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*WHITE PAPER* The Sound of Music - How & Why the Speaker Cable Matters

G'DAY

I’ve spent a sizeable amount of the last year putting together this white paper: The Sound of Music and Error in Your Speaker Cables

Yes, I’ve done it for all the naysayers but mainly for all the cable advocates that know how you connect your separates determines the level of accuracy you can part from your system.

I’ve often theorized what is happening but now, here is some proof of what we are indeed hearing in speaker cables caused by the mismatch between the characteristic impedance of the speaker cable and the loudspeaker impedance.

I’ve included the circuit so you can build and test this out for yourselves.


Let the fun begin


Max Townshend 

Townshend Audio



townshend-audio
1971gto455ho's avatar
1971gto455ho
549 posts
 
tbakin63 

Well done, felt much better when I got to the  Oh wait...
Like to “paste” that Everywhere....

hapafoto
11 posts
 
@TBakin63 - I believe the intro is an invitation for others test the methods and results for them selves. Perhaps instead of bashing his work you might test for yourself and report back?
nonoise's avatar
nonoise
11,226 posts
 
Mapleshade used to make flat copper ribbon ICs. I still have a pair. Also, Ed Shilling of Hornshoppe Horns used to make flat copper ribbon speaker cables many, many years ago. Both claimed they sound better than "normal" cables.

All the best,
Nonoise
kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,477 posts
 
Rule of thumb says that cable becomes transmission line (reflections from impedance boundaries) when signal propagation one way is longer than 1/8 of the fastest transition time.  When perfect square wave is applied all cables behave like transmission line, but it doesn't happen in real life.  Rise time of the signal is roughly 0.35/BW, being 17.5us for 20kHz bandwidth.
17.5us/8=2.188us  a propagation time of 437.5m  (assuming speed of 5ns/m).   Designers do this calculation in any digital design to determine if wires or traces need termination.  I would worry about transmission line effects in audio when using speaker cables longer than 437.5 meters, unless I'm missing something?

(Another commonly used test is to compare length of the cable to 1/10 of the signal wavelength.  20kHz audio signal has wavelength of 10km, assuming signal speed of 200,000km/s.  1/10 of it is 1000m)
b4icu's avatar
b4icu
558 posts
 
Sorry Mr. G'DAY, you are miles from the truth.

I also spent much time into speaker cables research & analysis.

1. The speaker side is not a part of the analysis. It is only looking into the Amp's output through the cables. 
2. The most important character of C (capacitance) should be zero, when the two cables (black and red) are separated and conducted by two separates. Problem solved.
3. The way to go (tested with multiple cases over here: https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/no-one-actually-knows-how-to-lculate-what-speaker-cable-they-...about two years ago,
and here: https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/how-to-select-a-good-speaker-cable
4. What matters is R (resistance) as it's series to the Amps' R out or DF.
If that is kept low the sound improves significantly. Try it.

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