John Dunlavy On "Cable Nonsense"

Bmpnyc wrote: "Lamp cord is not acoustically transparent. The quality of the copper must have an effect on signal transfer.The cable companies that offer the purest materials
seem to garner the best reviews. Harmonic Technology's single crystal wire comes to mind."

The largest effects upon subjective results with speaker cable is not the conductor. It is two things: the insulation and the geometry.

Lamp cord copper would work reasonbly well if the insulation was changed and the geometry was changed.

If you doubt that the geometry has a big effect, then try this and report back. Get some runs of lamp cord. Run one set like lamp cord. Take set #2 and separate the two condutors completely, by inches. Listen.

I think you'll hear a difference.

Having said that, I do think that for reasons that no one knows that pure Silver and copper do sound different, and SPC sounds different again... although again, this is more subtle than the difference in insulation and geometry.

_-_-bear (bearlabsUSA.com)

I put lamp cord in quotes because I meant any reasonably priced 20 gauge wire, like the speaker wire off the rolls at the home center or whatever people call monster cable. I'm not sure that acctual lamp wire would be such a good idea.

Why wouldn't "lamp cord" be a good idea ??? It is using the same low grade stranded copper and generic "plastic" type jacket that many "speaker cables" or "zip cord" uses. Are you trying to say that there MIGHT be a sonic difference between them ??? Could you please explain the reasoning behind your last statement ? Sean
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That should be 12 gauge. That's the second time I've made that mistake here. 20 WOULD sound bad.

My last statement? This looks like another confusion about "lamp cord" and lamp cord. By "Lamp cord" [in quotes] I mean zip cord, I probably should have called it that in the first place. I've never paid atention to the innards of lamp cord [no quotes] proper, so I said I wasn't sure if there was a physical difference between it and zip cord.
And why are "plastic" and "speaker cable" in quotes? Now this is getting really confusing. That's real PVC, and they are used to connect speakers to amps.