John Dunlavy On "Cable Nonsense"

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!!!

I do believe that cables can be 'engineered'. When you change the capacitance and inductance of a cable you are effecting a parameter called the "charateristic impedance"(I will use CI for short). In normal zip cord type wire, the CI is approximately 90 ohms. In RF theory it is said to be very important to match the load impedance to the CI of the cable.

If this theory was applied to speaker cable then we need to design cables with a CI of 8 ohms. The problem with designing a cable to 8 ohms is that a speaker is only a NOMINAL 8 ohms (or 4 ohms) and varies with frequency. It would be practically impossible to build a cable that could match the impedance curve of a speaker.

A few years back I investigated the effects of lowering the input impedance of my power amp. I tried some 75 ohm video cable as an interconnect and a 75 ohm RCA with a 75 ohm termination on the circuit board of the amplifier. This combo sounded very close to the best interconnects I had used in a more conventional manner. My preamp has a very high current output and can in fact drive a 8 ohm speaker at low volumes. It was important to drive the amp with this pre amp but it was less important what interconnect I was using. The differences that I heard in interconnects when the input impedance of the amp was 20,000 ohms was far larger than the differences when the input impedance was down around 100 ohms.

I do not know if it was the reduction of reflections due to the matching of the cable to the load. It may have also been the contribution of a lower noise floor due to the reduced thermal noise of the lower input resistor. I believe that musical enjoyment can come from the contribution of a number of factors, combining in a manner that makes the sound pleasant to YOUR ears. I kept the low input impedance in my amp for about a year until I got a different pre and had to take it out cause the new pre could not drive the load!