Dielectric?


I was listening to Bill Frissell "Nashville" last night. This disk has some of Nashville's best studio musicians working with Bill on a fantastically well recorded session. In the second cut there is the tinniest of cymbal, just shimmering in mid air. I'd never heard it shimmer before. As I continued listening I became aware that my system was pure magic and I took full advantage of the opportunity by playing some of my favorites." WOW, this is amazing" I said to myself with a huge Cheshire cat grin. As I was listening I noticed one of my vacuum cleaner hose speaker cables was hanging down while the other was bent slightly up. "This imperfection must go" so down on the floor working the two cables so that they align. ( I know it's sad, but I'm a perfectionist, I've tried to control it, but...) I'm talking maybe one inch or so, the effect on the coppers molecular structure is small, but I've now taken my closed hand and run it over the majority of length in each cable.
The cables looked good so back to my music. "Where is the magic?" I'd killed it completely, the presentation was flat, the shimmer gone. Oh all the information seemed in place, just no life!
My conclusion, the dielectric had over time created a field beyond the confines of the cable housing and I had discharged it, taking away the added benefit of the extended field. My cables are fully suspended so there is nothing within an inch and a half that can effect the extended dielectric. My amps stay on all the time which would retain the charge in the field even when the system is off.
Does this make sense? It's an easy experiment maybe some of you can try it to see if you have a similar result. I'm feeling like the casing of our cables has more to due with the performance than any of the other factors. The dielectric materials used have the ability to retain a potential charge that can be drawn on during high current demands, the cables dielectric in effect is doing the same job the capacitor dielectric is doing only with less efficiency. Plus some materials benefit in the shielding from other wave energy. Is this "the" factor in our power cord and cable discussions that were not giving the proper attention to.
Should we be discussing what materials best retain a charge and best shield wave forces. My reference to wave forces are of course RF, EMI but I've been thinking, there are far more than just that, there is Microwave, Ex-ray, Grama-ray, all emitted daily from the sun. Solar flares and the intense cosmic radiation have been tied to radio fades and power grid failures, I thing there is a lot to discuss here.
I realize I've exposed myself to great ridicule, but I'm far more interested in what I think I'm learning than playing a fool. Thanks for your thoughts, J.D.
128x128jadem6
Jadem6, It is doubtful that the dielectric could make much of a difference in the power delivery of a cable. A farad can deliver one ampere for one second. If a cable is highly capacitive it might muster up 1 uF of capacitance. This is not much current compared to what the power company delivers. Instantaneous current from the power company is determined by wiring and transformers out on the pole and the wiring going to and inside your house. Every connection is a potential source for degrading that current delivery. If you want to improve peak energy storage, the place to do that is in the DC power supply inside your gear.

The other half of the dielectric story has a negative side. It is true that the higher the 'K' the more energy it can store. It also means that the field is non-linear and it will not return 100% of the stored field when requested. In a capacitor this is called dielectric absorption. It is mechanism responsible for producing a small portion of a signal delayed in time. In a power cable this would have very little effect but in a coupling capacitor it is quite detrimental.
A couple of comments.
First, Jadem6 says to have experienced a difference in the sound mainly by running his hands over the cables. This is believed to be the main difference since the cables, although in different positions (right vs. left), are elevated from the floor. Right? Did he run his hand over both, right and left, cables? If everything is correct, then we can safely assume that the biggest change was the discharge of the built up electrostatic field around the cables. This can be quickly done by hand or over a period of time just by resting.
Although Jadem6's amplifier is always on, we could safely assume that there is no voltage across the conductors when music is not being played. Voltage is what creates electrostatic fields. If one shorts the positive and negative poles of a capacitor, then both plates are mostly at the same voltage potential all the time. In such instance the capacitor would have zero capacitance. This is easy to check with a meter.
So could we be suspicious that the constant "good sound" is due, not to the electrostatic field but, to the thermal state of the amps devices? A good test would be to disconnect the cables from the amp while leaving it on. Then, after many hours, plug the cable back in and listening to see if the sound remained "good". If it does, then thermal state is the reason. If it doesn't then we could continue analyzing capacitance. I would only suggest that the cable be connected and disconnected with as little mechanical change to the conductors as possible. In other words, do not bend it. This is only because we would not be able to safely quantify the amount of difference, if any, that would be due to a change in the physical state of the conductors.
Second, Bmpnyc said to hear an improvement on the sound when the cable was disconnected. Well, assuming that what Jadem6 and Bmpnyc call "better sound" is the same, then they experienced contradicting results. But for the results to be contradictory one must also assume that the "biggest" change that Bmpnyc's cables experienced between original state and reconnection is the change of the electrostatic fields. Notice that I am highlighting the word "biggest". This is because I believe that we naturally tend to focus on the "bigger" things. Only once those "bigger" things are removed can we focus on the next "bigger" thing.
So, electrostatic state may or may not have been the "biggest" difference. Bmpnyc talks about a "chaotic" connection. For which I understand that no two connection qualities would be the same. This could be the biggest reason for the change in sound. But, the fact that the cables were disconnected also suggests that there was the possibility that the electrostatic fields around the cables stabilized.
If Bmpnyc's experience was mainly influenced by electrostatic changes on the cable, the a cable would "sound better" after the electrostatic charges have dissipated. I would tend to disagree with this. Even though I believe in the chaos theory, I simply think that what Bmpnyc called more "detailed sound" isn't what Jadem6 calls "better sound". Some times harshness and forwardness is confused with detail.
Bmpnyc, I believe that you are on to something. It is just that I feel that it may have to do with thermal state.
As far as making a cable with glass, I have an idea for you. There are hollow-tube shaped fiberglass insulators available. These are used for insulating pipes. While these would not be purely glass (they also would have air), they are very flexible and would also help separate the conductors from other things in the proximity. I will have to remind you that glass can easily be electrostaticly charged. Simply run your hand over a TV screen when it is turned off. Also notice that the field is much stronger at the glass than a couple of millimeters away. In other words, the charge on the air is much lower that the charge on the glass.
If you feel that "better sound" comes from having a higher electrostatic field build up, you may need to consider the following: This field build up is caused by voltage (potential differences). In other words, the cable's electrons are being excited by changes in voltage between positive and negative poles (at the amp). Since the surrounding bodies to the conductors are at some voltage state (perhaps their own floating ground stage), the fields around the cables are caused by the different in voltage between the conductor's energy and the bodies' state. This could be represented in an schematic with two capacitors, one between the positive cable and a floating ground and the other between the negative cable and another floating ground. If you analyze the effect of these two capacitors on the signal, you will see that they would in fact work as low pass filters. What this whole paragraph means is that the "quantity" of electrostatic field that is giving you your "desired sound" may be rolling off the top end of the music. Subjectively, this could be considered "smoother sound". But if your cables use Teflon or PE as dielectric and are separated from the floor, you do not have a large "quantity" of electrostatic field. So, I am suggesting that glass may not be what you are looking for but. Glass may give you a large field (quantity). What you may be looking for is field stability. After all, by dissipating the electrostatic field with your hands, you changed the "quantity" and the stability of the field. I am assuming that after many hours of operation, the electrostatic fields are stabilized.
PVC may give you a larger electrostatic field potential around a cable but most audiophiles feel that it does not sound good enough.
Also, thicker Teflon will have the ability to create larger electrostatic fields that thinner Teflon. This is because the thinner Teflon has air around it. So, if we use the above mentioned schematic representations, the thicker Teflon would sound more "dull" or "smoother", depending of who is listening to it.
Please e-mail me to let me know what you may find out from further experiments. I am doing experiments of my own about the same topic but have never been in this forum. I only came to it because Sqjudge pointed me to it.

AL
Great post Al, and welcome. You are correct that all I did was to rub my hand over maybe 50% of the length of the cables. I have two cables, but only for bi-amping so two wires are in each cable. I wanted to share my experience because it's simple to test by others on their own systems. I was hoping to hear if others would experience the same thing. If so it might be interesting to figure out what was happening and see if it was a measurable issue. I will write you soon, maybe the three of us can work on some of these experiments together in that it appears we both are talking with Sq off site.
Thanks again for the post and welcome! J.D.
Just got back from a hectic weekend, and it's great to see all of these interesting ideas. Unfortunately my TV seems to have blown up, so I'll have to think about this some more later. Al, I don't think the change in sound I experienced was a shift in harshness, but I can see that it is possible. I haven't touched a thing since reinserting my interconnect, and the sound has been consistant, a nice balance between a cohesive soundstage and detail.