[sdiy] "Time Winding" in Audio Cables ???

[Magnus Danielson]

From: Richard Wentk <richard at skydancer.com>
Subject: Re: [sdiy] "Time Winding" in Audio Cables ???
Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2005 16:16:25 +0100
Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20050711160230.03ddee70 at mail.skydancer.com>

> At 15:51 11/07/2005, Glen wrote:
> >On a totally separate forum, I have a person who has been to all the 
> >Monster Cable(tm) sales seminars telling me that low frequencies travel 
> >through an audio cable more slowly than the high frequencies. Is this 
> >remotely true?
> 
> Cables are surprisingly complicated things, and there are some quite subtle 
> interactions between amps, cables and speakers that can affect the sound. 
> But... you can eliminate most of these just by using a decent enough 
> connector cross section.
> 
> I always use mains power cable, which has *more* than enough cross section 
> for accurate audio. In fact I challenge anyone to tell the difference 
> between Monster Cable (tm), any other specialist cable, and cooker cable in 
> a double blind test.

I agree. As long as you have sufficient cross-section, in order to lower the
serial resistance loss to sufficiently low levels, you should be home free on
the cable side.

> The low frequencies claim is bull. A long enough section of cable can 
> potentially act like a dispersive filter. But you need a *huge* length of 
> it - miles - before the effect can become audible. And with those kinds of 
> lengths all kinds of other issues are more influential anyway.

I agree. The effect is there, but it is so tiddely-too-tiny that for all
practical purposes we can just forget it. The missmatch of the speakers, the
little resistance added by the cable and then the amp creates much bigger
influence. Then we acoustical impedance of the speaker cabinet and the
acoustically impedence load of the surroundings will also make a larger effect.

> You can check the claim audibly with a click test. Put in a click, and see 
> what you hear. If it sounds like a chirp - which it won't - you know you 
> have dispersive problems. But I'll bet anything that the most distorted 
> sound you'll ever hear, even from a cheap system, is a slightly smoother 
> click that lacks transient attack. And you can solve that by beefing up the 
> amp to make sure it has enough drive to reproduce a click accurately, and 
> using good monitors.

Indeed. I might add that I used a clicker-system alot back in my PA days to
identify polarity. Polarity shifts between elements is a much bigger problem
IMHO. Time delay differences comes next and then working on a propper summing
can make a huge difference.

> In fact in terms of distortion, the way that speakers mangle the sound is 
> far more influential than cable.

Exactly. Passive filters? Whoooo, do I need to say more???? Toss your big amp
aside, the passive filter is burning your power away and your control of the
elements is not being changed greatly by the amp.

Changing speaker cables to improve the system is like changing the gear-handle
into a gold-top one is going to do to your cars speed, not much. Unless you are
really analysing the total system (amplifier, cables, cross-over filters,
speaker elements, speaker enclosure, speaker placement, EQ corrections,
delay corrections, polarity corrections etc. etc.) you have no idea what the
change will do to your system.

Cheers,
Magnus