Wired: A Beginner's Guide To Speaker Placement

[sholling]

Wired has a brief but interesting beginners' how-to on speaker placement. I'm glad to see that most of the advice was really pretty good for the intended audience (neophytes). It's just too bad that the article went off into the weeds with a claim that you need to spend money on name brand speaker wire.

http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Set_Up_Your_Speakers?

 

[highfigh]

"As an electrical engineer and former physicist I have had a hell of a time even understanding the so-called technical reasons often give for why cables shouldn't matter."

If he is, and was, he should have been comfortable explaining why different grades of speaker wire do matter, not by avoiding any statement of details.

 

[Seth=L]

"As an electrical engineer and former physicist I have had a hell of a time even understanding the so-called technical reasons often give for why cables shouldn't matter."

That right there makes me not want to read the article. I know that's bad, but how can I trust anything the guy says?

If he is, and was, he should have been comfortable explaining why different grades of speaker wire do matter, not by avoiding any statement of details.

That's how it always goes. 99.99% of those that are EEs or "former physicists" and are also audiophiles will not co-relate science with their claims. The ones that do will go into electrical theory and measured performance and point out the differences on paper, but rarely do these differences amount to anything when listening to music.

 

[3db]

"As an electrical engineer and former physicist I have had a hell of a time even understanding the so-called technical reasons often give for why cables shouldn't matter."

If he is, and was, he should have been comfortable explaining why different grades of speaker wire do matter, not by avoiding any statement of details.

I too am an electrical engineer and still cannot fathom to this day (except for the fine art of fleecing the sucker) how claims made by wire/cable manufacturers and people who write reviews for speaker wire/interconnects (lining their pockets with some payola) in such short distances can alter the sound.

 

[lsiberian]

"As an electrical engineer and former physicist I have had a hell of a time even understanding the so-called technical reasons often give for why cables shouldn't matter."

If he is, and was, he should have been comfortable explaining why different grades of speaker wire do matter, not by avoiding any statement of details.

I think this is just a lack of research on the subject. The monster reference is a clear indication of that.

 

[sholling]

I think some writers just fall for the marketing hype.

 

[darien87]

Looks like the guy might have just mistyped his sentence. It looks like it's been changed.

"Contrary to the marketing, cables do not matter. How do you know they don't matter? Because in blind tests even audiophiles struggle to tell the difference between $100/foot exotic cable and simple lamp cord. Even when they can tell the difference, they're not sure which one is better! (As a practicing engineer I have had a hell of a time even understanding the so-called marketing reasons often give for why cables should matter.)

Of course, if you want to impress your friends, they'll have heard of Monster cables. But before dropping more than about $20 on 50' of speaker wire, you should start with some lower cost 14 or 16 gauge wire from an online retailer or the local hardware store."

 

[sholling]

Looks like the guy might have just mistyped his sentence. It looks like it's been changed.

"Contrary to the marketing, cables do not matter. How do you know they don't matter? Because in blind tests even audiophiles struggle to tell the difference between $100/foot exotic cable and simple lamp cord. Even when they can tell the difference, they're not sure which one is better! (As a practicing engineer I have had a hell of a time even understanding the so-called marketing reasons often give for why cables should matter.)

Of course, if you want to impress your friends, they'll have heard of Monster cables. But before dropping more than about $20 on 50' of speaker wire, you should start with some lower cost 14 or 16 gauge wire from an online retailer or the local hardware store."

That's better! The rest of the story was a great read for beginners and now he's corrected the only glaring error. Kudos!