Stranded vs singal core conductors and skin effect

"I am an engineer." So am I.

Don't ever let anyone hit you over the head with college degrees, experience, or whatever. In other words, you don't have to be a cook to know what things taste like. Try things out, and come to your own conclusions. Regardless of how things measure, I've learned enough to know that my ears are the most important piece of equipment I will likely ever come across. If you hear the difference, it is real.

Trelja, So am I, an engineer, that is and an amateur cook. About tasting, it is easy to get people to think that there is a difference in the taste of different salts and inevitably those people do 'taste' a difference, when, unless the salt has been deliberatly doctored, there is no difference. So careful with analogies.

I have also learned that my ears-mind are also easily fooled and therefore not always reliable for detecting differences even when they are real, nevermind when they aren't real.

I do understand, however, the expression, 'perception is reality' and perhaps that that is what you mean.

Respectfully, Bob P.

Bob, yes, that is what I meant.

But, different salts (or, spices) do taste different in the same way that different cables sound different.

No one really questions subjectivist opinions when it comes to food, wine, wristwatches, clothes, shoes, furniture, etc. When I say I like Coke better than Pepsi, no one has ever really had a big problem with it. I've never had to justify it beyond saying it's that battery acid taste that does it for me, even to those who preferred Pepsi (or RC Cola) - and, even having to say that much is rare. The same acceptance doesn't exist if I say I like high-end audio component A better than component B. Somehow, the latter position MUST be justified empirically. For whatever reason (a lot of which is ego) these matters are such a big deal in audio. Things must be measured; the resulting specs then shoved down people's throats in order to justify or denigrate.

Bud Fried's famous anecdote of the island's clock tower comes to mind in terms of the dangers of depending on specs, and how foolish we are on relying on equipment and their resultant measurements that have not been fully developed at this point in our development as scientists and engineers.

Music is supposed to be fun. Objectifying audio, which is a relatively impossible feat (at least, today) in my opinion, tends to turn things into spitting contests, which for me is the antithesis of fun or what a hobby should be about.

My point, however, Trelja, was that all salt tastes the same, but people do think that they detect different tastes, because someone has convinced them that salt from the sea is different than salt from the inland salt caverns. Theoretically, perhaps, there is a difference, but practically, the level of salinity is so high that one could not taste the difference, if indeed there is one. same with the stranded skin effect on the sound of cables. Yes in theory, but no in practice.

Bob P.

Cables are pure simple physics, no big deal. Thick solid are the optimal solution, but every other configuration also gives a signal, it just ain`t that pure and powerful anylonger.