AndrewT said:
That's true Andrew but I hope you get what I mean. Do you?
Do you suggest to "forget about R and L" when investigating audible effects of speaker cables?
Please note what I did respond to with my post.
Your objection to my response doesn't make sense since I never said that C cold not affect things. What I wrote is 100% true. R and L do/can have an audible and measureanle effect.
/Peter
Hi,
the problem is you associated the measurable and audible effects of the cable parameters as affecting the speaker.
I don't believe this to be the case.
I firmly believe that the changes cables make are to amplifiers, that are susceptible to output load conditions, is to the amplifier and not the speaker. It is the changed amplifier output that one can measure. The speaker merely attempts to reproduce this altered signal.
There is a direct effect that source resistance can have on a speaker. as source resistance is increased, the effective Q of the speaker is raised and this can be audible. It's one of the reasons I always recommend very short cables from power amp to speaker and preferably locate your monoblock amplifiers right beside the speaker terminals.
Throw out all those multi-channel monsters that cannot compete with a monoblock.
the problem is you associated the measurable and audible effects of the cable parameters as affecting the speaker.
I don't believe this to be the case.
I firmly believe that the changes cables make are to amplifiers, that are susceptible to output load conditions, is to the amplifier and not the speaker. It is the changed amplifier output that one can measure. The speaker merely attempts to reproduce this altered signal.
There is a direct effect that source resistance can have on a speaker. as source resistance is increased, the effective Q of the speaker is raised and this can be audible. It's one of the reasons I always recommend very short cables from power amp to speaker and preferably locate your monoblock amplifiers right beside the speaker terminals.
Throw out all those multi-channel monsters that cannot compete with a monoblock.
Agree 100% which is why I laugh about those marginally stable "high end" amps, designed rather than engineered, that are termed "particularly revealing of cable differences." There's a certain British amp that comes to mind...
If I heard a difference between reasonably competent cables (anything as good or better than my beloved orange extension cord), I would first kick myself for having done a poor job engineering my amplifier, then I'd go find my mistake and fix it.
I started reading this thread about a year ago, hoping to enlighten myself.
However, there was so much rubbish being spouted that I soon realised it was not worth wasting my time to continue reading and I abandoned the thread.
I look in now and again to see if any sense is being promoted and spotted Pan's erroneous comment and could not let it pass without presenting my interpretation.
You can all disagree if that is your persuasion, I will take a little holiday while you argue among yourselves.
Enjoy this new year and try to learn as much as you did last year.
However, there was so much rubbish being spouted that I soon realised it was not worth wasting my time to continue reading and I abandoned the thread.
I look in now and again to see if any sense is being promoted and spotted Pan's erroneous comment and could not let it pass without presenting my interpretation.
You can all disagree if that is your persuasion, I will take a little holiday while you argue among yourselves.
Enjoy this new year and try to learn as much as you did last year.
Andrew,
now you're loosing it. You aren't reading carefully enough and/or put words in my mouth. I did allready point that out to you.
There's no problem or anything erroneous about what I wrote.
I wrote in respons to Bud who more or less claimed that if you want to learn about speaker cables you should forget about L and R.
What is it that you do not understand and what it is taht makes my comment to him erroneous? Answer: Nothing.
It is you who don't get the picture.
All I said was that if you want to do this you must realize that the effect of cable R and L directly on the speaker is audible and easy to meassure. This does NOT mean that there are no other effects that can have influence. Do you get it now?
/Peter
now you're loosing it. You aren't reading carefully enough and/or put words in my mouth. I did allready point that out to you.
There's no problem or anything erroneous about what I wrote.
I wrote in respons to Bud who more or less claimed that if you want to learn about speaker cables you should forget about L and R.
What is it that you do not understand and what it is taht makes my comment to him erroneous? Answer: Nothing.
It is you who don't get the picture.
All I said was that if you want to do this you must realize that the effect of cable R and L directly on the speaker is audible and easy to meassure. This does NOT mean that there are no other effects that can have influence. Do you get it now?
/Peter
SY said:
Good for you but what you are implying is that all of the amps that I've listened to were marginally stable and poorly designed. I've tested mine while driving real loads and could not find instabilities.
I agree it will be possible to "engineer" an amp to make all cables sound the same, I'm convinced that it will have poorer SQ than a "designed" amp with good cables.
With the amps I had before, it was always audible whenever I turned the ligts on or off, and it was the same with radio clocks, computers and such
With the amps I use now there is no such "problems" and sound doesnt change whatever electronic devices are on
btw, amps have been tested stable into 1ohm load
I dont know how these exstremely stable amps reacts to different cables, as I have had no reason to change anything
But I do know that whenever I have had everything disconnected, fore whatever reason...every time I had it all assembled and connected again, it somehow didnt sound as good as I was used to
But after a short while and some minor changes to the orientation of mains connectors, everything seemed back to normal again
There are people who strongly believe that it takes time before cables and everything is "normalised" and stable, cables in particular, and I have heard statements that it takes several months
Yeah, now I do hear shouting about mind tricks
Well, I have no opinion about it, one way or the other, as Im really not sure what to think about any of it, and it really seems impossible to prove any of it, either way
With the amps I use now there is no such "problems" and sound doesnt change whatever electronic devices are on
btw, amps have been tested stable into 1ohm load
I dont know how these exstremely stable amps reacts to different cables, as I have had no reason to change anything
But I do know that whenever I have had everything disconnected, fore whatever reason...every time I had it all assembled and connected again, it somehow didnt sound as good as I was used to
But after a short while and some minor changes to the orientation of mains connectors, everything seemed back to normal again
There are people who strongly believe that it takes time before cables and everything is "normalised" and stable, cables in particular, and I have heard statements that it takes several months
Yeah, now I do hear shouting about mind tricks
Well, I have no opinion about it, one way or the other, as Im really not sure what to think about any of it, and it really seems impossible to prove any of it, either way
tinitus said:Anyway, IF there would be just a grain of truth in any of the above, about cables and electronics needing a certain time to get "accustomed" to each other, and settled in...well, then any standard DBT would seem totally inadequate to prove anything
Kind of "twisted"
No, why?
/Peter
I find it amazing that as soon as I suggest actually performing tests to prove one way or the other that cables can make a difference, there is suddenly a flood of posts trying to explain why cables can make a difference and a whole lot of silence from those who were shouting loudest about why they can't.
Why is everyone banging on about speaker cables suddenly? Am I missing something?
I am not in a position to measure differences in L and C between various speaker cables. I only have a few different ones at my disposal anyway and I am certainly not about to waste my time constructing cables specially designed to poor specs. All my cables were chosen as the best I could afford or construct at the time and there are still sufficient differences between them to obviate any need to do that.
My thoughts were to start out at the very beginning by demonstrating that cables can influence the sound. That certainly seems like step one to me. I can swap mains cables, speaker cables, analog interconnects and digital interconnects. I can also play my system with and without a mains filtering extension lead. This certainly seems like enough ground to cover as stage one.
Why is everyone banging on about speaker cables suddenly? Am I missing something?
I am not in a position to measure differences in L and C between various speaker cables. I only have a few different ones at my disposal anyway and I am certainly not about to waste my time constructing cables specially designed to poor specs. All my cables were chosen as the best I could afford or construct at the time and there are still sufficient differences between them to obviate any need to do that.
My thoughts were to start out at the very beginning by demonstrating that cables can influence the sound. That certainly seems like step one to me. I can swap mains cables, speaker cables, analog interconnects and digital interconnects. I can also play my system with and without a mains filtering extension lead. This certainly seems like enough ground to cover as stage one.
Last night I swapped an IC, coax for shorter twisted pair Kimber. I liked the sound of the system better after the swap.
Does this mean that the new cable has a different sound to the coax?
No. It just means that, "I liked the sound of the system better after the swap."
When changing cables yourself you are also changing the measuring equipment, if you are aware of this you won't jump to conclusions.
Does this mean that the new cable has a different sound to the coax?
No. It just means that, "I liked the sound of the system better after the swap."
When changing cables yourself you are also changing the measuring equipment, if you are aware of this you won't jump to conclusions.
Andre Visser said:
Hi,
The easiest way to find out is IMHO the way we did many years ago.
We focused on interconnects and wires by inserting them early on in the amplifying chain.
In those days that meant MC headamps, high gain phono stages or microphone amplifiers.
Differences in LS cables are a lot harder to detect for most people.
Test examples could start from the audible difference between solid core and muti-strand ICs, silver versus copper, various gauges, twisted versus parallel, shielding methods and so on.
All in all I'd keep it simple and you should preferably also have a bridge to measure inductance, C and R and make sure you eliminate anything that can ruin the tests before you carry it out.
A daunting task unless you'd stick to the basics.
Ciao,
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