Science or marketing blabbering?
Sep 5, 2009 at 4:52 PM Thread Starter Post #1 of 22

greenhorn

Headphoneus Supremus
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"I use 26 awg wire, because the cutoff frequency which skin effect starts to come into play with 26 awg wire, is 107Khz, which allows for it to be used to reproduce a perfect, unaltered signal transmission of 96Khz playback recordings."

"[But...]a 96Khz sampling rate has no bearing on the frequency response of a headphone."

"No but it does have bearing on the signal being transferred through the cable to the headphone. If you alter the higher frequencies, you are thus altering the audible ones as well. Think of it as though the audio signal is a bunch of magnets, holding itself together in specific formation via the magnetic fields attracting and rejecting one another. if you alter the positioning of some of the magnets (even ones out of audible range) you are thus altering the magnetic fields that are holding the audio signal in a bit perfect formation."

Well, from my point of view the title question is a rhetorical one. So basically I posted this for everybody's enjoyment
smily_headphones1.gif
.
 
Sep 5, 2009 at 5:45 PM Post #3 of 22
Quote:

Originally Posted by greenhorn /img/forum/go_quote.gif
Well, from my point of view the title question is a rhetorical one.


Touche.

k
 
Sep 5, 2009 at 5:50 PM Post #4 of 22
Quote:

Originally Posted by iriverdude /img/forum/go_quote.gif
On speaker cable, some people use thinner wire for treble, thicker for bass, or thinner strands for treble, thicker for bass.


You mean within the same cable?

If so, Monster Cable started that some 20+ years ago.

Didn't have anything to do with inductance though. It was more of a skin effect thing. They had larger conductors in the center of the cable and smaller conductors toward the outside. The idea being that due to skin effect, the bass frequencies would travel down the larger center conductors and the higher frequencies down the smaller outer conductors.

k
 
Sep 5, 2009 at 6:04 PM Post #5 of 22
Hehe luckily most people cannot hear above ~18 kHz
tongue.gif


No seriously, where do you have this from greenhorn?
 
Sep 5, 2009 at 6:54 PM Post #8 of 22
It's a real physical phenomenon but he's said it in a way that makes no sense at all. Skin effect only really comes into play with low frequencies and even then it's going to make barely a difference for the loads on headphone wires.
 
Sep 5, 2009 at 7:20 PM Post #9 of 22
Quote:

Originally Posted by DanielCox /img/forum/go_quote.gif
Skin effect only really comes into play with low frequencies....


eek.gif


Say what?

Skin effect only really comes into play with low frequencies?

Which skin effect are you referring to? The only skin effect I'm aware of that only comes into play with low frequencies is the one involved with having sex.

k
 
Sep 5, 2009 at 8:18 PM Post #11 of 22
Quote:

Originally Posted by DanielCox /img/forum/go_quote.gif
That's right, skin depth increases with decreasing frequency.


True enough, but skin depth increasing with decreasing frequency isn't skin effect coming into play as you said. Rather, that's skin effect going out of play.

The "problem" of skin effect comes into play as the skin depth decreases, as it does with increasing frequency, which has the effect of reducing the cross sectional area of the conductor for higher frequencies causing them to see a greater resistance compared to lower frequencies.

This makes skin effect a high frequency effect, and one which comes into play at high frequencies, not low frequencies.

Or was your "that's right" you correcting yourself rather than reasserting your statement? If so, then my apologies.

k
 
Sep 5, 2009 at 11:25 PM Post #12 of 22
I see what you mean. You want a cable that in thin enough so resistance is equal for audible frequencies while I'm talking about a cable that is thick so i can get the lowest resistance possible.
 
Sep 6, 2009 at 12:10 AM Post #13 of 22
This is just plain BS!!

When there is money at stake money is the king of the hill. You can make up whatever nonsense you want because most likely there will always be a couple of guys willing to believe in fairy tales. Brake a glass, make a picture of it and call it art. Sell it for 10 grand and wait for some guy to give up that money without asking anything...

And yeah, I am having a hell of a day. If someone here started using their brains a bit more... Damn it, common sense is really uncommon, isn't it?
 
Sep 6, 2009 at 1:03 AM Post #14 of 22
Quote:

Originally Posted by DanielCox /img/forum/go_quote.gif
I see what you mean. You want a cable that in thin enough so resistance is equal for audible frequencies while I'm talking about a cable that is thick so i can get the lowest resistance possible.


Then you want litz.

k
 
Sep 6, 2009 at 1:47 PM Post #15 of 22
"Even with poor-quality wire, an audible degradation of sound may not exist. Many supposedly audible differences in speaker wire can be attributed to listener bias or the placebo effect.
Listener bias is enhanced in no small part by the popular manufacturers' practice of making claims about their products either with no valid engineering or scientific basis, or of no real-world significance.
Many manufacturers catering to audiophiles (as well as those supplying less expensive retail markets) also make unmeasurable, if poetic, claims about their wire sounding open, dynamic, or smooth. To justify these claims, many cite electrical properties such as skin effect, characteristic impedance of the cable, or resonance, which are generally little understood by consumers. None of these has any measurable effect at audio frequencies, though each matters at radio frequencies[2]."

source
 

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