Speaker wire is it science or psychology


I have had the pleasure of working with several audio design engineers. Audio has been both a hobby and occupation for them. I know the engineer that taught Bob Carver how a transistor works. He keeps a file on silly HiFi fads. He like my other friends considers exotic speaker wire to be non-sense. What do you think? Does anyone have any nummeric or even theoretical information that defends the position that speaker wires sound different? I'm talking real science not just saying buzz words like dialectric, skin effect capacitance or inductance.
stevemj
Redkiwi: For my own edification, would you explain what is wrong with the digital standard, and how Nyquist's theory falls short?
trelja - I would love to see your article. It must be very difficult these days to design HiFi amps and preamps when the very wire you use in them screws up the sound. Just think of all that wire in the voice coils and crossovers, its a wonder any recognizable sounds make it into the room.

It must be especially discouraging to realize that after spending hundreds of dollars on 8 feet of really cool line cord that it is connected on one end to hundreds of feet of ordinary wire that goes round and round the transformer core and on the other end to hundreds of miles of ordinary copper wire that goes eventually to the power source.
Steve, your beating a dead horse here, you will not convince the believers of cable and they aren't going to change your mind either. If you just like the debate then have at it, but it is just the same words typed over and over. As far as Stero Review, c'mon, there's a name known for their coverage of high def. systems. Why not let the guy at Best Buy help you out?
Both! Some people ask, "It's just wire how could it make a difference?". Well... A magnifying glass is just glass isn't it?

As for the internal wiring of components being cheap, that is true. We all pay for the signal that comes OUT of the component. HOW the signal gets the sonic qualities we love is irrelevant.

Cable "science" in the purist form, is designed to preserve signal quality between components. Unfortunately that is nearly impossible. Therfore each cable type/design will add or subtract sonic qualities to your music. To get the best sound, one must have the right cable... Not necessarily the best cable.

The psychology comes when you try to find the RIGHT cable for your system... I think I'm going crazy!
Jostler - Come on, I started out giving people here credit for understanding that it is not fair to compare differnt size wires. Then I realised I couldn't do that and included that the wire had to be the same size for a fair comparision. I will grant that large exotic wire will be better than small cheap wire. And there is science to back it up. Small wire reduces the amps damping factor which results in changes in frequency response. This, as I'm sure you know, is because speaker impedance varies.