Sabai, you’re definitely on the right track. A couple decades ago, when I was first beginning to investigate what it was that made one speaker wire or IC better than another (at around $600 a pair or less), I wondered, when it came to geometries for example, why every maker seemed to choose a different one and yet they each invariably claimed that theirs alone was THE best one for the application. I didn’t know much, but knew they couldn’t all be right. Overall, I think trying to evaluate wiring simply by relying primarily on reviews is pretty dicey. At some point you just have to break down and consider as much of the underlying physics you can unearth to get at what makers are clearly not telling us.
As far as the physics go, cables can indeed be said to be doing something and by definition that something is necessarily bad. I first learned about this when looking into the ‘system-wiring-all-by-the-same-maker-vs-the-mix-n-match-approach’ debate. The argument for using wiring all from the same manufacturer (or from the same series) goes something like this:
Every wire injects its own unique set of timing errors (electron group delay pattern signature) that can be seen in an oscilloscope with respect to the original test signal, so no wire is perfect in that regard. These errors are the sum total of the wire’s physical elements: metallurgy and gauge, geometry, insulation and connectors. If, for example, each pair of multiple IC's in a system is electrically different (different brands) from the others, then all their individual group delay patterns will be different. That means that their total impact on timing within the system will simply be the sum of the delay patterns of all the pairs. And, if all the pairs were identical, they would simply all have the same pattern and they would all effectively 'overlap' in their timing signatures (while not increasing in amplitude) as seen in a 'scope and, in that sense, therefore act more like a single pair of the IC's in question. Multiple differing timing delay patterns are understood to combine to cause an increase a system's tendency to make the music sound a bit more like it's being electronically reproduced, or more “canned”. The longer the delay and the larger the amount of it there is, the worse the sound.
It may not be quite possible for a maker to get their accompanying speaker wires to have precisely the same pattern as the analog IC's, but any of them worth their salt can get reasonably close and this is what they traditionally try to do.
But, what is all this going to matter if all the IC's in a system are built identically if they are of crap quality to begin with? Yes, all their timing delay patterns are marvelously indistinguishable from each other...they just happen to sound like $hit (the combined scope pattern is severe). As you go down the scale in QUALITY, Not necessarily price, this is what you begin to run into, so everyone has to be realistic about it. OTOH, as you go UP in quality, there begins to be at least a reasonable expectation that the vast majority of the wiring you're going to run across all tends to have rather benign delay patterns anyway, so very small, and therefore so innocuous, that individual contributions won't likely be adding up to something too objectionable sounding at the speakers. And at that point the consideration is on other characteristics of the wire being considered: their tone, speed, dynamics, etc, etc.
But, in regards to your op, Sabai, maybe my main point here is simply the model that wiring, when using an oscilloscope anyway, is not so much ‘doing something magical’ as all the makers would plainly have us all believe, but rather that the best wires can, and should, be thought of as simply satisfying Ohm’s Law the best and otherwise simply managing to do the least harm in the system. The rest may amount to little more than descriptive language…not that that’s all useless – I’m no objectivist. It’s just that I think that descriptive language should never be substituted for a more proper understanding that can be had through the basic physics involved – even if the reality is that we’re left by the makers to try to uncover all that for ourselves. Cheers.
As far as the physics go, cables can indeed be said to be doing something and by definition that something is necessarily bad. I first learned about this when looking into the ‘system-wiring-all-by-the-same-maker-vs-the-mix-n-match-approach’ debate. The argument for using wiring all from the same manufacturer (or from the same series) goes something like this:
Every wire injects its own unique set of timing errors (electron group delay pattern signature) that can be seen in an oscilloscope with respect to the original test signal, so no wire is perfect in that regard. These errors are the sum total of the wire’s physical elements: metallurgy and gauge, geometry, insulation and connectors. If, for example, each pair of multiple IC's in a system is electrically different (different brands) from the others, then all their individual group delay patterns will be different. That means that their total impact on timing within the system will simply be the sum of the delay patterns of all the pairs. And, if all the pairs were identical, they would simply all have the same pattern and they would all effectively 'overlap' in their timing signatures (while not increasing in amplitude) as seen in a 'scope and, in that sense, therefore act more like a single pair of the IC's in question. Multiple differing timing delay patterns are understood to combine to cause an increase a system's tendency to make the music sound a bit more like it's being electronically reproduced, or more “canned”. The longer the delay and the larger the amount of it there is, the worse the sound.
It may not be quite possible for a maker to get their accompanying speaker wires to have precisely the same pattern as the analog IC's, but any of them worth their salt can get reasonably close and this is what they traditionally try to do.
But, what is all this going to matter if all the IC's in a system are built identically if they are of crap quality to begin with? Yes, all their timing delay patterns are marvelously indistinguishable from each other...they just happen to sound like $hit (the combined scope pattern is severe). As you go down the scale in QUALITY, Not necessarily price, this is what you begin to run into, so everyone has to be realistic about it. OTOH, as you go UP in quality, there begins to be at least a reasonable expectation that the vast majority of the wiring you're going to run across all tends to have rather benign delay patterns anyway, so very small, and therefore so innocuous, that individual contributions won't likely be adding up to something too objectionable sounding at the speakers. And at that point the consideration is on other characteristics of the wire being considered: their tone, speed, dynamics, etc, etc.
But, in regards to your op, Sabai, maybe my main point here is simply the model that wiring, when using an oscilloscope anyway, is not so much ‘doing something magical’ as all the makers would plainly have us all believe, but rather that the best wires can, and should, be thought of as simply satisfying Ohm’s Law the best and otherwise simply managing to do the least harm in the system. The rest may amount to little more than descriptive language…not that that’s all useless – I’m no objectivist. It’s just that I think that descriptive language should never be substituted for a more proper understanding that can be had through the basic physics involved – even if the reality is that we’re left by the makers to try to uncover all that for ourselves. Cheers.