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Do Speaker Cables Make a Difference? Science Weighs In.

Pandovski said:
All AR speakers were made with 18g internal wiring.
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This may actually be a good "first approximation" place to start when choosing speaker cable. Although, I don't know how many people are willing to open up their speakers to check the internal wiring. If we assume AR chose this because it is "good enough" to get the job done, then we should at least arrive at a "good enough" setup in our home. If the internal 18ga wire is only a foot long, and you desire your speakers to be 10 feet from the amp, then you only need to select a wire that has 10x cross-sectional area. That way, the losses of the interal wire are identical to the losses external to the speaker. In this case, a wire with 10x cross-sectional area of the 18ga is 8ga. So, if you want to wire your ARs to your amp 10ft away (and they only have one foot internal), 8ga is a good place to start. If you desire your stereo to be any better than "good enough," like you strive for a superior audio experience at home, then you'll probably want more copper in your cable than 8ga will give you. If you have a notion that L and C play any sort of role in a cable, then the topology of the cable will be of very great importance.
 
I had a spool of cable and loved messing about with cables and caps. Also I hate those wire termination connectors they use in speakers. They are the bottleneck including rheostats, lpads and switches when they corrode.

Improvements came when I sprayed contact cleaners on the connectors and when I tinned them with solder. Then I remember I read on TNT how corrosion can creep up inside cables. So i started throwing the internal wiring altogether and using my own from a spool.

The cleaned and tinned connectors bugged me and I would eventually just go back in and remove them, wire up my own cable and directly solder. The improvements I would hear from cleaning the first time would not happen when rewiring the second time.

Internal wiring is short, its not supposed to make a big change when you increase gauge. Unless the factory gauge was insufficient, which rarely is with well designed speakers.

House de Kris said:
This may actually be a good "first approximation" place to start when choosing speaker cable. Although, I don't know how many people are willing to open up their speakers to check the internal wiring. If we assume AR chose this because it is "good enough" to get the job done, then we should at least arrive at a "good enough" setup in our home. If the internal 18ga wire is only a foot long, and you desire your speakers to be 10 feet from the amp, then you only need to select a wire that has 10x cross-sectional area. That way, the losses of the interal wire are identical to the losses external to the speaker. In this case, a wire with 10x cross-sectional area of the 18ga is 8ga. So, if you want to wire your ARs to your amp 10ft away (and they only have one foot internal), 8ga is a good place to start. If you desire your stereo to be any better than "good enough," like you strive for a superior audio experience at home, then you'll probably want more copper in your cable than 8ga will give you. If you have a notion that L and C play any sort of role in a cable, then the topology of the cable will be of very great importance.
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When you become an OCD Audio Nervosa driven Tweaker, :screwy: the main motto is "the factory always chose that'll do" therefore you try to over engineer everything, cables, caps, pour solder on crossover tracks, pour dampening inside cd players, put granite slabs under everything, replace electrolytic with poly etc. etc. Its just madness.

I'm better off without it.:dunno: I have bigger fish to fry. I want Martin Logan ESLs, I want to build an OB system, I want tubes etc. :naughty:
 
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I've replaced the crossover wiring in Boston Acoustics A-150s and A/D/S L780s with solid core copper 16awg and yes it made an audible difference to me. Whether or not someone on the internet will dispute what I heard matters little to me.
 
Do Speaker Cables Make a Difference?

Of course. Remove them, and the difference is immediately apparent!

***

I recently changed out from 10 to 12 gauge here. Only difference I noticed is that it's a lot easier to get the wire into the connectors now ... only reason I changed out the wire is I needed to go smaller to fit a Niles speaker switch I just added to the system so I can A/B amps ...
 
yawning.jpg


I'm yawning...I'm yawning some more...ZZZzzzzz....

Try it...ears on...or it never happened.
 
What gauge are those wires on the photo?

710vivd.jahold.jpg


Interesting how even cost no object or just decent Hi-Fi speakers have 16-18 gauge internal wiring and those cheap connectors. Does Vivid Audio G1 Giya or B&W are likely to cheapen out on wire gauge?
 
"Normal speaker cable doesn't have significant capacitance or inductance, but its resistance does vary somewhat -- especially with thinner cables, because all other things being equal, the thinner the wire the greater the resistance."

then you perform your Ohms Law and the equation is
Speaker Cables make no difference unless you are using cables way too small.

"his chart assumes a minimum speaker impedance of 4 ohms and a maximum speaker impedance of 40 ohms"

So in order to get a result we need speakers of 40 ohms

"The biggest change was a boost of maximum +0.4 dB between 4.3 and 6.8 kHz."

and once again, the average ear needs 3db to notice a difference and we are measuring 0.4 db,

Cables make a difference but your not hearing it.
 
Next up how to solder 04 welding cables to a .07uf by pass capacitor inside pioneer HPM100's
 
jsixis said:
"Normal speaker cable doesn't have significant capacitance or inductance, but its resistance does vary somewhat -- especially with thinner cables, because all other things being equal, the thinner the wire the greater the resistance."

then you perform your Ohms Law and the equation is
Speaker Cables make no difference unless you are using cables way too small.
Click to expand...

We must be using different Ohm's Laws then. When I use Ohm's Law to calculate the effects of any loss medium (like cables), I find that every cable makes a difference.

jsixis said:
"his chart assumes a minimum speaker impedance of 4 ohms and a maximum speaker impedance of 40 ohms"

So in order to get a result we need speakers of 40 ohms.
Click to expand...

You get a result with every speaker, regardless of the impdance. Where do you get this stuff? Are you just making it up as you go along?

jsixis said:
"The biggest change was a boost of maximum +0.4 dB between 4.3 and 6.8 kHz."

and once again, the average ear needs 3db to notice a difference and we are measuring 0.4 db,

Cables make a difference but your not hearing it.
Click to expand...

Aw jeeeez. Wish I had the Pickard faceplant picture, it would be quite appropriate here. Perhaps Pandovski will supply it for us. Is it your experience that you require a change of 3dB in order to hear a difference? Or, are you just reciting what you think you've read elsewhere on the Internet? Did you even read the article Urizen linked to in the OP? A reference was made to a Toole/Olive research where listeners could detect 0.3dB low-Q resonance. Toole is not some bozo writing blogs on the interwebs, rather a respected figure in the study of acoustics and audio. Are you seriously suggesting he is just blowing smoke? The 3dB figure is a good rule of thumb for choosing an amplifier's rated output power, but has nothing to do with what is being discussed here. My personal experiments indicate that average listeners can hear a 0.25dB broad spectrum volume change without straining. Are you just repeating things you've read with similar sounding words, or sharing personal experiences? You do know that this forum is all about personal experiences, right?
 
Pandovski said:
When you become an OCD Audio Nervosa driven Tweaker, :screwy: the main motto is "the factory always chose that'll do" therefore you try to over engineer everything, cables, caps, pour solder on crossover tracks, pour dampening inside cd players, put granite slabs under everything, replace electrolytic with poly etc. etc. Its just madness.

I'm better off without it.:dunno: I have bigger fish to fry. I want Martin Logan ESLs, I want to build an OB system, I want tubes etc. :naughty:
Click to expand...

All very good points. You know, to say something is over engineered is a judgement call. In order to make the judgement of if something is over engineered or not, you must know what the goal is. If the tweaker sets a new goal, beyond the original goal the manufacturer had, and is able to realize it with superior components, then this is NOT being over engineered. It is, in fact, critically engineered for the new goal.

If hunting down better cables and caps, damping CD players and adding mass is "just madness" to you, and that you are "better off without it," then I might suggest that The Cutting Edge forum is not well suited for you. Perhaps you'll find happier times in the sandbox if you confine your time to the General Audio forum instead. That way, you can fry your bigger fish and find true bliss.
 
Thanks for the link!

I would concur with the author's conclusions:

"So what's the lesson to take away from this? Mainly, don't use skinny cables in any system where you care about the sound quality. Also, maybe don't be so quick to judge those who say they hear differences among speaker cables."

I tend to grab the bit about "no skinny cables" and move on, but clearly there are going to be non-trivial differences between at least some cables, and this article doesn't even begin to test broader questions such as "can you measure a generalized sonic character of a particular cable or is it highly variable depending on the speaker being driven and/or by the amp driving it?"

Cheers,

Otto
 
I just flipped my zip cord end to end ... the bass is much fuller and better defined now, the mids sweeter.

The high end brings to mind a crisp autumn morning in the mountains ...

Either that or a soap commercial ...

IrishSpringGirl.jpg
 
I've actually heard that speaker, at an AK Fest, no less. Since I've heard it, therefore I have experience, and can post my opinion. In this forum, experience is the rule. Those that want to pass weak, mocking jokes will find themselves on the outside looking in.

The admins have the power to ban, forum specific.
 
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My point was that even new, Hi-End and "esoteric" speaker designs like the one by Robert Trunz (former B&W, now Vivid Audio) in the Giya use 18AWG cord.

B&W uses 16-18AWG.

Considering the amount of current and the length that goes in the internal speaker wiring 16-18g is obviously deemed sufficient by manufacturers. If 30$+ higher gauge speaker wire made such audible difference why would they skimp on it?

If you could afford and bought a Nautilus or the Giya, would you rewire it because it is 16-18g and uses computer grade clip connectors?
 
After years of reading it, this discussion still baffles me.

As a guitar player, different cables are easily recognized by ear. So are strings, pickups, picks, fingernails and even dry skin. No one really debates it. I do realize that it's the start of the signal chain, but a change is a change.

I can easily hear the difference between the various wires I have in the house, so can my kids, the only thing that is discussed is which is better. That seems to be a point of contention. I imagine that I'd have to be in the room to render an opinion, but the reason I'm here is to gain experience vicariously. (well, sort of vicariously, not so much through another's life as through their wallet. thanks to all who bought it first and took the risk so I, being a cheap b*stard, don't have to.)

What really throws me though, is not whether there is a change, but the desire to use a meter to decide whether it is there or not. Is the testing equipment really more sensitive/accurate/repeatable than ears? I really do struggle with the idea that they are. It is so easy for me to hear a difference in components that look the same on paper... it seems to me that the testing used to put the data on paper is actually less accurate than good listening skills.

Am I just wrong on this? Or is there some other reason to use measured data? I am very new to the engineering side of audio, and much of the technical bits send me running to google and the NEETS manuals to figure out even the basics of the discussion, but few measurements really seem to be able to predict an experienced outcome. (I really wish I could talk to Zilch about this.)

Thanks
 
Pandovski said:
]

Interesting how even cost no object or just decent Hi-Fi speakers have 16-18 gauge internal wiring and those cheap connectors. Does Vivid Audio G1 Giya or B&W are likely to cheapen out on wire gauge?
Click to expand...

Pandvoski I have 12 gauge internal wiring for my woofers and midbass drivers. The plans called for at least 14 gauge internal wire. I had the option of what gauge of wire to use since I build my own speakers. :)

My Hiquphon tweeters also require 12 gauge wire to make a connection to the terminals.

http://www.hiquphon.eu/terminal_how_to_connect.html
 
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