Speaker Wires on Carpet

I would use speaker cable elevator on cable that does use much shielding.If your speaker cable is well shielded, and there are alot that arent, then u shouldnt worry to much about it. Talk to any seasoned guitarist. they dont want cheap cable running from their guitar to their amp. When playing on carpet the cable picks up static an amplifies it in the form a of audible crackle. They avoid this by good shielding cable. The same reasoning can be used with speaker cable. On stereos u wont hear this because the speaker cable isnt being dragged along the floor, like a guitarist would drag his phono cable around. But stationary speaker cable still will pick up some of that static. But if u dont have it laying on carpet, dont worry about it.

I'll also side with Rush here. Although my cables are currently on the carpet, the times I have listened with the cables up, I noticed a definite change in the dynamics. At first, I thought I was crazy, but after reading it a couple of years later, my suspicions were confirmed.

Well, I'd guess that the good news for a question like this is that there should be a measurable and repeatable test for this phenomenon. And, it doesn't even have to be a double blind test, although that sure would be an interesting (well, at least to me) addition.

If your carpet's acting as a dielectric with enough effect for you to hear a difference, then any actual effect would be a difference in the electrical signal being received at your speaker. That is testable. I don't happen to have the issue, and no, I'm not running out to buy carpeting or even a variety of sufficiently long carpet runner samples to perform such a test. But I'm sure that any number of folks with the appropriate technical background and available equipment could nail this one and/or at least help quantify the impact for us all.

From what I remember of any recording studio I've ever been in (no, not that many ;~) I can never remember seeing little cable risers anywhere. Wire strewn all over the place, and lots of carpet too, but no little cable risers. They probably figured that their shielded & balanced connections more than covered any such effect.

This is very simple tweak to test because it can be done real time while music is playing without disconnecting anything, no need to talk in theory. On a couple ocassions with group of people present no one could hear any real difference when any of my speaker cables were lifted off carpet.

There may be some cables that can benefit but none of mine did......I use many other tweaks that do work for me, so I am not anti-tweak.

Looks like I generated a lively discussion. :-)

Let me repeat one of my questions: does it make any difference if the positive and negative runs are twisted together (as they are in many inwall wires) or are running straight and parallel? I thought I remember reading that the twisted configuration was designed to cancel out interference.