The Science of Cables

@ rotarius

That does not apply to cables though

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Ever hear of this thing called super conductors, which last I checked are cables. And these items are the focus of much effort to push the limits of our understanding of lots of things including things that help explain how the reality around us operates at the atomic and sub-atomic levels, which oddly enough tells us a whole lot about the universe writ large.

It’s just a cottage industry where some people source wire of various grades from the same known wire manufacturers .

You might have a point for most generic cables but metallurgy and processing is a big factor in the audiophile cable making endeavor ( and we have experienced this first hand as a supplier moved his base of manufacturing from Japan to Taiwan to China....it started as a great sounding wire and went to high level of mediocrity and finally stopped at absolutely awful ). And lets not even get into the complexities of making and then using liquid metal alloys as conductors which are not at all like wires.

@teo_audio: "It’s good to remember that numbers exist no where in the real world, that numbers are an abstract thing in a human mind. They can never be real. It’s a tool...and it is in charge of exactly nothing. Math can be one of those incredibly dangerous ultimate appeals to authority, if one is not careful."

More flat earth. More hollywood moon landings. The very fact that you are reading and writing in this thread is because numbers are real. Go pound sand.

Guess it would be real interesting to find out who, on average, has the better sounding rigs. The folks who ultimately rely on the LCR or those that rely on the EAR.

Good question! I would have to say without a doubt the system that relied on ears (assuming someone spent the time required to fine tune the system to their liking.) We cannot at the present moment explain all the measurements and chemical reactions that occur to make one system more enjoyable than the other. I say chemical reactions because you can’t remove your brain from the picture - it’s part of the system. 

To continue on that thought - you can use measurements to build your system and get a pretty good room response, but you can’t fine tune with measurements. Why? Because the goal isn’t definable (at least at this time). What would your goal be with measurements? A ruler flat response curve? It’s been done, and usually it sounds bad. The goal is to fine tune the system in order to produce the most pleasing sound to the listener and ideally one that extracts maximum emotion and realism. Good luck putting those concepts in a formula. 

>>less than the width of an atom.<<

What?! If that’s true then ears are a form of nanotechnology. They truly are better than the microphones used to take measurements. That’s crazy!