Scientific reasons why cables matter for audio

[Haskil]

Here is the whole thing in English, courtesy of Claude...

It was quite commendable of that magazine to publish such an article amidst all the pro-cable esotericism and marketing jargon ! For my part, since then, I've been using four-conductor, 1.5 mm² multi-strand electrical cable in a flexible sheath, with the conductors connected in pairs, to connect my speakers to my amplifier...

 

[pinger]

I think most, if not all, Stereophile contributors believe there are audio qualities that can’t be measured or explained by measurements. Then again, I haven’t read anything they’ve published in a long time

That's called religion not Science. Or maybe $cience LOL

 

[pinger]

Years ago I believed the cable bull$hit. I had the heavy monster cable speaker wires LOL. I cleaned out my closet a year or so ago and saw the monster cables sitting there. Still not using them LOL. Who needs those heavy unsightly things going to my speakers? I dont

 

[Speedskater]

With this punchline:

"Thus, at audio frequencies, a cable less than 2,000 ft long is no more complicated than its series resistance and parallel capacitance. As the cable becomes longer, or as frequency increases, the cable will begin to behave as a transmission line. "

Everything else in the article assumes we are talking about long lengths of cables carrying audio which become transmission lines, not what an audiophile uses in his system.

That is exactly the point that Jim Brown was trying to make.
Of no importance in audiophile systems.

 

[mhardy6647]

Well, this is nice. My last response disappeared. I post it again just now. It vanished again. So I just wrote a one-liner saying my replies are deleted. That too disappeared instantly!

I can't believe he asks me a question but makes sure I can't respond.

oy vey.
Clicking "like" only because we don't have the option of clicking

 

[DSJR]

I've been continually surprised how 'good' the Amazon Basics RCA cable is (also actually, the rather different Amazon Basics 3.5mm to RCA cables I have). If these were dressed up with woven jacket and foo labelling, plus posh *looking* plugs, these cables could sell for hundreds in a higher-end dealer and nobody would be any the wiser I believe (dealers in the UK used to make over 50% profit margin on cables, not sure these days)...

 

[delta76]

The truth obvious hurts and need to be hidden Amir

Someone will get very defensive and even aggressive when their wallet is hurt. Sometimes even more so than emotions

 

[Mart68]

If these were dressed up with woven jacket and foo labelling, plus posh *looking* plugs,

Expensive cables essentially are amazon basics dressed up like that.

Plugs on mine are KLE, £100 for four. Don't ask.

 

[FrantzM]

Well, this is nice. My last response disappeared. I post it again just now. It vanished again. So I just wrote a one-liner saying my replies are deleted. That too disappeared instantly!

I can't believe he asks me a question but makes sure I can't respond.

Perhaps your response signal ran at 20 Hz on 1500 feet of audio cable …

 

[anonyless]

Well, this is nice. My last response disappeared. I post it again just now. It vanished again. So I just wrote a one-liner saying my replies are deleted. That too disappeared instantly!

I can't believe he asks me a question but makes sure I can't respond.

i can still see your original comment (https://www.youtube .com/watch?v=FXncFIHDjpU&lc=UgzG5hIqe53waTWr95Z4AaABAg ) , the one with 7 likes. but it shows "5 replies" and it only shows me one by Michael something. the rest of the replies are hidden

 

[Axo1989]

Well, this is nice. My last response disappeared. I post it again just now. It vanished again. So I just wrote a one-liner saying my replies are deleted. That too disappeared instantly!

I can't believe he asks me a question but makes sure I can't respond.

I guess that's the very definition of a rhetorical question.

 

[amirm]

i can still see your original comment (https://www.youtube .com/watch?v=FXncFIHDjpU&lc=UgzG5hIqe53waTWr95Z4AaABAg ) , the one with 7 likes. but it shows "5 replies" and it only shows me one by Michael something. the rest of the replies are hidden

I wrote a shorter reply and that stayed. Are you not able to see my last reply where he asked for measurements?

 

[Axo1989]

I wrote a shorter reply and that stayed. Are you not able to see my last reply where he asked for measurements?

If we are talking about the OP video (the link from @anonyless is broken for me) a search for @AudioScienceReview gets no results for me just now, so I assume they are being removed continuously?

Scratch that, maybe the comments hadn't completely loaded, there's one from you (posted '2 days ago' so I guess the original) at the top as 'highlighted comment' now (but no others) with replies ... one from a poster noting that other replies are missing, and one reply from the YouTuber himself (posted '3 hours ago' ie at the time I'm posting this) containing a long quote from Galen (who I assume is relevant somehow but I'm not planning to watch the video to find out). Anything intervening is gone.

 

[amirm]

Scratch that, maybe the comments hadn't completely loaded, there's one from you (posted '2 days ago' so I guess the original) at the top as 'highlighted comment' now (but no others) with replies ... one from a poster noting that other replies are missing, and one reply from the YouTuber himself (posted '3 hours ago' ie at the time I'm posting this) containing a long quote from Galen (who I assume is relevant somehow but I'm not planning to watch the video to find out). Anything intervening is gone.

That last bit was written by me. Galen is the owner of the Iconoclast cables and is the one that is giving the presentation. The youtuber is doing a bit of voice over but otherwise, adding no content other than insulting me for not knowing what I am doing.

 

[anonyless]

I wrote a shorter reply and that stayed. Are you not able to see my last reply where he asked for measurements?

no - this is what i can currently see

 

[Wesseling Audio Lab]

The wonderful old stories from Stereophile!

"Superficially, there was still no difference. But this entire business is about subtle changes, and, indeed, activating the DBS system had made a difference. From my usual listening seat, one side sounded like the other. Sitting closer, with reduced room influence and, perhaps, suboptimal driver integration, the DBS side had a slightly better, smoother transition from the midrange to the treble."

AudioQuest Cheetah interconnects & Mont Blanc speaker cables Kalman Rubinson, November 2004 | Stereophile.com

Kalman Rubinson wrote about AudioQuest's DBS cables in November 2004 (Vol.27 No.11): Over a period of several months I fielded requests from Joe Harley of AudioQuest to install their new Dielectric-Bias System (DBS) cables in place of the AQ cables I already had. I cannot convey how...

www.stereophile.com

 

[solderdude]

Thread should be called:

Scientific reasons why cables don't really matter for audio​

The explanation from Galen is NOT of any importance for speaker cable (only resistance is) and not for audio interlinks.
It is important for RF and digital connections.

 

[SSS]

Flipping through the Galen papers it seems to me that the measurements and formula are correct. The stated effects are electrically there. My main point is whether the conclusion regarding audio sound quality is right? Galen produces probably good cables. As an former Belden engineer he knows for sure how cables are to be made. In a youtube presentation he admits the depending on amplifier and loudspeaker properties a sound benefit may or may not exist. It needs to be tried out. For me a loudspeaker and its chassis have so much more parameters defining their performance that I think that the little more from a cable does not improve much if any the sound performance.

 

[wwenze]

If you replace speaker cables with air it doesn't work.

Therefore, there must be a transition between "completely not working" and "practically perfect"

That transition comes at a very low price point

I mean, we don't even give a **** that RCA connectors aren't 75ohm, yet some people are still happily selling $1000 SPDIF cables/DACs using RCA. People can't even decide if they want coaxial or twisted pair for their interconnects, which is not a question for digital. Try off-spec cables for commercial wiring, and you're in for a bad time.

 

[NTK]

Be very careful when a person talks about electrical cable, and confuses the "impedance" of the cable with the "characteristic impedance" of the cable. Chances are that the person is giving you a full load of BS, or clueless on the subject, or both.

Let's take a look at where this "characteristic impedance" came from. Below is the derivation part copied from the Wikipedia page.

Characteristic impedance - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Notice that at the start, voltage and current are both expressed as functions of time (t) and position along the length of the cable (x)? This gives you the first clue that the "characteristic impedance" only matters when you expect there are significant variations in the voltage (and current) level along the length of the cable. So ask yourself: Are you expecting big voltage variations along the cable, that the voltage at the output end of the cable is going to be very different from the input end? If not, the characteristic impedance doesn't matter. Electricity travels at 2/3 the speed of light in copper cables. Unless the cable is very long (kilometers) or the signal frequency is very high (RF). At 2/3 speed of light, the wavelength of a 20 kHz signal is ~10 km.

Let's dig a little further. The starting equations (telegraph equations) describe dV/dx & dI/dx, which are changes in the amplitudes with position x in differential form (time dependence is factored out to the e^(jωt) term).

A few steps down, we got the expressions for V(x) and I(x) in terms of k & A & A₁. The characteristic impedance Z₀ is the ratio A/A₁, which are to describe variations in V or I in different positions along the cable. Therefore, the characteristic impedance is only relevant for those that care about what happen in the spatial domain of an electrical signal propagating in a cable. Which means it is only relevant when the cable length is of the similar order of magnitude as the wavelength of the signal in the cable, or longer.