Can we objectively rate speaker cables?

>>For example, I think many would agree that copper is generally warmer than silver.<<

And they would all be wrong.

The purity of the conductor, its' geometry, and the dielectric influence the sonics far more than the choice of metal(s).

IMO

Shadorne -- Very interesting article you linked to. I was particularly struck by the last sentence under paragraph number 4. I see no reason to doubt that sentence is factual.

Rova said: I will agree that because the speaker side of the system is fairly low in impedance and the wire characteristics and flaws likely have much less impact because of this. However, for interconnects the wire flaws and characteristics play a much bigger role due to the higher impedances involved.

I disagree. The "wire flaws and characteristics" which are significant for speaker cables simply are different than the ones which are significant for interconnects. Inductance and gauge (resistance) clearly can be significant for speaker cables, depending on length and on the impedances of the amplifier and speakers. For interconnects, those parameters are almost always insignificant, while capacitance and shielding are important.

Stan said: The advance of audio has mainly consisted in discovering that things we thought made no difference in fact do.

Stan -- I agree in principle with your comments, but only up to a point. If the concept behind a product is sufficiently unconventional, or the price seemingly absurd, I will want to see some rationale which is at least half-way plausible before I will spend my time and/or money investigating it. Besides their apparently outlandish markups, what I find to be the biggest turn-off about super-expensive cables is the design rationale which is typically offered in their "white papers" and other literature. Which, as a technically trained person, I KNOW to be largely nonsense in many or most cases, designed to sound good to the majority of audiophiles who are not technically trained.

I am not saying that the products will not be good performers in many systems, just that I find the design rationale (as well as the price) to be a turn-off. Even though I know it will never happen, I would much rather see cable purveyors simply say something like "we used the following very expensive materials and construction techniques, we voiced it all on very high resolution systems, and we don't know why those materials and techniques make it sound so good but they do." Which is what it all amounts to, at best.

Regards,
-- Al

Since the cable interacts with the speaker at one end and the amp at the other - and it is these interactions which largely determine how it "sounds" - how is it even theoretically possible to make an "objective" evaluation apart from the devices it is connected to? Aren't the only "objective" things you can measure about cables inductance, capacitance, and so on? Things that may help predict how they will interact with other devices (or may not; too many variables.)

No, since it was been proven in blind test after blind test people cannot. Remember, those tests always use the same 'chain' of electronic/speaker equipment and the sound level is always dead on. So, much for interaction of equipment. What is another and much misunderstood difference is how different nationalities and ethnic backgrounds affect the way they hear. Years ago a great article appeared in FI magazine, long gone, that explored how British and American people 'hear'. Professional in depth, hearing tests have confirmed that people do 'hear' diffently. Maybe that is why all the confusion goes on.

Rove wrote: " I beleive many owners may be using one component of a system (cables for example) to compensate for flaws in other components in the system."

The implies that there is a single standard to which any particular component should be designed.

That's simply not the way engineering works, whether one is building airplanes or stereo equipment. Every choice one makes when designing a product has advantages and disadvantages and the accumulation of those choices represent an overall compromise the designer is willing to live with.

For example, in an airplane you can add bigger fuel tanks that allows the plane to fly farther. However, this increases weight and has implications that ripple through the rest of the plane's design.

Same thing with the design of audio products. One amp's designer may choose circuit topology that offers superb performance in one area but leaves the unit more sensitive to cable parameters.

Your comment would suggest this design is simply wrong, regardless of the other benefits the designer believes it offers.

However, it is not uncommon for a designer to choose performance with restrictive requirements over options that offer more benign compatibility.

That is why it is important to treat the amp, cable and speaker as a lumped circuit. In order for music to come out of the speakers, they must all interact. Take a speaker wire out of one circuit where it works fine and it may not work as well in another.

I don't think there is anything particularly magic or mysterious going on, other than the fact that most home users have to discover the best combo by trial and error. That easily leads to the incorrect assumption that what ever works for them should be the same for everyone else.

Finally, just for the record, I'm not in the camp that finds "massive" differences between wires (unless there is just something horridly wrong, such as unshielded telephone wire being used for a turntable interconnect.) Pay a bit of attention to resistance, look at capacitance and inductance parameters, consider shielding issues, have good connections and I'm fine to leave the obsessive/compulsive mental gyrations to others. ;-)