Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Proof that Speaker Cables Do Matter!

Maybe not a lot, but it's a start! Who's got $2k, I want a pair! Don't kid me baby, you're an audiophile, you know it's all about the subtley, now give me some love! You make me work so hard!

Sorry the link wouldn't load so I had to paste in the article:

Blind Test: Most Listeners Can Tell the Difference Between Speaker Cables

Tue Jan 22, 2008 2:23PM EST

See Comments (16)

Skeptics (including me) love to laugh at people who claim they can hear the difference between stereo components hooked up with one cable vs. another. Can wires really be that important in the audio experience?

The Wall Street Journal put the question to the test at a recent audio show, renting a booth, and hooking up two sets of identical components, differing only by the speaker cable. One set used off-the-roll, 14-gauge speaker cable from a hardware store. Another used a pair of Sigma Retro Gold cables from Monster, $2,000 for 16 feet of cable total and "as thick as your thumb." The writer couldn't tell the difference and figured no one else could either.

Surprise: People who visited the booth and listened to both sets of equipment (not in view) preferred the expensively cabled audio equipment 61 percent of the time.

What's happening here? For starters, jokes and skepticism aside, speaker cable really does make a difference, at least up to a point. Try hooking up speakers with a single aluminum-wire strand vs. a real braided-copper cable (even a hardware store cable) and you'll easily hear the difference; the cheap cable will make the speakers pop and hiss. It makes sense then that continuing to move up the cable quality ladder might keep making a difference. But how far? Maybe gold connectors will improve quality another 1 percent. Thicker gauge a further 1 percent. I'm not sure I'd buy $2,000 speaker cables for an extra few percentage points in quality (in fact, I'm sure of it), and I am far from stumping for mega-expensive cabling, but it does seem plausible that the high-tech speaker cables might really make a difference, even if it's a small one, just by continuing to refine the connection from point A to B.

Also at work: For audio junkies (like those who visit a big stereo convention) who've fine-tuned their listening rooms, the difference may be even more noticeable than to those of us who have to watch movies and listen to music in noisy environments, surrounded by screaming children. This helps to explain how testers might prefer one cable over another at a rate of nearly two to one.

On the flipside: The WSJ found virtually identical preference for high-end CD audio (played from a $3,000 CD player) vs. a WAV file played from a standard iPod. The shocking lesson: Cables may actually matter more than the source of the music, at least while it's still in digital format.

Where did you get this from?

speaker cables do matter

And for those looking for the actual article and not the summary from the blog.

Wall Street Journal Online

Thanks for the post SatKartr. Interesting article on all of the points it covered, not just the cable comparison. I'm curious whether I would have been able to hear the difference. I can't remember enough of my statistics classes (a true tragedy) to recall how to specifically calculate margins of errors and statistical significance, but a sample size of 39 seems like it would leave a decent chance that the results observed could be attributed to chance rather than to an audible difference. I'm not trying to be contrarian, but it does seem a question worth asking with the results being only 11 percentage points off of dead even.

Either way, it's an interesting article. If I had all the money in the world I'd have no problem wiring up my system up with $2K Monster cable, unfortunately I'm not there yet.

Jason

yeah, I blocked out as much statistics as I could after my final.

Edited as inncomplete post.

I wish I could remember statistics form 30 years past but I have enough trouble remembering what I had for lunch yesterday. However I woudd agree +/- 11% may be chance.

Interesting none of the "speaker cables do matter" crowd has taken the million dollar challenge, they run for the hills. Did you also know you can't tell the difference passing DD or DTS through a coat hanger versus a coax or optical cable.

http://www.edn.com/index.asp?layout=blog&blog_id=1700000170&blog_post_id=1150015315

I still contend that the great speaker wire (and amp) debate would make a great Mythbusters episode.

You can't tell me that there are more people interested in whether or not a shark can be blown up with a flare gun than there are wondering if that $500 HDMI cable or $5,000 speaker wire is better than its fractionally priced brethren. While the Mythbusters gang isn't perfect, I think they do a reasonably good job. I'd love to see them take a stab at this controversial topic.

Interesting article, but I'm sure it will come under serious fire from some around here.

Randy, interesting article as well, thanks for posting. I hadn't heard of that before.

Peter - totally agreed, let's all bombard them with the suggestion and see if we can make it happen!

Jason

I know that Adam wants to do it (I think I heard him say that), but the producers are unconvinced.

RE: Mythbusters - I beleive the problem stems from the conclusion still coming down to a subjective response rather than direct science, as better sounding can be subjective.


Re: The 61% - only 4 more people found the more expensive cables to sound better(if he didn't allow for a 'can't tell the difference' answer), so yes that could be done by chance, definitely not a big enough sample to be worth much so far as proof, but interesting none the less.

I wonder what criteria he had put on the listening session, ie: listen until you feel you can hear a difference or you have to pick one or the other, not "I can't tell a difference". If he allowed for a no difference choice then the 61% becomes an even smaller number of people that chose the more expensive cable, since he doesn't state the actual numbers, just percentage points which can be very deceiving with such a small number of people.

I was wondering what the room conditions were.

I ASSUME that this was done in a quiet room somewhere off the beaten path of the trade show.... but you'd think that he would have mentioned that in the article if he was truly trying to be scientific.

I think the Mythbusters should film that segment of their show at Axiom's HQ. Axiom has all the requisite measuring equipment to assist in testing the myth. It would be great publicity for Axiom, too.

I know Adam Savage has been wanting to do this myth but hasn't yet figured out how to make it compelling for TV. I have a feeling there'd be great chemistry between Adam, Jamie, and the Axiom staffers.

I cant imagine how speaker wire would make the speakers pop and hiss.

Gold is actually worse of a conductor than copper so if you really want the best connection you need to use the bare wire. I like copper ring lugs myself but most equipment does not accomodate such a connection.

I don't think there's any doubt that cable quality can make a difference. The real question is *how* much of a difference will it make after a certain baseline. So what I'm suggesting is that the law of diminishing return quickly comes into play.

The last time I looked, copper was copper, there isn't two kinds, especially for the electrons to travel.

I'm not suggesting people should buy the ridiculously priced cables, but even in (computer) networking, cables matter. If you try to run 100Mbps Ethernet on marginal CAT3 rated cables, you will get errors on the wire. Of course, for speaker cables, keeping conductivity high is what matters. So I'm just suggesting that using a thicker cable for longer runs (with 4 ohm speakers) will make a difference. Just not $7000's worth!!!

For my HT, I bought the Axiom cables. It wasn't that expensive and it gave me a piece of mine. But for one of our store location (mostly playing CD/FM), I ran HDLC cables - Home depot lamp cord!

As for Mythbusters, I just don't know how they could test it objectively.

When I logged in this evening and saw this subject line it immediately caught my attention, since if it wasn't just a joke(e.g., "without them you don't hear anything!") and turned out to be true(it didn't)this was major news in audio technology that I might soon be reading a paper on in my AES Journal. After reading both the Yahoo blog and the original WSJ article, there appeared to be no consideration of statistical probability, as a couple of replies here have mentioned. Using 39 trials with apparently 24 successful ones(the 61%)at a 0.5 probability, this calculates to a probability of .0998, which is about twice the 5% or less standard which is required in scientific testing for the result to be viewed as not due to chance. So, this result, contrary to both linked articles, was another blind test failure to support the claimed benefits. Not even statistical support was found, much less the extravagant language we sometimes might read when a $2,000 "cable" is compared to about $4 worth of lamp cord, e.g., "huge", "night-and-day", etc.

It was also interesting to see, of course, that the tests also failed to distinguish between the iPod playing the WAV file and the $3,000 CD player.

Hang,

I was not really replying to you, I was just next in line on the thread. I will say that I'm familiar with networking environments and the difference between various twisted pair wire, as I work in IT for a company that has 12,000 employees in my town. I even wired my own house.

If your talking apples to apples, and using the proper AWG for the situation, you won't be able to recognize any difference.

My 14/4 homemade biwire picked up from buddy's foundry works just fine for my mains along with the 12ga purchased from a surplus store for the rest of the speakers

This is my personal opinion and not intended as a reply to anyones post. Expensive speaker wire is about how it looks rather than how it sounds.

Wait a minute... so did the flare gun work with the shark?!

Dang, for 2 grand it better look pretty darn good.

Yeah, I wouldn't even pay that much to have Regina Spektor going from my amp to my speakers.

You would so.

You'd be pinging us with PMs to borrow.

I was thinking the same thing.

Here's the cynical in me talking again...
This article sounds to me like an attempt from Monster cable at "Dark Marketing".

Just testing you guys.

Exactly. The ethernet cable is entirely different. It's built to carry low power high frequency signals. The speaker cable only has to carry frequencies as high a 22 kHz, but at a much greater power level. The inductance of the cable comes into play at these ultra-high frequencies (read open circuit).

A nice thick gauge cable (12 to 14 gauge) of any maker will suffice for speaker wire use.

I was also going to make a comment about the sample size, but John beat me to it.

I know. I was just replying "in general" and wanted to make sure that I'm not in the "wow...must be expensive so it must be good...." crowd. Although I tend to think you get what you paid for, in audio, that doesn't really apply. I also used the Cat3/5 example because I knew you had an IT background. Hey, it's in your profile!

Hi folks, without getting into the quality of cable = better sound argument, the Cat3 example caught my eye as requiring some further explanation.

Cat 3 verses Cat 5 wiring is not a relevant example for analogue sound transfer. The difference that cat5 cas over cat3 is not so much quality but in design and it is designed to assist where you have multiple data paths all flowing through the same sheathed cable.

The difference is in the way the pairs inside are twisted. Cat 3 has multiple pairs of wires but these pairs are not twisted together individually. It's designed for analogue signal such as phone use and works fine for that.

Cat 5 is designed for things like computer data transfer where each pair has separate data signals traveling through it simultaneously. The only significant difference is that each of the pairs are twisted together to help 'insulate' each pair from the other pairs signal via induction.



It is the twists that make this a better choice for data transfers, it is not the 'quality' of the cable. Without the twists effecting the magnetic fields to reduce induction, you would be limited to very short lengths for data transfers. This is not nearly as relevant to a single pair of speaker wires, even if they are mixed in the wall with a few other speaker wires.

Not being argumentative at all, just thought I could help clear up this point.

As someone who has terminated many ethernet cables over the years, I can't help but recite:

orange-white
orange
green-white
blue
blue-white
green
brown-white
brown

whenever I see an unsheathed cable.

Oh good, someone who terminates cat-5 the same way I do.

Although these days I generally demand 5e or 6.

Well, I guess they could do what they alway do at the end of a "boring" episode: Cram some C4 in the speakers and blow it up at the end ;-)

oh, the humanity!

I got the impression that they were actually kind of tired of doing explosions. Adam, Peter, did you get that feeling too?

Explosions are cool.

They are the audience's bitches when it comes to explosions, it seems. Sean, you are not helping.

Great point Murph. Cat 5 makes a terrific speaker cable because of its low inductance and low resistance.

One of my pet projects a while ago was to find a set of speaker cables which didn't colour sound at all. In a closet somewhere I have a boxful of various exotic cables some pricey, some not. Regardless I always came back to single 12awg zip chord, until I came across the article below. So I made a DIY set of in-wall 16awg doubled up cables (becomes 13awg) with ultralink connectors. I've been very pleased with the results.

Cost for 1 set of 16 ft cables was $20 for the in-wall dual connector twisted quad electrical cable at Home Depot, $20 for the connectors, $1 for the shrink wrap. $41 in total. As the article said a main objective is to keep inductance as low as possible the longer the run, hence the advantage of dual connectors.


http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/volume_10_2/ultralink-CL414-cable-5-2003.html

As for interconnects that's a different story, but as the Colin Miller commentary suggests the better ones have low capacitance characteristics. The Blue Jeans Low Capacitance interconnects are what I use for RCA connections.

http://www.bluejeanscable.com/store/audio/index.htm

Peter, you're right. . .












*boom*

what if they blew up a few Bose systems?

Maybe they could hook up a huge generator or battery or something to cables until they melt or show appreciable resistance.

Regarding gold and copper:
Gold is much more stable than copper, it is almost completely un-reactive in air. Copper on the other hand (as does extremely conductive silver) reacts with CO2 and O2 in the air to form non-conductive copper-salts.

That is the reason that most contacts are gold-plated, not because gold is the best conductor.

The appropriate statistical test is the chi-squared test:
chi-squared=(expected-observed)^2/expected

24/39 versus 18/39 is no where near statistically meaningful.
EPIC FAIL for the WSJ!

Not all of their myths tests are 100% objective. See the recent segments involving the blind-man-driving-while-a-drunk-jamie-instructs and the "Beer Goggles", where they rated the attractiveness of people at different levels of intoxication. These were based on subjective responses.

In such a speaker-wire/amps-matter myth episode, they could test the physical properties of the sound to see if there's any difference using various methods. Then they could do a series of psychological tests with random subjects to see if they can skew the results on sets of identical wires/amps by telling folks that one set cost $X and the other $X,XXX, or by seeing which set people prefer.

I agree that it wouldn't appeal to everyone, but it sure would to a lot of us around here!

And heck, the way they *always* make a point of asking for suggestions, I'd think that eventually they'll get around to doing it.

It looks like all it takes is for someone (tag, your it) to post it on their forum and then we can all chime in about how great of an idea it is...

Mythbuster's Idea Forums

The idea has been on their forum since day one and still nothing.

This thread was a failure since the title was conceived.

Flip a coin 300 times and you might get 61% heads and the rest tails. That's all I'm going to say.

Well, that would be clear proof that you had an imbalanced coin.

One or two could land on the edge... Then you could read minds!

Until you just couldn't stand it anymore and purposefully knocked the coin over the next morning!

Au contraire.

The concept was to see what entertainment value could be derived from touting such a weak outcome on this type of forum (can you spell "ideologue"), especially in the context of all the experiments that have been performed such that it would be theoretically quite anomalous if an experiment here and there did not reach marginal significance, as definitive proof.

It's been fun guys, although I expected better, I expected you'd get more worked up about it. You're way too cool for me.

you clearly haven't been around this forum long enough to see how many dead horses we've beaten
I think we are somewhere in the numerical range of the population of New York

That 'splains the funny smell every time I log in here.

A trollish prank to be sure, but intended to be benign. Given the pedantic tone of your responses to some of my first posts, it seemed an appropriate way to interact--at the time. I'm over it now. How about you?

I was referring to the dead horses which, I don't imagine smell very good, particularly whipped.

How many flips of a quarter did it take you?

:-P kidding...

Just one... it came up the way he hypothesized, which confirmed his theory on the balance of said quarter and nullified the need for further testing.

Oh, duh! I was trying to think how many horses that would be, estimate seems a bit high if you count each post as a dead horse, some 20 million? Perhaps multiple dead ones get whipped depending upon post.

FOUR HUNDRED BABIES HORSES!!!

(cultural reference: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRuNxHqwazs)





Warning: A kid can watch the whole thing but probably shouldn't hear the whole thing (at one part)...use headphones.

many posts were deleted
somewhere in the range of oh maybe millions eh 2x6, Peter?

Peter accumulates all deleted posts to get free stuff...

I think he wrote some code which is tabulating all those posts to count total.
Didn't some banker do that sometime in the past to collect all the rounded off cents into a bank account? than he was a millionaire within a few hours? Or is that just an urban legend?
oh so many questions,...

That was the movie "Office Space."

Peter is in the Office Space?!!


I know he HAS an office space.

And didn't they say in Office Space that they did it in Superman III or something?

I'm not sure, but check out the chick on channel 9!

I may have to put that movie in again this weekend....