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Dielectric?

I was listening to Bill Frissell "Nashville" last night. This disk has some of Nashville's best studio musicians working with Bill on a fantastically well recorded session. In the second cut there is the tinniest of cymbal, just shimmering in mid air. I'd never heard it shimmer before. As I continued listening I became aware that my system was pure magic and I took full advantage of the opportunity by playing some of my favorites." WOW, this is amazing" I said to myself with a huge Cheshire cat grin. As I was listening I noticed one of my vacuum cleaner hose speaker cables was hanging down while the other was bent slightly up. "This imperfection must go" so down on the floor working the two cables so that they align. ( I know it's sad, but I'm a perfectionist, I've tried to control it, but...) I'm talking maybe one inch or so, the effect on the coppers molecular structure is small, but I've now taken my closed hand and run it over the majority of length in each cable.
The cables looked good so back to my music. "Where is the magic?" I'd killed it completely, the presentation was flat, the shimmer gone. Oh all the information seemed in place, just no life!
My conclusion, the dielectric had over time created a field beyond the confines of the cable housing and I had discharged it, taking away the added benefit of the extended field. My cables are fully suspended so there is nothing within an inch and a half that can effect the extended dielectric. My amps stay on all the time which would retain the charge in the field even when the system is off.
Does this make sense? It's an easy experiment maybe some of you can try it to see if you have a similar result. I'm feeling like the casing of our cables has more to due with the performance than any of the other factors. The dielectric materials used have the ability to retain a potential charge that can be drawn on during high current demands, the cables dielectric in effect is doing the same job the capacitor dielectric is doing only with less efficiency. Plus some materials benefit in the shielding from other wave energy. Is this "the" factor in our power cord and cable discussions that were not giving the proper attention to.
Should we be discussing what materials best retain a charge and best shield wave forces. My reference to wave forces are of course RF, EMI but I've been thinking, there are far more than just that, there is Microwave, Ex-ray, Grama-ray, all emitted daily from the sun. Solar flares and the intense cosmic radiation have been tied to radio fades and power grid failures, I thing there is a lot to discuss here.
I realize I've exposed myself to great ridicule, but I'm far more interested in what I think I'm learning than playing a fool. Thanks for your thoughts, J.D.
128x128jadem6
redkiwi
1,092 posts
 
I have a feeling the quality of dialectrics is very important in all audio cables as well as PCs. I cannot theorise why as well as you do J.D. But I am trying the 47Labs cable kit at present, which has a 0.4mm OFC solid core conductor and thick high grade teflon dialectric. It sounds nothing like another cable I have that uses 0.4mm OFC solid core conductor, but with a thinner and lower grade teflon dialectric. Of course I expect the copper quality is different too, but I would have expected copper quality to only affect the cleanness or lack of grain in the sound, from past experience. One cable is a real contender and the other does not belong in a high-end system.

I have also experienced how re-routing cables internally inside components can change things very significantly. I have also experienced how if you take a cable off a system and roll it up, and then put it back in the system it takes quite some time to get back to the sound it had before. Just how much of this is due to the physical changes I am making to the conductor, dialectric or the electrical fields is difficult to guage.
jadem6's avatar
jadem6 OP
1,074 posts
 
Thanks Redkiwi for picking up on what I'm trying to learn here. All my electronics books were written just after the discovery of electricity, back in my collage days, so I'm at a considerable loss. They talk about dielectric constants Ke and dielectric strength V/mil. The Ke of air is 1 and ceramic is 80-1200 with a V/mil of 20 and 600-1250 respectively, where glass for instance is 8 and 335-2000. It would appear from reading further that the V/mil is the number of most importance here, but for the life of me I can't remember learning any of this, so I have no idea if I'm right on that assumption. I'm hoping you or anyone else can help straighten me out.
Anyway, on further exploration I see that glass with it's V/mil of 335-2000, and Mica of 600-1500 are far and away the best. Polystyrene was 500-760, but Teflon is not listed. (I think it's function back then was to sit on the bottom of a frying pan) So my first question is what are the values of Teflon, and how much is it improved with thickness? Is it one to one or ..? Second thought was has anyone tried fiber optic glass tubing as an insulator? Are there other ways to achieve the values of glass, but in a flexible manner? Has anyone tried glass tubes? I was thinking it would be fairly easy to use a gauge of wire as required and pull it through a tube. With a simple gas torch one could bend the glass 90 degrees. A solid interconnect could be built I guess. This sounds like a real pain though, I can just see an earthquake in California, or New Zealand for that matter and all the interconnects popping, not good!
All I seem to have is questions, maybe more where they came from. Anyone who can help in this brainstorm please feel free. J.D.
cornfedboy
1,645 posts
 
all this reminds me of a coversation i had with jeff rowland, maybe 10 or 12 years ago, about his using hex-head stainless steel screws inside his amplifiers. his reponse, gleaned from a japanese audio guru who used tiny hammers and tuning forks to test the "internal resonances" of various components: "nothing doesn't matter." only now do i begin to understand what this means. -kelly
sqjudge
96 posts
 
I believe that the dielectric strength is related to the amount of voltage that it takes to force a charge thru the thickness. If air is 20 V/mil that is 20 volts per millimeter. (I don't think the value is right because it takes a few thousand volts of static charge just to jump a 1/4 inch). Dielectric constant (Ke) "is a direct measure of its ability to store electrons as compared to air". Teflon has a Ke of 2.0 and Poylpropylene is 2.1 while air is 1.0001. The more electrons that can be stored, the higher the capacitor value will be for a given physical size. The higher the 'K' factor the more the electric field is distorted in the space around the capacitor. For best sound one need to use the lowest 'K'. So with this in mind we should take bare copper/silver wire and let it hang out in the dry air. There are a few designs that use small spacers and for the most part the dielectric IS air. I hope this helps to lead you to sonic bliss!
sqjudge
96 posts
 
To clarify my above post ... An IC could be made with bare wire and spacers. Air is a better dielectric than any other insulator.
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