Synergistic Research Cable Risers?

A reasonable question for "exotic" cables and embellishments thereto is what kind of engineering and/or physics background does the designer who invented them have. I tried to find out what training many famous cable "engineers" have and there is no mention of it anywhere to be found. If they were trained physicists they would know how to calculate the effect of such things as electric field dipole energy introduced into and later released from the floor your cables are on. Such energy from the minuscule electric fields surrounding loudspeaker cables is so slight it could return only a tiny fraction of a micro-Volt signal to the speakers. Skin effect is another example of junk science. Cable manufacturers advertise the steps they take to address the problem of skin effect causing high frequencies to be attenuated by the loss of conductivity of electricity flowing through the center of a conductor away from the surface where skin effect concentrates the current. Some use litz construction; many thin conductors individually insulated to make them thinner than the skin depth at high frequencies. Others use ribbon cables because the thickness of a ribbon conductor is less than the skin depth. Here is the problem: you can use a graduate E&M physics text to do an integral of current density at a given voltage taking into account the diminution of skin depth and conductivity of the cable, or there are free online calculators which do the integration for you and give you the resistance of a length of any gauge cable for any frequency. My 8 gauge speaker cables have a DC resistance of 0.008 Ohms. At 20 kHz skin effect increases that resistance to 0.016 Ohms. In series with my 4 Ohm planar magnetic speakers, the ratio of resistance, and the ratio of signal current through my speakers, is 4.008 to 4.016. This means at 20 kHz, a frequency almost nobody can hear, the sound pressure is reduced by 0.017 dB, proportionally less at lower frequencies. Cable designers either did not know how to calculate this or they knew the public would have a superficial idea about skin effect and fall for it. Any physicist in today's culture where authority no longer has to be earned the way marketing does not will be dismissed for want of charisma if he/she points such things out.
For me, these selling points of cables is so extreme and so fraudulent none of their rationalizations for cables costing hundreds or thousands of dollars has any credibility. How many people who have already invested in such things can suffer the loss of bicycle tire pumps to their self-esteem to admit they can't hear the difference they paid for? That is why I trust myself to design my own amplifiers, preamplifiers, and cables more than I do most manufacturers. Like all other industries, there is more and more dishonesty.

I haven’t read all three pages of posts yet and will delete if necessary but these are not ordinary cable risers. Note that they have a red ECT looking device on each one. This is probably the reason that using these risers focus the sound. Whether or not they act like the Black Box which was a failure in my system (cut off highs at 8Khz and above) I don’t know. I plan on trying them out in the future. I gave back the Black Box.

P.S. I 100% disagree with drbarney’s conclusion because there is an art to constructing cables that is currently not quantifiable and cannot be test equipment verified.  The sonic differences are obvious as I have been a cable tester for a manufacturer for two decades.  

Another fellow thinks the audio signal has frequencies. The signal is not the audio waveform. Hel-loo!

I read all the posts.  +1 goose.  Without the 32 HFTs in my custom listening room I would need extensive quadradic diffusion paneling on the front and rear walls.  The side and ceiling surfaces have extensive absorption paneling.  The sound in this room is comparable to at least $250,000 in electronics despite using a 30 year old $2500 pair of Legacy Focus speakers.  (The entire room cost $160,000 to build which eliminated the need for bass traps).  However, the Shakti Hallographs do make a more significant benefit in imaging.  The HFTs provide a huge soundstage and focus the sound.  

In my previous listening room, I had underground speaker wire conduit installed prior to pouring the concrete.  The wire sounded much better under the ground than laying on top of carpet (25' speaker runs).  I decided that inexpensive cable risers were at least adequate on the new build with no reason for anyone to walk near the speakers (previous room had 42,000 LPs/CDs/78s-so I would have to walk over the wires occasionally if they weren't underground).

I have 9 of the SR Cable Risers in my system, which has two 10' SR Atmosphere Level 4 speaker cables.  I got them because I have carpet in my dedicated listening room and I was worried about static build up within the cable, particularly in the drier winter months.  Their design is superior to others, including Nordost, because of how they insulate against static transmission.  

Do they make a noticeable improvement in system (i.e. speaker cable) performance?  Its hard for me do say because I have had them in place for a few years.  I have not bothered with an A/B.  I will say two things about them: first, I can't recall a noticeable performance uptick when I installed them, so there may not have been one in my system; and second, I really like them because they make the speaker cables more noticeable so I don't have folks stepping on them and it allows for easy vacuuming without having to lift the cables all the time.

The paradox is these admittedly expensive risers likely work better, from a performance perspective, on cheaper speaker cables.  Well constructed cables with excellent insulation or isolation from RFI and other forms of transmission interferences likely don't benefit as much from cable lifters.

Bottom line is: each to their own, and if you like the look and intuitively presumed benefits then what the hell.  I will say they look good.

Ray