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Audio Myths... A mostly civilized discussion

ZeosPantera

brobillard

Mar 27, 2019

About wire speakers and interconnects... "I credit the success of the speaker wire industry to their expert sales and marketing ability. However, it is my experience that ordinary copper wire, as long as it's heavy enough, is just as good as name brands.
Looking at this from a different perspective, there will always be those who will want expensive wire, not because there is an audible difference, but because they may value pride of ownership and prestige in a similar way to that of owning a Tiffany lamp or a Rolex watch." Roger Russell, Author, Artist, Engineer, Inventor, Photographer, Collector, and formerly Director of Acoustic Research at McIntosh Laboratory, Inc. and the originator of McIntosh Loudspeakers

http://www.roger-russell.com/wire/wire.htm

http://www.roger-russell.com/

JZStudios

Mar 28, 2019

brobillardI don't buy into the whole OFC copper has better aligned atoms, and therefore electron current is better leading to an appreciable sound difference either. I have read that if you plan on essentially burying the wires OFC is a good way to go though since it's more resistant to internal corrosion. Doing my own "research" on a lazy afternoon one source took very accurate measurements of current draw and flow between OFC copper and standard wire and found them to be near identical, while unsurprisingly Monster Cable claims that in a blind test people chose OFC copper over standard wire a majority of the time. Smells like marketing BS to me.

Synecdoche

Apr 2, 2019

brobillardThough at least the Tiffany Lamp or Rolex will retain value and in some cases go up. $1000 speaker wire 10 years later would fetch $1 on Craigslist. Probably not even that long. I agree with you, for the most part speaker wire is speaker. Sure, it’s good to have the right gauge, shielding from interference, but much past that it doesn’t really matter.

thexder1

Apr 3, 2019

brobillardThat is always interesting to see people say that with all of the marketing out there saying otherwise. I read about a group of audio engineers doing testing and came up with a mechanism to switch very quickly between different cables with same amps and speakers. After 100's of blind tests they determined that no one could tell the difference between good old lamp cord and expensive speaker cables, and the science backs that up. The only thing to pay attention to is the size of the wire vs power and distance it is run, more power should have bigger wires, longer distance should have bigger wires. For home setups 14 gauge is generally going to be enough, if you have a big room maybe get 12 gauge, other than that just get the cheapest you can, it really does not matter.

ElectronicVices

2937

Apr 3, 2019

thexder1Never been much into cables "improving" things. As you mentioned, long runs or higher power delivery needs (inefficient speakers) do warrant proper gauge wire. I do see benefit in quality connectors and soldering. Given that my soldering skills have gone to hell in a hand basket I wouldn't be opposed to paying BJC for some well made speaker cables. Same with some of Audio Advisor's "bulk/house" options. I have had some luck with interconnects that employ better shielding as I have a ton of gear in an very small space and some of my interconnect runs are quite long. I absolutely do not understand cables that cost more than $120, as quality connectors can run up to about $80 a pair at the extremes. Most of mine clock in well under 30 bucks and come from monoprice or Amazon.

Stevangelist

Apr 11, 2019

brobillardFully agree. I nearly melted a TRRS 3.5mm terminal to smitherines while soldering but you know what? No shorts, sounds perfect! Take that, cryogenically frozen cables!

monte081

Apr 12, 2019

brobillard"Copper wire, as long as it is heavy enough" will not do. Mind you, from the electrical standpoint, the statement is 100% true. But there is another side of the story, and I urge all that are reading this to consider mechanical characteristics of the cable as a combination of the wire, insulation, and connectors. Especially for headphone cables. I am not advocating $1000 cables, but I would stay away from the cheapest cables and invest a bit into the mechanically solid setup. Making your own cables IS an option.

thexder1

Apr 18, 2019

ElectronicVicesDefinitely for line level analog signals the larger cables and shielding can make a big difference, but that is like a $15-30 cable not $100+ cable. I try to use digital interconnect where possible as that is almost completely immune to interference, though you might need higher quality cable to handle the data rates (kind of wish I could just send it all digitally over standard ethernet cable as that is cheap, readily available and easily handles the necessary data rates). I generally use the monoprice cables where I find the ones I need as they tend to be cheap, but have good connectors and the cables themselves are generally good enough, I think my whole set of cables for my computer was like $50 for long runs from sound card to amplifier adapters from 3.5mm TRRS to RCA etc. No reason to spend more and I probably could have gotten away with spending less without loosing quality.

ElectronicVices

2937

Apr 19, 2019

thexder1A digital interconnect, assuming you are referring to USB or Coaxial is a series of very small variations in electrical pulses that recreate the binary signal aka digital. They can easily be impacted by interference (assuming you have a highly noise environment) and are oversimplified by many enthusiasts. I was a complete cable non-believer but experience has taught me otherwise. Optical has it's own issues as the ability to lock on to a signal at or greater than 96khz is often very difficult for the receiving end. Also many optical cables are cheaply made with plastic fiber optic strands that may not refract the pulses accurately. Glass based optical cables are extremely fragile and prone to fracture. You can choose to believe or not, audio is a very personal thing but shielding on digital cables can make a difference in the right environment. Your $15 cable more than likely won't maintain a consistent connection over a series of many years. How do I know... almost all of my Monoprice cables are loose as hell after being reconfigured a half dozen or so times in the last decade.

(Edited)

thexder1

Apr 22, 2019

ElectronicVicesAs for digital signals, you are correct about the small electrical pulses, but digital by definition means that it just needs to determine if it is a 1 or a 0 which is very easy even with large amounts of interference. It is true that digital signals degrade over distance more quickly than analog signals, but for instance if you want uncompressed audio that is at or above the maximum frequency and volume range the human ear can comfortably hear then you are talking about something that is very easy to do and has been done for several decades on cheap coaxial cable or cheap twisted pair cable over 100 meters or more. The only problems are in the most extreme electrically noisy environments like A/C ducts, flourecent lights, elevators or industrial equipment, it is quite rare to encounter data issues on a copper digital like outside of those situations. For the optical, I agree that most TOSLINK cables are plastic fiber, but the required data rates are so low that generally does not matter, though I have not investigated far enough to see if the difference can be heard. That being said my own experience with them has generally come up with better results than analog cables, and about the same as digital. As for the glass fiber, it is more fragile, but not as easy to shatter as most people think, I have used that quite a bit in networking and have not encountered any problems with it. For what the average home user does with cables the glass fiber will likely be a bit of a problem, but if you have some idea of the bend radius requirements then you are very unlikely to encounter any problems with it. As for the monoprice cables coming loose, I would not know I don' t move things around more than twice a decade... because there is no reason I have found to do so.

Mowgli66

May 13, 2019

ElectronicVicesRespectfully, the bandwidth of a fiber-optice cable is orders of magnitude greater than required for audio. The transmission of those audio packets require such a small part of the spectrum that there is an EXTREMELY robust error-correction algorithm built-in. Bits is bits, when it come to audio.

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