I'm very much a speaker cable sceptic - beyond a certain minimum thickness and contruction quality, I've never heard any difference.
But at the same time, I try not to adopt the fingers-in-the-ears "It can't, it can't, it can't!" approach when people make claims that I doubt or without an explanation that I can understand. It's come to mind recently after a difference of opinion on speaker cables popped up across some YouTube channels.
I've always thought about speaker cables in terms of LCR (Inductance, Capacitance, Resistance), and those are well understood and easily measurable. And with a decent thickness of copper cable they tend to be vanishingly small. But some expensive speaker cables are made in a twisted or braided form, which raises capacitance, and I've never understood why they do that.
There's also been some debate about the skin effect, where higher frequencies are carried more on the surface of a conductor and don't reach much of a depth into it. That's a genuine problem at radio frequencies in the megahertz range and the like. Some argue that the effect does exist to some extent down at high audio frequencies, but the consensus among audio electronics experts seems to be that it's insignificant.
Then there's the idea of noise picked up from electromagnetic interference (EMI) and radio frequency interference (RFI), and that's what the recent YT disagreements have been all about. It's certainly true (and easily demonstrable) that speaker cables can easily pick up RFI - if I connect a length of speaker cable to my FM tuner, it makes an effective antenna. Whether RFI can have any effect on the audible spectrum is the big question. Is there any possibility of demodulation anywhere in the chain? After all, Lucille Ball reckoned she could sometimes hear radio through a tooth filling!
Surprisingly, while I can find plenty of material covering LCR and skin effect, I haven't found much of any detail on the possible effects of EMI and RFI - other than a sort of hand-wavy "You can try using shielded cable if you think you have a problem" thing.
So I'm going to try a test. A number of people have championed the use of Cat5 (or Cat6) ethernet cable in various configurations. Its twisted pairs are good at noise suppression, which is important at the high frequencies used for ethernet. I've used it myself in the past, but only bacause I had some and with no thought about noise suppression - I just soldered all eight connectors together, and used two cables for my speakers. It's inconveniently stiff and quite ugly, though, so I use QED 79 strand these days.
But I do have some Cat5 cable and some banana plugs, so I can try a twisted-pair noise suppression version at zero cost. And I simply have to try it, don't I? I know I do!
I'm going to make up a pair of cables along the lines of The "Full Frequency Range Cable". (That, and the linked pages, make some interesting claims about speaker cables - though I'm certainly not endorsing them). I'll measure the LCR compared to my QED cable, and the Cat5 will surely have higher capacitance. There's an interesting effect of high capacitance cables on some amps shown at Speaker Wire, so I'll use my scope and see if I can detect any ringing/oscillation.
Anyway, I need breakfast now. Next stage is to make up the cables, and I'll post a photo when they're done.
But at the same time, I try not to adopt the fingers-in-the-ears "It can't, it can't, it can't!" approach when people make claims that I doubt or without an explanation that I can understand. It's come to mind recently after a difference of opinion on speaker cables popped up across some YouTube channels.
I've always thought about speaker cables in terms of LCR (Inductance, Capacitance, Resistance), and those are well understood and easily measurable. And with a decent thickness of copper cable they tend to be vanishingly small. But some expensive speaker cables are made in a twisted or braided form, which raises capacitance, and I've never understood why they do that.
There's also been some debate about the skin effect, where higher frequencies are carried more on the surface of a conductor and don't reach much of a depth into it. That's a genuine problem at radio frequencies in the megahertz range and the like. Some argue that the effect does exist to some extent down at high audio frequencies, but the consensus among audio electronics experts seems to be that it's insignificant.
Then there's the idea of noise picked up from electromagnetic interference (EMI) and radio frequency interference (RFI), and that's what the recent YT disagreements have been all about. It's certainly true (and easily demonstrable) that speaker cables can easily pick up RFI - if I connect a length of speaker cable to my FM tuner, it makes an effective antenna. Whether RFI can have any effect on the audible spectrum is the big question. Is there any possibility of demodulation anywhere in the chain? After all, Lucille Ball reckoned she could sometimes hear radio through a tooth filling!
Surprisingly, while I can find plenty of material covering LCR and skin effect, I haven't found much of any detail on the possible effects of EMI and RFI - other than a sort of hand-wavy "You can try using shielded cable if you think you have a problem" thing.
So I'm going to try a test. A number of people have championed the use of Cat5 (or Cat6) ethernet cable in various configurations. Its twisted pairs are good at noise suppression, which is important at the high frequencies used for ethernet. I've used it myself in the past, but only bacause I had some and with no thought about noise suppression - I just soldered all eight connectors together, and used two cables for my speakers. It's inconveniently stiff and quite ugly, though, so I use QED 79 strand these days.
But I do have some Cat5 cable and some banana plugs, so I can try a twisted-pair noise suppression version at zero cost. And I simply have to try it, don't I? I know I do!
I'm going to make up a pair of cables along the lines of The "Full Frequency Range Cable". (That, and the linked pages, make some interesting claims about speaker cables - though I'm certainly not endorsing them). I'll measure the LCR compared to my QED cable, and the Cat5 will surely have higher capacitance. There's an interesting effect of high capacitance cables on some amps shown at Speaker Wire, so I'll use my scope and see if I can detect any ringing/oscillation.
Anyway, I need breakfast now. Next stage is to make up the cables, and I'll post a photo when they're done.
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