[adamlau]

Quote:

Originally Posted by fewtch What's the claimed reason that silver wire is superior to that of copper in a general sense?

In the sense that poor build quality and materials may affect the qualities of silver cable. And in the sense that personal preference and conceived notions become factors when comparing x vs. y. While silver conductors may show improvements over copper when analyzed and graphed, there are some who prefer the sound of copper over silver. some1x, for example.

 

[aeroes]

IMO, the wire makes a difference, its all about the size, the resistance, the material used, the purity of the wire, etc. The bigger the gauge the better it will transfer the signal therefore, it will sound fuller.

 

[warubozu]

IMO wires made of different materials offers different sound qualities and ther is a difference between them. Wires made of silver offers a slightly more foward (some may say bright) sound with fast bass response. Copper wires offers a warmer sound than that of silver with bass. Silver plated copper wires offers a warm sound with fast bass response. Gold plated copper wires offers a similar sound to that of silver plated copper wire without the brightness that some may find in silver wires.

 

[Joey_V]

Wire is wire to me. I went from 16 gauge speaker wire to 12 gauge ofc copper wire. There was a difference... I used an SPL meter and I measured the one speaker with the 12 gauge wiring to be 1db louder (meaning less resisitance, hence more audio output). Thats all.

Perhaps the louder volume allows the listener to think that the new wire is giving a better and clearer sound.

 

[eitook]

Quote:

Originally Posted by akerman Yes. It's all about resistances, as a high resistance decreases the signal. Given two pieces of the same cable, with the difference that the one is twice as thick as the other one, the thin one will have twice the resistance of the thick one.

Yeah the concept of resistivity makes a lotta sense from an electrical engineer's point of view. Since R = PL / A, where R= resistance, P = conductivity and A = cross sectional area of wire. This **** gets even more complicated if you wanna bring in electromagnetic theory into play...but bottomline : WIRE MAKES -SOME- differences!!!

 

[EdipisReks]

personally, i think the only way a new cable is going to make a difference is if it has a substantially different impedance than the original. this is, of course, assuming the original cable has enough integrity and shielding to carry the full, unadulterated signal to the transducers. an additional 75 ohms certainly makes a large difference with the ER-4P, the KSC-50's and the CD3000's. i'm confident that i could successfully differentiate the phones with and without the P->S adapter in a double blind test. the sound quality change is more about the voltage and current requirements than any inherent material "musicality", etc, though.

assuming that all the supposed cable material changes are real, and not merely an artifact of human placebo effect, how is changing the headphone cable going to alter the sound when the wires used internally in the phones, for instance with the Sennheiser HD600, is unchanged? surely the thin wires connecting the cable jack to the actual drivers would negate any other change.

of course, how the cable material, independent of the impedance, would change the quality of a signal is beyond me, so i think it's a moot point anyway. the basic properties of the electrical signal being carried in the cable are well understood, and i've never met an electrical engineer or physicist who has done anything other than laugh at the idea of different materials making changes in the signal. lest that sounds flippant, i try to ask every electrical engineer or physicist i get a chance to talk to the cable question, which has been about a dozen of each profession, respectively.

these unanimous answers, combined with scientific blind tests where cables of similar impedance but different materials have proved to be remarkably hard to distinguish despite the differences claimed, lead me to doubt that the cable materials make much of a difference. unfortunately these kind of tests have rarely been attempted, as few are willing to put their product or ears up against a true scientific test. this is pretty much the same reaction that is given by "dowsers" and "psychics", and other proponents of non evidence based phenomena, which may tell something about the general quality of the claims. as an aside, i have some experience in designing blind tests and i would be more than happy to help anyone design a proper double blind procedure.

 

[bigshot]

Here is my new favorite hoodoo audiophool site...

http://www.machinadynamica.com/machina27.htm

If anyone wants to know how placebo effect is described, check out this page...

http://www.machinadynamica.com/machina30.htm

Sounds pretty familiar, doesn't it?! I've read posts about cables that sound just like that.

But the CD player chip isn't all they sell...

Here is a tweeter that doesn't put out any audible sound!

http://www.machinadynamica.com/machina28.htm

The same company sells a jar full of pebbles that you put in the corners of your room to make your electronics sound better and improve your TV reception!

http://www.machinadynamica.com/machina31.htm

I laugh, but I bet someone here has a set of Brilliant Pebbles and swears by them!

See ya
Steve

 

[Tomcat]

Quote:

Originally Posted by EdipisReks of course, how the cable material, independent of the impedance, would change the quality of a signal is beyond me, so i think it's a moot point anyway.

Yup. Most theories work much better if we make reality fit the theory - and not the other way around. So, talking about perceivable phenomena is a moot point anyway as long as we cannot fully explain them. That's one cool scientific approach, EdipisReks. Love it.

I once asked a chemicists why I prefer chocolate flavoured ice cream to vanilla flavoured ice cream. But when he said it's all in my head and there's no scientific explanation for it and just as many people like vanilla flavour, I became painfully aware of my ability to fool myself. I did the only sensible thing and stopped eating ice cream. Nowadays, I prefer cardboard. It's cheaper, and I can always imagine it was ice cream, right? I have to be careful to use the same spoon, though.

 

[plainsong]

Quote:

Originally Posted by blessingx Felt the same way, until at a mini-meet and compared two HD600s (one stock and one Zu, then swapped - later tried another pair with a Cardas). I don't doubt a lot of cable claims are BS, but all you have to do is compare side by side and it's pretty obvious. I'm not talking subtle (and believe me a don't have golden ears)... and on an even decent system it's not "the last 1-2%".

Well I don't believe in golden ears, but yeah, I compared cables the same way as you. The same with ic's. Switching to my current IC's was like taking treating my system with draino.

So I wouldn't say all cables make a difference, but good ones do. Whether or not you like the difference is another matter.

However I would say that if you don't like the core of what you're hearing, changing a cable won't help. For instance if you hate the Senn sound, using a cardas cable probably won't help you like it any more.

 

[maarek99]

There IS a difference between cables for the Senn hd580 (tried the oehlbach, headphile silver and stock). And the difference is easily noticeable.

 

[JaZZ]

Quote:

Yes. It's all about resistances, as a high resistance decreases the signal.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Joey_V I don't believe in wire.... wire is wire, IMO. As long as the wire/cable is of good quality and OFC, that should be good enough. Wire (speaker wire too) is the biggest placebo in the speaker world.... perhaps in the headphone world, too... I went from 16 gauge speaker wire to 12 gauge OFC copper wire. There was a difference... I used an SPL meter and I measured the one speaker with the 12 gauge wiring to be 1 db louder (meaning less resisitance, hence more audio output). Thats all. ... Perhaps the louder volume allows the listener to think that the new wire is giving a better and clearer sound.

Are we talking of an 8-ohm speaker here? To cause a 1-dB increase, the difference with resistance would have to be in the 3-ohm range -- rather unlikely given the 16 gauge cable as a basis. Let's say its length is 3 meters. So the 16 gauge cable has a resistance of about 0.05 ohm, whereas the 12 gauge cable has about 0.016 ohm. Nothing that would cause a measurable difference in volume level. It's rather likely that what you've measured is the production variation of the speakers.

With 300-ohm headphones the relations are even less favorable for impedance variations to have any effect: all cables I've measured are around 0.4 ohm (for 1 meter) with not more than 0.2 ohm deviation. Also the deviations with capacitance are negligible. -- For interconnects, resistance has absolutely no meaning, given load impedances in the thousands of ohms, whereas capacitance could have a tiny impact.

In my experience cable parameters usually don't have a decisive meaning when it comes to the perceived sonic differences, if any at all. The differences are real nonetheless. I once was an advocate of the no-difference paradigm myself, until I heard the clear sonic differences cables can make. I own seven HD-650 cables, and each of them has its own sonic characteristic.


Tomcat...

...nice post!

(I wonder why this thread hasn't been moved to the cable forum yet.)

 

[Andrea]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tomcat Most theories work much better if we make reality fit the theory - and not the other way around.

I loved this sentence.

Although I'd go still further, and substitute "Most" with "All" -- then it would be flawlessly true.

 

[jpr703]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tomcat I once asked a chemicists why I prefer chocolate flavoured ice cream to vanilla flavoured ice cream. But when he said it's all in my head and there's no scientific explanation for it and just as many people like vanilla flavour, I became painfully aware of my ability to fool myself. I did the only sensible thing and stopped eating ice cream. Nowadays, I prefer cardboard. It's cheaper, and I can always imagine it was ice cream, right? I have to be careful to use the same spoon, though.

LMAO!!! That's the single best response to the "cables make absolutely no difference" crowd that I've ever seen. Somebody please make this a sticky and place it at the top of the Cables Forum.

 

[ILikeMusic]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tomcat I once asked a chemicists why I prefer chocolate flavoured ice cream to vanilla flavoured ice cream. But when he said it's all in my head and there's no scientific explanation for it and just as many people like vanilla flavour, I became painfully aware of my ability to fool myself. I did the only sensible thing and stopped eating ice cream. Nowadays, I prefer cardboard. It's cheaper, and I can always imagine it was ice cream, right? I have to be careful to use the same spoon, though.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jpr703 LMAO!!! That's the single best response to the "cables make absolutely no difference" crowd that I've ever seen.

Quite a coincidence, since it's just about the lamest defense of the "silver sounds better" crowd that I've ever seen.

 

[blessingx]

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