I've been watching the discussion on speaker cables for a while, now. In looking around for more information, I came across a study done by the McIntosh company using different types of cables with their amplifiers and speakers. (Sorry, I don't have the link just now.) They had a sophisticated instant switching mechanism between several types of cables, including romex, zip cable, speaker cable, really thin (24 ga) wires, and high end speaker cables. The cables were all about 20' if I remember right. This was all set up at some of their stores, and also, I believe, at some expos. They would play different types of music on their speakers, switching among the cables, then polling listeners as to which sounded best, or if any difference could be detected. The bottom line was that nearly all the listeners couldn't detect any difference between cables, EXCEPT for the 24 ga wire. Their conclusion was that multi stranded or solid made no difference, nor very low oxygen content copper; the main factor determining an audible difference in the cables appeared to be the total resistance / impedance of the cable, which had to be less than 5% of the speaker's total impedance. At 10% and higher, they noticed that people were actually beginning to percieve a difference. They also concluded that the "difference" people heard with more expensive cables was what they wanted, or needed, to hear because they were looking for, or expecting, an improvement with all the money spent on more expensive cables. Interestingly enough, people at their stores who noticed cheaper cables installed with the demo units insisted on having more expensive cables put in use before they would listen to the equipment. The conclusion here being that they placed a certain amount of trust in the advertising "authority" they were basing their beliefs upon as to the audible differences in cabling.
Have I hit the bee's nest hard enough yet?.......
