Slow speaker cables?

I believe the confusion stems from taking "fast" as related to the speed the signal travels from one end of the cable to the other. That's not it.
I believe "fast" here refers to the raise speed,
pretty much like the slew rate, the ability of the cable to accurately represent the dynamic swing of the signal it transports.
And in this regard, a cable with less inductance and dielectric absorption makes for a "faster" cable.

As alluded to by others, clarity vs congestion (distortion) can have a perceived effect on the speed of the sound.

B_Limo,

I surrender, there is no such thing as fast (less distortion, more accurate) cables or slow (more distorted, less accurate) cables.

That also means that there are no bright, warm, dark or cool cables or components. In fact, solid state and tubes don't have a different sound either.

Which ultimately leads to: a $100.00 piece of equipment sounds just as good musically as a $10K piece of equipment, so anyone having anything more costly than a transistor radio has just wasted their hard earned money.

Chuck

B_Limo,

Getting back to the real world, Al, Alex and David, thank you! The goal is to get the music from the source to and out of the speakers as accurately as possible. That's the ideal senario so that the music as it was recorded is portrayed as it was recorded. I remember conversations that I had with Chris Sommovigo (Stereovox) and Darren Censullo (Avatar Acoustics) years ago.

Chris said that everything in a cable or component is important. You can have the most perfect transmission wire and connectors in cables, but if the connections between the wire and the connectors is lacking, you're hosed. It's simply, the chain is only as good as the weakest link .

Darren said that the transmission of the music from the source to the speakers can only be degraded, there is nothing that can be added to the original signal to make it more accurate than the original signal.

Anything that masks the original signal can be classified as some form of distortion. It may be tubes adding harmonics (warmth) that really aren't there in the original recording. It may be other things like RFI or EMI interference adding noise perceived as sound and masking important aspects in the original signal. It may be small things like solder connections interferring and not passing the signal correctly. And like Al said, inductance, capacitance and resistance can have the effect of slightly altering the musical signal.

Chuck

B_Limo,

Getting back to your original question. Yes, your brain does have the ability to recognize millisecond differences in what you hear.

Think about hearing a guitar string or key on a piano that is just slightly out of tune. The wave is just a hair off (shorter or longer), but you recognize that it is off, that something just isn't right about the sound.

Chuck