Their is a simple test...
Its a double blind test...
Allow someone to use a two different wirers. Have them both hooked up to the speakers. Then have them switch wirers without you knowing which wirers they pick.
Then tell them which ones sound better.
Have them do this randomly 5-10 times. And if you can tell the difference every time then you know the investment you made is good. If not, then you have learned not to repeat the mistake...
Ampdog said:
All those zillions of electrons traveling at near light speed down cables - and then we insist on using a.c. so they must reverse every now and then and go right back. That just must wear that oxygen free cable out! You need to replace the worn cable every so often! (Stands to reason) I mean, if bushes in machinery wear out, and that at a very much lower velocity .....
Besides for the fact that we are NOT using AC, if this was a real problem, then the problem would exist in the Power Supply of amplifiers and not in the cables we use. It would also mean that all of our hous hold and utility cables (in the house, up on the street or underground) would have a certain lifespan. However this is not the case, at least not for decades. And the reason they would have to be replaced would probably have to do with the insulation and not the cables themselves.
Oxidization occures only when their is oxigen. Cables have insulation, theirfor they have no ability to have access to Oxigen.
When you move current through a wire, the atoms vibrate at an increased speed. The more current, the more vibrations. This vibration is evident in high power lines that hum, and/or results in heat. In AC power, vibration is added because of the 60hz of switching that occurs which is the US standard for utility power. Europeans and other countries use a higher frequency (I beleive its 110hz). They are more prone to the humming sound, however they also loose less current over a larger distance.
We can thank Tesla for all of this. Tesla was probably the best electriction the world has ever seen. However he is not given much credit. In fact, in the museum in Washington, he is barely mentioned in any of the contributions he accomplished (which are many). He was eccentric, and thus was forgotten or simply ignored. Edison and Tesla didnt get along, but Edison had a personality that was much more charismatic. Thus Edison is a well known name, where Tesla is beign forgotten. It is sad that Tesla wasnt and isnt acknowledged outside the schools of electrical engineering.
Larger wirers dont vibrate as much because the ratio of current to conductive material is great.
As for speaker wirer, I recommend copper strand wirer with good, easy to use, connects. Most connects are made out of gold, which happens to have the disability of beign corrosive. Therefor every ten years or more, you should clean your gold and copper connects. Again, this is only what is exposed to oxygen, and is not within the insulated wirers.
Also the insulation used today will last for hundreds of years. Old houses used a fiber based insulation that deteriates over time. Today we use polymers that will probably exist for hundreds of thousands of years. Some day the human species will probably disapear. If intelligent life re-emerges, they will have excavations of our old civilizations, and find plastic all over the place. They will also find Twinkies. hehe
mustang_steve said:
That said, I do think exotic cables are a sham. Here's my rules for buying cables:
1) Quality: I expect cables to be consistent and well built.
2) flexible: I need a cable I can easily route and handle....flexibility is key to this. this is the reason I like PTFE insulation on my interconnects, and soft rubber on my speaker cables.
3) looks: I have visible speaker cable runs, so I did opt for a good looking set of speaker cables. I spent more than I would if I went with 12ga OFC , but it was worth it to me. If it was an in-wall run or under the carpet, I wouldn't have cared if it was bright pink cable...I'd use it anyways if it was good quality for the right price.
Mustang Steve has it right! I make my cables out of Copper wire I find at home depot. I then add my own connects that I buy at RadioShack. I was lucky to find that when buying connects for my current speakers, that they were discontinuing the Monster Brand Horse Shoe Connects. These connects really are great, because they are strong (they dont bend like cheap connects), easy to install, with a great surface area provided between the copper wire and the connects, and they fit my purposes very well.
The original price on these connects were over $10 for 4 (one speaker wirer). That would have been over $60 for a 5.1 system... ouch... Therefor I wouldnt buy them... however they since they discontinued them, they were selling them for $4... Very nice... so I bought 6 or 7 of them... had to run around the city to get enough of them, but I beleive the ease of use, the quality of connects and the price was right.
My Speaker cable is also Monster... However, once again, I bought it years ago when Radioshack was discontinuing the cables. Therefor it was slightly more expensive then what I COULD of gotten from HomeDepot, but the visual quality of them, the flexibility of the wirers, and the large 10 gaudge made it a good investment. Again, I didnt spend much more then $10 for large roles of it. I also bought the monster RCA wirers, because they were on a massive reduction of price (70% off), they were thick and flexible, and were of good quality. However, after a few years of usage, the RCA's are kinda falling appart... so for thoose who are looking at $20-$30 Monster Interconnects, verse the $2-3 normal ones, I would recommend the normal ones. They simply last longer.
Lastly the studies I have found, and trust, were performed, not only by audiophiles, but electrictions and psycologists too make sure that the study was performed in a way that was fair in all instances. I fear that the problem people experiance poor performance with home made, cables is due the low quality of the construction they utilize. Few people have the ability to make very good sodering connections. And less people have the ability to provide the needed precision to construct their own cables with connects. I am lucky because of my fathers long history with creating and fixing electronics, his Masters in EE, and his and mine profectionism.
The usage of Psycologists in these studies are very important. Many Psycologists dont do head shrinking. Instead they study the human mind and body. What Is important in this case is their consistant scientific approach to studies of human hearing. They create studies that test the capabilities of human hearing, they then publish these studies, and how they were conducted. Then other scientists become critics and point out the problems with these studies. Then the issues are addressed, and the process repeats itself. They have learned allot, which is the background for many of my statements in this forum. The biggest things they learned are that; Everyone hearing is different. Some have exceptional abilities to hear extremely high frequencies, while other people are very sensitive to small changes in the tones of sound. The majority of people have spots in our hearing that are not as good as others. Its like having a equalizer in our brains that is alittle askew. We also are often granted with one ear that can hear better then the other ear.
If you test someone with various gaps in the sound, you will find another ability people have. That is, some people will not hear the gaps, and will hear a steady tone. Others will hear choppy sound.
How we hear isnt just with our ears, but how our brain processes the sound. Also, if you train people to listen better, they can start "feeling" differences in all of the above areas, but they cannot tell exactly what is going on. This makes tests with audio equipment even harder, and more of the reason we need scientists to conduct these studies.
For all of us, we MUST spend time at high quality speaker stores. Listening to sound from different speakers. Many sales men in this area understand this, and will give you hours of time to just listen. You can then sit their and train yourself to hear better. Adjust volume levels of speakers, and just listen. Analyse the sound, pay close attention. Be more attuned to the smallest of differences. Listen to the breath of the signer, the vibration that continues well after a string is plucked. The feeling of the base on your skin. Feel the music, or what I call, having the hair on the back of your kneck stand up.
This is all important, and is not often mentioned or understood by many consumers and sales men in the Highend Audio world.
The reason I wrote all of this, is because I have done research on speaker cables and these tests. The best ones, I beleive, are the ones that test peoples hearing ability, that uses a large range of people who have different abilities, that spend time teaching them how to listen carefully, that are objective, and are not influenced by the industries.
I have seen tests that meet this criteria, and that come up with no conclusive evidence that one wire is better then the other. They go so far as to classify the abilities of different peoples approach and ability to hear, and they publish not only the overall results, but also the individual classes of people. These tests all fall with-in the margin of error.
With that said, the cable industries continue to point to studies that prove otherwise. I fear that this may be another case of "Big Tobacco" proving that smoking doesnt cause cancer. Then again, they often are the ones to make the best disputes over the tests performed.
Mike
