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

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.