Speaker Wire - Does it effect the sound quality??

[Big Chris]

I definitely heard a difference when moving to my Atlas cables from my QEDs (The Hypers are 3x the RRP per metre of the QEDs, but I waited for bargains to pop up on eBay).

Before anyone says I only heard a difference because I wanted to hear a difference, my Wife who calls me crazy (among other things) for spending money on "bits of wire" also heard a difference...... Much to her chagrin.

 

[Anonymous]

Well I am one person who does, apparently, spend silly amounts of money on cables. My speaker cable was £800, direct from Max himself. My Transparent Ultra MM interconnect RRP was around £2k, I got it for about half that I think off Ebay. I recently swapped it during a demo for the MM2 version (newer technology) and I could hear a subtle difference, may be just as much difference as changing the CD player or amp, perhaps spending a few thousand more on that. I'm certainly into the laws of dimishing returns.

As paradiziac says, if you don't believe you can hear a difference, save your mopney. For those of us that choose to spend "silly" amounts for whatever reason, that's our perogative

In the context of my system, spending 2 grand on an interconnect and speaker cable is roughly 10% of the RRP of the entire system. So not that silly then :?

but then some people have more money than they need, and like to indulge
in kiddin them self they have supersonic hearing.

 

[Anonymous]

I'd be very interested to know if double blind trials have ever been done with different speaker cables.

(i.e. neither experimenter nor listener knows which cables are currently connected).

You'd also need to repeat such a trial (e.g. for 5 different cables, connect different ones at random say 10 times each and get the listener to write down which one he thought it was).

I say 'he' above for good reasons

If such trials have been done, could listeners distinguish the different cables reliably?

If such trials have not been done, then the difference might just be down to what the listener wants to hear.

I have no personal opinion on the matter - obvously the impedance and other characteristics of the cable can change the sound - the interesting questions are :

1. By how much?

2. Are such difference audible? If so, to what percentage opf the population?

3. Does the quality of the sound correlate at all with the price paid for the cable (in a double blind trial)?

 

[Anonymous]

[/quote]but then some people have more money than they need, and like to indulge
in kiddin them self they have supersonic hearing.

[/quote]

And your point is...? Its up to me what I spend my money on, none of your business. I don't kid myself about having supersonic hearing, in fact the speed of sound waves is pretty much fixed :wall: If I think spending £x on component Y is worth it because it sounds better, looks shiny or just cos its the new toy on the block, then that's my perogative.

I dont really care what others think, I trust my ears, wallet and judgement.

 

[Anonymous]

but then some people have more money than they need, and like to indulge
in kiddin them self they have supersonic hearing.

[/quote]

And your point is...? Its up to me what I spend my money on, none of your business. I don't kid myself about having supersonic hearing, in fact the speed of sound waves is pretty much fixed :wall: If I think spending £x on component Y is worth it because it sounds better, looks shiny or just cos its the new toy on the block, then that's my perogative.

I dont really care what others think, I trust my ears, wallet and judgement.

[/quote]and your point is/my point is the whole cable debate stinks but each to there own,
i bought some fisual interconnects at six quid and it beat my £100 ones chord siren hands down,
so i wont waste money any more on cables,, but have made my own cables and very good they are too at a fraction of what
you would pay for similar results sound wise.

 

[alan harknett]

Not just speaker wires but all wires in the chain from the mains wire to the audio phono interconnects through to the wires in the speakers them selves, all will have an inpact on the sound. You don't have to take anyone's word for it just try some different cables and you will hear a difference (sometimes for the worse) most hifi shops will lend cables for you to try, check it out.

 

[datay]

I think it would be appropriate for Tim MP to say what online guide to AV/hifi he lifted the text from (probably an American one, the references to "wire" give that away).

And to the other new forum member who wonders if double blind tests have been done on speaker cable, have you tried searching that?Will provide you with the information you need.

All so old, and these "debates" are getting increasingly circular. This is a forum for a magazine that rates all equipment, including cables, so why don't you take this up with a letter to the editor, perhaps? If you spend any time here you're going to have to put up with plenty of people discussing what they hear with cable x in their system, or asking opinions on cables. It ain't gonna stop because you copy and paste a technical explanation of basic speaker cable function.

 

[Anonymous]

I really can't be bothered to get into technical debates about impedance, capacitance, conductivity etc, it starts to becomes a Pi$$ing contest and its really not that interesting. Using my most trusted measuring tool (my ears) I can hear a difference, when I changed from solid core mains cable to a proper speaker cable the result even surprised me.

 

[professorhat]

i bought some fisual interconnects at six quid and it beat my £100 ones chord siren hands down,

But surely the two must sound the same? Otherwise you're confirming there's a difference in the sound and just stating a preference.

 

[the record spot]

...I bought some fisual interconnects at six quid and it beat my £100 ones chord siren hands down...

Oh for sure; I have a Fisual coax cable, about £4 if that from Amazon and it's excellent. Build is up there with stuff costing £30 or more. I've one of their 3.5" jack to optical cables that I used for my Airport Express and it was the same. Highly recommended.

 

[SteveR750]

Don't feed the...never mind.

 

[Andrew Everard]

I think it would be appropriate for Tim MP to say what online guide to AV/hifi he lifted the text from

Wikipedia.

 

[datay]

I think it would be appropriate for Tim MP to say what online guide to AV/hifi he lifted the text from

Wikipedia.

Thanks Andrew. You have to take your hat off to the man's research skills then.

 

[Native_bon]

Am one who surelly hear differences in cables. Sometimes a better sound quality.

1 your mains has to be clean

2 It really starts to matter when you got a highend system

3 Any weaknesses in the system will prevent u from hearing an upgrade in cables.

4 Am a music producer and use a lot of cables in my recording studio & my home Hifi system.

5 Expensive is not always better sounding.

 

[Anonymous]

There are definiitely slight differences. Mostly inaudible providing you don't start with bell-wire.

Any cable costing £2000 is a definite waste of money IMO. I'd rather give it to a local childrens hospital. That would probably make more difference to the sound too due to the increased feeling of well-being it would induce.

And in the end, the best cable, is no cable. I believe the future of high end audio will lie in wireless transmission of digital signals to speakers with built in amplification and digital to audio conversion.

 

[Native_bon]

Yes i agree with you. Cause active speaker produce the best sound for your money. But still cables do make a diference to sound, but all depends on if you like what the cable sound like?... it may sound different but not neccessary better.

 

[Ravey Gravey Davy]

Is this the end of a circle I see before me?

 

[Anonymous]

Yes, I did search for double blind trials, and the only ones I found were very small, which is why I asked on here if anyone knew of any proper trials.

But it seems even asking such a question upsets some people.

 

[The_Lhc]

Any cable costing £2000 is a definite waste of money IMO. I'd rather give it to a local childrens hospital.

What are they going to do with a bunch of speaker cable?

 

[Anonymous]

There are definiitely slight differences. Mostly inaudible providing you don't start with bell-wire.

Any cable costing £2000 is a definite waste of money IMO. I'd rather give it to a local childrens hospital. That would probably make more difference to the sound too due to the increased feeling of well-being it would induce.

And in the end, the best cable, is no cable. I believe the future of high end audio will lie in wireless transmission of digital signals to speakers with built in amplification and digital to audio conversion.

At least you're saying it's your opinion. I hear lots of differences with cables, and is generally better the more you spend.

£2K wouldn't be wasting your money if you a had a £50K Hi-Fi system

 

[McRagefit]

I believe it can have some effect on the sound you hear, although I do think the biggest factor is the contact resistance (for example which plugs you use, how firmly you screw your speaker cable, ... ).

Contact resistance can vary several orders of magnitude depending on the material used. As most of you probably know, gold for example has a low contact resistance.

 

[paradiziac]

Yes, I did search for double blind trials, and the only ones I found were very small, which is why I asked on here if anyone knew of any proper trials.

So why don't you borrow a bunch of differenct cables, hook them up to a good revelaling system, do your own unbiased DBTs and post the results? I'm sure some folks would be interested to read it.

Personally I wouldn't find it a productive use of my time--I tend not to worry about small differences (cables or otherwise) and large differences are so obvious--why go to all the trouble of setting up a blind trial and publishing it? It's a hobby after all!

 

[Anonymous]

I do think the biggest factor is the contact resistance (for example which plugs you use, how firmly you screw your speaker cable, ... ).

And why would that be? All resistance is going to do is to attenuate the overall sound, make it quieter which can be compensated for by increasing the volume.

The largest single factor is more likely inductance, giving rise to a quite significant cable impendence many times greater than that of the speaker. For best results you want the impedence of the cable the same as that of the speaker, so a cable with impedence of 400 Ohms is totally mis matched to a speaker of 8 ohms. To lower the cable impendence you will need a large capacitance and lower inductance (you cant get both low so its a compromise) , but then high capacitance cables bring other problems.

 

[CnoEvil]

What I want to know is - Can you claim them on expenses? :? :shifty:

 

[Psilocybin]

for me personally...no! i got richer sounds to do a test on some high quality wire and cheap run of the mill wire. i heard no difference what so ever. in fact they actually really annoyed me, as they claimed they could hear a 'massive' difference, where as they both sounded the same to me (which made me think they were just saying that so i'd fork out a load of money)

all of our ears are the same, so to say some people can hear the difference and others not...is a complete load of **** and bull. maybe if you have a really expensive sound system (mine is worth about £600, amp + speakers) you might hear a difference. I just went out and bought some cheap thick copper wire and i'm a happy man!