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How were the two "top" cables selected?

Posted by Richard Greene on April 20, 1999 at 17:04:51

In Reply to: Cable studies. posted by Clayton Oxendine on April 20, 1999 at 15:14:07:

The post goes directly from a list of cables to a conclusion of
which are best. That's too large a jump for me.

You can tell the author is a data/RFI guy because for him life
starts at 20,000 Hz.!

I can't hear 20,000 Hz., can you?

So the "down 3 dB at 20 kHz. is not audible.

For 10 foot speaker cables resistance, inductance and
capacitance do matter but differences measured among
cables of a reasonable gauge (at least 16 gauge)
designed for audio use are small.
Debates on whether they are audible when using a ten foot
speaker cable will continue forever.
Characteristic impedance of cables is a data transmission
concern -- not an audio frequency concern for 10 foot cables.

I do like the comment "Bi-amping is expensive but the results
are stunning". That comment would not apply to bi-wiring which
simply adds more copper between your amp and speakers -- perhaps
"buy wire" would be a better spelling than "bi-wire" -- the
electrical circuit remains the same whether the wires from the
drivers inside your speakers meet at the speaker terminal or
at the amplifier terminal.

The comment on using "cheaper" wire for low/mid frequencies and
"quality" wire for high frequencies seems backwards to me
because most of the current flowing to our speakers is for bass
and mid-range frequencies. How do I know that?
Well, I just shut-off the tweeters on my "buy-wired" EPOS
ES11 speakers and could see no change on my amplifier output
meters while playing pink noise -- that must mean very little
power is required for tweeter frequencies. So if you want to use
"cheap" wire for some reason, I'd say don't use it for your
bass/mid-range driver. Of course we could debate forever on what
"cheap" wire is. I'd say it's any wire less expensive then the
30 cents per foot Home Depot 12 gauge speaker wire I use.

By the way, is Mtrycraft allowed on this website?
An audio website without his comments and the nasty
responses just doesn't seem very exciting!

Note: My comments on wires do not apply to 50 foot speaker
cables -- only to 10 foot or shorter cables.

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