Slow speaker cables?

Music is transient in nature. It is not so much a bunch of sine waves layered as it is a multitude of transients crammed together. And cables, as much as any other piece of equipment, can blur the transient nature of music.
There are many ways that this can take place in reality, but I'll use just one as an example.
Even though a kick drum is tuned very low on the frequency spectrum of what we hear, there is a very sharp leading transient spike that is found at the beginning of each smack of the drum head. Cables, and all other components, can very easily mask this spike. This happens as specific distortion mechanisms within a cable design impact the signal. When this leading edge spike is either diminished or completely masked we end up hearing only the harmonic aftermath of the drum strike.
This has the effect of delaying what we hear from the drum very slightly.
Since the kick drum is typically whats sets the pace for the entire piece of music, having it sound delayed in time causes it to be behind the rest of the music. When a drummer is consistently late in his timing they call that "chasing the beat". The real world effect of this is that is causes the music to sound "slower" and more disjointed.

This is the main reason why cables that are known for high frequency clarity are also often known as being "faster". These types of designs convey the transient nature of the music differently than others, many times better.

Can we actually hear this micro second delay caused by the missing transient leading edge? Actually, we absolutely can.
Consider the fact that tests done on Ray Charles showed that the consistency in the timing of his finger snaps were on the order of milliseconds. Given what's known about the physiology of the human body, which is to say the actual physics and biology of snapping your fingers in time, we know that one must be able to "hear" changes in time at least an order of magnitude greater than what we can actually create.

In the end, cables that are most accurate in the time domain are the ones that get the transient nature of the entire musical spectrum correct. They are the ones known as being "fast". They are also the ones that tend to get your foot tapping as well. Cables (and other equipment) known for being "slow" mask much of the transient nature of music, causing it to sound more "smooth" as well as typically less detailed.

I just looked up Chuck's comment on our ability to perceive sound in terms of speed, I found an excerpt that might be helpful ...

Human auditory perception has its limits as well – the minimum time in between sonic events to be distinguished separately is on the order of 20 milliseconds. Inside this limit, sounds begin to blur together to create first a buzzing then a continuum. Although this may be the limit to distinguishing sounds as separate events, human hearing is extremely sensitive to timing quality of events spaces in time. Percussionists create musical sonic events that are distinct, typically separated by hundreds of milliseconds. The accuracy with which they articulate any given event, however, is on the order of a millisecond.

12-12-12: Csontos
Al, does the fact that I'm hearing an improvement rather than just verifying one on instrumentation outweigh any negative impact on the amp? Doesn't the fact that we're dealing with wire no more than 6" long render inductance a non-issue? I'm guessing the Acoustat amps were built this way for the reason you mentioned. But also with the ability to drive low impedance loads such as the Acoustat speakers. So does it not stand to reason inductance is not an issue?

Not sure what you mean by "negative impact on the amp," but I would not doubt that you may have heard an improvement that would not have been verifiable even with sophisticated instrumentation.

Yes, I would expect the 6 inch length to most likely make inductance a non-issue. When I submitted my earlier comment I missed that fact that you were referring to internal wiring of such short length. A short length of heavy gauge wire like that would also nullify or greatly minimize pretty much all other cable effects that I can envision as being of possible relevance, including not only resistance, inductance, and capacitance, but also skin effect, strand jumping, dielectric absorption, RF "transmission line" effects, etc., to the extent that they might have had any relevance at longer lengths.

My research seems to corroborate my experience that replacing power supply wiring with 8awg, 500 strand is a significant overall improvement.

Assuming that the previous wiring was not poorly chosen in some way, such as being marginal in gauge, and that it had not suffered some sort of age-related degradation, and assuming that the previous solder joints were good, the only explanation that occurs to me for the improvement you perceived is that minor differences in physical placement of the old wiring vs. the new wiring might have affected coupling of noise transients (perhaps associated with current surges caused by abrupt changes in the power demands of the music) to or from other circuit points. Perhaps there are other reasons, but it's hard to say without having knowledge of the specifics of the design.

Excellent comments by several of the others above.

Best regards,
-- Al

There is such a thing as the high end audio "twilight zone".

THings that are observed (or heard) to occur there cannot often be fully explained or quantified.

But they often do seem to really exist!

Its where tweaks like wire changes can be heard by many but predicting what one will actually hear in any particular case is often futile, as is expecting that another will hear exactly the same thing and react similarly.

All sorts of creatures, both dark and light inhabit the high end audio twilight zone. You have to identify the ones you can trust and the ones you cannot!

Eerie music plays......

Al, I was referring to your suggestion of a "downside by increasing induction" and it's possible result to the amp but that is now moot. Wiring I'm dealing with is the stock 12 and 14awg wire that virtually all the amps I have were built with. It's this wire that I've replaced with similar 8awg wire the stock Acoustat amps are built with. I've simply come to the conclusion that cost factor is the driving force behind building an amp just adequately rather than building it to reach it's full potential. There are probably lots of amp circuits capable of sota performance if given the correct internal accessories.