Simple question, or is it...


What exactly is an audio signal made of, and what exactly is the medium it travels through in a cable??
128x128thecarpathian
An audio signal is purely a varying electrical voltage & current, just that .  Nothing more.
You can always get into the atomic & particle physics aspects of what makes up electricity itself but nobody really knows :-)  And it does not really matter anyway.
Is that the reason, say, a Teflon dielectric, insulation, will cause ICs to sound better than cheap PVC insulation?
Capacitance between plates is proportional to overlapping area and relative permittivity while inversely proportional to distance.  Relative permittivity of the material (also called Dielectric Constant) is a measure how fast given material can be polarized by electric field in comparison to vacuum.  Permittivity is inversely proportional to speed of electromagnetic wave in material, squared.  Speed of electromagnetic wave thru material depends on how fast material absorbs and releases energy (dielectric absorption).  Because Teflon has low Dielectric Absorption electromagnetic wave travels faster thru it, than for instance thru PVC.  As a result of it capacitance between Teflon wires is smaller than between identical PVC wires.

Of course being straight proportional or inversely proportional is a
simple equation for plates, but much more complicated for the wires but proportionality (dependency) is still the same.

It is possible to lower Dielectric Constant of any material by foaming it or oversizing it around the wire as hollow tubes (air has lower dielectric constant than Teflon).  My ICs have hollow oversized tubes made of foam Teflon resulting in 6.1pF/ft  while typical wires have about 25pF/ft.
An audio signal is purely a varying electrical voltage & current, just that . Nothing more.
Let me start simplifying it:

INDIAN SEE EAGLE OVER RABBIT  (instead of Ohm Law I=E/R)  ;)
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