I've been in electronics all my life. There is one facet of audio and the audio community that I am having a difficuilt time with. SPEAKER WIRE! I would BET $$ that there is NO person that could guess which wire he was listening to if the run was, say 20 to each speaker. I would be referring to the VERY BEST cable one could find and compare it with the same gauge of Monster cable or similar. I would guess that the person could not guess it all 20 times. And the other thing that amazes me is that some speaker cable is labeled for the "correct direction". In my archaic way of thinking ac or dc does not know the difference. I might be WAY off base, but if I am I hope someone sheds some light on this for me. ( $1,200 for an 8 foot set of cables??? )B
Speakers are pretty benign with nominal 6 ohm dropping to 3.8ohm worst case but have no idea what happens with phase. Part of crossover is in epoxy - cannot tell what values or even what kind it is. Cable on the other hand is pretty strange. It has many (>10) solid strands helical woven on hollow air tube (that way each strand is only in magnetic field of adjacent strands) resulting in about 1" OD in Teflon, but there is also one more "strand" inside that is not solid but contains again about 10 hair-like strands. My non-audio friends (who believe all amps, sources, cables etc. are the same) look at this four 1" thick wires at each speaker (shotgun) but don't say anything. I know THAT look.
It might be interesting to measure the Characteristic Impedances of those cables and see how that interacts with the impedance of your speakers in the vocal range.
Atmasphere, First speaker cable I had was thick stranded Monster cable (clear insulation). I found later that it is possibly the worst type of cable because skin effect starts in copper at 20kHz at gauge 18 causing smearing but also because same skin effect causes current to constantly jump from strand to strand in order to stay on the outside (lower resistance path) crossing each time impurities that reside on the surface (copper oxide is a semiconductor). When I got Audioquest Indigo I noticed that highs became much stronger, open, faster. This cable was decent for class AB amp but sounded thin in lower midrange with lean sounding class D amp. I replaced it with Acoustic Zen Satori that not only fixed this problem and added overall speed and clarity but also added pleasant "silkiness" to voices. Can anybody define "silkiness" in terms of RLC?
Not many would believe that power to speakers is not really delivered thru the wire but on the outside of the wire. It gets even more complicated with coax interconnect where energy is delivered only thru dielectric (there is no energy delivered thru wire itself). I also suspect that we still don't know everything about electric current (that could explain "silkiness")
Kijanki, yes, a long cable like that can thus be seen by the speaker as a higher output impedance of the amplifier resulting in a lowered damping factor. As you point out, this likely has more effect at high frequencies, but if we are talking about hearing differences between cable, its not rocket science (although there is math :)...) to see that there could be an audible, measurable and repeatable difference.
Let's not forget inductance of straight wire. For instance 20' (counting both ways) of gauge 14 copper speaker wire has inductance of 12.64uH equal to reactance of 1.6ohm at 20kHz.
Bababondoman, if your speakers are higher impedance, like 16 ohms, it may well be that you won't hear much difference.
But if you have four ohm speakers the cable is critical, and 20 feet will not work with any cable on four ohms- you will lose definition and impact. This is one of the disadvantages of four ohm speakers- the cables should be kept as short as possible!
As to whether you could correctly identify each cable in a blind test, I know I would not want to be shown up in such a test, but OTOH that is not to say that you won't hear consistent differences between the cables. One on one tends to work much better for hearing those differences.
If you look at the amplifer/cable/speaker interface, there are four electronic factors at play: purity of materials, gauge of the conductors, length of cable and the characteristic impedance (which is combination of inductance, capacitance, resistance, caused by the geometry of the cable). Even though 'experts' will tell you characteristic impedance has nothing to do with audio frequencies, it does seem to play a role- you can easily hear the differences between cables if they do or don't match the impedance of the speaker.
Of course, no cable is going to match any particular speaker perfectly. That is why while you will hear differences in the way of improvements in some comparisons, you will also hear tradeoffs. This is why there is a thriving cable industry :)
I once suggested a bet that I would identify 20 out of 20 different interconnects,if listened to them in my system,and allowed to take notes-as I do not trust my short term memory any more-for how long has that been the case? There was one character in particular who doubted my ability.When I realized that this wager meant having uncouth people in my apartment,I said -what the hell and dispensed with the circus.
I dont think you will find "the best" cable. Let me choose the cables and the rest is easy. I have been cable tested before and picked the different cable 100% of the time. If I can get it correct 100% you pay. Areyou near the bay area? Jallen
Ok ok ok, I get the picture guys. And I will answer your question regarding the past 20 years. I suppose I have always spent whatever money to purchase whatever I needed to gain the sound that I PERSONALLY like to listen to. Next time I get to the big city I'll do evaluation and see if I hear a difference. The I'll to see what all the fuss is about these horseless carriages. :)
"I would BET $$ that there is NO person that could guess which wire he was listening to if the run was, say 20 to each speaker. I would be referring to the VERY BEST cable one could find and compare it with the same gauge of Monster cable or similar. I would guess that the person could not guess it all 20 times."
Interresting offer. I don't gamble. If you are serious, though, I would like to take you up on your offer. How much would you be willing to bet?
Baba- I'm not a gambler so I'll decline your proposal. But, if claims about speaker wire are jammin' up your brain, wait 'til you get a load of posts about power cords making a difference. I am not an EE, I am not encumbered by electronics theory and I have no idea why wire should matter (or not) but the simple fact is...the sound changes when you change wire...and not just temporarily. I'm not offended by the ridicule of the skeptics. Am not on a campaign to change anyone's mind. I was a skeptic once too but heard the difference for myself in a very modest system. For me, wire's another option towards sonic improvement...mainly an issue of how much you are willing to spend.
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