Comparing Speaker Cables


I have accumulated several pairs of speaker cables that I have never tried to do careful A/B comparisons of because the time it takes to swap them is longer than my audio memory. But my speakers are bi-wired and it occurred to me that I could hook two different cables up and then only swap them at the amp which would be much faster. Is there any sonic downside to having a pair of unconnected cables hanging off one of the sets of inputs while the second set is connected to the amp?

pinwa

No. But there also is no reason to bother comparing cables at all if you forget that fast what one sounded like. Either that or your cables are near identical. Either way, why bother?

Chuck didn't your mother ever tell you that if you don't have anything nice to say you shouldn't say anything at all?  In this case substitute constructive for nice.  And aren't you the one always saying everything matters?  And I have found that for me and my ears the only way to really figure out if something is better is to compare it as directly as possible to something else.  But hey, if you think your audio memory is that great I would be happy to have you come over and tell me which of the cables you think is better LOL.

I don’t know.  And when I did comparisons using a few songs there differences where clear. And there was song variations based on dynamic range of music and number of sounds within a bar. 

That is not a problem at all.

The design of the cable tells you all you need to know.

You always want your cables as short as possible. This is why we put mono amps behind the loudspeakers. This is most important with low impedance loudspeakers.

For full range speakers and subwoofers you also want heavy (low) gauge wire 12 gauge or lower with as low inductance as possible. Kimber Kable makes the best speaker wire although I do not care much for their interconnects. The real sonic difference to listen for is low bass performance.

Have fun!

My advice is to pick a small number of tracks and take very careful notes.  Listen for the extremes and pick tracks that are hard to reproduce.  This is the best possible way to do these kinds of comparisons.  

If, based on your notes, you don't get a general sense of any differences, then that is very good and it suggests the sound profile of the cables is similar.  

I have found there is usually a difference in treble or bass that becomes noticeable if you focus in those areas and possibly in terms of nuance and detail.