Are there any constants in speaker wire designs?

Kijanki, what Nordost cable line you are refering to? I know very well Nordost Heimdal IC and Nordost Frey IC, & Nordost middle line SC I can honestly say that your adjectives does not belong to Nordost.

Heimdal, for instance, will give lots of warmth, and bloom to vocals, while Frey blends warmth, transparency, details, and complete sound from top to bottom, while keeping everything mixed with musicality.

Before entering Nordost, i also expected fast, transparent, clinical sound (from Medical equipment company!) but I found the sound I was really searching for , and really was not expecting.

ps.: sibilance and harsh is gone once cables are really broken in.

But anticable for $10/foot and put your $$ elsewhere

Mjordans - I was talking about general opinion on the forums and in reviews.

In AVGuide review: http://www.avguide.com/review/nordost-tyr-cable I found this statement:

"That Nordost have evolved a distinctive house sound is indisputable. Fast, crisp and loaded with so much treble energy they can make other cables sound distinctly rolled-off, they are not for everybody."

Brightness is often blamed on cables when it really comes from SS gear or speakers but you have to agree with me that "Lean" is the most common word used to describe Nordost cables.

09-01-10: Irvrobinson
Kijanki, skin effect isn't considered significant at audible frequencies. At 20KHz it'll be less than 0.2db, which is truly insignificant in the context of real speakers in a real room.

Strand jumping sounds like quasi-technical mumbo-jumbo to me.

You are correct about skin effect. Skin effect is a phenomenon that you tend to see at microwave frequencies. Your comments also point to one of the big problems in the audiophile game in general; there is too much BS in the selling of audio equipment. The reason, i suspect, is that most audiophiles know little about electronics and are therefore susceptible to marketing hype and "buzzwords". Add to it all, the "audiophile" reviews that you read by reviewers who often have undisclosed conflicts of interest that mean that they are really acting as salesmen for the vendors' products. For me, the net result is that I have become highly skeptical of the claims that I read. This loss of credibility, I think, is ultimately harmful to the industry.

Let me make a brief comment on you statement about the significance of inductance and capacitance in cable. Under the "transmission line" model, a wire can be characterized as a network of inductive and capacitive elements; then you analyze the signal distortion effects of this model. However, the transmission line model is also one that is primarily observed at microwave frequencies. At audio frequencies, the wire is basically a resistive element. But speaker cable might run on the order of 5-10 ohms/km so resistance should generally be negligible.

When people claim that they observe dramatic differences among cables (and they often do so using buzzwords like "sweetness", "focus" and similar BS), if the test is not minimally a blind test then I tend to discount the claims unless they can back it up with some objective data. I mean, in reality, when it comes to subjective judgments, you can pretty much convince yourself of anything.

PaperW8, not so long ago I was doing shootout of several power cords. When I put Kimber PK14 on a my DAC, all the music suddenly became sort of IN FOCUS. I can not find a better word to describe this. So it is not BS. And there is no equipment to measure "music focus". I know I could probably do this in blind test, but its so hard to organize this.. I mean, what go to other room and leave my wife to switch cables,do on/off/on all the quipment, etc..

Kijanki, that might be system dependant. I will only believe in "NORDOST is lean" stuff if at least 7 of 10 OWNERS would say so. In my system Nordost are FULL BODIED (quite an opposite ah?). Switching SC to 8TC makes me sleep, KCAG sometimes irritatingly "rings" and NORDOST.. they sound just right. And the reviewers... sometimes they have just not enought time, or not the most suitable equipment etc.. When I was buying nordost, I have read almost anything I could find, and now after couple years, when I really can say I know how the nordost house of sound looks like, I msut say, that there was one superb review in which reviewer NAILED IT DOWN right. But I forgot the link to it...