gmgraves Posted December 30, 2019 Share Posted December 30, 2019 10 hours ago, audiobomber said: I asked if you had ever tried biwiring, you responded with reasons why you believe it isn't worthwhile. I assume that you have not tried, and are therefore working with limited information. I investigated biwiring my system with dual and single 10' runs of Linn K400 13ga cable. Every configuration sounded different; single run to tweeters with short K400 jumper cable to woofer, same except connected to woofers first, and finally biwired. I have 12ga zip wire, Linn K400 single and biwire runs and Cardas Neutral Reference bi-wires. There are significant and easily heard differences between them, all in favour of the more expensive options. The opinion often stated by "objectivists" is just to use 12ga from a hardware store does not hold. You agree that capacitance, inductance and resistance change with biwire vs single run. These base parameters are enough to change the sound, IMO, but there are other potential factors as well, e.g. phase effects: http://www.empiricalaudio.com/computer-audio/audio-faqs/bi-wiring-speaker-cables and IM effects: https://www.qacoustics.co.uk/blog/2016/06/08/bi-wiring-speakers-exploration-benefits/ Biwiring is in no way essential, but if I have speakers with dual terminals and biwire cables, I will definitely use them. Now, I've tried most everything, including bi-wiring. And yes, it definitely changes the sound of the top end. No doubt. Using an audio spectrum analyzer, I found that in the case of the speaker cable I was using at the time (Symo), the lower treble region was attenuated about 1.5 dB from around 4KHz to about 6.5KHz compared to single wire. Not a lot, but did it change, on direct comparison, the character of the sound. That's why I say that bi-wiring cannot add anything to the sound, only subtract something from it as it must. Sure, capacitance, inductance and added resistance do, indeed change the sound, but measurement wise, not for the better (unless it is taming a peak in the speaker's frequency response). But unless you have access many different brands, models, and gauges of wire with which to experiment and some fancy measuring equipment, finding a combination that will improve the sound of one's speakers by attenuating peaks in the FR, for instance, it's almost impossible to predict the results. Most likely it will makes the speakers sound worse than they did with single wiring. Bi-amping with a low level adjustable crossover before the amplifiers, of course, is a different kettle of fish altogether. Mostly, with cable swaps, and bi-wiring schemes it's a crap shoot, and I have found that many audiophiles, impressed that the sound changes, automatically assume that it's a change for the better, whether it is or not because in their minds, different is always better. Ralf11 1 George Link to comment
gmgraves Posted January 4, 2021 Share Posted January 4, 2021 On 12/30/2019 at 6:37 AM, audiobomber said: I agree that cables are subtractive, but they can also be used to flavour the stew, with subtle but important changes in tonality, detail, soundstage and PRaT. It is commonly stated that long interconnects with short speaker cables is preferred over the opposite. At a very minimum, biwiring is equivalent to halving the length your speaker wires. The IM and phase improvements vs. single wire are a bonus. Judging the value of a cable swap is best determined with extended listening time. Initial impressions can be misleading, it takes time to determine a cable's strengths and weaknesses. Quick changes and A-B testing are useful but not definitive. Long term listening is great for getting used to changes between any new configuration or hardware over the previous configuration or hardware. It also helps the memory of the previous configuration or hardware fade. George Link to comment
gmgraves Posted January 4, 2021 Share Posted January 4, 2021 3 hours ago, audiobomber said: I listen for flaws. If a cable does something poorly, it will become evident with extended listening. all cables are lossy, so in reality, all cables do something poorly if they change the sound. Cables that change the sound are designed to suppress some portion of of the audio spectrum and they charge a good amount of money for the privilege. My opinion backed by a Masters in EE. George Link to comment
gmgraves Posted January 4, 2021 Share Posted January 4, 2021 1 hour ago, audiobomber said: I use Cardas Neutral Reference bi-wire speaker cables. Tonally, they are a little warmer than neutral, which suits my system and preferences. The other characteristic they have is a deeper soundstage compared to the Linn K400 bi-wires and generic 12ga cables I own. The Cardas speaker cables, which I purchased second-hand, provide a complementary tonal balance, along with resolution that allows subtle depth details to come through. There may be some cheaper cable that I would like just as well, possibly even better, but I don't know where I would find these among the multitude of choices, because measurements unfortunately do not tell the whole story. Like I said. It’s just an incontrovertible fact of physics that if two interconnects sound different, it’s because the two cables are attenuating different portions of the audio spectrum and both are wrong. Speaker cables are different in that the impedances involved are low; less than 1 Ohm usually for the amplifier (assuming solid state here), and nominally four or eight Ohms for the speaker. That means that the longish cable runs add significant resistance to the overall impedance characteristics of the amp/speaker interface. Again, different brands of cables affect the speaker sound differently. I use Sewell Direct “Silverback” speaker wire in six foot (only) lengths. This cable is 12 Ga, 259 strand, OFC cable and in such short runs, changes the overall impedance of the system by less than a quarter of an Ohm. It has minimum effect on the system’s sound. My opinion is that using cables, either interconnects or speaker cables as a fixed “tone control” is wrong-headed. George Link to comment
gmgraves Posted January 5, 2021 Share Posted January 5, 2021 1 hour ago, fas42 said: Dear me, George, that's pushing it 😉 ... first, why are "both wrong" - the possibility that one is right, and the other wrong, is not in the picture? And secondly, the fact that one cable is better at, say, rejecting RF interference than the other is not part of the equation? They are both wrong only if they both change the sound! One advantage of Integrated amplifiers is no interconnects. fas42 1 George Link to comment
gmgraves Posted January 5, 2021 Share Posted January 5, 2021 3 hours ago, audiobomber said: I measured the resistance of my right speaker cable out of curiosity: 0.2 ohms, including connectors. Here are the rest of the specs: Outside Diameter: .600" Dielectric Type: Teflon®, Air Inductance uh/ft/loop: .034 Capacitance pf/ft: 117 Cable awg: 8.5 Conductor Type: Golden Ratio, Constant Q, Crossfield, Pure Copper, Litz I am 100% confident that the Cardas cables let info through that your inexpensive cables lose. IME, it's pointless to argue with someone who believes there's "one true way" to build a audio system, and this is all off-topic, so I'll leave it at that. Uh, DC resistance of a speaker is irrelevant and not the same thing as impedance. Also, speaker impedance is spec’d as “nominal”. Because it changes with frequency. I have no doubt that speaker cables can change the sound of a speaker. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that different cables let different amounts of “info” through or that price has anything to do with it. The physical characteristics of the wire determine the performance of the cables, not the price. Of course, the larger the cross-section of the cable (AWG) the lower the cable’s impedance (resistance, capacitance, inductance). This will affect the frequency response curve of the speaker by attenuating the signal less. But again, we are dealing with an AC signal so, no speaker cable is not going to affect the entire audio spectrum linearly. Some frequencies will be attenuated more than others, and this depends upon the cable’s AC characteristics. But in any case, the amount that any speaker cable will affect a speaker’s sound will be minuscule, often less than a dB over any given frequency range. One can believe what one wants, but if one does the maths, they tell the story. Believe me, this subject is neither rocket science nor magic. There is sound, relatively simple physics behind this. If you have speaker cable that changes the sound of your speakers dramatically, then you’ve bought cables that were designed to do so (like those hyper-expensive cables from the likes of MIT, with their in-line boxes which have controls on them). Remember, wire is a passive component. It cannot have gain, it can only have losses; it can only attenuate signals, and all wire does this to some extent! In most cases, it doesn’t apply significantly to audio due to the lengths involved, coupled with the very low frequency band width of an audio signal. As length and frequency increase, wire characteristics become a larger and larger component of a system’s overall performance. For instance; a length of RG-59 coax (of the kind usually used between audio components) of 50 ft, will attenuate a 20 KHz signal by just about 1 dB. But that same length of RG-59 will attenuate a 100 MHz signal by more than 10 dB (IIRC)! I’m not going to go so far as to say that the audio cable business is snake oil, (i.e. fraudulent), but I will say that it’s engineering provenance is “dubious” at best. A lot of their success is due to the “emperor’s new clothes” syndrome coupled with the fact that human aural perception is extremely suggestible. HawkPatooey 1 George Link to comment
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