[nick_charles]

Quote:

Originally Posted by BIG POPPA /img/forum/go_quote.gif Dan Modwright from Modwright - Elegance. Simplicity. Truth. Great audio gear from the ground up, and first class modifications. brought a Lessloss cable to demonstrate his gear at the last meet. He told me they do make a difference and liked the Lessloss.

....and Roger Russell ex McIntosh says they don't make a difference !, oh dear how can we possibly reconcile this difference ?, how about we ignore the opinons and test this empirically in a controlled fashion

Quote:

IMO some Head-fiers just don't spend enough time listening to their gear to know the sound intimately, have crummy gear, or have a set up where it is hard for a cable to be beneficial. just my 2 cents.

Sigh, the "your gear isn't good enough" express is arriving on schedule...

 

[JaZZ]

Quote:

Originally Posted by nick_charles /img/forum/go_quote.gif Sigh, the "your gear isn't good enough" express is arriving on schedule...

It may sound like a stereotype, but it can't be denied that higher resolution makes possible differences clearer or audible in the first place.
.

 

[cswann1]

Firstly, a thank you to our forum moderators who have let this thread continue this long.


To the OP, I'm with a lot of others that ask "why do you want to?". If a freind is happy, why try to make him or her unhappy by trying to make them believe that what they hear is a lie?

I for one, bought a quality IC and PC for my home set up, solely for the purpose of satisfying my curiosity. It turns out that in both cases, not really caring whether or not I could hear any difference (If I couldn't then...yay me, I don't have to worry about spending money on upgrades) I could hear immediately that there was a change in the sound of my system. In the case of the IC's, at first, I thought "what the hell. This sux". But that was because I really hadn't processed what I was hearing. Once I had I realized that the differences were actually an improvement.



Anyway, my experiences are my own and that's neither here nor there as far as this thread goes, and if half the people who read this think I'm a delusional audio nerd, I'm good with that. But one point that I do want to make is that whether or not a $100 cable is better sounding (or different at all) than a $2 cable, you usually get a product that is at least very well constructed of quality parts, should you choose a higher-end product. You can't say that about the cheap crap that comes off of a hook on a pegboard panel at Radio Shack. I went to a meet where several guys spent several minutes troubleshooting a dead amp, and it turned out to be a faulty power cable. One that was cheaply mass-produced.

The "do they or don't they make a difference" debate will rage as long as folks are willing to spend time arguing over it. But one thing that is irrefutable is that a cord that is working, sounds... 100%... without a doubt... and it cannot be denied or disproved... better than one that is not working.

 

[nick_charles]

Quote:

Originally Posted by JaZZ /img/forum/go_quote.gif It may sound like a stereotype, but it can't be denied that higher resolution makes possible differences clearer or audible in the first place. .

I think it is a testable hypothesis

 

[Young Spade]

Quote:

Originally Posted by nick_charles /img/forum/go_quote.gif I think it is a testable hypothesis

I can test that for you right now.
*plugs in stock cable to Triple.Fis and listens to music*
*removes stock cable and plugs in solid silver Lune cable*

Music is better with solid silver.
There you go.

Took a total of 10 minutes listening to the same song with the same player. The only thing I changed was the cable. The most obvious difference was having to lower the volume wheel on the T51 because of the reduced resistance the silver cable gives due to it's higher density than copper.

 

[cswann1]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Young Spade /img/forum/go_quote.gif I can test that for you right now. *plugs in stock cable to Triple.Fis and listens to music* *removes stock cable and plugs in solid silver Lune cable* Music is better with solid silver. There you go. Took a total of 10 minutes listening to the same song with the same player. The only thing I changed was the cable. The most obvious difference was having to lower the volume wheel on the T51 because of the reduced resistance the silver cable gives due to it's higher density than copper.

[size=large]Video......or it didn't happen!![/size]

 

[Young Spade]

^Haha.... but I could see where the big discussion (like this one here) can come from when comparing the difference BETWEEN top end cables. When going from a crap stock cable to a solid silver one, you're obviously going to get better resolution across the board through a simple display of physics (silver is denser therefore transmits the signal easier/cleaner than copper).

I don't really.... know a lot about differences in cables themselves but something as simple as this is easy to grasp and prove.

 

[DayoftheGreek]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Young Spade /img/forum/go_quote.gif I can test that for you right now. *plugs in stock cable to Triple.Fis and listens to music* *removes stock cable and plugs in solid silver Lune cable* Music is better with solid silver. There you go. Took a total of 10 minutes listening to the same song with the same player. The only thing I changed was the cable. The most obvious difference was having to lower the volume wheel on the T51 because of the reduced resistance the silver cable gives due to it's higher density than copper.

Density has nothing to do with resistance.

You can't just say you "grasp" something and then make statements like that. Science is NOT common sense.

 

[Young Spade]

What, it doesn't? As in it's easier for the signal to go through the cable because it's denser? That' is not true?

 

[883dave]

To the OP

The first thing you should do is mortgage everything you have.
Next go to all the financial instiutions you can, and borrow as much as you can.
Then go to all of you relatives and beg, borrow or steal all they have.

Then buy a used 1972 pinto, a megaphone and a tall soap box.

Use this to travel across the country preaching your gospel to the uneducated masses.

This is the only way you can get your message out there and convert the world.

 

[DayoftheGreek]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Young Spade /img/forum/go_quote.gif What, it doesn't? As in it's easier for the signal to go through the cable because it's denser? That' is not true?

This might be true if electricity was a physical wave, like sound, which travels faster through water and solids than it does air. This is because the molecules are far apart in air, so sound moves slowly.

Electricity travels easier through materials in which the electrons can move the easiest. Gold and lead are both much denser than silver, but they are not as conductive. Generally elements want to have a full outer shell, so elements with one electron in their outer most shell will do their best to get rid of it. Also, larger elements will have less pull on the outer most electrons because they are much further away.

 

[JaZZ]

Quote:

Originally Posted by nick_charles /img/forum/go_quote.gif I think it is a testable hypothesis

Yes – but even you won't dispute the merit of a higher resolution when it comes to detect subtle sonic differences.
.

 

[Young Spade]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DayoftheGreek /img/forum/go_quote.gif This might be true if electricity was a physical wave, like sound, which travels faster through water and solids than it does air. This is because the molecules are far apart in air, so sound moves slowly. Electricity travels easier through materials in which the electrons can move the easiest. Gold and lead are both much denser than silver, but they are not as conductive. Generally elements want to have a full outer shell, so elements with one electron in their outer most shell will do their best to get rid of it. Also, larger elements will have less pull on the outer most electrons because they are much further away.

Oh, well first off I'm going to apologize for wrongly posting my previous statement; I thought that electricity traveled in a sense similar to sound; as that is the thing that is being produced from my headphones. (That is why I thought they were somewhat similar).

Second, thanks for clearing that up. I knew that silver was a more conductive material than gold or copper as you stated, but for the wrong reasons as I know now. But that makes sense now, thanks for correcting me. I'm in this thread to learn so thank you (and anyone else feel free) for calling me out on something I post.

But I guess to build off of this, besides the material used, what are other factors that influence how efficient the cable carries the signal?

 

[DayoftheGreek]

I'm happy as long as everybody learns, and learns actually science. I'm not the most knowledgeable guy about cables, but I do know a few other things. You can effect the signal by using multiple stands of wire, instead of one thick wire. Higher frequencies travel more on the outside of the wire than on the inside (skin effect) but this is more more noticeable in higher frequencies. I'm not sure how it comes into play with audio, because in my studies of the effect we used 100Khz or more. More boundaries in the cable (metal on metal, metal on plastic, shielding on metal, etc) chance the capacitance of the wire, which would change the frequency response in very minor wars.

All of these things effect cable measurements, but the debate is on the fact that these things have very small effects on the wire. Effects that some claim are audible and some claim are not.

 

[Chef]

They do, just not at a length any sane person would use for headphones, and also not in the way many people here might think. Very nice post from another forum:

Quote:

John_Siau' date='Apr 9 2010, 13:25' Richard, Thanks for the excellent post. I definitely consider myself an objective audiophile. Differences can be measured when they exist (provided we make the correct measurements with the required accuracy). Likewise, differences can be detected in double-blind tests if they are large enough to create an audible difference. Let me present my perspective as a designer of pro-audio and audiophile equipment: I believe in ABX tests and use them on occasion when developing and testing products. I rely much more heavily on measurements when designing products. If I measure a defect and can cure the defect at little or no cost, I go ahead and fix the defect. It is usually much easier (and therefore cheaper) to fix a measured defect than it is to determine whether or not it is audible. I design with a wide safety margin to keep defects well below audibility whenever possible. Often the difference in parts cost is only pennies. If we were building millions of units, each penny would count. We build thousands of units, and our development costs are a significant portion of our total costs. The few pennies spent on better components, or extra ground plane layers on a circuit board are trivial. As an objective audiophile, I have occasionally been surprised by the unexpected: I decided to test speaker cables to show that the differences are insignificant. I expected to demonstrate that 18-GA zip cord was indistinguishable from high-quality audiophile speaker cable or even the heavy-gauge cables used by the sound reinforcement industry. I was shocked to discover that there were differences, and more shocked to discover that the zip cord performed better than most of the other cables! Let me add that we do not sell speaker cables, nor do we have any plans to do so in the near future – I have nothing to gain or lose from this discussion. All of the speaker cables tested performed well when loaded with an 8-ohm resistor. I substituted an 8-ohm JBL 4410A studio monitor, and the cables performed very differently. The speakers do not present an 8-ohm load over the entire audio band. The actual impedance varies from 1-Ohm to about 16-Ohms. The impedance variations produced frequency response variations. I then set up a demonstration that allowed us to listen to the error signal across the cable, played back through another JBL 4410A at the correct amplitude. We could switch between long cable, and short cable, and cable error signal, and demonstrate audible differences with 100 foot lengths of cable, but no audible differences at 12 feet. One surprisingly poor cable was 10-GA SO cord. The SO cord is the thick black neoprene jacketed cord (with many fine strands of copper) that is used for heavy duty AC power cords. This cord is commonly used in long lengths (100 feet or more) for large commercial sound reinforcement systems. This cord has lots of copper and had the lowest DC resistance, but surprisingly, it had the worst measured performance, and the most audible effect on the music played. The reason for the poor performance is that the cable has far too much inductance, and far more inductance that the cheap 18-GA zip cord that we tested. It turns out that the inductance of the speaker wire is much more of a factor than the DC resistance! The conductors must be closely spaced to achieve low inductance. Telephone or Ethernet twisted-pair wire has very low inductance, but high DC resistance. Multiple twisted-pairs wired in parallel can achieve near-perfect perfect performance at very long lengths. 25 pairs (in parallel) at 100 feet driving 8-ohms are astonishingly good. 10-GA SO cord at 100 feet is surprisingly bad. Final thoughts: I thought the claims about speaker wires were ridiculous, but it turns out that the differences were much larger than I expected. I thought that the heavy-gauge wire would perform the best - it was actually the worst. Like many things, expensive is not always better. Moral of the speaker-cable story: Test before claiming that differences don't exist. Test before claiming that differences do exist. Don't make claims without testing. Don't waste money on claims that are not backed by good test data.