Good, Neutral, Reasonably Priced Cables?

Cables have been researched extensively in both aerospace and computer science, but I suppose you'd have to say, with different objectives. Not with respect to audible effects, and not for the highly 'experimental' geometries/materials tried out by audio cable designers. Some audio companies do use designers with this background and make extensive use of modelling (e.g. Nordost, according to their website). But it would cost serious money to study what the effects of, say, mechanical resonance do in physical and electrical terms, and there are no percentages in it unless it affects something besides audio.

I wonder also how many sonic effects are just due to poor construction and quality control in audio cable manufacture.

Hi Tvad,

I've got access to an extensive library of technical journals at work- I'll try to find some time (maybe friday afternoon) to see if there is a body of literature in them that might be relevant.

I recall reading that participants in Audio Engineering Society meetings have explored this issue in the past, but have not seen write-ups- if you are inclined, that might be a direction to look into. Perhaps there is a proceedings journal or maybe even a peer-reviewed journal.

Signal propagation characteristics in printed circuit boards are pretty extensively documented- perhaps there are useful analogies here as well.

Tracing back from Audioholics, there is a website by Rob Elliott that has some detailed articles and measurements- there are several references cited that might be worth digging up:

Elliott Site

Then, there's always Google...

Anyways, as far as I'm concerned, no apologies necessary- the more approaches that can be brought to bear on bringing some clarity to the whole cable arena, the better.

Tommy: Thanks for the kind words. I'm glad that your system and ears responded equally well to the Goertz. Both of those are good signs : )

As far as Goertz flat speaker cables go, it does less wrong than any other speaker cable that i'm aware of. The reduction of skin effect due to using a wide flat conductor, the lack of time smear from providing one straight path via a solid conductor, the benefits of proper impedance matching via their exclusive geometry, the lack of in or out of band phase shifts due to reducing inductance to a minimum, the advantages of low series resistance due to using heavy gauge conductors, the benefits of using low loss dielectric, the relatively consistent impedance / series resistance that the cable has regardless of frequency, etc... all add up to form one very complete and well thought out package. If one were to change ANY part of the design, the results achieved would not be anywhere near as good as they are. In effect, the results are due to having a "balanced package" approach to product design. One can do this when they know the parameters of a system that the product will be working within and the amplifier / speaker interface* is pretty cut and dried. On the other hand, interconnects have far more variables involved in terms of the interface that they'll be used in and that's why i've stressed picking the proper speaker cables first and then experimenting with interconnects. Otherwise, you have no point of reference and you have no idea as to what could be wrong or where to start looking. You have to form some type of a baseline to build your system upon.

In plain English, the amp can not only "load up" better into Goertz flat speaker cable, there is less information that is lost or distorted on the way to the speaker itself. As i've stated before, power transfer ( the ability to "load" the signal effortlessly ) and transient response are always optimized when the impedances match or there is very little impedance mismatch involved. As you can see in the independent testing performed on the Audioholics website, Goertz MI-2's provided somewhere between a 2.5 - 8 ohm nominal impedance with the Zobel's in place. As such, the cable itself is basically the same impedance as the speakers being used.

What this accomplishes is multi-fold. That is, the amp is no longer seeing a multitude of complex impedances ( the cables reactance, the speakers reactance and a combo of the two ) to load into, it basically sees the loudspeaker. That's because the electrical traits of the Goertz flat speaker cables have been optimized to fall WAY beyond the audible range. In effect, the Goertz cable becomes "electrically invisible" within the system. Now you get to hear just how well the system is matched and whether or not the amplifier can control the speaker. Since many systems consist of poorly designed gear and / or amps that aren't capable of properly controlling the speakers in use, many folks blame the Goertz cables as being "junk". The fact of the matter is, the Goertz cables simply revealed that the "junk" is somewhere in the rest of the system.

By minimizing skin effect, maintaining the proper impedance over a very wide bandwidth and minimizing phase shifts that are directly related to inductance, you no longer have time smear and reflections ( ringing ) to deal with. In effect, getting rid of the time smear allows the notes to unfold as they normally would i.e. it is no longer "disjointed". This allows you to hear the actual harmonic structure in a far more natural form, increasing the natural "liquidity" of the notes.

Getting rid of the signal reflections that would normally occur due to impedance mismatches allows the amp to deliver cleaner sound i.e. less ringing, smearing and error correction ( negative feedback ). This too contributes to the cohesive presentation that one encounters with this cable in a well thought out system.

Obviously, there are many other factors involved here which i covered over in the AA thread that you mentioned, so i don't want to repeat it all here. Suffice it to say that i didn't get a lot of rebuttal / negative comments on that thread because it's hard to refute verifiable facts.

Tvad: Most Military / Government gear uses proper filtration in the power supply. This negates much of the need for "fancy" power cords and / or power line conditioning. If you remember, i've always said that the better the power supply is designed, the less difference one will notice when trying various power cords. On top of that, the cleaner that the AC is coming into your system from the mains, the less difference one will notice when trying various power cords. To be blunt here, most "high end" audio gear is WAY under-designed in this respect, hence the market for "fancy" power cords. Having said that, most of these power cords are just as inadequately designed as the gear that audiophiles are connecting them to.

Flex: The first cable that came to mind is neither massive in diameter or heavy in terms of weight. It is simply very rigid with a lack of pliable, self-damping jacket material. This combo makes it an excellent conductor of vibration. This cable in raw form is currently being used as both a power cord and speaker cable by more than a few regulars of this and other audio forums. As such, it can do twice as much damage to the system i.e. the directly coupled mechanical vibrations from the speaker cabinet being pumped back into the amp and the acoustically coupled air-borne vibrations from the speakers being coupled to the gear through the mechanically resonant power cords. One can literally "knock" on this cable at one end and feel / hear the vibrations quite easily at the other end 6 - 8 feet away. Needless to say, i'm not using this cable in any of my systems, even though it has quite a bunch of merit to it in terms of electrical design integrity. This just goes to show that even the best design ideas can be implimented in a less than optimum manner. Sean
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Sean,
You have prompted my curiosity on several occasions with these statements, so let me ask whether you have any real evidence or whether these are your hypotheses.
First, what exactly constitutes a well enough designed power supply that cables don't matter (much)? Can you cite any specific piece of digital gear in either the pro or consumer world that, from your experience, has a well enough designed power supply to make the gear impervious to power cords?

Second, have you got evidence that what you call a self-damping jacket material (do you mean dielectric?) will damp out the mechanical vibration of a rigid conductor? Say, a solid core or heavy flat ribbon. I have real doubts that much damping would occur over the length of a typical conductor when either end is subject to shaking. Even if the jacket does some damping, the vibration will occur over at least part of the cable until it damps out, so it depends whether the primary effect of vibration is to produce microphonics within the cable, or whether it is simply to transfer vibration between components. I'm curious because I've seen very little data -just a lot of handwaving or conjecture by a few manufacturers and/or audiophiles.