Used cable or new DIY cable

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#61
It's also common in the industry to nudge the volume control up a tad when the fancy cables are plugged in. Louder sounds better. It only have to be a dB or two louder. Not obviously louder as long as you take a few seconds to swap the cables over. Always pay attention to the volume setting when the salesperson is demoing stuff for you.

Tom
 
#63
When a replacement power cable does make a difference on the perceived audio quality, I suggest to do a few inexpensive tests before spending a significant amount of money for a Hi-Fi power cable.

1) remove any loop from the cable: use zip ties or strong tape to pach tigtly the cable and reduce the loop area to zero. Keep the power cable at some distance from other cables.
2) add near the end of the cable one or two snap-in ferrite filters. If you need to buy them, I suggest Würth 74271222 because they have the right size and I have found them very effective during actual tests with a spectrum analyzer in a controlled environement. They are available from most electronic distributors.
3) If step 1 and 2 made a audible difference, the next step is to buy exact required lenght of standard industrial shielded power cable and build a new power cord. Use common plugs for now, the fancy ones may be bought later if the test is successful. I suggest 1mmq section - this means slightly bigger and stiffer than a regular power cable, but still way more flexible than most Hi-Fi cables. Add the ferrite filters again.

If this cheap and simple test on the power supply cable does improve the sound, then the issue is radio frequency interference - radiated or picked up by the cable. This will influence some sensitive high impedence low frequency circuits inside the preamplifier and amplifier. I don't know if this the only way that a power cable may "have a sound", but it is a very common scenario where a DIY cable will have on EMI the same or better effect than expensive commercial ones. There is no need to use precious metals and exotic materials when electro magnetic interference rejection is the goal.
 
#64
In an AC circuit it’s true the electrons wiggle back and forth. They wiggle back and forth according to the instantaneous audio frequency. But recall there are two wires for an AC circuit + and - . Thus, when electrons move on the + wire toward the speaker it makes the speaker diaphragm move outward. And when electrons move toward the speaker on the - wire it causes the speaker diaphragm to move inward. This is why you would ideally want the best sounding direction of both + and - wires to be in the direction toward the speaker. Obviously all other cables and interconnects and fuses should follow the same logic. And that’s why the argument that wire cannot be directional in an AC circuit is incorrect.
 
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#65
In an AC circuit there is no + and -. There is a constant change in polarity and the higher the frequentie, the faster the change. Perhaps you confuse with the + and - terminals on an speaker or amplifier.

Here are two interesting links that explain both AC current and speaker polarity.
https://www.physics-and-radio-electronics.com/blog/alternating-current-ac/
https://audiouniversityonline.com/speaker-polarity/?utm_content=cmp-true

In any case, a speaker cable and the electrons moving thrue it have no idea of its direction.
Like I said before, internal wiring of audio gear and speakers don't have arrows on them.

Hugo
 
#66
That’s right, when you reverse the + and - wires on the speaker OR the amp, you reverse the polarity of that speaker. That means the speaker diaphragm moves IN when it should move OUT and vice versa. The moving charges (electrons) cause the diaphragm to move. If you reverse wires on both speakers the system will be in reverse polarity.

The two + and - wires form an AC circuit. When electrons move toward the speaker on one wire they move in the opposite direction on the other wire. You only need to worry about electrons moving toward the speaker. You can ignore the electrons moving away from the speaker.
 
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#69
But can it be measured? How do speaker cable companies determine the directionality of a 100m spool of cable? I'm sure they are not going to listen to determine. There must be a way to measure and for us to control what we bought, not?

Hugo
 
#72
There is slightly less voltage drop across the wire in the ”correct“ direction compared to the other direction. Cable companies can either measure or listen to the first length of cable as it comes off the big spool. Then they know how to deal with the rest of the spool. Fuse companies usually tell customers to try the fuse both ways.
 
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#77
geoffkait said:
In an AC circuit it’s true the electrons wiggle back and forth. They wiggle back and forth according to the instantaneous audio frequency. But recall there are two wires for an AC circuit + and - . Thus, when electrons move on the + wire toward the speaker it makes the speaker diaphragm move outward. And when electrons move toward the speaker on the - wire it causes the speaker diaphragm to move inward. This is why you would ideally want the best sounding direction of both + and - wires to be in the direction toward the speaker. Obviously all other cables and interconnects and fuses should follow the same logic. And that’s why the argument that wire cannot be directional in an AC circuit is incorrect.
Click to expand...
Haha! Good one. I need more popcorn.

Jan
 
#79
Netlist said:
But can it be measured? How do speaker cable companies determine the directionality of a 100m spool of cable? I'm sure they are not going to listen to determine. There must be a way to measure and for us to control what we bought, not?

Hugo
Click to expand...
Certainly not some of the UK companies I know (who order their wire in bulk from other industrial UK companies). 😉

As far as I can see, a majority of products from audio wire brands are either ineptly designed (since they often perform significantly worse than items that can be bought for far less), deliberately aiming to use their electrical characteristics to provide some kind of EQ, or some kind of combination of the two. The second's fair enough -plenty of cases where it may be useful. Trouble is, very few of them ever seem to discuss the basic mechanisms and why that is the case -most just retreat behind misapplied / irrelevant science or outright pseudo-science. That's bad enough. It's even sillier when some simply lie, or show total ignorance in other ways. Tellurium Q -they're a good example. 'The first cables designed to combat phase distortion' [no less]. That's what they say [their italics]. Except -even if we ignore technicalities for a second (something they are very careful indeed to avoid talking about), the claim itself isn't true, since Bruce Brisson & MIT were claiming exactly that over 30 years ago -about 2 decades before Tellurium Q even existed.

Netlist said:
I'd be happy to see that too for I searched but could not find. But I'm not that good in feeding Google with English cable terminology..
Click to expand...
I think we'll be waiting a while, because there isn't any as far as I know. Although I'll be happy to be proven wrong.
 
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#80
Disclaimer: I don't do fancy cables.... (unless XLR in the signal path is fancy...)

But... once at a dealer, who knew I was not interested in cables, I did hear a noticeable difference when switching out expensive speaker cables for other expensive speaker cables. Sound wend from harsh to sweet. On a NAIM amplifier. Sweet was off course with the naim cables. The story was something with impedance matching with the amplifier. Now... in my mind, a good amplifier plays well with wide range of loads. All speakers have different crossovers and other RLC+some dynamic behavior. So an amplifier showing such different behavior with different speaker cables is a poorly designed amplifier. Don't buy!
But then... I've heard a remarkable difference on a naim amplifier once, so I believe it can be done... . I believe it can happen. I won't say you didn't hear what you heard. You probably did.
I'd rather buy a different amplifier though. There's pretty good stuff around for reasonable money these days, and those well designed amps will sound 'sweet' with any power cord put into service as a speaker cable... . You might be off cheaper in the end...
 
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