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Math + Logic + Science = something completely mad...

So, I've done a metric fuckton of research, notwithstanding the clear bias the man who designed and built my Belles has against esoteric cabling.  And here's the conclusion to which I arrived. 

My monoblocks are sitting on top of the speakers.  The distance from the amp to the speaker is barely a foot, which is exactly how long a run of wire I intend to use.  Goal is to minimize the effect the wire has on the sound.  

According to the calculations I've seen and done, the skin effect depth on copper wire at 20Khz is 461 micrometers.  Meaning a 19-gauge copper wire (911 mics diameter) would reduce skin effect to zero.  As in no impact whatsoever on the signal. 
 
Of course, it's actually very difficult to find 19-gauge wire.  18-gauge (1024 mics) is much easier, and the skin effect is near zero, but not quite zero.  Seems to be an acceptable compromise. Could go down to 20-gauge and eliminate skin effect entirely.  If I could find insulated aluminum wire, 18-gauge would eliminate skin effect entirely, because skin effect depth on aluminum at 20khz is 580 mics.  

12 inches of 18-gauge wire produces 0.006 ohms of additional resistance.  20-gauge = 0.01 ohms.  

Frankly, I don't see the value in spending big bucks on esoteric, heavy-gauge wire for this application.  I'd rather make the bigger investment in the 2m runs from the preamp to the blocks, because that's where the wire's going to have a hell of a lot more of an effect on the sound.  

Stepping back to allow you all the opportunity to punch holes in my thought process here. 
jerkface
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pauly
1,012 posts
 
My monoblocks are sitting on top of the speakers.

I stopped reading right about there … 


On another thread I saw you post that you find no sonic advantage to expensive cables over your cheap cables. 
(In my best Maury voice) “You are telling the truth.”
kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,432 posts
 
bruce19 
I replaced banana plugs with spades by crimping them first and then soldering with WBT 4% silver solder.  I applied heat to end of the wire first to prevent spade expansion and loosing oxygen free connection.  That way it's oxygen free and won't move.  Plain crimper worked poorly so for my AQ spades I borrowed from local HiFi store AQ crimper and it worked great.  Both look exactly the same - likely difference in quality.
https://www.audioquest.com/accessories/tools/aq-ratchet-crimper
4% silver solder is probably overkill, but it is doesn't cost much.

Measuring cable's inductance or capacitance with your LCR meter might be inaccurate since you measure distributed inductance or capacitance.  One affects another.   I believe there is a way of measuring it, by doing it at two different frequencies and then using formula to calculate it (inductive reactance is proportional to frequency, capacitive reactance is inversely proportional to frequency) .  Unfortunately your meter measures at one frequency only.
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perkri
909 posts
 
"Here is the really funny thing for me. On here, I am considered this uber objectivist. When I deal with my technical colleagues, I am a bit of a pariah, because I always relate things back to subjective experience, and take a different more human centric view on accuracy. I have proven that humans are more sensitive to differences than was previously thought based on some specific variances. Because of that, I probably know more than most what we can and cannot detect. Hence why I am very confident about what happens with cables."


There we have it. You are quite simply, a contrarian...
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