Speaker wire Myths killed by Science

[dirtmudd]

 

 

 

so do we believe in the science 

 

To believe or not to believe

[HPower]

When I built my previous Jub-Likes and my current FH-1 / K402s, I decided to wire everything with Supra PLY3.4 Speaker Wire.

Supra talks about various reason why their cable sounds better, but the main reason why I spent a bit extra on this wire is the

fact that all the strands are tin plated and have a quality PVC jacket.

 

Oxidation should not be a concern, even long after I am gone.

[michaelwjones]

From the AK6 spec sheet:

 

The quality continues with Audioquest Type 4 with Star-Quad Geometry internal wiring featuring carbon-loaded insulation, nitrogen-injected PE and solid long-grain copper conductors.

[billybob]

Believe it or not or believe it or else.☕

[Dave A]

31 minutes ago, michaelwjones said:

From the AK6 spec sheet:

 

The quality continues with Audioquest Type 4 with Star-Quad Geometry internal wiring featuring carbon-loaded insulation, nitrogen-injected PE and solid long-grain copper conductors.

Now there is a mouthful of marketing babble speak!

 

 So picture yourself in the listening room in Hope where you will see zip cord on the floor. Good enough for Roy means good enough for me. Buy 12g by the spool and be happy don't worry.

 

 From Audiogon, and I mean way gone, today. I just love humor in the morning!

"Had my interconnect cables custom made to be 10’3.47” long…mathematically this is the perfect length as all the distortion has plenty of room to disperse."

 

Well that is true for one specific wire manufactured in a particular way. The math changes when you vary construction and gauge and strand thickness.

 

Cable cooking and freezing can change the math when it alters the metallurgical structure.of the conductor.

 

 You can reverse the cable and the math will change. Wire has a best way for proper electron flow.

 

 Avoid laying speaker cables on a bare floor as wood will change the flow of electrons and render your mathematically precise calculated wire to then be incorrect. Ceramic tile will not unless you have tile with heavy iron content. Also avoid finer wool carpets as they are prone to static electricity buildup which can effect your outcome too.

 

 

[Schu]

another boring economic discussion...

[michaelwjones]

1 hour ago, Dave A said:

Ceramic tile will not unless you have tile with heavy iron content. 

 

Now I'm hosed; I have a concrete floor in my listening room. Better excavate some of it to determine the iron content. Whoa; that means you too Dave. That rebar in our floors could interfere with the flow...   😂

[Dave A]

1 hour ago, Schu said:

another boring economic discussion...

another predictable reaction.

 

26 minutes ago, michaelwjones said:

 

Now I'm hosed; I have a concrete floor in my listening room. Better excavate some of it to determine the iron content. Whoa; that means you too Dave. That rebar in our floors could interfere with the flow...   😂

😁See now I planed ahead knowing all this esoteric electronics voodoo ahead of time. While I do have wire mesh it is way down in that 8" thick 5000psi slab that mainly depends on the fiber mesh for crack resistance. My cleverly constructed steel building was designed to be an audio enhancing Faraday cage to reduce all harmful electronic interference. It's why my speakers sound so good with so few components.

[Fido]

I like my Bluejeans cables and they are very reasonably priced, have option of locking Banana Plugs and look very clean throughout my system. I never have to even think about cables and thats one less thing to have to analyze.

[babadono]

  From the wiki article cited:

Moreover, many audiophiles are willfully ignorant of the fallibility of human hearing. They will claim to "just use your ears" as a rationalization for their pursuit. Ears detect, but the brain hears, and the brain can easily be fooled into confirming any level of bias. Many of these so called audiophiles are equally ignorant of how to properly control for this fallibility, and will even dismiss it outright; many will claim that properly controlling with a blind test will "stress out" the listener thus harm any data gathered, without any evidence to support such a notion. Perhaps deep down the audiophile knows that they are full of it, and the idea that they could be made a fool of is indeed quite stressful. In fact real audio scientists will have to follow several critical modeling steps to design experiments which ensure a scientific level of accuracy and reliability. However, to the audiophile this is all flippantly dismissed, many times in spite of the evidence. Even the audiophile press will perform uncontrolled listening tests which involve simply turning it on, and having a pleasant experience, leading the reader to assume they can do the same thing, and they can, but their results will be just as flawed.

[michaelwjones]

44 minutes ago, babadono said:

  From the wiki article cited:

Moreover, many audiophiles are willfully ignorant of the fallibility of human hearing.

 

Somewhere is those cable articles was a statement that "hearing memory" of the prior sound has effectively dissipated in less than 30 seconds. Better switch fast...

[MicroMara]

Listening is divided into 3 categories

 

1. Physics is the objective acoustics, it is physically based on measurement .

 

2. Human ears are the psychoacoustics. They filter the metrics , such as volume , sound structures , etc .

 

3. The human brain is the subjective acoustics, it awakens the emotional component as well as evaluation of the music.

 

Those who don´t understand this should deal themselves with other hobbies.

[babadono]

And also(preaching to the choir here at Klipsch Forum):

Spend the bucks on decent speakers.^{[note 25]} Everything else in the chain has pretty much reached the point of diminishing returns, so speakers are the lowest-fidelity component left, and spending more money can still result in noticeable gains. Note that, however, many expensive speakers are also rubbish, just to keep the decision interesting.

[oldtimer]

3 hours ago, MicroMara said:

Listening is divided into 3 categories

 

1. Physics is the objective acoustics, it is physically based on measurement .

 

2. Human ears are the psychoacoustics. They filter the metrics , such as volume , sound structures , etc .

 

3. The human brain is the subjective acoustics, it awakens the emotional component as well as evaluation of the music.

 

Those who don´t understand this should deal themselves with other hobbies.

Hobby?  Darn, I just thought it was part of life.

[OO1]

 

[OO1]

 

[michaelwjones]

55 minutes ago, oldtimer said:

Hobby?  Darn, I just thought it was part of life.

 

Hobby? Part of life? It's a lifestyle!

[Deang]

12 hours ago, HPower said:

…but the main reason why I spent a bit extra on this wire is the fact that all the strands are tin plated and have a quality PVC jacket.

Why I’ve been recommending it for years. Another reason would be it’s what Klipsch used for internal wiring for decades. 

[Marvel]

8 hours ago, MicroMara said:

Listening is divided into 3 categories

 

1. Physics is the objective acoustics, it is physically based on measurement .

 

2. Human ears are the psychoacoustics. They filter the metrics , such as volume , sound structures , etc .

 

3. The human brain is the subjective acoustics, it awakens the emotional component as well as evaluation of the music.

 

Those who don´t understand this should deal themselves with other hobbies.

Well, there is the psycho... part of it.

[Audible Nectar]

I do think that there are differences in sonics among different wire and metallurgy formulations.....pretty much anything one passes a signal through will affect the signal on some basis, sometimes very marginal, sometimes more so......

 

.......but the REAL argument in my mind is that this stuff is WAYYYYY overpriced and shrouded in mystery as to be believable. I don't hear/see any hi-fi shops offering to send you home with five pairs of ICs or speaker cable formulae (and even if hefty margin was involved, like $200/500 per reasonable length) for trial such that you could put those claims to the test, or even if true really know what synergizes best with your system.

 

I am NOT going to shell out those sort of dollars on non-returnable/non-trial basis stuff and be told just to "believe" - that's not going to cut it. And I've put in more than my share of time on cap, tube roll evals and everything else but the wire stuff in it's presentation, claims, and methods of trial and proof make impossible to reasonably "play" in this space absent just silly money to just "blow". I am one of the "convincible/sellable" ones but not at the silly prices these people charge and how today's production methods work. I well know that good iron on a power amplifier costs some $$. But even if that wire is pure gold strand it can't cost what these people are charging. Caps are almost as silly but at least that "field" is still more narrow and something is known at least of their basic characteristics, where the wire thing just got to pure stupid.