell into the audiophile category and actually went through a spell of depression when I realized it was all just a bunch of **. Sometimes you truly think you hear a difference when in reality you do not. Just ask any music production engineer who though he was adding a subtle effect to the mix only to find out the effect was not even engaged. Any honest engineer will admit this has happen at least once in his career.
Physics is Physics and we cannot change that. We can however fall victim to the placebo effect. I myself have fallen victim. Now I am a recovering Audiophile.
Again I mean no disrespect.
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Can someone please explain to me or direct me to the information on how a typical power amp's speaker outputs are "balanced" ?
In EVERY power amp I've seen, the negative speaker cable is connected to chassis ground. I fail to see how this is a balanced system.
No one has argued against the laws of Physics , least of all myself. The laws of physics and the table of elements will , in fact, reinforce my arguement.
. . . and the coat hangers wouldn't be toaster wire ?
Complete ridiculosity.
I don't get it. How you cannot hear a difference astounds me.
I am not saying the difference in cables is as dramatic as changing to a different set of speakers , but it is definitely noticeable in most cases and quite obvious in some.
Do you think you can hear a difference in amplifiers ? CD players ? Speakers ?
Where does it end ?
I suppose you guys all have receivers (except for Brian who obviously uses an arc welder converted for audio use) , run lamp cord for speaker wire, and have "Hi-Fi" speakers from Best Buy. Why would you waste your money on anything else ? You can buy a 7 channel 100+ wpc receiver for like $300 ! What a deal !
Anticipating your rebuttal,
...........................Blake
In EVERY power amp I've seen, the negative speaker cable is connected to chassis ground. I fail to see how this is a balanced system.
No one has argued against the laws of Physics , least of all myself. The laws of physics and the table of elements will , in fact, reinforce my arguement.
Brian Oshman said:
. . . and the coat hangers wouldn't be toaster wire ?
Complete ridiculosity.
I don't get it. How you cannot hear a difference astounds me.
I am not saying the difference in cables is as dramatic as changing to a different set of speakers , but it is definitely noticeable in most cases and quite obvious in some.
Do you think you can hear a difference in amplifiers ? CD players ? Speakers ?
Where does it end ?
I suppose you guys all have receivers (except for Brian who obviously uses an arc welder converted for audio use) , run lamp cord for speaker wire, and have "Hi-Fi" speakers from Best Buy. Why would you waste your money on anything else ? You can buy a 7 channel 100+ wpc receiver for like $300 ! What a deal !
Anticipating your rebuttal,
...........................Blake
A lot of exceptions, including every bridged solid state amp ever made (like the Ampzillas of my youth), all of the Audio Research amps...
But yes, MOST solid state amps have one side grounded.
Blake,
You might want to explain to me WHY a pair of coat hangers should sound different for a proper copper cable if the LCR specs are the same.
Bob
You might want to explain to me WHY a pair of coat hangers should sound different for a proper copper cable if the LCR specs are the same.
Bob
It used to puzzle me why so many people don't hear a difference with quite radically different speaker wires, driver setups, phasing errors, etc until I realised that some people just can't hear much difference at all, and will tolerate quite amazing peaks/dips in freq response, etc, without any change of expression at all, while I've got fingers in my ears! - perfect for Rock & roll audiences!
I remember the days when we changed from using fig8 lamp chord to arc welding cable and when this was upgraded to 3mm solid copper transformer wire, we thought we'd invented something new!!
Those Ampzillas found their way out here, too - serious current generators, those things, Sy!
'those AES papers! - the amount of time I spent trying to follow convoluted mathematical justification proving that what I could clearly hear just existed in my imagination ....
If any testing included the use of headphones for different "speaker" wires, there would be few people that couldn't hear the difference between coathanger wire (or plain steel) and ordinary copper wire as the conductors! Essential and very revealing tool, headphones - not common today, unfortunately.
[If the coathangers had the same LCR specs as the "proper" copper wire, then those coathanger would be made from the same "proper" copper wire, naturally.]
IMO, Blind tests are most useful to "prove" just about anything, particularly in groups - 'never understood the assumptions, or the logic, behind the idea of sitting a whole bunch of people (the more "expert" the better!) in different positions in an ideal uniform listening room and evaluate different components that are hidden from view in the same time interval and ....
(IMO, blind testing is about as useful as selecting "horse racing results" by committee!)
And yes, Trans, everyone has made that ol' mistake - not so much when recording, but certainly when mixing down, particularly with deadlines and producers over your shoulder!
I remember the days when we changed from using fig8 lamp chord to arc welding cable and when this was upgraded to 3mm solid copper transformer wire, we thought we'd invented something new!!
Those Ampzillas found their way out here, too - serious current generators, those things, Sy!
'those AES papers! - the amount of time I spent trying to follow convoluted mathematical justification proving that what I could clearly hear just existed in my imagination ....
If any testing included the use of headphones for different "speaker" wires, there would be few people that couldn't hear the difference between coathanger wire (or plain steel) and ordinary copper wire as the conductors! Essential and very revealing tool, headphones - not common today, unfortunately.
[If the coathangers had the same LCR specs as the "proper" copper wire, then those coathanger would be made from the same "proper" copper wire, naturally.]
IMO, Blind tests are most useful to "prove" just about anything, particularly in groups - 'never understood the assumptions, or the logic, behind the idea of sitting a whole bunch of people (the more "expert" the better!) in different positions in an ideal uniform listening room and evaluate different components that are hidden from view in the same time interval and ....
(IMO, blind testing is about as useful as selecting "horse racing results" by committee!)
And yes, Trans, everyone has made that ol' mistake - not so much when recording, but certainly when mixing down, particularly with deadlines and producers over your shoulder!
What is funny is how many people say cables don't do crap.
For some people they do!
For me it was the biggest upgrade to my entire system, it came alive with awesome cables. Old dick smith generic 'hifi' cables sounded dull, dead and lacking in sound stage and definition after long wear in. CAT5e was better (probably higher grade copper?) Bought some top of the range audioquest cable with lifetime warranty designed for installs and minimum capacitance/inductance/resistance over very long runs, for a bargain price from a hookup and once they wore in they sounded brilliant. I tried pluggin in my old cables, muddy sound straight away.... is it just me? Needed wearing in again? Who knows.
I have noticed if I do not use my rig for long periods of time (1-2 weeks) it'll go back to being a little muddy until it gets a good few hours of play time, to warm up the amps and I guess re-align electrons in the cables?
Guess its the same ballpark as biamping or biwiring... all subjective and system to system.
For some people they do!
For me it was the biggest upgrade to my entire system, it came alive with awesome cables. Old dick smith generic 'hifi' cables sounded dull, dead and lacking in sound stage and definition after long wear in. CAT5e was better (probably higher grade copper?) Bought some top of the range audioquest cable with lifetime warranty designed for installs and minimum capacitance/inductance/resistance over very long runs, for a bargain price from a hookup and once they wore in they sounded brilliant. I tried pluggin in my old cables, muddy sound straight away.... is it just me? Needed wearing in again? Who knows.
I have noticed if I do not use my rig for long periods of time (1-2 weeks) it'll go back to being a little muddy until it gets a good few hours of play time, to warm up the amps and I guess re-align electrons in the cables?
Guess its the same ballpark as biamping or biwiring... all subjective and system to system.
Man made vegetarian crab meat! I'm also a serious cook. Thirty years ago I was at a party where someone served fake crab meat. It had the right consistency but the flavor was not even close. Some people made awful faces, some people said "it tasted just like real crab meat." I learned that no two people taste the same when sampling the same dish.
The point is everyone's ears are different. From nature, and from nurture. Especially when we get older the sum total hearing damage changes our hearing from year to year. That some people can hear a difference in different cable means that there is a difference. If you don't hear the difference its because YOU DON'T HEAR THE DIFFERENCE not because there isn't one!
The point is everyone's ears are different. From nature, and from nurture. Especially when we get older the sum total hearing damage changes our hearing from year to year. That some people can hear a difference in different cable means that there is a difference. If you don't hear the difference its because YOU DON'T HEAR THE DIFFERENCE not because there isn't one!
Gotta laugh a bit with some of this stuff -
I remember when those crazy priced Shunyata cables arrived on the market and they then found that they weren't so neutral in some amp/speaker combinations - THAT didn't get into the audio pages!
You have to admit, it takes quite a lot of discipline to admit that your latest acquisition costing as much as a new car, just doesn't sound good in your system - good thing that the local agents have a return policy!
I borrowed a pair of those fancy copper terminal block connectors, Cardas, I think, and was a bit dissapointed that there wasn't a dramatic improvement in the sound - maybe with the current silver conductors it might make a difference - maybe it requires pure silver connections all the way thru, or the system just isn't good enough, or ..... there's always something!
I remember when those crazy priced Shunyata cables arrived on the market and they then found that they weren't so neutral in some amp/speaker combinations - THAT didn't get into the audio pages!
You have to admit, it takes quite a lot of discipline to admit that your latest acquisition costing as much as a new car, just doesn't sound good in your system - good thing that the local agents have a return policy!
I borrowed a pair of those fancy copper terminal block connectors, Cardas, I think, and was a bit dissapointed that there wasn't a dramatic improvement in the sound - maybe with the current silver conductors it might make a difference - maybe it requires pure silver connections all the way thru, or the system just isn't good enough, or ..... there's always something!
Let's get this discussion back on track. We are (supposed to be) discussing the WIRE that makes up SPEAKER cable. We are NOT discussing amps, sources or interconnects. We are discussing WIRE. We are also not discussing cable terminations, because a poor termination will at the very least add R to the cable, and that will cause an audible difference.
My point of departure is that two cables of different material but roughly the same LCR will sound the same. The length of the steel wire will need to be shorter than the copper wire to maintain the same R. Someone can go into a materials table and get that answer.
Configuration of a cable DOES make a difference. Widely spaced parallel pairs, closely spaced parallel pairs and tightly twisted pairs will have different L and C. Woven CAT5 cables are notorious for their high C. That is not audible per se, but it can drive an amp into high frequency oscillation, and that is audible.
OK, explain to me:
1. Skin effect is real and frequency dependent. How much loss in dB at 20k
Hz vs 20Hz in a 2m 14ga zip cord?
2. Teflon is supposed to be superior to PVC because the higher energy storage in PVC causes time smearing. In light of the fact that PVC insulated CAT5e can pass something that is recognizable as a square wave at 350MHz, exactly how much time smearing is there at 20kHz?
3. The grain structure of wire is supposed to cause noise because of dielectric effects at the grain boundaries. How much higher in dB is the noise floor of industrial grade copper vs many 9's oxygen free audio grade copper?
One final note: Those who are most violently opposed to DBT are also those whose theses are invalidated by DBT. Time and again DBT has shown that kilobuck cable is indistinguishable from 14-16ga zip cord. The retort is always that DBT is flawed. "I have golden ears and I can hear the difference. The cretins doing the testing couldn't possibly hear what I hear." My retort: The placebo effect is alive and well and directly proportional to the cost of the item. Have you ever heard that the best weak ever made is removing the last tweak?
Bob
My point of departure is that two cables of different material but roughly the same LCR will sound the same. The length of the steel wire will need to be shorter than the copper wire to maintain the same R. Someone can go into a materials table and get that answer.
Configuration of a cable DOES make a difference. Widely spaced parallel pairs, closely spaced parallel pairs and tightly twisted pairs will have different L and C. Woven CAT5 cables are notorious for their high C. That is not audible per se, but it can drive an amp into high frequency oscillation, and that is audible.
OK, explain to me:
1. Skin effect is real and frequency dependent. How much loss in dB at 20k
Hz vs 20Hz in a 2m 14ga zip cord?
2. Teflon is supposed to be superior to PVC because the higher energy storage in PVC causes time smearing. In light of the fact that PVC insulated CAT5e can pass something that is recognizable as a square wave at 350MHz, exactly how much time smearing is there at 20kHz?
3. The grain structure of wire is supposed to cause noise because of dielectric effects at the grain boundaries. How much higher in dB is the noise floor of industrial grade copper vs many 9's oxygen free audio grade copper?
One final note: Those who are most violently opposed to DBT are also those whose theses are invalidated by DBT. Time and again DBT has shown that kilobuck cable is indistinguishable from 14-16ga zip cord. The retort is always that DBT is flawed. "I have golden ears and I can hear the difference. The cretins doing the testing couldn't possibly hear what I hear." My retort: The placebo effect is alive and well and directly proportional to the cost of the item. Have you ever heard that the best weak ever made is removing the last tweak?
Bob
constantly 😱 and other things like listening to speakers with forgotten zobel correction on just one channel 🙂 and a component with bad connection, or loosened speaker wire, but still working 😱😛
anything is possible 😀🙂
This thread is about your favorite wire -- no matter the reason. Do not consider it an opportunity to restart the now closed cable thread. This thread is getting awefully close to closure.
Do not consider this an opportunity to discuss whether wire makes a difference, that is not the subject.
dave
My current favorite is Utilitec 16 AWG wire cut from a 40 ft. extension cord sold at Lowe's. It's a three wire cord that allows all kinds of different configurations for experimental purposes. I've paid $8.40 each (after taxes) here in Washington State.
Best Regards,
TerryO
Best Regards,
TerryO
favorite wire
I use 10 gauge solid core house wire, no connectors bend the ends around the binding posts! Sounds great NOT user friendly!
I use 10 gauge solid core house wire, no connectors bend the ends around the binding posts! Sounds great NOT user friendly!
I can only imagine. About a year ago, I bought some solid 12AWG, and its still sitting there.
favorite wire
They have to be custom bent into place, like wrestling a big python! You can break a sweat changing components! lol But they do sound good!
They have to be custom bent into place, like wrestling a big python! You can break a sweat changing components! lol But they do sound good!
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