What kind of speaker wires do you use ? (1 Viewer)

[Chu Gai]

Not that these factors make huge differences, but they do exist.

Huge only for the wire mongers. They exist sure but you make mountains out of molehills. If the history of audiophile wire shows anything is the creation of 'solutions' for problems that don't exist or aren't audible. If you wish to purchase a wire on some theoretical ground, by all means I encourage you to do so with the utmost of sincerity. But to state that there are huge audible differences, there's nothing in research to support such a contention.

Drop a few dollars or see if a local university has the following paper: "Amplifier-Loudspeaker Interfacing," R.A. Greiner, JAES Vol. 28 No.5
or get your local library to obtain for you "Cables and the Amp/Speaker Interface," Audio August 1989 via inter-libray loan. It's free.

People can and do make poorly engineered and designed wires and cables. To some extent, its a testament to the engineering of most 'mid-fi' equipment that they manage to deal with such foolishness.

 

[Gordon Groff]

Noise or signal might get into the amp via the interconnects if they were poorly shielded or you had a nasty source of EMI/RFI such as a misbehaving dimmer or halogen, but speaker wire..no way. Don't tell me you're starting to pick up radio stations now.

Thanks for this post, Chu! Based on my common sense understanding of basic electricity, I could see NO WAY a speaker wire can pick up "noise" when loaded by a 6-8 ohm speaker coil.

Glad someone with REAL knowledge agrees

Shielding for low-load (high impedance) signal interconnects: yes! For speaker wire: silly!

Gordon
Mr. Romex

 

[Chu Gai]

I'm sure someone will someday sell speaker cables with deer repellent too. But spraying the outsides of cables with 'bitters' for those who have chewing pets makes a little sense!

 

[Earl Simpson]

Chu Gai! I have a question on capacitance and inductance. Is this a problem to be worried about if you run separate wire cables to each terminal? I used 12 AWG stranded single conductor cable in 1000' spools and the pairs/cable groups ( using the term loosely) are in some places not close together.

 

[Tim Hess]

A mix of some Bettercables and Home Depot 12g (for my Rear Center)

 

[Chu Gai]

I don't see it as a problem. There is a point at which the two conductors are far enough apart that there's no effect whatsoever. I simply see this as being a bit on the messy side. Maybe you see it as 'creative clutter'!!

Really, there's too much that's being made over speaker wire. Make good, solid connections. Keep them clean. Better to pick up a book on acoustics and work on your room and speaker placement. The returns can be substantial. Sometimes the things that spending extra money on speculative matters brings is not peace of mind but paranoia.
In a couple of years, maybe less, we'll see new ads for cables, new geometries, new marketing terms, new heretofore unknown problems, and then the agita and angst begins all over again. Look, it's bad enough we're being bombarded with shampoo commercials that nourish and feed dead hair.

 

[Michael R Price]

Chu, nice job debunking my possible explanation for some wire differences. The only problem is now I don't even have a way of understanding why I do hear differences, if only minor ones. And the resistance difference between the wires I've tried has been negligible.

 

[RichardHOS]

There is a perfectly good explanation for what you are hearing, but it is a psychological, not acoustical, explanation.

 

[Chu Gai]

Start another thread if you want Michael and outline under what conditions it was that you heard differences and we can talk about it. But consider for a moment and ponder the reasons why it is that if we level match things at the speaker terminals and the wires are now unknown to the listener, why is it that no one has yet been able to identify one wire from another? After all, here you have the ability to 'listen with your own ears' without any other distractions. Yes, it's the old DBT.
There are reasons why you're experiencing differences but it has more to do with the nature of human hearing rather than anything else. If you want to discuss it we can.

 

[Michael R Price]

OK, sounds reasonable... I was going to ask what the nature of hearing does to us that makes us seem fooled into believing nonexistent differences (and how to eliminate that, so we can be happier with generic wires). But, I shouldn't get too off topic. I'll eventually start a new thread discussing it, if such a thing is possible (can't now... my amps got damaged and I'm pretty busy anyway).