How To Chose Speaker Wire

headrott

mantis wrote: »

Whats been said in both the article and Videos posted above do have some truth to them. Believe it or not there is a ton of Snake Oil cables out there that do nothing to improve the overall audio quality of the original signal.
There is also a law of Diminishing returns. I've been preaching this for many years in here and I think I'll restate some real hard truth into this subject.
And I Quote " Once the goal has been achieved, nothing more can be done to improve the signal". So understanding the goal is first and foremost before you buy any cable.
Example:
Speaker Cable. You have a pair of speakers that need to be connected to a amp so you can hear sound. The Speakers live such distance from the amp, the speakers have a resistance that is stated on the spec's of just about all speakers made. You need to know the amps abilities to push signal and the speakers abilities to except the signal. Once all the factors are calculated , you now have the very basic knowledge of understanding of what needs to be done.
So you can figure out gauge with these factors. This doesn't change except when your comparing Copper to Silver. Silver can transmit the same amount of signal with a smaller gauge. Most companies use Copper , some will use Silver plating and some solid silver. In any case, you need to know what gauge you need to achieve this goal.
Now you have to learn about honest problems that occur to a cable. The biggest one is interference. So given speaker cable designer has to be wary of such issue and make cables that can transmit this given signal from amp to speaker without picking up anything along the way.
Same goes for loss, the given speaker wire need to be able to send the signal from amp to speaker without any loss.

In this going slightly deeper, the original signal needs not be changed. It needs to be fully intact when it leaves the amp to the point of entering the speaker. This was as a end user listener if you will, you will be able to hear everything given speaker can play of given signal.

So what quality of said speaker wire does it take to get this job done? I don't care what speakers and amps you own , if they can send and receive the entire signal , the speaker wire needs to be able to transmit it.
So what does it take to get this job done? Forget money for a minute. I want to fully understand what it takes. I don't care about fancy jackets, pretty looking connectors , just raw ability to pass the signal properly.

Once this is achieved , nothing more can be done to make it any better. The only thing a wire needs to do is do it's job properly.

Most of you know I'm in the business, I have also met , trained and been to many of these wire companies factories. I have met with hundreds of Engineers from these companies and I've learned a ton. I also get to meet speaker engineers and Amp designers.
What I have learned from all of them is my Quote.

Now understand, I love wire, I always been fascinated by it. I love the way it looks and feels. I enjoy connecting it, managing it and it makes me feel wonderful when I have a rack full of beautiful looking wire. But I don't want is cables in my systems that can't do the basic thing and that is send the signal properly.

So to take this thread to a different level, we should all understand the goal. If adding fancy wire to your system is your goal, I'm not hear to tell you not to. I'm not hear to hate on anyone who doesn't believe in high quality wire or ones who will stop at nothing to own the highest end cables possible. It's not about that , it's about understanding the fundamentals of what these cables are suppossed to do and thats all. After that your on your own to make up your own mind on what cables you want in your system. As long as you understand , I find no reason to judge.

Dan, you are falling victim to the fatal "the cable(s) either passes the signal or it doesn't" fallacy. This is not the truth. There are many levels of passing the signal. There are lower end cables (i.e. Blue Jeans) that will pass a percentage of the signal. There are other cables (i.e. Monster) which will pass more of the signal. There are other cables (i.e. DH Labs silver sonic) that will pass more fo the signal. There are still other cables (i.e. MIT Shotgun S3) that will pass more of the signal. There are other cables (i.e. MIT Oracle 1.3's) that will pass more of the signal.

NO speaker, IC, power, etc. cable will pass ALL of the signal. It is not physically possible (with the technology we currently have). There is always loss to a greater or lesser degree. You can get closer to or further from the actual signal produced by the amp (or whatever component) depending on the quality of cable you use to pass that signal.

It is not either/or. There are many many levels of how well the signal is passed by cables; not only two.

treitz3

Well said, Mr. Headrott.

Tom

ZLTFUL

"You've fallen victim to one of the classic blunders! The first is never get into a land war in Asia! But only slightly less known is never go against a Sicilian when cables are on the line!"

polrbehr

Funny people those naysayers, they seem to think not with their brains, but their _________! *fill in the blank*

Why not try some of the demo cables out for yourself and report back. Pretty simple, really.

BlueFox

F1nut wrote: »

BTW, you do realize that engineers and scientists are the ones designing all these cables you rail against, right? I ask because that fact seems to have escaped you, which is not really any surprise where you're concerned.

This is a good point. One sign of low intelligence is thinking everything that can be discovered has already been discovered, or the corollary is we understand everything.

We are just starting to scratch the surface of knowledge regarding what occurs at the atomic level, and still struggling how to explain why this affects what we hear. There is no faith here, only fact. The issue is how to put everything together into a theory that can be proven with predictable results. However, vendors, such as Shunyata, are now able to use their knowledge and consistently produce cables with better sonic characteristics with a lower price each generation.

mantis

To all who have any issues with my post, I'm not saying anything about brand or what does it better then the other. I left that out on purpose as most of you who have had great experience with tons of different cables know most cables sound different, have different sonic signatures etc. We can agree on that as to my understanding as stated above, it's pretty difficult to pass the entire signal perfectly.

So All start with you Dskip,
I hear you and yes you read my post wrong. But with the proper gauge, proper length that is spec'd to the given system, this is the very basic of what is needed to pass the signal correctly. We can go deeper with materials and different metals as we do know that change a lot of factors.

F1nut ,
You are totally right on your point. There is so much more then just the proper gauge. I think collectively we could have a proper conversation about what does it take to get the job done. We can go down the road of our favorite cables and talk about the technics they believe in to reach the goal.

tonyb,
I believe you need to dig a bit deeper into this subject further. Sound quality doesn't come from cables, when they do as you stated, your getting a colored sound. years ago I was standing in the same shoes your standing in now. I thought colorations where a good thing and I could fine tune a system with different cables as most of them sounded so different.
Transparent cables do not sound like Monster cables, Tributaries do not sound like Kimber Kables, Etc etc etc.
I don't disagree with what you said but I have learned so much more over the years and I believe a cable in theory should not color the sound at all. They should not sound like anything. They should do the job they where built for.
If you think about it, amps, wire , speakers , room acoustics , source( not in any order) all play a huge roll in the overall experience of a replay system. But what one needs to understand is exactly that. The system is supposed to be as true to the signal as possible given price point and technology ability at those respected price points.
Even the very best system will fail if in a room thats not acoustically treated allow the freedom of expression. Perfection is well at least for most of us is not obtainable. But at least if one is interested in learning how to obtain such level of perfection , one needs to know the very essence of how to achieve this.

headrott,
I have fallen to nothing. I have spent many hours with many manufactures of all kinds of gear and there is a common answer to many of my questions. Especially Cable companies , if you ask any one of them , they will tell you how to achieve sonic perfection. I will also tell you there is tons of incorrect cable building going on out there and is why I stated what I stated which some of what was said in those posted videos hold some hard truth.

mantis

As a follow up to my post, everyone should read this state made by Audioquest.
I have found most cable companies all strive for this very thing. Not to add bass to your system or make your highs sound better, they try to build cables at given price points to perform their best and they all have strong beliefs on how to get this done.

Audio and video reproduction is fundamentally a case of damage control. The signal is at its greatest potential ... is least damaged ... at the source. Great sound and great pictures, music that consumes you, movies that transport you around the universe ... all come from honoring the original signal. It’s an unavoidable fact of life that every component and cable in a system causes distortion, changing the overall character of the signal. These aberrations add up, like layers of dirty glass between you and
an image you are trying to see. Better cables, and for that matter better components, cannot improve the signals they carry ... they can only do less harm to those signals and reduce the amount of noise and distortion introduced into a system, thus improving performance.
The goal of high quality components and cables is to be like cleaner panes of glass ... to minimize any alteration or distortion of the signal. Do No Harm!

mantis

Another company i have a deep respect for is Cardas. They have the same goal as Audioquest. They strive to pass the signal as pure as possible and with the technology they feel strongly about.
Please read the following.

It is said, wire is just wire. In reality, a high-end audio cable must balance resistance, capacitance, inductance, conductance, velocity of propagation, RF radiation and absorption, mechanical resonance, strand interaction, high filtering, reflections, electrical resonance, dissipation factors, envelope delay, phase distortion, harmonic distortion, structural return loss, corrosion, cross-talk, bridge-tap and the interaction of these and a hundred other things. As a high-end cable manufacturer, Cardas Audio strives to address every detail of cable and conductor construction, no matter how small.

An elegant solution deals with quality, not quantity. Cable geometry problems are resolved in the cable’s design, not after the fact with filters. George introduced the concept of Golden Section Constant "Q" Stranding to high-end audio, but Golden Ratio, 1.6180339887... : 1 is as old as nature itself. Golden Ratio is the mathematical proportion of life itself, the heart of musical scales and chords. "Discovered" by the Greeks, but used by the Egyptians in the Great Pyramid centuries before, man has employed Golden Ratio to create his most beautiful and naturally pleasing works of art and architecture.

The signal used by your system, be it digital or analog, through tube or solid state, is always alternating current. The cyclic effect of alternating current vibrates the wire in your system like the strumming of a guitar string. The beating of the capacitive, inductive and mechanical elements in audio cable is set in motion by the transient energy of the audio signal, just as the guitar string is set into motion by the strike of a pick. This form of vibration or resonance distorts the audio signal and produces many sound anomalies, from colored bass to glare. Every interconnect, every speaker cable, every chassis and speaker wire has its own resonant signature. Like the mass, tension and hardness of the guitar string, the mass, tension and hardness of the conductor, coupled with its inductance and resistance, and the capacitance of the cable, determine what sound is made. Each strand in a cable has its own note or beat. Conductor strands interact with other same sized, near unison, and multiplistic sized strands creating beats the same way a cube listening room would, or one with multiplistic dimensions like 8’ x 16’ x 32.

Stereo systems depend on the purity of the audio signal. When the cable linking all components together imparts its own sound, the audio signal is corrupted. Cardas created a conductor that absorbs or cancels the noise released by the current fluxuation, by progressively layering strands that share no common resonant multiple. This conductor uses the same mathematical proportioning seen in the worlds greatest concert halls for essentially the same reasons. The infinite indivisibility of the Fibonacci Sequence or Golden Section is a key to controlling resonance. The ratio of ø (Phi), or 1 to 1.6180339887... to (infinity), is the Golden Mean, called Golden Ratio or Golden Proportion.

In Golden Section Stranding, individual strands are arranged so each strand is coupled to another, whose note or beat is irrational with its own, thus nulling interstrand resonance. This is the famous "Silent Conductor". It is the silence of Cardas conductors that allows them to be so uniquely musical and pure.

At the heart of cable oscillation is delayed or stored energy. This energy results from the lowered internal "Q", or resonant point, of conventional conductors. Cardas cables employ a unique stranding method where strands diminish in size towards the interior of the conductor. This design is called Constant Q Stranding and it allows each strand of the cable to share the load equally. It is a very effective method of reducing the Non-linearity seen in conventional conductors, without compromising the symmetry of the conductor or the capacitance of the cable.

Ordinary Cables are di-pole antennas, both radiating and absorbing RFI/EMI, which sustains system resonance. George’s cable design incorporates Crossfield Construction in its manufacture, which reverses every other stranding layer to defuse the di-pole effect and match conductor propagation to that of surrounding dielectric materials.

Cable resonance is further reduced through the use of ultra pure copper, air dielectrics and state of the art connection techniques. Our ultra pure and homogeneous metals have proven to be the best conductors for audio signals. Cardas uses diamond dies exclusively, drawing the strands in a hydrogen reduction atmosphere. This process reduces the amount of impurities and eliminates the surface contamination that occurs when standard metal dies are used. As each strand is drawn, the resultant ultra pure surface is immediately given a urethane enamel "Litz" coating. This is a continuous process that results in a perfectly insulated strand and ultimate longevity of the conductors. Ordinary uncoated copper stranding corrodes in a relatively short time. Cardas meticulously maintains the purity of the conductor strands until they are sealed at termination.

mantis

And finally the other fully respected company that makes cables is Kimber Kable. Ray is a fun dude but can be a little nutty . His technology in the cable business is rock solid and very proven to work. They work hard at achieving perfection.

Please read the following.


Established in 1979, Kimber Kable is the brainchild of inventor, engineer and entrepreneur Ray Kimber. Ray's fondness for new discovery and experimentation actually began in the first grade when he built a crystal receiver, which he tweaked, without help or knowledge, by adding to it a set of army surplus headphones. It wasn't supposed to work, but it did, he remembers.
After his experiences managing a theater, a couple of concert tours, assembling professional audio sound and lighting matrices, and sales of high-end kits, he realized that cable was more than just merely important. "If weaving cable could alter the sound so significantly, I figured everything else about cables was on the table for discovery, rediscovery or reinvestigation."

The phrase "necessity is the mother of invention" was the catalyst behind the creation of Kimber Kable. In the mid '70s Ray worked at a sound and lighting company in Los Angeles, at a time when the first big discotheques were being installed. The lighting systems were generating noise that was being picked up by the speaker cable.
Traditionally sound and lighting systems were not installed right next to each other, nor did lighting systems ever have such an array of noise generating fixtures, such as strobes and other flashing and dimmable lights. But in a discotheque the lights and speakers are installed next to each other. The speaker cable was acting as an antenna array and bringing noise from the lights into the sound system.
They tried to cure the problem by encasing the speaker cable in a steel conduit, and while that helped the noise it also had the unintended result of lowering the fidelity of the audio. This was due to the steel interacting with the magnetic field of the speaker cable.

Ray had the idea of some counter-rotating sets of conductors to cancel the magnetic interaction effect, but then also surmised that the counter-rotating sets of conductors would likely not pick up noise even without the conduit. He was correct, the noise was greatly reduced! But, Ray was also quite surprised at the difference in perceived audio quality. It was that discovery of noise elimination and improved fidelity that set him to developing cable designs.
To his great satisfaction the finalized version of his braided wire concept not only rejected the (RF) noise, but allowed the system to sound different, better, musical. It was after this period of discovery that Ray decided to take a risk and began entertaining the idea of selling his new discoveries.
He hit the road with a few spools of cable and some modest test equipment. He would first show that there was a testable difference in cables and then would do a simple "before and after" test, replacing regular speaker cables with Kimber Kable. For these tests Ray would choose the most modest system in the dealer showroom. The result was very obvious - it made a significant difference.
Over the years Ray would continue to test various metals as conductors, assorted manufacturing protocols, assorted stranding sizes, different twist lengths and insulation, as well as methods for adhering insulation to cable. All the time improving, modifying, and expanding upon his original cable concept and design.

gudnoyez

Hey Dan I bought two pair of Audioquest Chocolate HDMI cables because of a write up you did on their Cinnamon Series that I found when I googled Audioquest HDMIs I demoed the Chocolates after reading said write up and now own two pair replaced my Oppos stock HDMI with one of them and couldn't be happier.

mantis

gudnoyez wrote: »

Hey Dan I bought two pair of Audioquest Chocolate HDMI cables because of a write up you did on their Cinnamon Series that I found when I googled Audioquest HDMIs I demoed the Chocolates after reading said write up and now own two pair replaced my Oppos stock HDMI with one of them and couldn't be happier.

I own a Chocolate which is one my Blu ray player. I have all Cinnamon's on everything else. Love Audioquest cables.

polrbehr

mantis wrote: »

I own a Chocolate which is one my Blu ray player. I have all Cinnamon's on everything else. Love Audioquest cables.

Chocolate and cinnamon can go good together... but not with ravioli.


Funny thing is, once upon a time I remember telling someone to look no further than M*nster cable... pretty sad. And whoever said education is expensive must have had cables in mind.
: )

F1nut

polrbehr wrote: »

Chocolate and cinnamon can go good together... but not with ravioli.

And whoever said education is expensive must have had cables in mind.

I'm not sure which is the better sig material.....LOL

ken brydson

Ravioli.... hate the fake "meat"...

ROHfan

polrbehr wrote: »

Chocolate and cinnamon can go good together... but not with ravioli.


Funny thing is, once upon a time I remember telling someone to look no further than M*nster cable... pretty sad. And whoever said education is expensive must have had cables in mind.
: )

You know, you've offered to come over to my place and bring some cables in the past. I would love to hear what higher end cables sound like so maybe we can try setting it up again?

When I first embarked on this journey I was very opinionated on matters of cabling, even to the point of being insulting toward some of the more respected members here. But that's in the past and I've since learned to be humble and open minded. Being that my occupation is the testing of copper communication wire and fiber optic cabling I tend to look at the subject more along the lines of what Mantis has stated, IOW, I can't ignore the technical aspect. I can buy into the notion that cables can change the sonic signature. But I will propose that if there is that much of a difference then it should be able to be measured with test equipment. One may say that they hear longer and clearer cymbal decay on a given set of cables. If it can be heard, then, IMO, it stands to reason that it can also be measured. When someone starts posting the results of those kind of tests I think the nay-sayers would be a little more "on board" then they are now. I know I would be.

So, behr, how does the 23rd sound?

treitz3

ROHfan wrote: »

If it can be heard, then, IMO, it stands to reason that it can also be measured.

Hello, ROHfan. I hear what you are saying, I really do, if only it were that easy. Many things can be and are measured but there are other very important aspects that can not be measured. Things such as but not limited too; height perception, depth perception, spacial locational cues, ambiance, coherence, imaging, separation and overall sound stage perception. These aspects may not be on the list of someone who simply listens off axis or uses the system as background music and that's fine. But for those that do, these aspects are extremely important.

Then there is the argument that we (humans) may not yet know exactly what to measure for.

Tom