The Science of Cables


It seems to me that there is too little scientific, objective evidence for why cables sound the way they do. When I see discussions on cables, physical attributes are discussed; things like shielding, gauge, material, geometry, etc. and rarely are things like resistance, impedance, inductance, capacitance, etc. Why is this? Why aren’t cables discussed in terms of physical measurements very often?

Seems to me like that would increase the customer base. I know several “objectivist” that won’t accept any of your claims unless you have measurements and blind tests. If there were measurements that correlated to what you hear, I think more people would be interested in cables. 

I know cables are often system dependent but there are still many generalizations that can be made.
128x128mkgus
As fate would have it cables are not subsonic, sonic or supersonic. They aren’t even hypersonic. They’re light speed. So are power cables. So you can’t apply fluid dynamics or finite analysis or Schlieren photography. You need to apply the laws of electromagnetism and analyze how vibration and magnetic fields interact with electromagnetic waves. And how electromagnetic waves travel through solid metal conductors.
@ razorbraun

Had to think about it a bit, dredge up a lot of grad school era stuff, flip some things around, and turn other things inside out, but yeah that is pretty well sorta absolutely kinda bang on you nailed it....

And also is a great way to look at the why and how of chaos, or rather what our relatively simplistic math/analytical tools describe as chaos....and why it reefs our relatively simplistic math based theory thingees and why we humans can simply ride it out...or to paraphrase you, at base, life, writ large, is an art form...  

Damn that was good.......to loosely paraphrase my late dad, jeez your eyes are totally wide open....and then some pretty wicked extrapolations from your observations...wicked....just wicked....
Sorry, that was a jumbled mess of posts I did! I shouldn't rush my posts, bad things happen in regards to descriptions of systems. One of the downsides of building so many systems is that I occasionally describe the connections incorrectly. Mea Culpa.

Let me try again; Simply put, the AES/EBU Schroeder Method digital link (XLR acting as AES/EBU) is going from the MF transport to the Exogal Comet DAC. I had done a double SPDIF link earlier many weeks ago, but I cannot recall which DAC I was using. Now, this is the second time I have done a Schroeder Method digital link, both times superb results.