What do you think is actually happening when you raise your cables from your floor? What was affecting the sound with the cables on the floor? How? With what effects?
If for instance you are posting some constant sonic effect on the signal, what’s the explanation? If it’s some constant background noise, presumably if you have your system on without music playing you should be able to hear this “noise.”
Do you?
I have cable running through walls and along shag rugs. I can’t hear a thing coming from my speakers when music isn’t playing so what might I expect to hear a difference with cables raised?
Well, that is a pretty low bar. Oh well. Pretend its serious, answer it serious.
What do you think is actually happening when you raise your cables from your floor?
We don't have to think, by which I think you mean guess, because this has been tested. If its distance then the higher the better. But testing with the same materials doing the lifting shows no such relationship. If its vibration then materials known to have excellent vibration control characteristics should work better. This has been tested and revealed to be not only correct, but the opposite. Materials with known bad vibration control characteristics actually work better. So its not vibration control. If its electric charges then known electrical insulators should work better.
Bingo! Ceramic insulators perform best of all materials tested. This suggests its something to do with electric charges.
What was affecting the sound with the cables on the floor? How?
Again, evidence suggests it was electric charges. They do tend to propagate along surfaces, you know. There are even electrical standards used in industry by which these things are rated. When comparisons are made guess what? The insulators with the highest kV ratings sound the best.
With what effects?
The effects are the sound has grain, glare, backgrounds are less black, air around images less open, and the whole presentation is flatter, less 3D, and smaller. Ceramic insulators that raise cables up off the floor improve all these effects.
If for instance you are posting some constant sonic effect on the signal, what’s the explanation? If it’s some constant background noise, presumably if you have your system on without music playing you should be able to hear this “noise.”
Do you?
Pretty sure you meant to say imposing not posting. Posting makes no sense. In any case you would be right, if only you were right about it being constant. Why would it be constant? What on Earth could possibly be adding a constant noise? We go to great lengths to design power supplies that are what? Constant! That's how hard it is to be constant!
Not to mention, if it was constant, well we sure wouldn't need elevators. We'd simply figure out what it is and filter it out.
So constant is the last thing it is.
By the way, you see what I'm doing? Taking ordinary basic stuff everyone knows, really obvious stuff in fact, not the slightest bit exceptional or controversial, combining it with a few simple observations and then applying basic 101 level deductive logic.
I have cable running through walls and along shag rugs. I can’t hear a thing coming from my speakers when music isn’t playing so what might I expect to hear a difference with cables raised?
Well you could try and see for yourself. Or just read through the info on-line, including even in this very thread. No? Hmmm.
Okay so here we go. Sorry if this is plodding slow and basic but... its really basic stuff. Its just connecting the dots thats hard.
Electric current cannot move through a wire without creating a proportional magnetic field around that wire. Also, magnetic fields cannot cross a wire without inducing a current in that wire. It then follows that electric charges anywhere near the cable will in some way however small induce a signal in the wire.
So there's one "why" right there. The music signal itself generates electric charges all around the cable. To the extent they are allowed to build up whatever noise and smearing they cause will build up as well.
But wait, there's more!
Insulators are imperfect. Insulators tend to absorb a small amount of energy which is then released back into the wire, the time delay smearing the signal. Air is a pretty good insulator. Carpet, wood, not so much. Nowhere near as good as the expensive carefully chosen dielectrics used in a lot of high end cables either. So there's another reason.
But wait, there's more- and this is the kicker!
Do you have any idea the size of the tiniest squiggles on a record? Its roughly the size of a large organic molecule. In other words, really, really small. Yet we hear these tiny details. When you drop something on the floor and look where it went, you know by sound alone where to look. When speakers are placed too near a side wall the imaging is ruined. With experimentation we learn sounds arriving within 3 to 5 milliseconds are responsible. Sound travels about one foot per millisecond. So we put our speakers three to five feet away from the side walls and the imaging is great.
We could go on and on all day like this. One after another, and not a one of em the least bit controversial or even secret. Just basic stuff everyone knows. Or if they don't, can confirm in like ten seconds with a web browser. A whole lot of things that may seem utterly unrelated until you realize what they all have in common is humans being able to discern incredibly tiny little details.
Well, some of us, anyway.
