I must agree with you, Mike. Let us get a little sense here. I measured a number of loudspeaker cables for L and C (R being irrelevant in home setups) and found the highest C to be 220pF per 3m length; inductance of 3 microhy. Taking into account that normal 8 ohm loudspeakers rise to some 30 ohms at 20 KHz, the -1dB frequency would be 250 KHz (actually shifting to the MHz region because the loudspeaker impedance keep rising). Furthermore this inductance was for 1 wire. Normally with 2 leads being together, current would flow in opposite directions, substantially cancelling inductive effect.
Similarly simple calculation will show that capacitance in loudpseaker wire also causes a maximum of 0.013 dB loss at 20 KHz. So what is it that can cause alleged audible differences? Certainly not L-C-R!
As far as exotic wire is concerned, what cheases me off (to use a decent expression) is that folks go on about the "dramatic" effect of exotic wire, but nobody seems to mind the many meters of ordinary "cheap" copper wire in cross-over inductors and voice coils. No one is advocating bell-wire or saying cable has no influence per se: but for audio I have yet to see any article, academic or otherwise, setting out an acceptable reason why I should use fancy cable. Much have been written, none of which can show unchallenged proof of audible contribution. (That is why eminent British designer Douglas Self wrote an article (Electronics World) "Why I buy my Cable at Woolworths".)
Someone suggested that anyone who cannot hear a difference has no experience. I would humbly suggest that my 50 years experience in audio design proves different, at least as far as any L-C-R influence goes. And then there are all those illuminating (not to say embarrassing) blind tests .....
Yonty
Similarly simple calculation will show that capacitance in loudpseaker wire also causes a maximum of 0.013 dB loss at 20 KHz. So what is it that can cause alleged audible differences? Certainly not L-C-R!
As far as exotic wire is concerned, what cheases me off (to use a decent expression) is that folks go on about the "dramatic" effect of exotic wire, but nobody seems to mind the many meters of ordinary "cheap" copper wire in cross-over inductors and voice coils. No one is advocating bell-wire or saying cable has no influence per se: but for audio I have yet to see any article, academic or otherwise, setting out an acceptable reason why I should use fancy cable. Much have been written, none of which can show unchallenged proof of audible contribution. (That is why eminent British designer Douglas Self wrote an article (Electronics World) "Why I buy my Cable at Woolworths".)
Someone suggested that anyone who cannot hear a difference has no experience. I would humbly suggest that my 50 years experience in audio design proves different, at least as far as any L-C-R influence goes. And then there are all those illuminating (not to say embarrassing) blind tests .....
Yonty
Johan Potgieter said:
Johan,
Can you tell me which year, which issue? I would be interested in that article.
BTW Fully agree with you. But there are cables where they actually attach a box with caps and coils at each end so that it mucks up the sound so you can hear a difference. What I call designer cables.
Jan Didden
janneman said:
Jan
You can search an index of Electronics World articles at:
http://www.softcopy.co.uk/electronicsworld/
The article to which Johan was referring was entitled "Cable Sonics?" and was published in three parts, September, October and November 1997.
Geoff
Hi John
Did you try calculating zero crossing delay numbers, say for something we can actually hear, like a 1-5 Khz sine, and a distributed RLC into 4 to 8 ohms?
Well, one has to admit, inductors are also a bone of contention for some. And, the actual device is designed for flux coupling and specified energy storage characteristics..vc's are the same, but they also have different design criteria..
Inductance measurement of a single wire has little meaning, as it requires forming a loop, which is not consistent with end use. I'd use the Terman equation first, unless the wire design was some goofy thing..Johan Potgieter said:
Was that calc done with L and R excluded, and that 30 ohm number you used..Johan Potgieter said:
Did you try calculating zero crossing delay numbers, say for something we can actually hear, like a 1-5 Khz sine, and a distributed RLC into 4 to 8 ohms?
Johan Potgieter said:
Well, one has to admit, inductors are also a bone of contention for some. And, the actual device is designed for flux coupling and specified energy storage characteristics..vc's are the same, but they also have different design criteria..
Geeze, you got some time in,,eh?Johan Potgieter said:
Attachments
carlosfm said:
Sure. You can use "designer cables" with for instance tube amps that are sensitive to complex loads, and make a difference. But the basic reason is the sensitivity of the amp to those complex loads. And using "normal" cables will show the sound of the amps without disturbance. Unless, of course, you use the cable to "tune" the amp. But that can be done with a couple of components at the amps output, saving you multi $$$ spending. It is not that the cable "brings out the emotion in music" or other such nonsense. I believe it IS simple, Carlos!
Jan Didden
janneman said:
I agree with you in almost everything, Jan.
It's not a question of "tuning" the amp, it's just a matter of letting it play as it can.
In the end, there are always compromises. A cable is a cable, and if you can cut it in half and use much smaller lengths, you will already have improvements.
It's like removing an inductor on a crossover, simplifying it, and hearing another level of transparency that was absent.
Besides cable construction (which affects R, C and L, being the R of least importance), there are sonic signatures on the metal used for the conductors.
Otherwise why use copper and not a much cheaper metal?
Aluminium?
Lead?
carlosfm said:
This is called "antropomorphism (sp?)", assigning human-like qualities to innate objects. Like saying "my car really likes to revv up". The amp cannot "letting it play as it can". It has certain characteristics which you accept, or modify, with components, cables, or other speakers. It is not like helping the amp do something it had in it but until know it didn't know how to get out.
Jan Didden
Anthropomorphism: also referred to as personification or prosopopeia, is the attribution of human characteristics to inanimate objects, animals, forces of nature, and others. "Anthropomorphism" comes from two Greek words, ανθρωπος, anthrōpos, meaning human, and μορφη, morphē, meaning shape or form.
janneman said:
Jan, spare me that...
You never know if you are taking the best out of the amp, there are many factors to limit it's performance.
Cables, speakers, etc... you can't guarantee what's the best cable that makes the amp perform as it should.
Your "normal" C+L cable can perform well with a certain amp+speaker combination, but then you change that cable for another one and you hear an improvement in detail, bass tightness, etc.
You can't isolate the cable from the picture and expect it to be the best cable in every circumstance.
That's my experience, either antropomorphistic or not.
carlosfm said:[snip]You can't isolate the cable from the picture and expect it to be the best cable in every circumstance.
That's my experience, either antropomorphistic or not.
Carlos,
I think that is my point precisely. If you have a competently designed amp, and a "normal" cable, that's it. Change it to another "normal" cable, same sound. Now what may happen is that you have a sensitive amp, so to say (load sensitive that is) and "funny" cables. Every combination may sound different, is that what you want? Spending the rest of your life swapping cables, amps, to find one that works objectively reasonably well? Are we not able to make a cable that doesn't change the way the amp sound? The cable has to get the signal from A to B, NOT get it from A to B while changing it to C. If a cable does that to the extend that it is audible, the cable builder should get back to school. Unless you deliberately want to use the cable to change the sound, then all bets are off, the sky is the limit, but don't come to me saying this cable is "better". It is the worst.
Jan Didden
carlosfm said:
over aluminum? of course it does... aluminum would get very hot cause of resistance and would require far larger gauges to carry the same current
lead's even worse if I'm not mistaken... nobody wants their wires being 100 degrees all the time
and aluminum isn't cheap.... not cheap enough for justification of these flaws
lead is VERY expensive in pure forms
carlosfm said:
Jan, spare me that...
You never know if you are taking the best out of the amp, there are many factors to limit it's performance.
Cables, speakers, etc... you can't guarantee what's the best cable that makes the amp perform as it should.
Your "normal" C+L cable can perform well with a certain amp+speaker combination, but then you change that cable for another one and you hear an improvement in detail, bass tightness, etc.
You can't isolate the cable from the picture and expect it to be the best cable in every circumstance.
That's my experience, either antropomorphistic or not.
that's just simply untrue from what I've seen...
if you're talking interconnects that's different... but not the extent you talk of...
you're probably one of those folks who thinks that if they replace those $1 capacitors with $100 exotics that you can here the capactiance difference... correct?
janneman said:
Jan, I don't spend my life changing cables and my speaker cables are 15 years old.
I'm telling you about experiences I made over the years, with LOTS of amps and speakers, and not necessarily on my system.
I have a pair of spare "normal" figure-of-eight Supra 2.5 cables, amongst others.
If I go to my main system and change the Kimbers (which are more capacitive due to their construction) by the Supras, here's what happens:
- Less dynamics.
- Less (and worse, loose) bass.
- Less transparency and speed in the midband and treble.
Averyone can notice this, it's as clear as water.
I make my amps to be less sensitive to speaker cables, and the proof is that the cable with theorethically less ideal parameters (the Kimber) sound better.
The same experience I had in other systems by changing much more expensive cable by cheaper, "normal" cable.
And why did I do that?
Because I was hearing strange things and I knew the amp was not happy with those speakers and/or cables.
And those are exactly the amps which are sensitive to cables and/or are not correctly matched to a pair of speakers.
Because some good speakers will only work well with certain amps, as you know.
There's planning to make when one builds a system, like not using hard to drive speakers with "boutique" low-power class-A amps, tubes, etc.
So, you can't so easily predict the results unless you try.
You can make assumptions that can be spot-on in most cases, with experience and knowing how things work, but sometimes you can be wrong.
I agree with you on the fundamentals, but not in everything.
carlosfm said:
That's a very interesting question and the answers aren't obvious. They do not have that much to do with conductivity.
In the case of aluminum, it actually makes a very good wire, but connections are the issue. You can't easily solder it, it cold-flows under pressure, and it can cause corrosion in contact with other metals. For some time, house power wiring in the US used aluminum, but it has had to be replaced over the years as contact junctions fail, sometimes causing fires.
Lead is considerably more expensive than copper per unit volume. It also has terrible mechanical properties and is toxic.
Audiophilenoob said:
Then why can't pure(r) copper sound different?
Why can't silver sound different?
Why can't carbon
(used by Van Den Hul) sound different?Audiophilenoob said:
Then you have seen nothin' yet.
Audiophilenoob said:
No, I was not talking interconnects.
Interconnects make very noticeable difference when your source (sending) component has high output impedance.
Unfortunately, very common on commercial gear, even if it can be avoided.
Get things right and you'll struggle to hear differences between interconnects.
Audiophilenoob said:you're probably one of those folks who thinks that if they replace those $1 capacitors with $100 exotics that you can here the capactiance difference... correct?
Look Mr, if you want to discuss in a civilized way and learn something, it's up to you.
Otherwise, I will answer you in another way.
Anyway, if you can't hear the difference between an electrolythic cap and a half-decent film cap on a tweeter crossover, you'll never hear differences between cables.
carlosfm said:
Then why can't pure(r) copper sound different?
Why can't silver sound different?
Why can't carbon
Then you have seen nothin' yet.
No, I was not talking interconnects.
Interconnects make very noticeable difference when your source (sending) component has high output impedance.
Unfortunately, very common on commercial gear, even if it can be avoided.
Get things right and you'll struggle to hear differences between interconnects.
Look Mr, if you want to discuss in a civilized way and learn something, it's up to you.
Otherwise, I will answer you in another way.
Anyway, if you can't hear the difference between an electrolythic cap and a half-decent film cap on a tweeter crossover, you'll never hear differences between cables.
I wasn't talking about passive xovers... as I don't ever use them for obvious reasons... I was speaking about in the amplifier circuitry itself... especially those who claim name brand caps in a power supply can be "heard"
Audiophilenoob said:
Well, not really. Suppose your cable has R = .2 ohms, and you want to keep the power wasted in the cable < 1 Watt. That means you can shoot 2.3 Amps RMS, continuous, through the cable. That would be 40 Watts in an 8 ohms speaker, continuous. And the cable wouldn't even be lukewarm. So, dissipation isn't an issue.
Jan Didden
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