2. cables
  3. 146425-122613

The Science of Cables

It seems to me that there is too little scientific, objective evidence for why cables sound the way they do. When I see discussions on cables, physical attributes are discussed; things like shielding, gauge, material, geometry, etc. and rarely are things like resistance, impedance, inductance, capacitance, etc. Why is this? Why aren’t cables discussed in terms of physical measurements very often?

Seems to me like that would increase the customer base. I know several “objectivist” that won’t accept any of your claims unless you have measurements and blind tests. If there were measurements that correlated to what you hear, I think more people would be interested in cables. 

I know cables are often system dependent but there are still many generalizations that can be made.
128x128mkgus
chrissain
425 posts
 
LCR does have an audible influence, but are not the only factors in overall sound quality. A cable no matter how expensive cant improve the sound, it can however do less harm and let more music through. All cables color the sound, the better ones just do it the least. 
michaelgreenaudio's avatar
michaelgreenaudio
643 posts
 

Might I suggest starting this thread on the TuneLand forum or any expert audio forum who has a wider range than this thread. Without graphs, charts, diagrams and pictures your taking a subject that has been covered some 30 years ago and just adding to the circle of words.

Not that these are bad words by any means, just repeated over and over for the last 3 decades. By now all of you should be cable experts (if you have been in the hobby over ten years).

A new audiophile today can get up on cable knowledge easily within a couple of months if they know one thing, and only one thing needed, a community of folks who have already covered these topics and show the results in real time.

Audiogon is a cool forum, but keep in mind it's a beginners forum. You can be an audio beginner for 50 years and still not be experienced on the basic topics and issues. That's why you see the same topics repeated for 30 or so years. Audio forum threads unfortunately are not designed to be places of building documentation and references. Opinions? Yes, both more experienced and little experience, but without a good foundation usually. Simply put, your only going to get so far before the inexperienced and experienced get mixed into the same brew. Having to start the same topic again and again only really proves one thing, the whole is not documenting things properly and ends up falling into a hole instead of understanding a whole. No ones fault, just the nature of mixing fresh wine with old wine, instead of drinking from a properly aged vintage.  


mg

taras22
236 posts
 
@ stevecham

More flat earth.


Just way too funny. Actually more like curved space.

You may want to go take a peak at this thing called proof theory, which talks about what numbers can and can’t do. One of the things it says is that numbers are an abstract concept that relate most perfectly to themselves and only tangentially to the reality around us. And btw was a key development in the movement that led to the "quantum" revolution that has defined physics over the last century or so, which introduced us to the concept of curved space. So relativity you are much closer to flat earth than you may want to admit.


taras22
236 posts
 
@mkgus

They truly are better than the microphones used to take measurements. That’s crazy!


Actually it isn’t. OK lets look at it this way. As a machine a microphone is a speaker driver in reverse. And we all know that no matter how wonderful the driver design it will never ever replicate a real sound in any absolutely accurate manner, and we can easily hear that ( both the original sound and the replication ) and if the equivalence btwn drivers and microphones holds true and I think it does it should lead one to see the ear as the superior instrument ( sorry if that is a bit convoluted and circuitous and I hope youse guys get the point ) The other thing about microphones is their range is limited, and often brick-walled, by noise floors and ceilings, whereas the ear/brain has much greater range in that regard ( in fact in certain circumstances "looking" into noise floors the ear brain has something in the range of 50db advantage over microphone based measurement systems...and especially in the bottom 4 octaves ).
bsmg
152 posts
 
I agree with michaelgreenaudio with regard to "experience." I have several times over the years encountered people in work environments and in other situations in which someone professes "twenty five years experience in (fill in the blank") and then it later becomes apparent that more correctly they have one year of experience twenty five times.
More to discover