Re: Advise on speaker cable

["David Buckley" <db@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

--- In ukha_d@xxxxxxx, Ho Yin Ng <yahoogroups@h...> wrote:
> Tried it last night compared t&e vs my van der hul speaker
> cables t&e works .. obviously and sounds ok, but when compared
> to the van der hul which are not that expensive the van der
> hul brings out the detail and fullness that was not present in
> the t&e cable.

I find it odd that folks dont accept that there is a difference in
using different speaker cables.

An "ideal" amplifier is often described as a "piece of wire
with
gain".  The implication is that wire has no possible influence on
the music passing through that wire.

But any "real" wire has a collection of non-desirable
characteristics, including resistance, and much worse, capacitance
and inductance, making it a reactive component.  As such, if
analysed on its own, it has a frequency response, losses and all
kinds of stuff.

The result is that wire (which has characteristics) is interspersed
between an amplifier (with characteristics) and a loudspeaker (with
characteristics) or more usually a collection of loudspeakers with a
crossover network in front of it.  Crossovers are particularly evil,
full of inductors and capacitors.

The real story though is what sort of amplifier is driving this
collection of reactive loads.  A "stiff" amplifier will just
deliver
voltage (and thus current) to the load, almost irrespective of what
it looks like.  Other amplifiers are (much) less stiff, and will
behave differently depending on the load it sees.

For the last couple of decades my music listening amp has been a
Naim, and it has delivered music to a number of speaker systems
using different sort of cable.  At the moment its powering some old
bookshelf Missions, through the same cable as the man from quad
uses - orange 1.5mm twin core designed for outdoor appliances, and
it sounds definitely OK.  Why this cable - its what I use on the PA
for short or lower power (< 200w) speaker cable.  Above that I use
2.5mm, usually four core.

Theres no doubt though, the Naim sounds different with different
cable.  Years ago I tried some (dont laugh) Tandy "hi quality"
speaker cable, and the thing sounded terrible.  This cable was
parallel square braided section.  Although I've not had the lid off,
I believe that Naim amps dont have a Zobel network on the output
stage, and thus the cable and speaker load is responsible for tmuch
of the output stability of the amp.

It is easy to argue that these audible differences are the result of
the amp's inability to drive the load "correctly" (whatever that
means), but it is my experience that many of these "difficult"
amps
are just better a delivering an enjoyable listening experience than
(for example) a Phase Linear (which I had several of years back)
which will drive _anything_ but are really unexciting to listen to.

I'm less able to tell the difference on low level signal cable.  I
dont really think I can hear a difference between the nasty "free in
the box" phono cables, and upmarket stuff, so at home I tend to use
low end upmarket cables, mainly 'cos I like the engineering effort
that goes into the terminations, I think these cables are better
screened.  Today that means a Cambridge cable from Richer.  Cables I
make myself I use Van Damme OFC instrument cable, which is good
enough, has great shielding, and non-existent handling noise.

Speakers in the house I tend to use generic 79 strand, which is
again, good enough, given its generally driving adequate speakers
from a fairly stiff amp.


> But all in all it depends what you can hear. If you cannot
> hear the difference...

Then it doesnt matter.  Do whatever you feel is appropriate :-)