The answer is both simple and complex. When you have signal that passes through the skin effect region and will also have multiples of signal and harmonics mixed in..and you have a cable with a complex LCR and multiple resonances..and that cable is only 'perfect' at ONE frequency and marginally good at the rest, then you will have all kinds of changes in the energy as it is attempting to be transmitted down the given cable. The changes will be subtle but are noticed by the human ear, which is a temporal and 'peak level' sensitive device. Each cable will distort in these minute ways according to it's design and execution parameters and thus each cable will 'sound' slightly different.

The reason that this does not show up well in cable measurements is that the area of signal (level, etc) and type of distortions are small in comparison to the gross measured signal but the ear only works in the area of signal that is being distorted, for the most part..and this it represents considerably larger parts of the decoded signal to the ear - than it does to the measurement equipment.

As an example, the measurement equipment might say that the transient components are damage by 5% but in comparison to the rest of the waveform, the whole distortion is less than 0.005%. so they say the THD (total harmonic distortion) of the cable is a vanishingly low 0.005%.

Except that the ear works, for the larger part, on transient information, the timing between the harmonic transient peaks and the absolute levels of those peaks. So the ear would hear just those transients as the ENTIRE signal it works with so to the ear, the cable is distorting to the tune of 5%.

It is a case where the measurement methodology and weighting system for interpreting these 'measured' numbers...does not correlate in any way at all, to how the ear hears things.

So, in essence, the measurements are wrong as they are not specifically designed for, nor are they taking into account - how the ear hears and works.

And that's what you get when you let engineers decide the fundamentals instead of the theoreticians and the philosophers of science/reason decide the base science of the issue.

Great question.

Big Mike found a source of small gauge silver wire that we are going to try out.

I think I've ended up with a preference for monifilament/solid core speaker wire, as well.

One year, we made a set using flat ribbon copper 'monifilament' and it sounded pretty damn good!

This has even started to leak through to many 'pro' products, with my son's guitar teacher having developed a sonic preference for some brand of lead wire that goes from his guitar to his amp.

I haven't listened to it, he was just talking about his experience as a non-audiphile.

Alex Paychev had a positively anorexic tiny silver speaker cable that he demo'd with his all APL Hi Fi rig and it sounded superlative.

Lots of room to play!

I got a big roll of heavy speaker cable from Radio Shack years ago. You know, the clear stuff with the red line down one side. I still have some left...

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The answer is both simple and complex. When you have signal that passes through the skin effect region and will also have multiples of signal and harmonics mixed in..and you have a cable with a complex LCR and multiple resonances..and that cable is only 'perfect' at ONE frequency and marginally good at the rest, then you will have all kinds of changes in the energy as it is attempting to be transmitted down the given cable. The changes will be subtle but are noticed by the human ear, which is a temporal and 'peak level' sensitive device. Each cable will distort in these minute ways according to it's design and execution parameters and thus each cable will 'sound' slightly different.

The reason that this does not show up well in cable measurements is that the area of signal (level, etc) and type of distortions are small in comparison to the gross measured signal but the ear only works in the area of signal that is being distorted, for the most part..and this it represents considerably larger parts of the decoded signal to the ear - than it does to the measurement equipment.

As an example, the measurement equipment might say that the transient components are damage by 5% but in comparison to the rest of the waveform, the whole distortion is less than 0.005%. so they say the THD (total harmonic distortion) of the cable is a vanishingly low 0.005%.

Except that the ear works, for the larger part, on transient information, the timing between the harmonic transient peaks and the absolute levels of those peaks. So the ear would hear just those transients as the ENTIRE signal it works with so to the ear, the cable is distorting to the tune of 5%.

It is a case where the measurement methodology and weighting system for interpreting these 'measured' numbers...does not correlate in any way at all, to how the ear hears things.

So, in essence, the measurements are wrong as they are not specifically designed for, nor are they taking into account - how the ear hears and works.

And that's what you get when you let engineers decide the fundamentals instead of the theoreticians and the philosophers of science/reason decide the base science of the issue.

Are you being serious or sarcastic? I hope it's the latter.

se

Hello

Yes I have noted this phenomenon also, that really thick speaker cables is not optimum at all.

The only explanation I have is that 'more copper' provides multiple paths for certain frequencies. What little I know about electricity transmission cant explain it, but alternating currents are special and admit I don't have a full understanding of all equations.

I have returned to this one over and over during the years, even the image on the gallery have some thick ones I tried when I snapped the image. A friend of mine considered those sound good and had to try again and yes came to he same conclusion again - more area is only better up to a certain point.

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Are you being serious or sarcastic? I hope it's the latter.

Ken is serious. He sells wire, he has to be serious.

I'll be interested to hear what Steve (SASAudio) has to say about Ken's technical explanation above. Steve knows a lot about wire and the properties of wire.

--Ethan

Alas Steve, he is being serious.

However, I did not think he sold wire. Just goo, some kind of wall paint for projection.

Cheers, John

How about trying out different terminations for speaker wire?

Interesting opinions that inspire thought are like honey, they can be attractive and good. However, it can also attract flies. And everyone knows that flies can be covered with, and love - shit.

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Interesting opinions that inspire thought are like honey, they can be attractive and good.

That is indeed a correct statement.

Your run on posts do indeed inspire thought. Myself, it inspires scrolling past your post as quickly as possible, as rarely is there any coherent sentence structure pertaining to the topic at hand.

It is better to explain in a sentence or two, rather than turn the intended audience away with textual diarrhea.

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However, it can also attract flies. And everyone knows that flies can be covered with, and love - shit.

Do not be so hard on yourself K...while your rambling posts have little reality content, I would not go so far as to call your long winded posts excrement. Just textual rambling..

Cheers, John

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I never use terminations if I can avoid it. I mean, why add another component?

My wires are terminated...with extreme prejudice.

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... but the ear only works in the area of signal that is being distorted, ...

I'm sorry, but this is so wrong as to be humorous, at least at the surface.

Let's sort this out in a dialog, if you're willing to try.

What do you mean, to start with, by "area" in this context? Do you mean time domain, frequency domain, time/frequency tiling, or what?

For reference, the ear (meaning the inner ear, in particular the Organ of Corti, etc) is a time/frequency analyzer of more or less fixed time/frequency resolution.

Note that I did not say "fixed sensitivity'.

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... but the ear only works in the area of signal that is being distorted, ...

I think Ken is trying to re-state something that he has stated and re-stated and re-stated and re-stated and re-stated and re-stated and re-stated and re-stated and re-stated in the past.

Basically what he's trying to re-state is that he believes that the human ear is far superior at perceiving distortion of any kind, harmonic, phase, etc than any test instrument ever invented. Nothing from Bruel & Kjaer or anyone else will possibly detect what the human ear (particularly his ) is able to.

Subsequently, many manufacturers of test equipment find themselves redundant, having burned up millions of dollars in R&D when they could have just hired Ken for a few bucks an hour. He could have painted their projection wall too, while he was there.

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I never use terminations if I can avoid it. I mean, why add another component?

My wires are terminated...with extreme prejudice.

Well, if you're ever rooting through my waste can, and you find a cable that is tied in one or more hard overhand knots, you may assume that it is quite terminated with prejudice.

I don't tie knots in cables unless they are BAD cables.

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Alas Steve, he is being serious.

However, I did not think he sold wire. Just goo, some kind of wall paint for projection.

Cheers, John

I never got the chance to mention this in the cable thread before it was locked.
If anyone is interested Paul Miller (developed several respected audio analysers and editor for Hi-finews here in UK) reviewed Teo interconnect and speaker cable last year for that publication in December 2009.

Was interesting to read his thoughts, summary was the interconnects were very good.
He did mention he felt the properties of the alloy made it less suitable for long speaker cables though.
Vol 54, no 13 if interested.

Also its a good audio magazine if you never seen it, my favourite publication here in UK.

Thanks
Orb