I'm much calmer today. Back on my meds; it must be the meds. :-)
Look, everyone has something they become unhinged about; you know, where you want to beat the TV or the radio with your shoe until it begs for mercy. For me, it's pretty harmless; speaker wires. Otherwise I'm an easy going, go along to get along kind of guy. It's a Swiss cheese kind of thing; mostly solid except for where the holes are.
Amplifiers when done right are exquisitely designed works of engineering. Speakers even more so because they are works of art. Art is what transcends engineering because what you are after cannot often be defined by formulized, didactic formulas. Speakers transform emotionless volts and amperes, 0.01% TDH, 15 to 50kHz bandwith, 120db S/N ratio and all that other EE stuff into sound waves.
It is only those sound waves and our perception of them that can touch that something significant inside all of us.
Our ears are the gatekeepers; bad speakers, nothing. Good speakers, they can transport you and summon all manner of blissfull emotions; tastes, sights, touch and memories.
Sound, (and we are talking about artificial sound here, you are not in the concert hall after all), is best when it's free of artifice. The best speakers have the humility to make themselves transparent. That is the penultimate goal. Just you and the music.
In this hierarchy of two, the amplifier matters less. It is hard today to make and sell a bad amplifier. The truth is a $99 Sherwood stereo is within 95% of the best $4,000 boutique amp at normal (non-painful) listening levels. I have 'scopes, I have THD analysers, I have pure sinewave generators. I have personally tested everything I've bought (and passed on to my kids). The magic is not in the amps.
I used to design vacuum tube power amplifiers way back when. A good MOSFET power amp with little feedback does just as well. I believe instruments and a 'scope better here.
The magic IS in the speakers. This is something that defies measurement if the speakers being compared are free of cheap flaws. Here it also preference comes into play. We are individuals and what is bliss for you might be irritating and distracting for me. This is only natural, we are talking about the speaker to listener interface; there are no electronic instruments to measure and quantify that.
My advice? Spend money on the speakers. They are the car, the amp is the tires. You can always buy cool tires later.
Back to wires.
Wires connecting the two are completely inconsequential. They are in EE terms, passive components. Passive components cannot modify a signal. They cannot distort it, they cannot accentuate it, they cannot do anything except attenuate it. If they attenuate, turn up the volume 1db!
This thing really kills me. The advertisments for the "Bethoveen and Kiss approved cables" appeal to the dumbest and dollar rich among you. P.T. Barnum had your measure many years ago.
My white-coated attentant says it's time for more meds. Ahrg...
Mariss
