Based on your experience, how long do cables get till they start having significant vibration effects?
fdegrove said:
There is a lot of truth in those 7 words. You swap cables, caps, or resistors and hear a difference but after awhile you realise that although it is different, it is hard to decide whether the sound has actually improved. You may prefer the change on one track or CD but not on others, and worst of all, you decide it is actually an improvement but months later to revert back to the original and now prefer that. Is it just me ? 🙂
soongsc said:
Hi,
i cannot say, because i have not proven that systematically.
What i have done is to replace old cables by cables with flexible
structure and soft mantling. For the short cinch connections
i used cables with same conductors for signal and mass, not
coax. (No problems with noise or buzz so far.)
I put my amps, power cables and program sources on thick
rubber mats and so on ...
I close the screen of the laptop when playing loud, so the
laptop gets less vibration ...
I am thinking about damping the boards of my amps with
braces and some kind of bread ...
I bought cheap "illumination wire" with soft mantling, which
i like to test as speaker wire ...
Those measures sum up in a way that the whole system is not
the same anymore. It has improved a lot. I do it in intuitive
manner. Avoid capacity in the cables - even between signal and
mass - damp vibration of all components.
Connect all power jacks in correct orientation. Apply damping to
the line cord too.
Keep cables short.
Treat digital data cables and digital components the same way
as analog components.
I am sorry, it works. It costs nearly nothing. I often use
cheaper material than before, sometimes material intended
for different use than audio.
Cheers
HiFiNutNut said:
My experience is that you get an optimum wire dia for audio, if the cable dia get too large, you start losing HF detail. I believe lower diameter cables with low resistance conductors should be better.
Andre Visser said:
Hi Andre, is your conclusion on diameters arrived at from listening to the same speakers and amp over time ?
I'm wondering how you came to the conclusion that vibration effects have more impact on sound than flattening impedance, etc.?LineArray said:
Hi,
i think both, electrical and mechanical characteristics
of components are important. But both interact with
each other, when exposed to the sound field in a living
room and the vibration of the floor, where the
components stand on.
It is all a matter of relations. Even 10 Ohms resistance of
a cable is not much, compared to 47 K Ohms of a typical
power amp.
Harmfulness of resistance and capacity in the cables
depends on the characteristics of the components which
are to be connected by that particular cables.
But i FEEL, that the kind of lets call it "distorsion/smearing"
introduced by vibration, makes things a lot worse and has
an additional - maybe multiplying - effect on what is audible
as "dirt in the chain" .
The vibrational effects are dynamic and signal dependent,
it is a kind of unwanted feedback from the sound field
onto the signal processing components itself.
Our brain can detect them more easily, than a very slight
and signal independent rolloff in the frequency response caused
by a capacity e.g.
So far my thoughts, it is not scientifical. I hear differences,
i am wondering. Thats all. The differences are - TO ME -
too big to be explained by "different mood" of the listener
or "wishful thinking".
Cheers
i think both, electrical and mechanical characteristics
of components are important. But both interact with
each other, when exposed to the sound field in a living
room and the vibration of the floor, where the
components stand on.
It is all a matter of relations. Even 10 Ohms resistance of
a cable is not much, compared to 47 K Ohms of a typical
power amp.
Harmfulness of resistance and capacity in the cables
depends on the characteristics of the components which
are to be connected by that particular cables.
But i FEEL, that the kind of lets call it "distorsion/smearing"
introduced by vibration, makes things a lot worse and has
an additional - maybe multiplying - effect on what is audible
as "dirt in the chain" .
The vibrational effects are dynamic and signal dependent,
it is a kind of unwanted feedback from the sound field
onto the signal processing components itself.
Our brain can detect them more easily, than a very slight
and signal independent rolloff in the frequency response caused
by a capacity e.g.
So far my thoughts, it is not scientifical. I hear differences,
i am wondering. Thats all. The differences are - TO ME -
too big to be explained by "different mood" of the listener
or "wishful thinking".
Cheers
fredex said:
Hi Fredex, no I've experimented once with ultra-high-end normal mains cable 😀 that you can buy from any electrical dealer. I've found that 1,5mm2 cable gave me quite good HF detail and not that good bass, 4.0mm2 was the opposite and 2.5mm2 sounded like a happy medium, doing sort of OK with both LF and HF.
I believe the optimum diameter will always be a compromise, at the moment I use biwire cable with larger dia (I think 3.5mm2) on bass and about 2.5mm2 on HF. I can clearly hear the difference when I swop the two cables.
André
Andre. Glad you still have your sense of humour intact😀 But I didn't make myself clear, I mean in all the millions 😉 of experiments you have conducted with countless cables, were you using the same speakers and amps each time? Maybe just maybe your findings don't apply to other speakers and amps. Smarter people than me say what's at each end affects the results, if you take that further what part does the listener play ? 😀
The problem with conducting listening tests only, is that you never know whether it's the cable that's the problem or whether it reveals problem in other places in the system.
I think alot of the effects you talk about in this thread are minimal to negligible.
1) Microphony: mic cables usually have at least 30 db of gain and are at least 20 ft long.
Try setting up a preamp with a shorted input into a tape recorder (any recorder) and record while playing loud music in the room. Does any of the music end up on tape? Then its not in the interconect.
2) Shielding and RFI: do you hear any noise from your system when not playing music, then you dont have a noise problem.
1) Microphony: mic cables usually have at least 30 db of gain and are at least 20 ft long.
Try setting up a preamp with a shorted input into a tape recorder (any recorder) and record while playing loud music in the room. Does any of the music end up on tape? Then its not in the interconect.
2) Shielding and RFI: do you hear any noise from your system when not playing music, then you dont have a noise problem.
Wow! This old chestnut certainly has a life of it's own.
It went for a couple of months after Paulinators' first post in May '03.
Then it took off again on September '04 for another couple of months.
A lack of interest resulted in only 60-odd posts in August '06 and only one in '07.
Then it was dormant again until May this year, when it sparked a huge flurry of interest (nearly 1200 posts in a couple of months).
And we're off down the slippery slope again...😉
It went for a couple of months after Paulinators' first post in May '03.
Then it took off again on September '04 for another couple of months.
A lack of interest resulted in only 60-odd posts in August '06 and only one in '07.
Then it was dormant again until May this year, when it sparked a huge flurry of interest (nearly 1200 posts in a couple of months).
And we're off down the slippery slope again...😉
Sorry, fairly new to this site, I should know better. I keep thinking the PEAR cable challenge would quiet this down but it seems to have a life of its own!
cbdb said:
There wouldn't be this much interest if the effects were minimal to negligible............would there?
We are all sane here....aren't we?
The effects couln't possibly be in our heads only............could they? 😀
cbdb, Some coax cables can be really microphonic under certain conditions and you could get a signal, but I agree with you that these effects don't apply to speaker cables, and normally not to inter connects. If you turn up the volume (no program) and strike the inter connects you will hear if your cables are contributing anything.
cbdb said:
After building and designing studios for a couple decades experience suggests you're right, nothing here to learn. BTW, your pre-amp test as described isn't valid. Your simple exercise to explain why.
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