V.Dull – One for the Hi-Fi bods pls – Speaker cable suggestions pls…

A “negligible” difference is, ahem – a difference…

Which of course, would not be inaudible.

Of course there will be a difference between a 3.5m and an 8m cable (depending on the relative gauges of the cable of course) which is why I stated negligible AND inaudible.

Boy oh boy are we going to have fun. 😀

You won’t be able to go for a ride together afterwards – one of you will be sore about losing the bet and the other will be gloating…

And make sure you apply these to make sure the listening room is as tuned as possible:

http://www.avguide.com/blog/three-unusually-effective-new-tweaks-hi-fi-systems

I’m sorry, I must have misunderstood.

I thought the claim was, that changing cables would make NO DIFFERENCE to the audible results. As you say that changing cables WOULD make a difference, we have no argument and nothing to test.

EDIT: Sorry, do you mean there will be no difference between cables of the same length? O.K., in that case, please contact me via the details that I have emailed to you.

Regards.

I thought the claim was, that changing cables would make NO DIFFERENCE to the audible results. As you say that changing cables WOULD make a difference, we have no argument and nothing to test.

We can assume that two cables, even from the same manufacturer would be subtly different in their chemical make up, at no point have I claimed otherwise, but whether or not this is audible is the benchmark for success. To establish whether this is audible then we do a test to see if you can consistently identify any difference between the two cables and of course which you prefer.

Mr Woppit – YGM.

And make sure you apply these to make sure the listening room is as tuned as possible:

Oh
My
God.

Three thousand dollars ? I am in the wrong business !

We can assume that two cables, even from the same manufacturer would be subtly different

There is no doubting that two – even visually identical – cables will exhibit minor differences in transfer function. However; the differences are at frequencies way above human hearing; (as in in the MHz’s rather than the kHz…)

Is full suspension better than hardtail?

Me too. And the results of my experiment were that bi-wiring helped my setup, and bi-amping helped it lots more.
But that’s because bi-amping has clearly defined and very measurable performance enhancement effects when done correctly (ie the crossover is before the amps).

I didn’t install a crossover. I think the speakers are simply filtering using one half of the original crossover.

You simply can’t argue with ohms law.

True. However Ohm’s law applies to DC circuits 🙂

I am happy to perform a double blind test for any and everyone on this thread and will bet hard cash that you can hear no difference.

I wouldn’t mind that actually, but I am not around for 6 months. Only if you let me choose the cables. Although, how are you going to arrange double blind? Plus, you don’t really need to be blind as long as I can’t see or hear you change them over.

If there is a difference, you should be able to observed it by recording the sound coming out of the speakers with a microphone and performing a spectral analysis, non?

Well not exactly, because the equipment you are recording with will have limitations and colour the sound itself.

hence those who maintain the differences DON’T exist, seem to be listening on “budget” Hifi setups at best

I have a budget hifi!

Mine is a budget hifi also, it is just that the budget was large…

Anyway back to the physics – a cable will have inductance, resistance and capacitance. These values are small, however they surely act as a kind of filter? The product of the two small values can be in the audible range.

Then (off the top of my head now) the crystal boundaries in the metal would cause the electrons to diffract which would be frequency dependent. So the higher frequencies could scatter more therefore resulting in a longer signal path. Same could go for impurity atoms in the crystal structure.

Considering the above I don’t know why anyone would think two different cables WOULD sound the same.

Personally I think there is a difference, but some people’s brains don’t process music the same as other people’s. Same as how wine tasters can write a paragraph about wine that other people just say ‘yeah, it’s nice’ of.

The wine tasting scene from French Kiss is illuminating. In case you haven’t seen it, he gives her some wine and she says it’s nice but can’t say anything about it. Then he makes her smell a range of different scents like vanilla, lavendar etc etc and taste the wine again. Having been shown what to look for she can now detect all the subtle tastes within the wine. Possibly rubbish in practice but I think perception really works like that.

I wonder, how many of the contributors to this thread are musicians themselves?

I didn’t install a crossover. I think the speakers are simply filtering using one half of the original crossover.

The (relatively) low impedance of the cable acts as part of the cross over network inside the loudspeaker – when bi-wiring; you effectively add an extra component of impedence to the cross overs; the effect of this is that the low pass filter frequency for the woofer drops slightly and the high pass filter for the tweeter / mid range rises slightly. In practical terms the actual change in response is barely measurable; let alone audible.

However; when you bi-amp; you are creating two electrically isolated circuits; one for each part of the speaker – you can (if you wish) vary the signal level to each side for your own preference and you also gain significant headroom as you are now splitting the workload between two amps (which are presumably the same spec as the single one was) – it is the additional headroom and finer control which provide the benefit in a bi-amped situation. An active crossover can improve things still further; as you are then only amplifying what you actually need to hear and can remove the cross over networks from the speakers entirely.

However Ohm’s law applies to DC circuits

Not entirely true. It just gets very complicated….

stevehine – that all sounds reasonable enough, but if I remove the brass link surely it is no longer a crossover any more? And is it not true that the signals go through fewer electronic components?

Re Ohms law, yes indeed it is complicated as we are discussing 🙂 Ohm’s law is a simplification when you make everything time-constant ie DC.

Then (off the top of my head now) the crystal boundaries in the metal would cause the electrons to diffract which would be frequency dependent. So the higher frequencies could scatter more therefore resulting in a longer signal path. Same could go for impurity atoms in the crystal structure.

And if that were the case for audio frequencies where these effects are smallest I would be unable to reply; for the modern world would simply not exist – take Sky as an example – the 12 – 18 GHz frequencies it uses seem to cope perfectly well with the 30p / metre copper coaxial cable that is nailed to the side of my house; and yet I’m supposed to believe that we need to worry about the crystalline structure of speaker cables ?

I wonder, how many of the contributors to this thread are musicians themselves

I’d be more interested to know how many actually have any formal education in electronics…..

Then (off the top of my head now) the crystal boundaries in the metal would cause the electrons to diffract which would be frequency dependent. So the higher frequencies could scatter more therefore resulting in a longer signal path. Same could go for impurity atoms in the crystal structure.

Considering the above I don’t know why anyone would think two different cables WOULD sound the same.

Because changes don’t have to produce an audible result.
For instance were I to a stick a spectrum analyser on a bit of speaker cable in my house and you’ll seen a bunch of RF energy. Do the same in your house you’ll see a distinctly different bunch of RF energy.
What you won’t be able to do is hear this RF signal.

/edit Bollocks! too late with the post 🙂

take Sky as an example – the 12 – 18 GHz frequencies it uses seem to cope perfectly well with the 30p / metre copper coaxial cable that is nailed to the side of my house

Surely as an electronicist you can appreciate that the subtelties of an analogue signal across a range of frequencies being delivered to a human cortex have absolutely no bearing on a digital signal…?

It’s not necessary to have a qualification in electronics to be a critical hifi listener. However a good ear is pretty important I’d say.

Because changes don’t have to produce an audible result.

No, they don’t have to, but to me it’s easy to see how they could, which is my point.

@molgrips – It is still a crossover – think of it this way; A cross over has one input and two outputs; a low and a high. In a bi-wirable speaker this is done with two individual filters – one low pass and one high pass – The input is shared by virtue of the brass link. When you bi-wire; the circuit configuration remains virtually unchanged; however the impedance provided by the cable(s) now sits ‘between’ the inputs of the two networks

This page has some diagrams which show it better than I’m explaining 😉

Surely as an electronicist you can appreciate that the subtelties of an analogue signal across a range of frequencies being delivered to a human cortex have absolutely no bearing on a digital signal…?

Sky hasn’t always been digital….but even so; signal degredation in digital is arguable much more important – whilst there are error correcting mechanisms; they only work up to a point – It was more pointing out that if the underlying structure could have such a marked influence on a high power; low frequency analog signal then a signal of the frequency of sky simply would not transmit through copper cable at all.

Ah yes, there was me thinking there were components linking the two sides.. My mistake.

Nice link that – nice to see a fair minded treatment.

signal degredation in digital is arguable much more important

I’m talking about extremely subtle effects that can be detectable by a suitable human brain. A circuit specifically designed to listen only for 1s and 0s isn’t going to be affected.

In the same way that I can still hear plenty of music when I use bell wire on my speakers.

Plus, a digital signal is only one frequency innit.

I’ll probably regret posting this but re the Sky frequency, I thought the LNB down shifted the frequency to about 1 Ghz so that copper co-ax cable could cope?

I tried bi-wire/amping some ls3/5as with two Quad 306s but it didn’t make any odds, but I also heard it make a difference on some LS7t a while ago.

Based on whenever I have experienced significant cable differences it (nearly) always appears to be something to do with a crossover – for instance the AB-1s bandpass crossover in conjunction with an LS3/5a or my Cicable crossovers which are full of oversize inductors and capacitors.

I’ll probably regret posting this but re the Sky frequency, I thought the LNB down shifted the frequency to about 1 Ghz so that copper co-ax cable could cope?

No; you are quite right and I stand corrected.

1Ghz is still a hell of a frequency compared to 20kHz though

I’m talking about extremely subtle effects that can be detectable by a suitable human brain

Surely if these effects existed at this range you’d expect to be able to measure them somehow ?

I tried bi-wire/amping some ls3/5as with two Quad 306s but it didn’t make any odds, but I also heard it make a difference on some LS7t a while ago.

Bi-wiring can make a slight difference to the measured frequency response of a speaker; though it’s questionable if it’s audible – it would most likely have the effect of removing some mids (effectively creating / exaggerating the notch at the crossover point). Bi amping should make some sort of a positive difference unless you run 500W PA amps on minimum – THD tends to increase as you demand more from your output stage. If I was creating a new setup from a wish list I would definately go for active crossovers; bi or even tri-amping and no crossovers within the speakers.

Alternatively you could just take a calibrated measurement of frequency response using a behringer microphone and simply use your media server to apply an EQ correcting algorithm to your music; it’s much cheaper 😀

Surely if these effects existed at this range you’d expect to be able to measure them somehow ?

Maybe. Maybe whilst the ear responds to pure tones at up to 20kHz maybe it can detect higher harmonics of lower frequencies in some way or other. Maybe Arcam and so on can’t make microphones good enough to be able to measure any of this stuff.

I dunno 🙂

Alternatively you could just take a calibrated measurement of frequency response using a behringer microphone and simply use your media server to apply an EQ correcting algorithm to your music; it’s much cheaper

Something to be said for that idea, for sure. An alternative approach.

Can we have a thread on homeopathy soon?

Alternatively you could just take a calibrated measurement of frequency response using a behringer microphone and simply use your media server to apply an EQ correcting algorithm to your music; it’s much cheaper

I have a Tact pre-amp but haven’t set it up to do this yet – I am mostly going to use it for integrating a sub (or two) into the system.

The best thing I’ve found about speakers that can be biwired is that it’s much more convenient for testing them when you’re in the latter stages of crossover design!

Biamping with passive speaker level crossovers is a bit of a weird one because the amp driving the tweeter is still having to reproduce the bass signal, even though the highpass filter is stopping much of the current flowing (some is being shunted to ground). Thus a loud bass note can cause the THD from the tweeter amp to increase.

You can get measurement rigs that run much higher than 20kHz. Also very few adult humans can hear past 16kHz, and the older or the louder their job/hobbies the lower the cut-off.

Yes, I’m a musician, hence the stupid forum name!

It’s long been maintained by some people that although you can’t hear pure tones higher than say 16kHz, having a higher frequency response does somehow affect the perception of sound. At the other end of the spectrum it’s been shown experimentally that infra-sound can affect humans in very weird ways despite being completely inaudible.

If I had access to enough kit I’d like to do spectrum analysis on various bits of well reviewed kit and see if I could see exactly what commonly used words like ‘warm’, ‘bright’, ‘open’, ‘fast’ etc actually mean in frequency terms. Some of them I can guess at of course but still it’d be interesting to see graphs.

I think there’s some truth to the way ultrasonic information can affect audible sound, however unless you’re using one of the audiophile extended bandwidth media formats there won’t be anything above 20kHz on the recording. You might be shocked to see the number of high-end dome tweeters that have huge ultrasonic break-up peaks!

With loudspeakers much of the difference you hear is caused by the variations in distortion (both harmonic and otherwise), as well as the frequency response. The impulse response is significant but at lower frequencies the room has much more bearing. I notice that few audiophiles talk about polar response despite it being absolutely critical! All this stuff is measurable.

however unless you’re using one of the audiophile extended bandwidth media formats there won’t be anything above 20kHz on the recording

Yes but as already discussed, 20kHz is ultrasound for most of us, no?

Have we had a the picture of the rabbit with a cake on its head yet?

I never realised he’d died: The original celebrity avant-garde hat-wearing rabbit

Brilliant! That’s livened up the thread no end!

Thanks CGG

Mr Woppit, if you use the cat 5 cable, you could also cook the pancake on that lovely rabbits head at the same time. On the top of your amplifier 🙂 As an added bonus, you could combine your trip to the service department with a factory tour. The PA cable will be fine. And there IS a zobel network, it just incorporates the known values of the speaker cable, hence there being a required minimum to stop the amp from oscillating.