Speaker Wires on Carpet

Well I was skeptical of cable risers also! I was sent 8 green edge acrylic risers by a friend about a year ago to review. I had a bad tube in my pre-amp on the left channel which would hum. I was awaiting new tubes, but trying out the risers lowered the floor noise to the point that you couldn't hear the hum! When the Risers where removed the Hum was back. So that alone convinced me, as this is not one of the snake oil type tweaks for twits.

I today use about 14 of these risers, through-out my system, also under powercords & lengthy ic's.

Frank at Signal Cable is now selling this riser at a very affordable price. They are more attractive than any of the other types on the market as at a 7-8 foot distance your cables seem to be levitating in mid air.

Try some styrofoam, or ceramic coffee cups to come up with your own verdict prior to commiting. Good luck!

I had static problems in Colorado in the winter with my carpet there. I saw a tweak suggestion of spraying anti-static spray on the interconnects/speaker cables and it made a noise reduction in my system.

I bought the cable isolators but never did a before/after comparison, I just wanted them off the ground.

For those intending to do before and after testing, be aware that, with some cables, the simple act of moving the cables requires some further break-in time before the cables are again performing optimally. This is clearly apparent to me me with the Goertz AG-3 speakers cables, but not as much so with the Omega Mikro Planar speaker cables. With the Goertz, the re-settling time was only 2-3 hours or so, but it was very audible. Just be cautious of this in judging the outcome of your experiments.

The easiest and least exspensive way to find out if you need elevaters is to go to your dollar store and buy some anti-static spray.Spray the carpet where the cables will rest and see if you can hear a difference.If you hear a positive diffence either get some non conductive risers or more spray for $1.

You guys got me curious, so I tried it this afternoon with upside down ceramic coffee cups (Thanks Audiobugged). I'm actually a little surprised at how easy it is to hear the effect. Transients, like acoustic guitar plucks, are more dynamic. The overall tonality is very slightly brighter. One not entirely positive effect is the soundstage got shallower. I suspect if I toed out my speakers a little bit more I could make the soundstage as deep as it was before. I found I could vary the soundstage depth slightly by only lifting part of the speaker cable off the carpet.
In my system, the effect of lifting the cable off the floor is no where near as strong as changing ICs, for example, but it is audible.

If I had to guess as to the technical reason for this, it is the poor quality of the dielectric of the carpet that causes the degradation of sound. In particular, its dielectric absorption characteristic. It has been known for many years that capacitors with low DA are required for high fidelity audio, e.g. polystyrene, polypropylene, and teflon. Teflon is also widely used in cables. I think Rushton got it right - the signal, as it passes through the speaker cable, charges the dielectric, then the dielectric discharges somewhat lagging the electrical signal which muddies the sound. Air is the best dielectric possible, so this is why the cables sound better in the air than lying on the carpet.