The Physics of Electricity

I did the same as Eldartford with Jps Superconductor vs. Monster 14AWG speaker wire from RadioShack and indeed Jps one sounded slightly better but for nearly 10x more money per same length of 6'. I finally found a bargain on bulk VanDenHul speaker wire that I've purchased after short jewish negotiation:-) with Chris for only $80 12' of remaining 'left-over' unterminated wire(silver plated milti-stranded Litz)that can 'sit with JPS at the same table', but for substantially less money. Same experiment was done with RadioShack Gold interconnects vs. Nordost(can't remember the model) loaned from the dealer where I couldn't decide which one is better at all testing it on the digital-to-preamp and preamp-to-amplifier.

I've spoken in my experiments of price magnitudes of couple hundreds per speaker or interconnect cable which is at this point not reasonable to me, but that madness goes to the magnitude of several thousands wich is complete nonsense. I've also spoken that it makes sense to have good quality cable in your system which is possibly better than zip-cord, that synergises with your system in terms of electrical characteristics so you can do your own hobby homework to figure out which one will do the best job rather than loaning a number of unreasonably priced cables in order to decide which one is the best by listening.

I'll also speak that we, consumers drive this market by purchasing wires on the insane level and that's what I'm trying to explain so that most of us can have a good quality cables without breaking each other's banks.

Minus the costs of R&D and advertising...most high end cables would be similarly priced as the "budget" ones.

The difference between garden variety electrical cord and expensive signal cable is revealed in the OP's original question. His question is based on the presumption that electrical cables and signal cables have the same job--to conduct electricity. But that's not the case. Electrical cables only have to conduct electricity in the form of watts from point A to point B, while voltage remains relatively constant.

Audio signal cables (interconnects and speaker cables) are primarily designed to transmit the accurate values (in rise time, amplitude, and waveform) of voltage fluctuations--signals--that represent everything from the sharp transient attack and low fundamental of an orchestral bass drum thwack to the finest, subtlest timbre-defining overtones of the violin and cymbals in the 12-20Khz region. Electrical cord has no such mandate. You can use electrical cord for speaker cable and sound certainly comes out at the other end, but it's not optimized for accurate signal transfer.

Eldartford, Alpha-Core Goertz MI-2's.

In simple terms? I am asking for trouble (again) here, but here goes...

I believe the key thing better cables do better is that they minimise time-domain errors - specifically phase errors and time-smearing. I am a cable manufacturer and our designs are focused on these factors. This issue is not readily understood by audiophiles as we tend to perceive time-domain errors as if they were tonal errors, such as a cable that measures dead flat being perceived as bright because it smears the upper mid-range or lower treble.

Even though the scope for time-domain errors is very small in cables, I believe the ear/brain system is incredibly sensitive to the time-domain information in what it hears. This is because the ear/brain system actively processes what it hears in order to make sense of it, but that it has problems when it encounters time-domain errors that do not occur naturally. This is why measurements will never identify what which of two good products will sound better - even if we developed a measure for total time-domain errors, it wouldn't distinguish between those the brain can easily process and those that are harder.

Almost all aspects of cable design affect time-domain errors. Conductor material, conductor purity, conductor crystal structure, dielectric material, vibration control, geometry, connectors, how the connectors are connected to the wire, connector surface, connector mass, connector tightness.

And as with any other component, the performance of a cable is not defined by simply the conductor material, or the dielectric, or some bias current applied to the wires - not just by the technology employed but, just as importantly, by its implementation. Which means, just as with other components, you have to hear them, you can't decide based on the technologies used.