Why Do Cables Matter?


To me, all you need is low L, C, and R. I run Mogami W3104 bi-wire from my McIntosh MAC7200 to my Martin Logan Theos. We all know that a chain is only as strong as its' weakest link - so I am honestly confused by all this cable discussion. 

What kind of wiring goes from the transistor or tube to the amplifier speaker binding post inside the amplifier? It is usually plain old 16 ga or 14 ga copper. Then we are supposed to install 5 - 10' or so of wallet-emptying, pipe-sized pure CU or AG with "special configurations" to the speaker terminals?

What kind of wiring is inside the speaker from the terminals to the crossover, and from the crossover to the drivers? Usually plain old 16 ga or 14 ga copper.

So you have "weak links" inside the amplifier, and inside the speaker, so why bother with mega expensive cabling between the two? It doesn't make logical sense to me. It makes more sense to match the quality of your speaker wires with the existing wires in the signal path [inside the amplifier and inside the speaker].

 

 

kinarow1
Post removed 

@knownothing Thank you for your great response, I really appreciate it.

@tjag Thank you for your answers without getting so upset, believe me I challenge people at my church about theology and they give me the same upsetting 
responses I get in this forum strange that the reactions are so parallel.


I have a question for both of you, I use 2x P20 power regenerators from PS Audio they are about $10k each and seem to do their job. So my question is why do I need my fairly expensive AC cables to and from those power reconditioners, (I have isolated 20 amp circuits and audiophile Edison connections installed) the P-20s take AC power turn it into DC then regenerate it back to AC with hopefully perfect specs. Also in general I don't have any problems with RF in my system with any cables I've tried.
Thanks

@donavabdear Thanks for your response about the second law of thermodynamics. With all due respect, what's in the post does not relate to the law.

Regarding your comments on digital audio, you refer only to sample rate, which relates to frequency response. Bit depth which relates to amplitude is equally important. Most DAWs operate internally using 32 bit floating point internal processing.

Your bottleneck argument is not accurate. It frequently happens that a multitrack recording where the overall project file is 24/96 might include some material which was originally recorded in 16/44. The DAW will upsample that to 24/96 to make it compatible with the overall session. There won't be any more information in that track but the rest of the tracks recorded at 24/96 will benefit from the wider frequency response and greater headroom that the increased sample rate and bit depth allows.

@donavabdear you are welcome.

I’m no expert, but experiments showed me that even the quality of the pc connected to the linear DC power supply matter.

Why? I have no explanation other than cable material and structure shapes sound. Could be that cables are like bottles filled with water, they come in different shapes but the water in them is still water just delivered differently. 

I experimented with using combinations of different occ/silver/ofc wire types to supply my power conditioner. This works almost like an equalizer. I enhance the sound character by changing the wire combination.

Why do you use expensive power cords if you don’t believe in them?

The thing is, you are not curious and don’t want to try and experiment.

​​​​​​

 

@yoyoyaya Yes your correct on both points, I should have been clearer. Transfer facilities will not take time to resample your production sound if it is the wrong sample rate / bit rate or time code rate. Standard is 48k sample rate, 24 bit and 23.976 ND Time Code. When digital first came in I was the first to have an entirely digital system. It was hell, everyone was an expert and no one would listen, I nearly got fired from CSI: Miami on the first year by CBS. There were huge problems with time code flags and sample rates because some, not all recorders use the sample rate to generate time code and there was no standard with metadata. That was really a difficult time in movie sound. 

On the subject a great myth that practically no one understands is that a 48k sample rate and higher sample rates like 96hz or 192hz  converted back to analog have exactly the same wave form. I honestly knew this but didn't really understand that the wave forms are exactly the same the bit depth only helps the noise floor. 

Thanks for making that clear.