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speaker wires

cru-sade (krue sayd') n., v. <-sad-ed, -sad-ing> n.

1. (often cap.) any of the military
expeditions undertaken by the Christians
of Europe in the 11th, 12th, and 13th
centuries to recover the Holy Land from
the Muslims.
2. any war carried on under papal sanction.
3. any vigorous movement on behalf of a cause.
4. to go on or engage in a crusade.
[1570-80; earlier croisade < MF. See CROSS, - ADE 1]
 
Come to think of it, whatever minute changes a set of cables is ever likely to achieve (both in frequency response and time domain differences), pales in comparison to what a true full spectrum DSP product such as TacT 2.2XP can, thus overriding any differences there may be to begin with. Kind of makes the whole cable theory and spending crazy money on them even more harder to justify. http://www.tactlab.com/Products/RCS22XP/CorrectionTech.html
 
PHC1 said:
There are much more effective ways of spending money to improve system performance, by far the biggest is your room. Acoustic treatments will make your whole system sound different, so much so that budget components WILL blow expensive ones out the water in a treated room. A high performance system in a treated room will be in a league all of its own.
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At the risk of opening another Pandora's box (in additon to the cables debate), how does one start the room acoustics project? It sounds very worthwhile but I have no idea how to go about doing it, or at least taking the first steps. I know there are professionals who will do so, but can the layman (equivalent to village idiot, i.e. moi) do it?

Cy
 
At the risk of opening another Pandora's box (in additon to the cables debate), how does one start the room acoustics project?
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CMK16, see my post above about DSP, which also makes a multi-thousand dollar approach to room treating also questionable to a large degree. Problem with treating a room properly is both aesthetics and the outlay of cash. If you have a dedicated room and the budget for it, it's one thing but many people have to take the decor of the house into consideration. I've experimented with treatments over the years, there are quite a few companies out there, the ones that I thought were worth while are expensive and don't have much of aesthetic appeal. No one besides the audiophile himself likes a room full of bass traps and a plethora of other treatments hanging all over the place.

I have a pretty good frame of reference when it comes to fully treated vs untreated rooms and somewhere in between. I am really anxious to experiment with the DSP room correction stuff. I will be sure to report back just how much and what kind of a difference one gets from deploying this approach. I have a feeling it will go a long way and offer a good alternative to fully treated rooms but we'll see.
 
The answer to the speaker cable question depends on three things:

1) The equipment being used.

2) Your experience with critically listening to audio equipment.

3) The capability of your ears.

There is also a strong relation between people's opinion on speaker wire and the type and fidelity of the equipment that they own.
 
CMK16 said:
At the risk of opening another Pandora's box (in additon to the cables debate), how does one start the room acoustics project? It sounds very worthwhile but I have no idea how to go about doing it, or at least taking the first steps. I know there are professionals who will do so, but can the layman (equivalent to village idiot, i.e. moi) do it?

Cy
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Anyone can start, with or without equipment. If you study the theories and work with what you have, great things are possible. Will it be perfect? No, but again, the law's of diminishing returns comes into play, but so does the 80/20 rule. In this case you can get 80% there with 20% effort/cost on the attempt…

Places to start: (I’m not proclaiming any of these as the do-all be-all)

http://softwaredesign.com/RoomDimensionsCalculator.html

http://digitalcontentproducer.com/mag/video_sound_integrity_guidelines/

http://www.soundstage.com/audiohell/audiohell200111.htm

http://www.gcaudio.com/resources/howtos/speakerplacement.html

http://www.tnt-audio.com/casse/waspe.html

http://www.stereophile.com/finetunes/179/
 
Josh said:
The answer to the speaker cable question depends on three things:

1) The equipment being used.

2) Your experience with critically listening to audio equipment.

3) The capability of your ears.

There is also a strong relation between people's opinion on speaker wire and the type and fidelity of the equipment that they own.
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Ohm's Law will help as well :D
 
Buy the most expensive cables and wire you can from a place where you can take them back "if not 100% satisfied". Plug it all in and check for any difference.
If you like the difference, cool. If not, take it all back and get your money back.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained- and no cost involved.
Personally I agree with those who say that cables and wire add the least amount of "improvement" (if any) to your system.
Wizargoz
 
arebalos said:
Ohm's Law will help as well :D
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It helps in determining the gauge and material of the wire necessary to support a certain power level, but it does not account for the broad variations in sound that many speaker cables have when compared to each other.
 
The cable company, www.fatwyre.com has an extensive cable library, you can get advise on system matching from them as well as "borrow" just about any cable/IC you want for a nominal charge, once you found a winner, all those charges are used as credit towards purchase. Experiment away, I did, so have many of my friends.
 
CMK16 said:
... how does one start the room acoustics project?
Cy
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Tell you what - if you're just curious wait till the SO is out of the house and hang towels or blankets, no kidding.

Listen for reflections, from the wall behind your stereo, sidewalls, things hung on the wall, your chairs, you hear one, stick a blanket/towel on it. Even if you don't, experiment.

AMAZING. Then you'll know how far you want to go (and it doesn't even address bass traps).

Pete
 
Josh said:
It helps in determining the gauge and material of the wire necessary to support a certain power level, but it does not account for the broad variations in sound that many speaker cables have when compared to each other.
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Show me double blinds tests showing those "broad variations" and I will believe.:music:
 
Snake Oil Redux!

rdoust said:
Now that I'm a member of your club (maybe I'm not truly until I have the product in my hands) I have a question on a topic that, as I understand it, gets people excited. The Director of Acoustic Research at McIntosh has published a document on the internet that says that expensive speaker wire is a waste of money. http://www.roger-russell.com/wire/wire.htm Yesterday I received the Avia Guide to Home Theater and they say the same thing. While I was at Harvey's, everyone swore that the opposite is true. In every picture of a system that I see where people are using high-end gear, many of your own, I see gargantuan speaker wires. Can someone give me the skinny :D on this?
I look forward to hearing from everyone on this.
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I have finally realized that big-buck speaker wire or cable or whatever you want to call it, is a huge profit center for the mfg...for years I used top of the line Straight Wire.....I did the following recently for laughs...I ain't laughing anymore......A friend who works in electrical supplies gave me forty feet of 10/3 SJ cord. I snipped off the ground conductor and terminated the the other ends. After almost two weeks I can tell you that my system never sounded better....I had some audiophile friends over and covered the wire, claiming it's a new mystery cable.....all listened for about 45 minutes and said they liked what they heard....very smooth engaging sound. After the biscotti and coffee I asked if they would like to know what the wire was .....all nodded yes......when I exposed the mystery wire all I heard was silence....some said they would re-think their assumptions of cable, and what the rags had to say about them.....all that glitters is not gold....I sold the Straight Wire......and if you should want to actually purchase the same wire it will cost you under 60 bucks!
 
arebalos said:
Show me double blinds tests showing those "broad variations" and I will believe.:music:
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I won't get into this. I, and many people I know and have interacted with since I started this hobby, have heard the differences quite clearly.

We all envy people like you that cannot. It would have saved us a lot of money chasing after the ideal pairing of equipment and cables.

Happy listening.
 
Josh said:
I won't get into this. I, and many people I know and have interacted with since I started this hobby, have heard the differences quite clearly.

We all envy people like you that cannot. It would have saved us a lot of money chasing after the ideal pairing of equipment and cables.

Happy listening.
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I would also like to see the results of scientifically run double blind testing with enough trials that demonstrate statistical repeatibility in which the golden-eared crowd are involved and not people like me that cannot clearly hear the differences.

MikeSp
 
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