Simple question, or is it...

Getting back to the dodgy subject of does the signal travel inside the conductor or outside the conductor, the speed of the signal in a copper conductor is measured to be some high fraction of the velocity of light in a vacuum, let’s say it’s 85% of c for the sake of argument. But if the signal were mostly traveling OUTSIDE the conductor - in air - as some have argued, wouldn’t the speed of the signal be a lot closer to the speed of light in a vacuum? Or about 99.9% of c, not 85%.

That was in response to this 


"

That which is hidden from the most learned is revealed to mere children."

I doubt anyone has a stereo system in a vacuum. Anyway speaker wire doesn’t carry audio signals but an electrical description of the audio. That electrical pulse is carried in the wire mostly the outer 1/3 of the wire.

djones51

...  speaker wire doesn’t carry audio signals but an electrical description of the audio ...

No, it's an audio signal, an analog of the sound.

That electrical pulse is carried in the wire mostly the outer 1/3 of the wire.

It's not a pulse at all. It's continuous, an analog.

No it's an electrical description of the audio signal of the analog sound. Making the electricity vary between positive and negative at the speed and amplitude of the sound makes the speaker reproduce the sound. It's continuous but not in a linear way more like a varying pulse. Just like digital is a description of the audio signal in binary sent in packets the sum of which is a stream to a DAC or speaker if it's an active speaker.