Good value speaker cable advice please.
Comments
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perhaps you should get on with some work instead?
Let me Google that for you...0 -
Err, no. That's your brain convincing yourself that you've not just realised how stupid you've been buying expensive cable you didn't need.
Lets look at it from a technical point of view.
The signal that is sent out is a sinewave of varying amplitude and frequency. It has varying voltage and current. The cable needs to be able to handle the frequency, voltage and the current and to have sufficient ability to reject unwanted signals. Ideally, the loss in the cable needs to be minimal to ensure as much of the power in the outputted signal makes it to the speaker, although increasing the power outputted (turning up the volume) compensates and unless you're running cables 100m long and have 3dB loss on that, you're not really going to notice much. Once you've got a cable that does that, then no additional ability provides any additional benefit.
It doesn't matter if its oxygen free or any other free. It cannot modify the waveform being outputted from the amplifier to any beneficial effect. A cable NOT up to meeting the minimum requirements will be detrimental but once you get up to around 1mm diameter core, then for home use you're not going to get any problems other than interference due to poor screening. In fact, its actually the screening capabilities you want to be interested in because at the lengths of typical speaker wires, they make very good antennas for HF and LF frequencies and you're more likely to get RF induced noise being picked up and outputted through the speakers from all kinds of sources.
Speaker wiring, along with gold plated optical leads, is one of the biggest cons there is.
First up, thanks for that comment. Really nice
2nd ~
measureing a simple sinewave and ANY cable will do. I cant argue with that. Just about any cable would be able to send a single 1khz (or whatever) signal down the line intact. As you well know, music isnt just a single frequency sinewave
However, ALL cables start to suffer at frequency extremes
Skin effect comes into play, as well does the 'maxwell effect', capacitance, inductance, resistance, material purity, possible oxidisation, sheathing dielectrics, single or multicore, corrosion of the plugs/spades and shielding/braiding. (Although shielding in speaker cables is a lot less important than you make out)
Now if you want to set a blind test up for me with van damme blue and nordost silver wind on a decent hifi fed with clean mains then I might just take you up on that (Ive already done this test and got 100% right, im pretty confident I can do it again so long as I play the right music):idea:0 -
This is your lucky day Rik - you are only a few steps away from being $1,000,000 richer!! Just contact Mr. Randi ...Now if you want to set a blind test up for me with van damme blue and nordost silver wind on a decent hifi fed with clean mains then I might just take you up on that (Ive already done this test and got 100% right, im pretty confident I can do it again so long as I play the right music)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-end_audio_cablesJames Randi, a stage magician and scientific skeptic best known as a challenger of paranormal claims and pseudoscience, offered a prize of one million dollars to anyone who could prove his or her ability to distinguish an expensive high-end audio cable from an ordinary audio cable by means of a controlled listening test.[4][5] Michael Fremer of Stereophile magazine took the challenge, but satisfactory testing conditions could not be agreed upon, and the test did not take place.[6] In rigorous tests performed under controlled circumstances, listeners have not been able to prove there is any audible difference between high end and cheap cables[7].0 -
Skin effect comes into play
In general you're right, except for skin effect. That is one that doesn't stand up to any real scrutiny. At the highest audio frequency that an amp can produce, the skin effect is irrelevant, because the "skin" is thicker than the wire itself. It only becomes significant at very high (i.e. radio) frequencies - which is why they only use waveguides rather than solid cables at very high frequencies.
Outside audiophool circles, it seems to be generally accepted that speaker cabling is not a trivial subject, but it's nowhere near as complex as the sellers of expensive cables would have us believe.0 -
kwikbreaks wrote: »This is your lucky day Rik - you are only a few steps away from being $1,000,000 richer!! Just contact Mr. Randi ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-end_audio_cables
This really is a day of boredom (yawns)
Unfortunately, his blind test uses different cables etc. Way too many variables for my liking:idea:0 -
In general you're right, except for skin effect. That is one that doesn't stand up to any real scrutiny. At the highest audio frequency that an amp can produce, the skin effect is irrelevant, because the "skin" is thicker than the wire itself. It only becomes significant at very high (i.e. radio) frequencies - which is why they only use waveguides rather than solid cables at very high frequencies.
Outside audiophool circles, it seems to be generally accepted that speaker cabling is not a trivial subject, but it's nowhere near as complex as the sellers of expensive cables would have us believe.
Im assuming you mean actual signal loss? Im talking about 'phase shifting', of which ive seen measured differences at 8Khz and above (WELL within audible range):idea:0 -
I was referring to both (or neither). Because the "skin" does not in effect exist at audio frequencies, no significant attenuation or phase shifts could be attributed to it. Phase shifts could quite easily be seen at the frequencies you mention, but it will be due to other characteristics of the cable as a transmission line - not to skin effect.
It's just one of those things that the Marketing departments at cable makers like to add in to make the subject look very complex, in an attempt to justify their ridiculous (at the audiophool end of the market) prices.0 -
nice one!kwikbreaks wrote: »This is your lucky day Rik - you are only a few steps away from being $1,000,000 richer!! Just contact Mr. Randi ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-end_audio_cables
today i tried 1m of silver anniversary on one speaker and 1m of the cheap stuff in my earlier post from tlc-direct on the other speaker. I put the speakers next to each other and changed the balance from one to the other. I then swapped the speakers between the two sets of wires to ensure that i wasnt comparing just the 2 different speakers. My son actually did all the switching, so for me it was a blind test. The amp was a hifi cambridge audio one (not the denon AV one i'm going to use. I tried several tracks of music.
The result...
I thought that the one with the silver anniversary cable was a smidge louder. When my son tweaked the volume (by 1/100th to compensate) as he switched between speakers/cables, i could not tell the difference. If i'm paying and cant tell the difference, i think I'm gonna pay 50p per metre and feel good about it.:D0 -
ANY cable will be detrimental to the audio signal. All you can do is minimise that degradation to an acceptable degree. There is no magic which happens at "the minimum requirements" making cables suddenly perfect. There is however, a fairly rapidly accelerating law of diminishing returns in operation.It cannot modify the waveform being outputted from the amplifier to any beneficial effect. A cable NOT up to meeting the minimum requirements will be detrimental but once you get up to around 1mm diameter core, then for home use you're not going to get any problems other than interference due to poor screening.
Screening and RF interference are extremely unlikely to be a noticable issue with the amplitude of signals driving speakers.There's love in this world for everyone. Every rascal and son of a gun.
It's for the many and not the few. Be sure it's out there looking for you.
In every town, in every state. In every house and every gate.
Wth every precious smile you make. And every act of kindness.
Micheal Marra, 1952 - 20120 -
It wasn't my comment but as the userid hammyman suggests to me that the poster is a ham / radio amateur (as am I) he was talking of the cable picking up external RF fields such as radio transmissions and transporting that signal back to the amp where it may just find its way back into it and cause problems.Screening and RF interference are extremely unlikely to be a noticable issue with the amplitude of signals driving speakers.
I personally would hope that any amp fit for the description HiFi and certainly one where the owner would consider buying specialist speaker cables would be immune to common mode RF pickup on the speaker leads unless used in a taxi office or hammyman was blasting out 400w of SSB next door.0
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