John Dunlavy On "Cable Nonsense"

Sean, electrical PROPERTIES dictate the electrical behavior of wire, and audio signals are electrical.

Of course what you said doesn't work, and I never said that it would. I just said that speaker cables should have as little resistance as possible. They should also have minimal shunt capacitance and series inductance, but being in a low impedance circuit, the capacitance and inductance are fairly unimportant, especially for the run lengths you find in homes and studios. Velocity factor has totally negligible effect on audio.

I don't want my speaker cables to have "sonic characteristics." I just want it to deliver the signal from the amp to the speaker without alteration. You might be interested to know that 12 gauge zip cord at 30 cents a foot makes excellent speaker cable for runs less than, say, 40 or 50 feet. For longer runs I'd go to at least 10 gauge.

I get by with 26 gage speaker cable, but then again I use low watt bulbs (300B's).

Placebo effect is worth paying for. Audio and visual perception, in the end, is all in the mind. It all ends up as a psychological phenomenon - pure interpretation. Thus a placebo effect, especially for audio or visual interpretation, is entirely real in my opinion. And worth paying for.

Everyone's brain is wired differently, thus we all "hear" and perceive things in an individual way. Belief systems rewire the brain (memory is electro-chemical configuration). Thus scientifically, believing in something can in fact alter its perception to you.

Note that Dunlavy does say that cables have very different electrical properties which are measurable. As an engineer, Dunlavy has decided to build cables that focus on optimizing these electrical properties. They might even sound good? Too bad their appearance is crap.

I personally find that good looking speaker cables (fat, color coordinated, well terminated) "sounds" better. Thus I pay.

Bravo Trappist. Just don't take it to far is all I ask.

Grungle, you know it. I'm on the placebo hunt right now for some AudioQuest Anaconda interconnects!!!