Come on now, the article itself isn't poorly written, but it is two lines which set the entire article up as marketing for overpriced cables:
10 foot run of a typical cheap 24 gauge "speaker cable"
and
10 foot run of one quality high end 10AWG gauge cable
24 gauge cable is equivalent to one wire inside an ethernet cable. ONE! I think my cheap home theater in a box came with that, but you can't easily go buy 24 gauge speaker cable. You have to hunt for something that low of quality.
So there is no 'typical cheap 24 gauge speaker wire' in existence. It just isn't out there as a 'typical' product.
I use Monoprice as a standard of what 'typical cheap' should mean to anyone. It should be the freakin' white paper of what 'typical cheap' means. That, or Parts Express. But, let's look at what Monoprice has to offer for typical cheap:
HDMI Cable, Home Theater Accessories, HDMI Products, Cables, Adapters, Video/Audio Switch, Networking, USB, Firewire, Printer Toner, and more!
There you go, their cheapest cable is 50' of wire. It is 18 gauge and it runs $6.29. That works out to about a buck twenty-six for ten feet. Doesn't get much cheaper than that.
So, what is the measured resistance across that 10 foot run and how does that impact damping?
Oh, and let's go ahead and jump to 'cheap high-end' (does that even exist?) - 50' of Monoprice 12 gauge cable is $16.42. That's about $3.50 for ten feet. Nearly three times the price of the 18 gauge cable. About a hundredth the price of what the article likely would call 'high end' cable.
But, how does it measure up?
That's when you get into the math, and for that, you just need to look at the charts that are on this site to compare real world expectation of normal (no price with normal) wire.
-Same link as already posted-
Speaker Cable Gauge (AWG) Guidelines & Recommendations — Reviews and News from Audioholics
Now, it is very 'mathy' to get those numbers, but it comes from a formula and nothing more. The down side to this is that the article doesn't measure any specific cables, it just uses generic 'cheap' and 'high end'. To see how well Monoprice (or BJC or their pricey junk) actually measures out, you would need that cable, you would need to measure the resistance on that cable, and then plug the numbers into the formula. It will give you an exact result of what damping factor that specific cable will have on the audio.
The one question I have is that they add the damping factor of the cable and the receiver together to get their result. I would think this is accurate. I would also think that the connections in use would have some impact. So, direct wire vs. banana plugs vs. locking connectors, etc.
But, because they are not metioned, at all, I would also believe that these items have almost zero impact on things. In fact, the only thing metioned that does have an impact is the use of a non-standard audio wire which is so far outside the normal, it is ridiculous.
At 10', with normally built wire, regardless of price, on any 8ohm system, you will audibly be unable to detect any difference between 18 gauge speaker wire and 10 gauge speaker wire. You may be able to pull out extremely sensitive equipment and detect a change, but you can't audibly hear a change.
They always leave that part out as well... If you can't hear it, then it doesn't matter.
Thanks Audioholics for the heavy lifting on the math section! Would be cool to see a chart comparing actual cables against each other. Say Monoprice vs. BJC vs. 'high end'. Or a link to someone who has those numbers.
