Cable elevators


My Saturday hifi tweaking involved digging out the family’s box of wooden building blocks and using them to elevate my speaker cables off the floor. Previously under an area carpet on a wood floor. Mc 601s to SF Amati with Wireworld speaker cables (to be replaced with Cardas). 
 

The result—mind you the system is playing really well right now thanks to my new Cardas interconnects—is greater clarity (I think), sound stage, and texture. This is definitely about wringing out the last ounce of the system and maybe I’m imagining the improvement. I don’t think I’d spend any money on buying risers, but what the hell why not use the old building block. Looks dopey and the family laughs at me, but dang does the system sound amazing.

Anyone else play with risers/elevators?

w123ale

I tried elevators a couple times--just OK in SQ.  Krissy had me try using 100lb. fish line to suspend the cables about 1 ft. off the floor.  I had mono amps so I tried doing this on just the right channel first so I could hear if there was a significant difference.  The sound was better in all ways suspended rather than just sitting on the ground.  I have a suspended ceiling so hooking the cables to the grid was fairly easy.  I have a dedicated room so the look wasn't a problem to me.  If your speaker cables aren't too heavy you could use much lighter fish line for this.  One of the better tweaks I've done to the system and maybe the best for the money tweak ever.

Bob

When I owned relatively expensive (even used) Inakustik LS-2404 speaker cables, I occasionally heard some interference, and lifting them off the floor definitely helped. I doubt that the interference problem would afflict most cables designs, though, and I've never encountered a similar experience.

In ground wire radials on antennas, raising the wire off the earth ground will actually change the characteristics of the antenna, ergo the wire.  What electrical change, I don't know and have never measured the actual wire.  I do know it affects SWR.

How that translates to speaker cable, I'm not sure but under certain conditions I wouldn't doubt it affects sound, especially in longer runs.

I think it depends heavily on the construction and shielding in the cables. I couldn’t tell anything different with my AQ cables with DBS. But with tiny and thin Mapleshade cables with virtually no shielding by design, it makes sense to get them off the floor.