Speaker wire is it science or psychology

Sean

Good note! Agree that there are differences, though they may
be hard to quantify. I'm of the "diminishing returns" school about wires, just as everything else in audio. Are there differences? Yes. Am I willing to pay some preposterous prices to own the esoteric? Nope, can't afford it. But that doesn't mean I can't hear them, and I certainly don't begrudge anyone who has the wherewithal to avail himself of it. I've assembled a very nice system without spending the GNP of a small nation. Do I call it SOTA? No. But it will not embarrass me, and it will extract just about everything on vinyl or other sources that is there to be extracted.

As an aside to "Tireguy"... loved that simile of "like talking to a roof shingle". Gave me a good laugh.

Anyone who wants to plumb the science might want to take a look at Harmonic Tech's web page and read their arguments.

Finally, why do these debates invariably end in the ad hominem attacks? Guys, just agree to disagree. ( Saw on another post someone who took a shot at Bryston. I could fire back and tell him this or that. Pointless. If he hears "bright" so be it. There are a whole lot of other people who disagree, all of whom have perfectly functioning hearing.) Why argue perceptions? I find Krell to be "tipped up", but also understand that for many it's musical Nirvana. It's not my place to criticize that, merely to state my opinion and move on. Krell is excellent gear. I just don't care for it. That's opinion and perception, nothing more. Seems to me ICs and speaker cables fall into the same category.

I am always cynical. But 10 years ago I changed cables,
I was impressed, tighter bass, a layer or two of transparency, and the highs a little less grainy. Now whether $10,000 cables/interconnects vs $1000 are better, I
don't know but I think I would whether spend the difference
on something else. That is about 700 CDs. I could buy
every Schubert, Brahms, and Webern CD produced.

Steve, I recently initiated a post on blind listening tests and received a number of negative posts. In the end, it is difficult to argue with people whose only response is "there must be a difference because I hear a difference". I would bet large somes of $$ that the majority of audiophiles could not hear a difference between cables in a blind testing scenario. I also believe a similar result would occur if you put say Rotel type electronics in a Mark Levinson box. I find it easier to believe in the tooth fairy than to believe that most audiophiles can hear what they claim to hear!!

For a long time I considered that all wire was the same. My Dad who has been an electrical engineer for a long time would say that for speaker cable, as long as the gauge was large enough for the length, that was all that mattered. For interconnects, if you had a problem with noise, then a cable with shielding may help, but other than that, no differences.

Several times I've been curious about these types of debates and tried some experimenting to see if I could tell a difference. I compared the free $0.25 interconnects that come with stuff to Kimber PBJ and some AudioQuest stuff, but I didn't want to spend a lot for this experiment. I couldn't really tell a difference with the equpiment I had. I was using a Sony ES preamp with lots of digital gizmos built in, a decent amp, and Definitive Technology speakers. I was pretty convinced that there was no difference.

In the last year, I got a separate preamp for music and B&W Natuilas 802's. The dealer was asking what kind of cables I was using and I told him about the $8 balanced cables that I brought at the electronics supply store. He claimed that was choking my system. So he set up a demo at the store and I brought my cables. We tried my cables, some $240 cables, some $900, and some $2000, and there were clear changes at each step of the way. The most obvious of course was the difference between the $8 and $240. A cable with no specific engineering towards sound quality vs a cable that is trying to preserve the sound and minimizing distortion makes a big difference. The bass was not muddy anymore, instruments that kinda blended together could now be heard as distinctly separate instruments. Its really difficult to tell the difference unless you listen to a system that can reveal the differences and you do the A-B-A-B tests.

I would suggest going to a dealer and getting the chance to compare cables in several price ranges.]

Its really hard to get through to the truth about cables because there is a lot of snake oil sales out there and tons of buzz words floating about. While I was looking around for information, I found that there were some measurable differences in resistances, capacitance, inductance etc. Some of the measurements were suspect because they do them way beyond the audible range - so I don't know if those really have any effect. On one site, they showed oscilloscope traces at the amp end and speaker end of a cable, and you could see how different cables add distortion.

Its also difficult to swallow because the companies making the cables have some huge profit margins built in especially on their top of the line cables. If you look at the difference in construction between one line and the next, they make slight changes, trading one dielectric for another, or a slightly different copper purity, or adding air tube insulation instead of foamed insulation - and those kind of changes may not cost them any more to manufacture, or perhaps a few cents per foot but yet they charge hundreds per foot difference but that all comes down to the free market, supply and demand. They have to make certain models stand out as high end, and stand up to their competition etc. Its hard to get above the noise level with so many companies and different cable designs.

I think the easiest way to determine if better cables are worthwhile is to have a demo yourself - and go in with your current views and make someone prove to you that they make a difference. I would have never beleived it. My old system was so muddy by itself that cables didn't make any difference, but once I cleaned it up the difference was obvious - its not subtle so it wasn't hard to convince me even though I expected that I'd have to strain to hear anything and then convince myself somehow that I could tell a difference. It wasn't like that at all.

I have tried several different cables and used my wife as a guinea pig. She has definitely noticed differences between the three I tried. I tried some old 12 gauge stranded zip cord, some Kimber 4TC and Analysis plus oval. All were matched using a Rat Shack SPL meter that I had calibrated vs my B&K meter that we use at work for accoustic measurements (truck drive by testing). To match levels I used the 1000 Hz test tone on Stereophile's test disc 3.

Components used:
Sony CD/DVD
Lexicon DC2 pre/proc
Adcom 7400 amp
Dynaudio Contour 1.8 MKII
Line length is aout 16ft per side as I had to run the cables through floor and out under speaker to make the room "look nice" The Dyn cherry veneer has a very nice acceptance factor however.

I really liked the Kimber 4TC at first, it seemed to greatly improve imagingand I heard more detail in the music, but after a while it sounded a little bright. I had set up my speakers and a little light room treatment (plants, wall hangings, and big honking pillows) using the Bass/Midrange and Treble decade signals on the stereophile disc using my zip cord. After listening to the 4TC for a while I got suspicious. I remeasured the response and found a +2 to 3 db increase at around 1.5 to 4.5 kHz and a lesser increase out to 10k where the Rat Shack meter rolls off. I concluded that that is why the cable sounded different and better for a while.

I later tried the Analysis Plus oval, and it had a slightly less "etched" sound than the kimber and was not as fatiguing, but it had good imaging and I heard very good detail. On checking the spectrum, it was much flatter in the 1.5 to 4.5kHz range, and flattened the lower midrange a smidge.

I am very happy with these cables, and I still am happy with the Kimbers for my surround speakers, as my system does double duty for HT occasionally.

I would like to see more measurements using a Network analyzer, such as HP makes. I have used one in the past while building capacitive clearance probes, and it sweeps a network and displays a Bode plot of the LRC network attached. Insulators and wire configuration made a difference, but back then I was a poor junior engineer and couldn't afford speaker cable.

To conclude after a regrettably long winded response. Yes it is in our heads, but yes there is a measurable difference.

As we say in test and measurement, "Your results may vary"