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

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.