Do materials alter frequencies and speed?

Sean...They look a little strange, but if they fit in banana sockets they will work.

At present I am biwired with 12 AWG for the woofer and 18 AWG for the tweeter. (The lighter tweeter wire started out at 24 AWG so as to serve as a tweeter padding resistor, but one of those wires developed a short and were scrapped). The present wire is "sourced" from Home Depot (sorry about that). It is "speaker wire" not "zip cord" and the conductors are further apart which likely results in lower capacitance.

El: It doesn't look like Rsbeck is going to accept my invitation to put his own theories to the test and provide us with his own unbiased testimony as to the outcome. As such, i can send you both sets of cabling, which would allow you to continue to bi-wire the system as you are now. Only thing is, one set would have spades and the other would have bananas. Would this work with your specific amplifier and speaker connections? Sean
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Sean...I think I will skip the biwire thing for this test. Let's minimize the number of variables.

I don't think that spades work with Maggies. (I am actually a "bare wire" guy, so I'm not up on all the various terminations).

In addition to the Maggies, I will try the wires with my Madisound Odin speakers, which have more extended high end.
Ed.
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>>i'm simply saying that i think it provides a very audible contrast to the
sonics of zip cord.<<

That isn't the issue. The issue is whether or not .1 dB down at 20Khz or
.25dB down at 22 Khz is audible. You claim it is -- that if one has good ears,
one can hear this. I say that if you can pass such a test, you can make a lot of
money on the county fair circuit.

Nordost and Zip Cord may or may not sound different, but what would that
prove? This is a ridiculous way to test to see whether or not you -- SEAN --
can really hear .1dB down at 20Khz and .25 dB down at 22 Khz. It seems
obvious to me that you are trying to pull a switch -- trying to get others to
take an irrelevant test -- because you know that you can do no such thing.

In any case, I think it would at least be more responsible if you gave out
complete information and let people know that when you are talking about
this "roll-off" you are talking about .1dB down at 20Khz. I trust that few will
remain interested in your allegations if you give this information -- and I also
suspect this is why you leave this information out.


Now, if you want to compare Nordost and Zip Cord.

What are you comparing?

Where are the frequency response charts for the Nordost cables?

RLC?

Are we assuming the Nordost yield a perfectly flat response?

Based on what?

If they don't yield a perfectly flat response, then how is it relevant?

It isn't.

If you want to see if you can hear .1 db down, you need to measure it against
flat, you need exact level matching and you need to do it double-blind for it
to carry any weight.

Too many studies have shown that sighted tests are unreliable because of the
placebo effect. Any test that doesn't rule out the placebo effect carries no
weight. Similarly, anecdotal testimony carries no weight.

Conducting a sighted comparison against a cable with unknown
measurements without exact level matching and claiming it is a test to see
whether .1dB down at 20Khz is audible not only carries no weight, it is
pointless and silly.

Rsbeck: You aren't looking at the big picture and apparently refuse to do so. The amplifier is not driving the speaker cables independently of the loudspeaker load, it is driving / responding to the complex impedance that each individual cable / speaker combo presents to the amp on the whole.

This is why there are sonic differences in cabling i.e. the complex impedances vary with frequency and each amp responds accordingly to that load. Based upon how stable the amp is into various loads, not only can frequency response be altered, but so can transient response, distortion characteristics, etc... Nelson Pass has had all of this data publicly available and documented for appr 27 years now. Then again, i guess it takes a long time for news to go from one corner of the flat earth over to the other corner.

As such, i will not waste any more of your or my time debating our very different points of view. You are obviously stuck in one mode of operation and afraid to think for yourself beyond what someone else has told you to be the "truth". Studying something as simple as Thevenin's Theory might be to your benefit in the long run though. The fact that the nominal impedance of speaker cabling can vary from a few Ohm's to well beyond 100 Ohm's should be enough to make one wonder how they could perform equivalently in a very low impedance circuit. Such silly things as voltage to current ratios might explain a few things too. Then again, that was alluded to in the 27 year old article that Pass published too.

El: Sorry for not contacting you sooner, but as noted elsewhere, i was having major computer problems and decided to enjoy the nice weather rather than try and fix the computer. Drop me an email with your mailing address. Sorry for the delay, but i probably won't get these out until Tuesday morning. Sean
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