Something doesn't seem right about this...

A correction to your post, Willie, if I may. The specs for Kimber 12TC, and as I recall for many of their other cables, are for a length of 2.5 meters. See this page. ("DUT" presumably stands for "Device Under Test"). So the 1400 pf number represents only 171 pf/ft.

Very few speaker cables approach or exceed 1000 pf/ft. Some of the Goertz models are among the few that do, as are the old Polk Cobra cables.

I would add that speaker cables having capacitance that is high enough to approach, but not to reach, levels that might cause a given amplifier to oscillate, can nevertheless cause effects such as frequency response peaking, overshoots, ringing, and phase shifts that may have audible consequences. Particularly in the case of amps that use a lot of feedback. Those kinds of effects could perhaps be subjectively appealing in some cases, especially if not too severe, but are inaccurate in any event.

Regards,
-- Al

All, as always you are correct - it was for 2.5 meters - my mistake

I did look a couple of times, because I thought it was high, but missed the cable length

Thanks for spotting that.

Williwonka ... I have no idea if this is good, bad or neutral, but here's the specs on my Kimber cables:

DUT: 8PR 2.5m bare wire ends.

(Cp) parallel capacitance: 742.0 pF @ 20 kHz
(Ls) series inductance: 0.459 µH @ 20 kHz
(Rdc) dc loop resistance: 0.021 Ω
(Xt) total reactance: 0.057 Ω @ 20 kHz
Frequency response ± 0.5 dB: dc - 50 kHz

***************

I picked these cables up quite a few ago from a dealer. Is 742 pF @20kHz a lot, a little or just right? My amp is an ARC Ref 150 tube job that uses output trannies. I would appreciate your thoughts. For some reason, I think that capacitive loads are hard to drive, requiring current. I wonder how my rig would sound with different speaker cables??

Thanks

Bruce

Al and Williwonka, I mentioned here (to be posted) and/or elsewhere that I own the Kimber 8PR speaker cables. I checked the Kimber web site for the specs. Frankly ... I feel like I just had a Space Balls or Ben Hur "deja vu" experience. [Remember the Space Balls scene where Dark Helmet and crew were on the starship and increased speed to light speed, hyper speed and then they went plaid. Or Ben Hur, the boat started out at cruising speed, then increased to battle speed, and then ramming speed.]

Ok, here's my take-a-way from the Kimber site. First we start out with the cheapy "pure copper" version -- PR; then we move up to the line to the "ultra pure copper" version -- VR; then finally we go plaid, the "hyper pure copper" version -- TC. Now ... the capacitance and total reactance specs for each version (2.5 meters) are as follows: (PR) -- 742 pF/.057 ohms; (VS) -- 744 pF/.047 ohms; and TC -- 821 pF/.044 ohms.

Please help me here gents. The minute differences in these specs are about as meaningful to me as pondering how many angels can sit on a pinhead.

Bruce

Hi Bruce,

Those are all reasonable numbers, and unlikely to account for any sonic differences that may exist among those cables, or between any of them and the majority of other cables.

The most notable spec difference between the three cables is their rated bandwidth, those numbers being 50, 150, and 300 kHz respectively (for response within +/- 0.5 db). Whether each of those numbers would result in sonics that are better, worse, or the same as the others is a function of many system dependent variables, and conceivably also on the RFI environment, meaning that the answer is unpredictable IMO.

Best,
-- Al