Is all speaker wire (home Entertainment system) the same? Better quality

Sandtree

Username03725 said:
Different cables do sound different on a decent system. That's just an unarguable fact. 

I have to admit to owning fairly expensive home audio equipment but not fully sold on the whole cable thing beyond obviously bell wire and decent quality basic cables. If you look at the AV Forums there are many people running £30k+ home cinema systems and a large number of them recommend a couple of Amazon options at around £4-5/m for wiring up £1k per speaker setups. 

Mine is probably a bit under that budget as my TV is smaller than average and projector hasnt been upgraded in a while but half the speakers are running off such a cable and the other half are on a £15/m cable that was thrown in by the vendor of my original speakers. I have tried many times and cannot honestly tell the difference between the two.

The ones I am most suspicious of are those paying £300+ on a power cable and then plugging it into a standard mains socket... ok if you went via a conditioner then maybe but with the miles of cheap copper the electricity has already gone through I cannot see the last 1.5m making any difference.

These things should be really easy to prove their is a difference, hook the end up to an oscilloscope or such and show the different wave forms between the £5/m and £50/m speaker cable but oddly no one ever has produced such images to show the difference.

Your money, spend it on whatever you want to and if you can hear the difference then great... I am sure there are plenty who'd question why I spent £1,500 on a tiny needle on my turntable but it sounds great to me

coffeehound

Username03725 said:
And the best investment once you get past a certain point in your audio journey is to install a dedicated mains supply (CU, cable and wall sockets) to separate the audio system from the noisy mains.

Would that need its own earth rod as well?

Username03725

Sandtree said:

The ones I am most suspicious of are those paying £300+ on a power cable and then plugging it into a standard mains socket... ok if you went via a conditioner then maybe but with the miles of cheap copper the electricity has already gone through I cannot see the last 1.5m making any difference.

You've assumed that it's all about delivering the electricity. I know that Naim do a Powerline, for about £500. The cable from plug to kettle socket is pretty ordinary but Naim put the emphasis on good contacts and mechanical isolation. At both ends the mains cable is as far as possible mechanically isolated from the plug. Tbh I can't do it justice, Have a read of this if you fancy the detail. When making the connection on the back of the PS, pushing the outer case of the PL in as far as poss closes the clamps onto the contacts on the unit. 

I had a Naim power supply that came with a Powerline included, and left the Powerline unused thinking that when the time comes to sell it all I can point to it as unused and still boxed. In a passing conversation at the audio dealer he said 'just give it a try, see what you make of it.' So I did. With a very good system things like this are always going to be marginal gains, but this was quite a noticeable lift. Tighter bass, a wee bit more detail, a sense of it being just 'better'. I don't mind if that's all in the mind and a load of bunkum tbh - I paid a tiny proportion of the value of a nice audio system and it sounded better to me, so it was worth it. It wouldn't be worth it on a £399 box from Currys. Since got two more, for the pre-amp and the power amp power supplies, again, a small but noticeable lift each time. Btw no-one pays full price, there's enough margin for the question "what's your best price?" to be worth asking.

coffeehound said:

Username03725 said:
And the best investment once you get past a certain point in your audio journey is to install a dedicated mains supply (CU, cable and wall sockets) to separate the audio system from the noisy mains.

Would that need its own earth rod as well?

No. The new earth joins the incoming cable's earth as near as possible where it splits for the meter. Then take the additional feed off the live & neutral after the meter and before the existing CU with a couple of Henley blocks, and run this new cable to the new CU. The recommendation is to run 10mm twin & earth from new CU to unswitched mains sockets where the hifi is. This apparently gives the best results, acc to the many that have done it.

Sandtree

Username03725 said:

Sandtree said:

The ones I am most suspicious of are those paying £300+ on a power cable and then plugging it into a standard mains socket... ok if you went via a conditioner then maybe but with the miles of cheap copper the electricity has already gone through I cannot see the last 1.5m making any difference.

You've assumed that it's all about delivering the electricity. I know that Naim do a Powerline, for about £500. The cable from plug to kettle socket is pretty ordinary but Naim put the emphasis on good contacts and mechanical isolation. At both ends the mains cable is as far as possible mechanically isolated from the plug. Tbh I can't do it justice, Have a read of this if you fancy the detail. When making the connection on the back of the PS, pushing the outer case of the PL in as far as poss closes the clamps onto the contacts on the unit. 

I had a Naim power supply that came with a Powerline included, and left the Powerline unused thinking that when the time comes to sell it all I can point to it as unused and still boxed. In a passing conversation at the audio dealer he said 'just give it a try, see what you make of it.' So I did. With a very good system things like this are always going to be marginal gains, but this was quite a noticeable lift. Tighter bass, a wee bit more detail, a sense of it being just 'better'. I don't mind if that's all in the mind and a load of bunkum tbh - I paid a tiny proportion of the value of a nice audio system and it sounded better to me, so it was worth it. It wouldn't be worth it on a £399 box from Currys. Since got two more, for the pre-amp and the power amp power supplies, again, a small but noticeable lift each time. Btw no-one pays full price, there's enough margin for the question "what's your best price?" to be worth asking.

The first one Google shows up is £595 and I am sure there are more expensive ones out there.

I just find it odd, human ears are not the worlds most sensitive equipment and people say that their £500 powercable makes a notable positive difference to what they hear. When I go to my school friend's lab with equipment millions times more expensive and at least two extra zeros in price that they are all running on standard kettle leads... whats so special about HiFi and our ears that they can detect the difference and yet it makes no difference to a scanning electron microscope or such? Its not as if his budgets wouldnt allow him to replace every cable with £500 ones if it made a fraction of a diference.

Anyway, not judging anyone who buys snakeoil, as I say, I am sure some of the things I buy would come under the same criticism 

coffeehound

Some equipment I've used in the workplace has had screened mains leads for industrial locations with lots of RF / EMI flying about.

The thing that is suprising is that there's been no movement (that I'm aware of) toward whole-house protection against transients.  Most homes must have £thousands of electronics, yet no particular protection beyond maybe an outlet strip with suppressors.  Some commercial grade transient suppressors at the CU would be worth having, IMO.

Heedtheadvice

Username03725 said:

Heedtheadvice said:

The other 1% is for more special needs such as for audiophiles (those often with more money than sense and convince themselves irrelevent things make a difference! ooops! ), long runs from amplifier to speakers ( such as more than 10 metres or PA 100V line systems) or studios in professional use/4 wire (rather than 2 connections to each cabinet).

Forget all the hype about noise, special copper etc. Not relevant.

The most important aspect is the wire resistance...

It's easy to sneer and be dismissive ; allow me to add a comment or two.

Using audiophile as a derogatory term is to miss the point. Most people like music, it happens that a very small subset have the inclination, the desire and the wherewithal to take that to a higher level than a lot of other people would. It doesn't make us mad or stupid or weird, no more than buying a sports car does. Petrolhead seems to be a soubriquet that generally carries positive vibes, yet enjoying music to the best of our requirements and spending surplus income in a way that we derive enormous pleasure from is 'odd' and worthy of derision. Hmmm... ok.

Different cables do sound different on a decent system. That's just an unarguable fact. There may not be much difference and someone not accustomed to picking out the detail and the feel of music on a good audio system may not immediately notice those subtle differences, but they exist, and when the source is a multi-thousand pound system the difference that a change of speaker cable can make can be seen as the final steps, fine tuning if you will. And trivially but also a factor is that some cables fit the house better. I once changed from NAC A5 which is very solid & inflexible to something called Witch Hat Phantom and is infinitely flexible and physically smaller, which allows me to hide it away more easily. That it sounded slightly better to my ears was the prime reason to buy it, but a neater living room is a nice side effect.

Note too that length can be important. UK audio specialists Naim design some of their amps to use the speaker cable as a factor in impedance and inductance, and recommend a minimum length cable of 4m. 

But to the OP, as above; looking at the type of speaker you plan to use you don't need anything extravagant.

Ok, you can rightly claim my 'description' of audiophiles was a little bit derogatory. I accept that. Unfortunately though, as you claim on other aspects, effectively the facts speak for themselves and many so called audiophiles rely on the advertising hype, solutions to fix problems that do not exist for them, or it is a psychological effect that they believe there is an improvement whether it exists or not.

It is a undeniable fact that the vast majority of expensive "improvements" cannot be detected when a lone listener undertakes a double blind test and does not expect or is told there will be an improvement and is thus not subjected to influences. I am not being dismissive of the few rare actual improvements that can be made or even the even rarer listener that can detect them. Those detections require ideal listening material reproduced under ideal circumstances such as the best studio conditions.

I have been there having worked for many a year as a professional in the audio world and have lots of engineering experience. It is an undeniable fact that the electronics and electrical supply, faults excluded, have a minimal affect on the reproduced sound, generally negligible and for good equipment irrelevent. Tranducers along with the acoustics on the other hand are the weakest links. These are, as an undeniable fact, measurable to levels far better than we can hear. Scientifically proven, not just opinion.

I value high quality sound and thus have very high quality speakers (though I could not afford or would want to spend £30k !) The low thousands is plenty thank you! Ivan (for one) mentioned the other factors affecting the sound at home i.e. the acoustics. It is not often acceptable but changing the listening environment acoustics to be up to studio standards is not the norm for practical reasons so most will not have any chance of detecting any small audio improvement. However rather good if not startling changes can be made with acoustic treatment, positioning etc that will cost a lot less than what some will pay out for 'special' cables.

Yes you found an electrically 'inferior' cable better for practical reasons and nothing wrong with that but it would be interesting to know if you had your listening environment measured and modelled and changed to exclude external noise, prevent standing waves and non random reflections from hard surfaces. What reverberation time do you have in your listening room?

EDIT: With hindsight perhaps there should be no response as this is going well off topic and of no use to the OP plus I do not object to you spending your own money if it gives you pleasure!

Username03725

Heedtheadvice said:

<snipped for brevity>

Yes you found an electrically 'inferior' cable better for practical reasons and nothing wrong with that but it would be interesting to know if you had your listening environment measured and modelled and changed to exclude external noise, prevent standing waves and non random reflections from hard surfaces. What reverberation time do you have in your listening room?

EDIT: With hindsight perhaps there should be no response as this is going well off topic and of no use to the OP plus I do not object to you spending your own money if it gives you pleasure!

What I found was that a cable that Naim specifically offer as an upgrade over the standard lead did in fact make it all sound better. I'm not too bothered about the how & why tbh; I'd chanced upon the Naim forum and that led me to this relatively cheap upgrade. And it was an upgrade, it sounded better. I didn't need to quantify it nor write some blurb about what had changed; it was just 'better', by a small but noticeable amount. My evenings when no-one is in and I can enjoy listening to music along with a nice glass of red are now correspondingly a bit better. By how much? Lord knows. Let's have a stab at 6.2% better. That'll do.

On your final point, that really is the gist of it. Every man needs a hobby; mine currently is owning a ludicrous audio system that's cost more than some spend on a car. It's a source of enormous pleasure to me, and I've achieved what I first wanted as a 14 year-old in my mate's bedroom listening to his new music centre, thinking how great it would be to have a proper hifi. The cost is irrelevant and upgrades like the Powerline are worth it (to me), otherwise I'd be aware that it could be better and then I'd be less than completely satisfied. Let's hope that as many people as possible are also able to achieve a lifelong dream. [Btw I've had two come true - Leicester City won the Premier League ]

Ibrahim5

Whilst waiting for my speaker cable to arrive I popped into the garage looking for some temporary wire. Could only find 13a mains cable. I was quite impressed. Worked very well. I don't agree with the comment about speakers being wireless in the future. Wireless speakers may be available but will be inferior to wired. If you put good speakers and cable in a room should be good for 50 years.

[Deleted User]

Ibrahim5 said:

I don't agree with the comment about speakers being wireless in the future. Wireless speakers may be available but will be inferior to wired. 

There is no technical reason why wireless speakers can't be equal or even superior to wired speakers if you are listening to a digital sound source. CD quality is a mere 1.5 Mbits per second, easy enough to transmit via wireless. The challenge is keeping separate wireless speakers precisely in phase but high end DAC's with synchronised precision clocks can handle that.

It is just very costly with high-end hifi as you need to build a DAC and amp into each speaker so it becomes expensive to do but there are products available that can do this. The speaker itself can be equally good quality to a wired one AND avoid having the wire in the first place that is source of so much debate.

I wouldn't call these inferior speakers:

https://www.richersounds.com/hi-fi/dali-rubicon-6c-black.html

Ibrahim5

That's just putting everything into the speakers. A bit daft.