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Speaker cables

Holmz

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Why is it that when people on another forum see an avatar of a speaker cable using lamp shade, they discredit the person posting?

I probably would have used something better, but I have been waiting ~5 months for the mogami to get in-stock and ship.
(and the speaker sound better with a lamp cord than with no cable… which I needed to do after replace it a monoblock with a stereo amp.)

It seems to be ire inducing.

737F09E7-C682-4CE3-B6E5-89C851CB5AC4.jpeg
 

DVDdoug

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It's fine. There is a lot of nonsense in the audiophile world! ;)

The only important parameter for speaker wire is resistance (lower is better, to a point) which is a combination of wire gauge (lower gauge = larger diameter = lower resistance) and length (longer = more resistance). Typically, speaker wire is 16 AWG (American Wire Gauge). Of course the material is important too. It should be copper wire (but it doesn't have to be expensive "special" copper). There is some aluminum speaker wire which has more resistance for the same gauge.

But, polarity is important (+ on the amp goes to + on the speaker) and from the picture it's not clear if the actual wire is marked, or just the black & red terminals. And the colors in the picture are reversed... Usually, the wire has a stripe or the markings are on one side.

Of course the wire itself doesn't care about polarity and the signal is AC, and the speakers don't really care either, but the left & right speakers should be the same so the speakers move in-and-out together. And since the speaker in the picture has separate connections for the midrange & tweeter, their polarity should match too.
 
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Holmz

Holmz

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It's fine. There is a lot of nonsense in the audiophile world! ;)

The only important parameter for speaker wire is resistance (lower is better, to a point) which is a combination of wire gauge (lower gauge = larger diameter = lower resistance) and length (longer = more resistance). Typically, speaker wire is 16 AWG (American Wire Gauge). Of course the material is important too. It should be copper wire (but it doesn't have to be expensive "special" copper). There is some aluminum speaker wire which has more resistance for the same gauge.

One can argue that capacitance and inductance could be heard or at least measured to be different.

But, polarity is important (+ on the amp goes to + on the speaker) and from the picture it's not clear if the actual wire is marked, or just the black & red terminals. And the colors in the picture are reversed... Usually, the wire has a stripe or the markings are on one side.

Of course the wire itself doesn't care about polarity and the signal is AC, and the speakers don't really care either, but the left & right speakers should be the same so the speakers move in-and-out together. And since the speaker in the picture has separate connections for the midrange & tweeter, their polarity should match too.

Yeah… My preamp is inverting, so I just switch +/- at the speaker end To make up fior it. Being upside down from the preamp.

Most equipment is not inverting, so most do not have to do those things… Or they have preamps with phase/polarity switch to invert it.
 

kongwee

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Absolute out of phase. Absolute out of phase and absolute in phase have little different. But no problem. You just can heard stereo perfectly. Someone can find absolute out of phase better because somewhere in the chain is absolute out of phase. You just bring them in phase.
 
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Holmz

Holmz

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Absolute out of phase. Absolute out of phase and absolute in phase have little different. But no problem. You just can heard stereo perfectly. Someone can find absolute out of phase better because somewhere in the chain is absolute out of phase. You just bring them in phase.

We could refer to it as polarity.

The preamp inverts the polarity
so the speaker cables “backwards” restores polarity.

… but god only knows what happens in the recording studios.
(So it could be backwards on the source.)


And the colors in the picture are reversed...

Most do not catch that.

(Well done sir!)
 

kongwee

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We could refer to it as polarity.

The preamp inverts the polarity
so the speaker cables “backwards” restores polarity.

… but god only knows what happens in the recording studios.
(So it could be backwards on the source.)
A lot of thing can happen if they diy, especially cables.
 

mhardy6647

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polarity & phase -- not the same thing.

Flipping + and - conductors won't fix phase.
 
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ThatM1key

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I used this video a lot when the Topping E30 had that polarity problem:
 

egellings

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Flipping the cord connections will fix the phase problem if the phase angle is 180 degrees out. For other angles, no.
 

mhardy6647

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Phase is about time; polarity is about sense (positive vs. negative).
A trivial difference (interpretable as "no difference") for steady-state sine waves -- less so for other AC signals, including a sine wave pulse that starts somewhere in time and then does something (goes up or down) as a function of time.
 

Matthias McCready

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Phase is only perceivable when you are hearing two instances of the same source.

For example If I am micing an acoustic guitar:

If I flip the polarity on a single mic, a difference will not be distinguished, as there is nothing to reference this to.

If I flip the polarity on one mic of two a difference will be distinguished. Now whether this difference is better or worse depends entirely on the placement of the two mics relative to each other and the source (mic placement can cause them to be out of phase with each other). Phase is a function of time, and is often frequency dependent.

---

So in a listening system as long as the speakers have the same relative phase to each other; there will not be an appreciable difference.
 
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Holmz

Holmz

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---

So in a listening system as long as the speakers have the same relative phase to each other; there will not be an appreciable difference.

Whether one can hear it or not (IMO) gets dicey as sine waves always get mentioned.
Percussion instruments are more like impulses, than continuous waves.
If a kick drum is blowing dust backwards off of the microphone, then I want my speaker to be blowing a toupee off the back of the head… and not sucking it towards the speaker like a black hole does accretion of stellar material.

Secondly, what signal that the microphone collected looks like, I want the pressure wave to look the same coming out of the speaker.
I do not want only the frequency response to look the same. I want the signal to be upright too.

Which means that I also prefer a step response to be faithful to what a step looks like.
This is irregardless of whether we can hear it. It is just a higher fidelity.

People can argue the “musicality“ of some multi-k$ cable, but the outputted signal is nothing like the inputted signal… then it seem’s like sort of a fail at some level.


But the point was more of, that they see the zip cord and since it is not an Odin cable , then there is an ad hominem discounting of any understanding being possible.
I am not the Dali Lama, but if the Dali Lama had a post on loving kindness,., but had an avatar with a MAGA hat… then visually half the people would assume that he was a nazi solely on visual cues.

Which I guess is the whole point of using nice looking cables and to some extent tube amps.
Visually if they look good, then they must also sound good.
(and visa-versa.)
 
OP
Holmz

Holmz

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The Dali Lama in a MAGA Hat
sounds like the title of a song that CAKE decided to leave off of one of its albums.
:cool:

I met a stunning lady at a party about a decade ago, that was from Sacramento and close to some members of Cake.
It was like seeing a unicorn.
 

Matthias McCready

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Whether one can hear it or not (IMO) gets dicey as sine waves always get mentioned.
Percussion instruments are more like impulses, than continuous waves.
If a kick drum is blowing dust backwards off of the microphone, then I want my speaker to be blowing a toupee off the back of the head… and not sucking it towards the speaker like a black hole does accretion of stellar material.

Secondly, what signal that the microphone collected looks like, I want the pressure wave to look the same coming out of the speaker.
I do not want only the frequency response to look the same. I want the signal to be upright too.

Which means that I also prefer a step response to be faithful to what a step looks like.
This is irregardless of whether we can hear it. It is just a higher fidelity.

I agree that a system should be linear "faithfully reproducing what is put in." That is the goal.

----

What I was getting at is that phase is changing in the recording and mixing process of the music that you are listening to, long before your system gets involved.

In using the kick drum as an example they almost never have a single mic (for most genres that is). I usually use 2 or more mics when I am recording a kick drum (not jazz ;) ). If for example you have a mic on the beater (batter head) and another mic on the resonant head of the drum; those mic diaphragms will be moving in opposite directions with each strike of the beater. The engineer involved in said project is making a decision on which one they want to be "right." Said decision probably has more to do with how things feel (getting the mix where they want it) or playing well with other mics in the room than being accurate to the acoustic waveform.

Anytime a source has more than one microphone (audible) problems with phase are being introduced. Yet rarely do we have music in mono recorded with a single microphone.

---

Additionally when it comes to the mixing of music one of the main tools available is EQ. Any type of filter (EQ, Low-pass, High-pass etc) by their nature introduce changes in phase. Pass filters in a significant way. While linear phase EQ filters do exist in the digital realm they are able to achieve this at the cost of time (8+ ms usually); linear phase EQ does not exist in the analog world.

Bottom line: any album you listen to probably has a lot of significant changes occurring in phase before it gets to your system; especially records there were mixed and master with an all analog chain. I say sit back and enjoy the music, and trust the ears the created the album for you. :)
 
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mhardy6647

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Two sine waves of opposite polarity:
Figure-1-Polarity.png


Two sine waves 180 degrees (pi radians) out of phase

sine_180-deg-phase-shift.jpg
 
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