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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
detlof
1,899 posts
 
Eantala, thanks for pointing out Dunlavy's thoughts on this subject for us, though VERY thoughtprovoking, I find it a little biased and onesided, but then are we not all in one way or antother...and Koen thanks for your post, you should perhaps have added, that these days nobody knows anymore, inspite of CAD etc, how to make a violin, which would have a sound comparative to a Stradivari or Guarnieri for that matter. That knowledge has obviously been lost for good.
adamanteus
80 posts
 
Requiescat in pace. This has become audio's version of The
Hundred Years War. There's been very little light but a whole lot of heat generated. (Time to look at some other topics, eh?)
70242241e18c
81 posts
 
Detlof: I'm not clear on what you're saying. Do you actually listen to two DUTs simultaneously? What was your "blind" testing setup?
garfish
1,840 posts
 
Hi Stevemj; ears are connected to brain-- brain does all interpretation (perception) of sound (see your 3/24 post). We all know this-- don't we? I choose to trust my hearing, including perception of such, and my common sense. Respectfully, you seem to want to tie all this up into a tidy scientific package, when personally I think listening to music is much, much more complex and can't be relagated to a neat little "formula" or "procedure".

You (seem to) want to approach selecting wires based solely on science. I want to select wires based on the much more precise, and broader perspective of music appreciation, or "art". I continue to maintain that both are necessary parts of our lives, but I have enough confidence in my own senses that I can select wires without getting too bogged down in engineering. I have strong interests in both art and science. If you value art at all, I think we could get along. Cheers. Craig
detlof
1,899 posts
 
Craig, that was a beautiful post and I could not agree with you more. Wished I would have been able to express my own point of view so clearly and in such a straightforward fashion.
702, I was not listening simultaneously, with rapid switching inbetween, rather I was allowed to listen to the DUT in question (I did not know, which one it was of course)
as long as I wanted to, until I felt sufficiently sure to think to be able to identify it. The DUTS in question were Gryphon and Spectral and a Jadis pre. We also tried MIT and XLO speaker wires. Regards,
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