Scientific reasons why cables matter for audio

[Monster]

Something and pretty much *anything* as long as it's a decent conductor.

Beyond that, we get to Answer 2: Lack of education on the topic. :-D

That's an interesting comment.

Quite a few years ago I was in an audio shop to buy a pair of speaker stands. While I was there I was persuaded to buy some speaker cable. It was more expensive than I had previously considered but not really stupid expensive, I think there was an end of reel discount, so I bought it. Both the speaker stands and the speaker cables are still in use today, even though the speakers, and the rest of the system, have changed more than once. So far, so boring.

Now, in my teens, I used to commonly use multistrand 5 amp lighting cable for my speaker cable. It was very cheap and seemed to work OK with what was then my fairly cheap and, by today's standards, pretty primitive system. To me, in those days, that cable sounded OK too.

Now my question is, in the light of current knowledge, is using 5 amp lighting cable OK? Do cables really not matter to that degree?

 

[kyuu]

And just because he is allegedly passionate for sound also doesn't mean he can get away with silly AI thumbnails. Which is always a bad sign these days because it means laziness and a certain dismission of real artists and art. A hand drawn funny scribbling on paper would be more... genuine, real, human.

If you look at that cable in the thumbnail for a few seconds, all the "WTF even is this" buzzers start to go off.

 

[voodooless]

If you look at that cable in the thumbnail for a few seconds, all the "WTF even is this" buzzers start to go off.

Well, it perfectly mirrors the line of reasoning these people follow.

It looks smart and it feels right, but the second you actually look, you see it for what it is.

 

[Ropeburn]

Well, it perfectly mirrors the line of reasoning these people follow.

It looks smart and it feels right, but the second you actually look, you see it for what it is.

Slop.

 

[Mr. Swordfish]

ahh, like studying statistics!
View attachment 528723
source: https://xkcd.com/552/

Thinking correlation implies causation is a very very dangerous thing to do.

Anyone who does this is going to die.

 

[Oddball]

I think they should make the cables that are pet proof. I hosted a friend's dog for a month and the cute but unbehaving dog chewed through some of my speaker cables. I enjoyed the time with the dog as did not have any in my house for a while, but yeah, now need to replace the affected cables. Curious that the dog focused on surround backs and L front wide.

So cables definitively matter.

 

[Daverz]

Now my question is, in the light of current knowledge, is using 5 amp lighting cable OK? Do cables really not matter to that degree?

Lamp cord is fine for home audio.

 

[Rocky Maine]

Have you seen this? I didn't watch the whole thing, but in short, it talks about the differences that cable impedance can make. If we get different results when the cable impedance is combined with the speaker impedance, wouldn't we see this when we measure the frequency response?

 

[diddley]

For me, it was all said and done when I found out how thin the speaker cables in side the box where. Their lies your answer.

 

[voodooless]

Slop.

More like a simulacrum.

 

[kyuu]

I think they should make the cables that are pet proof. I hosted a friend's dog for a month and the cute but unbehaving dog chewed through some of my speaker cables. I enjoyed the time with the dog as did not have any in my house for a while, but yeah, now need to replace the affected cables. Curious that the dog focused on surround backs and L front wide.

So cables definitively matter.

 

[Ropeburn]

Lamp cord is fine for home audio.

Also quite pretty if you're into that. Hemp rope and all.

 

[Mr. Swordfish]

Not to mention that inside any speaker is a different wire, that is usually much thinner, connecting the terminals to the x/o and speaker’s voice coil terminals. I guess it has to be outside of the speaker for it to be an important consideration.

This is why you need to open up your speakers and replace the lousy wire they came with with mag^H^H^H superior audiophile wire.

And while you are at it, all those crossover components need to be replaced too, and before any smartypants here tries to tell you that this won't make any audible difference, it most certainly will, especially if you replace the components with "better" values. A few more microfarads or millihenries will do do wonders.

/sarcasm

 

[Mr. Swordfish]

Now my question is, in the light of current knowledge, is using 5 amp lighting cable OK? Do cables really not matter to that degree?

The back of the envelope calculation shows that if you're driving an 8 ohm speaker with 800 watts you're pushing 10 amps through the speaker cable.

Do you have an 800 WPC amp? And if you do, do you turn it up all the way?

Ordinary lamp cord uses 18AWG wire and is rated for 10 amps.

200 watts into 8 ohms is 5 amps, which would be 22 AWG. Probably still fine, but 22AWG is awfully thin from a mechanical perspective.

The main electrical property of speaker cable is the resistance, and if the resistance of the wire starts approaching the impedance of your speaker it can have audible effects (mostly just attenuation). 10 meters of 22AWG cable will have a resistance of about half an ohm. Not worth worrying about, but at a certain point, how cheap do you need to be?

 

[Oddball]

View attachment 528996

Thanks - that looks helpful, but more like a cat or dog-like-cat size grade. I was dealing with a proper sized German Shepherd so something more military grade would be appropriate.

 

[mhardy6647]

Thinking correlation implies causation is a very very dangerous thing to do.

Anyone who does this is going to die.

Yes. A well documented fact!

 

[pablolie]

Lamp cord is fine for home audio.

Yes indeed it does. I have good cables (~800 for speakers), but it's because I like the looks, not because I think they add even remotely to SQ or even measurable performance (as thousands of measurements have proven).

 

[amirm]

Just post this to a question he asked in the youtube comment:

@PassionforSound
13 hours ago
Amir, what measurements did you take to test the different propagation speeds of different frequencies in the wires?

@AudioScienceReview​

@PassionforSound Why do you ask? They are all near speed of light, not sound, but light.

To make such measurements, you need to test pulses in nano-seconds with incredibly fast rise time. We are talking Gigahertz bandwidth. The necessary digital scope and probes you need will cost well over $100,000! Toy measurements such as what I showed in the above youtube measurements may not apply. I paid that much for my Klippel analyzer for speakers. So if there is merit, I would spend that kind of money.FYI, Galen doesn't have such gear either. He is showing you a bunch of graphs and computed values from elsewhere.Importantly, he makes catastrophic mistakes. Go to 17:00 timestamp in his video: https://youtu.be/hUEkhglCItI?si=yP8DMPsP32JI-GTR&t=1039

Read the top of the slide. It says the impedance is computed for 500 feet of cable!!! Do you use 500 foot speaker cable???Let's prove how that computation is insane for our applications. He is showing an impedance of 500 ohm at 20 Hz. Let's say your speaker is 5 ohm. This means your cable will have 100 times higher impedance than your speaker. In simple electrical terms then, the cable will chew up 99% of the voltage, and your speaker, 1%!!! That means all the power is dissipated in the cable and not your speakers!!! If so, your speaker cables would get really hot when driven by a high power amplifier which we never see.We do however, see that if we run 500 feet of speaker cable in your walls, or in a large venue. There, high voltage drive is used to help reduce such effects. Not in your audio system with 20 feet of wiring.

I bet you not a single person sitting there, as well as you, understood that he is showing you complete misinformation. He is hiding behind complex scenarios where cables are used in high frequencies and long distances, to confuse his audience that these things apply to normal cables. Since typical audiophile, or even a degreed engineer, may not understand the specifics here, they fall for the conclusions that are not based on any reality. As I mentioned I fully understand what is saying and why nothing he says applies to audio. Why else would any of that fail to show anything when I play music through a system?

And if he is right, then all the other cable companies must be wrong because they don't obey his rules. How come there are advocates for those cables? And the ones you used and raved about? Those don't have matching propagation delays, right?If I sat through his presentation, I would have just one question: have you run a repeated blind test to show that the sound is actually improved with his cable. Should be easy if he thinks speaker cables have whopping 500 ohms and 40 degree phase shift at 20 Hz! If all you care about sound not measurements that I show, that you should be your requirement. Don't be dismissive of my measurements in audio band, yet believe a bunch of powerpoint slides.

 

[amirm]

this is the slide by the way:

Note how he claims at 20 hz, we have a 509 ohm impedance! Fortunately he highlights, likely by accident, that said impedance applies to 500 feet of wire!

 

[Jim Taylor]

This is why you need to open up your speakers and replace the lousy wire they came with with mag^H^H^H superior audiophile wire.

And while you are at it, all those crossover components need to be replaced too, and before any smartypants here tries to tell you that this won't make any audible difference, it most certainly will, especially if you replace the components with "better" values. A few more microfarads or millihenries will do do wonders.

For the sake of less informed visitors reading our posts, it would be helpful for you to add a sarcasm emoji. Otherwise, Poe's law takes effect.