Raise your hand if you're convinced that speaker cables make no difference to sound q

[magiccarpetride]

Raise your hand if you're convinced that speaker cables make no difference to sound quality.

[vrette]

Can I respectfully keep my hand down depending upon the circumstances? Are we comparing cruddy thin gauge wire with a high quality much thicker stranded gauge wire, or a $1000 set with unobtainium coated connects versus a $2000 set with solid unobtainium connectors? Low grade thin gauge versus good quality thick gauge, yeah, you should hear a difference if your system is up to it. Where it gets hazy is when you start spending hundreds or thousands of $$$. Like so much in Hi-Fi, it is all about diminishing returns,,

[SuperQ]

Can I respectfully keep my hand down depending upon the circumstances? Are we comparing cruddy thin gauge wire with a high quality much thicker stranded gauge wire, or a $1000 set with unobtainium coated connects versus a $2000 set with solid unobtainium connectors? Low grade thin gauge versus good quality thick gauge, yeah, you should hear a difference if your system is up to it. Where it gets hazy is when you start spending hundreds or thousands of $$$. Like so much in Hi-Fi, it is all about diminishing returns,,

Stranding only helps when it's Litz. But even then the effect on audio frequency range is minimal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litz_wire

[Mnyb]

Can I respectfully keep my hand down depending upon the circumstances? Are we comparing cruddy thin gauge wire with a high quality much thicker stranded gauge wire, or a $1000 set with unobtainium coated connects versus a $2000 set with solid unobtainium connectors? Low grade thin gauge versus good quality thick gauge, yeah, you should hear a difference if your system is up to it. Where it gets hazy is when you start spending hundreds or thousands of $$$. Like so much in Hi-Fi, it is all about diminishing returns,,

Yes thats the q speaker cables can make difference if they are technically unsuitable for that particular speaker so what kind of cable to wich speaker ? If you have low impedance planar speakers or similar.

If inductance and resitance is very low it's ok, but you dont need to much $$$$$ to fix that, keep them short and thick.

[vrette]

Stranding only helps when it's Litz. But even then the effect on audio frequency range is minimal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litz_wire

Interesting, but not really my point. My point: a high grade, thicker gauge wire is going to perform better, and thus sound better, than some thin gauge zip wire that you buy at Radio Shack. Anything more than that is probably a waste of money.

It all has to do with the ability of the wire to carry the electrical signal AND current. Putting a skinny ass wire between a big ass amp and watt hungry speakers is like trying to wire your house with 24 gauge wire. The wire will not be able to handle the current and amperage, Cheap and thin speaker wire will inhibit the ability of your amp to drive your speakers properly.

[Muele]

Resist the temptation, don't feed the troll.

Don't now if the trollscore goes this low, but I would rate it 0/10

[JonWill]

But as ever, there is an interesting question at the heart of this... I have sOme old QED 79 strand cable. I have been wondering for some time whether this needs upgrading, or whether the lengths can be different (currently the same length, but one sPeaker much closed to the amp) or whether I should bi wire. Or is the whole speaker cable debate a red herring? I know there's no right answer, but I wish there was!

[Stratmangler]

Don't Naim amps have stability issues with certain types of cable ?
Can't remember the specifics of it all....

Edit - had a little search around on the 'net and found this http://www.harbeth.co.uk/usergroup/s...AIM-literature.

Chris

[Covenant]

I totally agree with the comments about not wasting your time with overpriced speaker cables but, in my system, one of the best upgrades I did was changing from copper to silver cables. Now the copper cables I was using were cheap, so I may have been perceiving a big difference that doesn't apply if I had been using a good quality copper cable originally.
Slightly off topic, a better quality digital cable between dac and Touch was a very worthwhile improvement.

[vrette]

Resist the temptation, don't feed the troll.

Don't now if the trollscore goes this low, but I would rate it 0/10

I hope I'm not considered the troll here... This is the one cable type upgrade where I could really hear the difference on a pair of Magnepans that I once owned.

Beyond that, either my system or my ears aren't good enough to hear the difference between the speaker cables lying on the ground versus being suspended above the carpet. .

http://shop.mapleshadestore.com/Tria...nfo/CABLELIFT/