| Columns Retired Columns & Blogs |
| Loudspeakers Amplification Digital Sources | |
Analog Sources Accessories Featured | |
Music Columns Retired Columns | |
Show Reports | |
Features Latest News Community | |
Resources Subscriptions |
© 2024 StereophileAVTech Media Americas Inc., USA
All rights reserved
"Consternation leads to lucidation..."
It seems that some missed the basics of skin effect, with respect to how it functions or acts, with respects to an audio signal/cable.
If that has become a bit more clear, congratulations!
If one is lucky, they only have many, many more years to understand how to take that to an effective point in audio design. I understood it with respects -and down to- molecular considerations by the time I was 25. I'm 43 now.
Audio cables have a completely different set of requirements compared to any RF considerations. Completely. What seems simple on the surface (a skin effect pun) is actually quite complex.
I would submit that here, some folks sit and argue, but the overwhelming number of engineers and physicists who understand the basics of a 'fluid metal as an audio cable', as I explain it to them, I see their eyes light up and they wander off into a new point of understanding of what exactly goes on in audio signals and audio signal propagation - altogether.
They don't argue about it, they simply get it. They love it. It's a fabulous and fun thing to spend time musing on.
They can take that understanding..and move forward in every area they apply, in electrical terms, to any given point in audio.
And many other areas, as well.
Coming from you, rvance, I would have to take that as a compliment.
Actually, from Sir Sidney Fudd in "I Think We're All Bozos On This Bus" by Firesign Theatre.
Reminds me of Tom Waits comment on one of the late night shows in the 70's
"I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy"
Don't know if he stole it or made it up.
Dorothy Parker (American Short story writer). She concocted many wonderful quips.
Yes, I have read some of her stories. Thanks for that, Elk.
KBK writes.......
Nope, I missed nothing heres the basics.
The bottom line is Skin Effect is not a relevant factor of concern when choosing / designing high performance loudspeaker cables for hifi audio systems. The DC resistance and inductance of the cable are far more important factors as can be seen in our Speaker Cable Face Off and Cross Coax vs Zip Cord articles where we modeled lumped element parameters (R,L,C) of speaker cables.
WOW! Skin effect at a molecular level! And all this time I thought it had to do with electrons and frequency.
The considerations at an RF level are considerably more complex in my experience. Matching networks, rejection loads, tuned cavities and a range of other techniques to get the energy to go where you want it and with the greatest efficiency. If it turns out that audio is more complex than RF, then I've been doing things the wrong way for 25 years.
I'm sure that anybody of a scientific or engineering bent would be intrigued by this novel use of a heatsink compound but I guess it would depend on the scientists or engineers specialization as to whether or not they would take it seriously. I think a lot of scientists and engineers buy Quadra Beam purifiers, but only if their expertise falls into an area which does not allow them to see that the claims made for that device are spurious and false.
Not medicine I hope. I'd like to think that any drug or procedure that was prescribed to me had been thouroughly tested using the rigorous approach of true science.
My thanks to sasaudio for the links and info. You supplied some very useful information there for all audiophiles to read and more importantly, to understand. I think my assertions about the depth of skin effect @20Khz were a bit on the optimistic side. I couldn't be bothered to do any more research, got a job, kids, hobbies etc.
Long live the thread!
P.S KBK. Any resistance data on the liquid cables yet? If you can't supply it I may have to make my own set and test them myself.
"Not medicine I hope. I'd like to think that any drug or procedure that was prescribed to me had been thoroughly tested using the rigorous approach of true science."
Well, I'd hope that too, but I was working once with a top tier specialist doctor for an educational video and he let me in on a little secret: it's AFTER a drug is released that true testing results, because you go from a tiny set of numbers (clinical trials being maybe 3-5000 people and often college students or another narrow subset) to the general populace. It's why Vioxx looked pretty good on paper as it went through FDA tests and resulted in some not so good deaths once it was "out there."
As the crazy guy in Cole's (Bruce Willis) head in 12 Monkey's said: "Science ain't always an exact science with these bozos!" That probably goes double when they stand to make a couple hundred million of it... Oh---is that how these guys came up with liquid cable? Wacky science driven by dreams of obscene profits?
OMG! the audio fight of the new century.
fresh-clip lands a devastating "clip" to KBK's jaw and down goes kbk.
What a spectacular comeback for fresh after getting that penalty from the ref, sasaudio.
kbk is still on the mat , will he recover before the ten gigahertz countdown? or will he dissipate, liquid like, and spill out of the ring?
(just goofing guys, please carry on)
A little bit from Princeton on the idea of using liquid gallium for MRI (magneto-rotational-instability) testing along with lab sized realistic simulations of MHD effects, in order to check the validity of mathematical modeling, and to conduct basic tests.
http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&sa...earch&meta=
I thought I'd leave this thread for a while, as it was going nowhere, as the same points were still being bandied about. Remember, this is about the production of a product for resale - that the entire pattern of thinking that brought it into existence is proprietary, and thus the intellectual considerations are part of the art of it's creation and thus will not be given away to complete an argument - simply due to the existence of angry dissenters. Meaning: Sorry! I don't give away what I know, simply because not knowing gets you angry, or it does not fit your current model of what is real in this world.
As I've said before, apologies... but asking for the finer details of the art of design from any given audiophile company, asking for them to publicly disclose that which puts bread on the table..is a ludicrous position, at best.
I've done business with Brian Kurtz and I trust his ears more than any
other person, save for my own. If he says the cables sound great, then they
do.
Brian makes his own cables and they are very reasonably priced. They sound
better than any that I have ever heard and I've listened to a lot of cables.
He's a good guy and dearly loves messing around with audio stuff. Not to mention,
his business ethics and attention to serving his customers is fantastic.
Pages