cables 101? The brands and differant sounds?

Sean, any comments on "shielding"?

Dunlavy is an interesting story. 10 years ago, I believe that he was a believer in cables and this is obvious from his patent which you can read on the PTO.gov website. However, in the last three years he has been espousing that more expensive cable designs, including his own are just attempts at optimizing some parameters that are not really important and improving durability and aesthetics. He would not admit that cables make a significant difference. Seems hyppocritical. IME, he is just getting old and probably losing some of his hearing.

In any case, Dunlavy is certainly not the only engineer that uses measurements and analysis to design his cables. In fact, I would describe his cables as rather rudimentary designs at best. In my early days as a cable designer, I read and agreed with many of the assertions in his patent. It's a shame that he now says that there was nothing there. In any case, if you want to see some analysis and measurements on cables made by an engineer, see the following website:
http://www.empiricalaudio.com

Not everything on the website is validated and therefore is still theory, but the theories make sense to me based on the measurements and analysis. In the absense of conclusive measurements and listening tests, the theories will have to do.

Unsound, i don't have too much experience with shielded speaker cables. I've only ever run one pair and they definitely sounded "different" than some others that i had of similar geometry but lacking the shielding. On one specific amp that has always sounded somewhat "closed in" and done so regardless of speakers or speaker cables, they REALLY opened up the top end and somewhat leaned out the bottom end. It is the only time that i've ever been able to get this amp to come across as sounding somewhat spacious. As a side note, this was not a big deal as i primarily use that amp to driver woofers. I was using it full range on a temporary basis in another system when i swapped speaker cables. However, i did not base an opinion on this one specific encounter. Other shielded designs might sound quite different. The person that i sold them too fell in love with them, so i guess that they worked well in his system.

Audioengr, thanks for commenting on the Dunlavy's. Can you give us a brief description of the speaker cables in terms of conductor geometry, special traits, etc ??? I have checked out your site a few times and it is an interesting read. As to designing cables with scientific reasoning coming into play, i think that there are quite a few companies that do so. Obviously though, there are as many and probably a lot more that don't. As such, the market is loaded with cables that are nothing more than generic junk with fancy price tags and others with more thought put into them. Unfortunately, most of these also carry a "fancy price tag" too. For those that lack a technical background, it can make wire selection a lot more difficult as they have less of a knowledge base to work from. Sean
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Sean - Dunlavy's patent describes an 18-twisted-pair cable I believe. The inner 7 pairs are cabled or twisted and then the next layer of pairs is twisted around the first group in the opposite direction. This way the fields from pair to pair interact less. Then the pairs are terminated with the first wire from each pair being grouped and the second from each pair being grouped. He talks about using stranded wire, but I am a strong believer in solid-core wire. And of course, Teflon is the best insulator, next to air.