Speaker wire! Worthy upgrade?

[JJ]

Originally Posted by bageleaterkkjji

i bought 12g wire from monoprice 2 but anyone with onkyo ht750b speakers or the htib sp908 with the same speakers know if the wire will fit in the speakers? lol

All wires will fit all terminals - just depends if you have to use pin connectors, banana plugs, or just tie the wire strands around the dang thing,

I.e., I had spring loaded terminals on my old HTiB that came with 24 AWG wire - bought 14 only to find it wouldn't fit into the terminals - hooked up the wire ends to pin connectors - fit into terminals - problem solved!

Not to mention sound quality increased incredibly also!

[mdabb]

I have been researching speaker cables and hope to one day soon buy new ones. I have read that oxygen free cable is not an important factor and actually has a negative effect. The process strips the wire of Iron which is somehow beneficial. Same would apply for treated connectors. Quality/purity of the wire is most important.

It is also good to have all three front cables the same length. Why not having the other rear channels the same as the front three is a bit of a mystery to me. After all it is science??? Obviously surround channels are usually at further distances but still if you want to get technical.

Just out of curiosity who uses cables that cost over $250 each???? Have they lived up to your expectations??? What is the estimated life of a cable???

Clearly I still have more research to do but wanted to know how people liked their expensive cables.

[ixlegitballinxl]

good thread, I'm using 16 gauge atm, been considering going to 12g, but is it worth it??

[FIDDYPOP]

What is imho? what does that mean, stand for?

[Johnny Vinyl]

Originally Posted by FIDDYPOP

What is imho? what does that mean, stand for?

In My Honest Opinion

[Johnny Vinyl]

I think I may have started something that is becoming quite technical, which I didn't mean to do.

I personally believe that you should buy good quality cable, as it does make a difference. I don't think , that we should be overly concerned about length of cable. Sound travels so fast over just about any medium of your choice that we wouldn't be able to tell the difference anyway. However, in a perfect world, that certainly would be ideal (however impractical).

I think that your FRONTS and your CENTRE should be of the same type/length/grade. Your rears and sub are less critical. I would still suggest buying a better grade cable though. However, it is so impractical to run the 3/4" cable I use now for my fronts/centre along the floor to my rears and sub. So I opted for a lesser quality there.

My cables at the front-end are worth about $500...not the best, but they work and trust me, I noticed the difference.

[richteer]

Originally Posted by mdabb

I have been researching speaker cables and hope to one day soon buy new ones. I have read that oxygen free cable is not an important factor and actually has a negative effect. The process strips the wire of Iron which is somehow beneficial. Same would apply for treated connectors. Quality/purity of the wire is most important.

Umm, why would copper or silver cables have iron in them? Dunno where you read that OFC has a deletarious effect on sound...

Just out of curiosity who uses cables that cost over $250 each???? Have they lived up to your expectations??? What is the estimated life of a cable???

I do. The 1.5m Nordost Frey interconnect between my turntable and preamp cost me $1000+, and I'm currently saving up for a 6m length of the same to connect my preamp to my power amps, and 1m pair of Nordost Frey speaker cables. I lust after Nordost's Valhalla and Odin cables, but they're beyond my means (especially the Odin). More to the point, they would be inappropriate for my system.

Although I noticed a fair sized improvement, I wouldn't recommend such expensive cable to everyone! The cables one uses should be appropriate to the system in which they're used.

A decent cable which isn't mistreated should last a lifetime.

[richteer]

Originally Posted by FIDDYPOP

What is imho? what does that mean, stand for?

IMHO = In My Humble Opinion; sometimes you'll see IMNSHO (In My Not So Humble Opinion).

[CAB]

Originally Posted by richteer

Umm, why would copper or silver cables have iron in them? Dunno where you read that OFC has a deletarious effect on sound...

Uphill and losing battle. I too am a Nordost fan and might some day work up to Frey. * bow *

[mdabb]

[QUOTE=richteer;1035418]Umm, why would copper or silver cables have iron in them? Dunno where you read that OFC has a deletarious effect on sound...


There is a link below where I found part of the info about OFC cable it is about copper wire. Scroll down to: "What about oxygen free wire?". The resistance is increased after the process. There is I think two other websites where I read info about "speaker cables" and do comparisons. Some of the info was also about untreated connectors. I didn't bookmark them and will have to back through and find those articles.

http://www.roger-russell.com/wire/wire.htm


I am just trying to make sense of "speaker cables" in general and sift through all the info. Cables costing $250 each and cables costing more are where it gets frustrating. What makes that cable so great and is it just a claim? Before I make a purchase I want to make sure why that cable is great or better. After all I want to do what is best for my system now and in the future. I will find the other articles soon and hopefully they will be of use to others.

For people who already own expensive cables- what lead you to buy that particular cable? If I'm going to spend a couple thousand dollars on cables I have to know "why" those cables are the ones to get.

Also sorry if I'm trying to get too technical but after all wouldn't we want to sort through the hype and get down to what is a great speaker cable and why? It's not like you can borrow speaker cables to test out.

[RUR]

Originally Posted by mdabb

Also sorry if I'm trying to get too technical but after all wouldn't we want to sort through the hype and get down to what is a great speaker cable and why? It's not like you can borrow speaker cables to test out.

Anything's possible. I have some long-ish MIT bi-wires laying about unused. What length do you need?

[richteer]

Originally Posted by mdabb

There is a link below where I found part of the info about OFC cable it is about copper wire. Scroll down to: "What about oxygen free wire?". The resistance is increased after the process. There is I think two other websites where I read info about "speaker cables" and do comparisons. Some of the info was also about untreated connectors. I didn't bookmark them and will have to back through and find those articles.

http://www.roger-russell.com/wire/wire.htm

That explains a lot. I've had a look at that site in the past, and there's a lot on there that goes against established audio credo (not to mention, my own experience). For this reason, I don't give a lot of credibility to it...

I am just trying to make sense of "speaker cables" in general and sift through all the info. Cables costing $250 each and cables costing more are where it gets frustrating. What makes that cable so great and is it just a claim? Before I make a purchase I want to make sure why that cable is great or better. After all I want to do what is best for my system now and in the future. I will find the other articles soon and hopefully they will be of use to others.

For people who already own expensive cables- what lead you to buy that particular cable? If I'm going to spend a couple thousand dollars on cables I have to know "why" those cables are the ones to get.

Also sorry if I'm trying to get too technical but after all wouldn't we want to sort through the hype and get down to what is a great speaker cable and why? It's not like you can borrow speaker cables to test out.

Last point first: any good dealer will let you borrow cables. It's one of the privileges one can expect for shopping at a specialist dealer as opposed to Best Buy et al.

As for your other questions, one way to keep up with this stuff is to read reviews in high end audio magazines like The Absolute Sound, HiFi+, and Stereophile (I especially like The Absolute Sound).

What makes a cable great? The sound quality! The better the cable, the less effect it'll have on the sound--the more it'll let through. I'm no reviewer, but when I upgraded from a generic no name cable to Nordost Frey, I noticed all sorts of little details I hadn't noticed before. And, stereo imaging improved.

I have a fairly expensive system, so spending serious $$$ on cables is OK. Cables can and do make a difference, but it only makes sense to spend a lot of $$$ on cables when the rest of your system is (or will be after any planned upgrades) up to par. The best cables in the world won't improve the sound of a flawed system; if anything they'll just make those flaws more obvious.

[DJeffries]

Originally Posted by mdabb

There is a link below where I found part of the info about OFC cable it is about copper wire. Scroll down to: "What about oxygen free wire?". The resistance is increased after the process. There is I think two other websites where I read info about "speaker cables" and do comparisons. Some of the info was also about untreated connectors. I didn't bookmark them and will have to back through and find those articles.

http://www.roger-russell.com/wire/wire.htm


I am just trying to make sense of "speaker cables" in general and sift through all the info. Cables costing $250 each and cables costing more are where it gets frustrating. What makes that cable so great and is it just a claim? Before I make a purchase I want to make sure why that cable is great or better. After all I want to do what is best for my system now and in the future. I will find the other articles soon and hopefully they will be of use to others.

For people who already own expensive cables- what lead you to buy that particular cable? If I'm going to spend a couple thousand dollars on cables I have to know "why" those cables are the ones to get.

Also sorry if I'm trying to get too technical but after all wouldn't we want to sort through the hype and get down to what is a great speaker cable and why? It's not like you can borrow speaker cables to test out.

Unfortunately there is no way correlate most audiophile jargon to electrical parameters. From an electrical point of view:
For an ideal cable the output signal would be exact to the input signal. Real wire has electrical parameters that make it impossible to build an ideal cable. The parameters that affect a cable’s performance are resistance, inductance, and capacitance. Any technobabble that you might hear whether based in sound engineering or voodoo science would be accounted for in those three parameters. Resistance effects all frequencies evenly for all practical purposes. Inductance and Capacitance can be thought of as a resistance (with some phase shift thrown in) in which the value depends upon frequency (at least for comparing cable performance). When taken together these three parameters is referred to as impedance. A good cable is one that is engineered to keep the effects of impedance (usually measured in db loss) below what is detectable as well as not fall apart on you.

For example the signal loss of a 10 foot length 12 AWG Zip Cord peaks at about .15db at 20KHz. I can’t speak for you, but for me that is far below what I can perceive even with the MC501s and 802Ds which is not cheap gear.


Some marketing claims that engineers tend to have a problem with:
1) Skin Effect: This is a real enough phenomenon but is so minute at audio frequencies that in the example above it accounts for about .002db of that .15db loss.
2) Dielectric Absorption: Again real enough but does not present itself until the 100s of MHz to the GHz range of frequencies.
3) Directionality: Audio is AC. AC signals travel in both directions. If this was true the signal would be compromised no matter how the cable was connected.
4) Break-In: Wire does not break in. Dielectrics do not align to any signal. How can they when the signal is AC that is fairly random in nature. In fact very random on a molecular level.


A few things that do affect the sound no ifs ands or buts:
1) Too much resistance. Not usually be design and can be fixed with larger gauge wire.
2) Too much inductance. This rolls off the highs to give what audiophiles refer to as a warm sound.
There are many really really expensive cables built this way. By design.
3) Coating a lesser conductor with a better one. This is usually silver coated copper. This exaggerates skin effect and bumps up the higher frequencies. Tends to give the illusion of better detail unless done to the point of being harsh. By design.

[matthewrounds]

I'm just wondering how many of you beleive in using the same length wires between the receiver and the speaker?

[DJeffries]

Originally Posted by matthewrounds

I'm just wondering how many of you beleive in using the same length wires between the receiver and the speaker?

Given that an electric signal travels very close to the speed of light, it would take a very large difference in wire length before any delay would be noticed.

[jomari]

Originally Posted by DJeffries

Given that an electric signal travels very close to the speed of light, it would take a very large difference in wire length before any delay would be noticed.

nice postings Djeffries... great technical material but given in laymens terms. kudos on that one!

on the topic of having both cables to be of same length, unless you do something extreme, like have 5 feet for one speaker, and 1000 feet for the other one, there should be no significant sonic difference/delay/degradation over the said speakers, unless you consider gauge in the picture, which is a different story altogether.

there would be a tad, but we're talking milliseconds. no need to point out technical babble here, but you wont hear the difference.

[matthewrounds]

Originally Posted by DJeffries

Given that an electric signal travels very close to the speed of light, it would take a very large difference in wire length before any delay would be noticed.

I'm glad this is the response at least two have shared in the discussion. There is a huge misconception about this and I would love to invite a person who claims they can tell a difference when speakers are wired with different length wire to come and prove it.

[Grubert]

Use the money on Blu-ray movies and beer. Much sounder investment.

[mattym]

this whole argument irritates me a little, as the benefits (perceived or otherwise) are missed totally by the vast majority of users as they have no acoustic treatments in their rooms, which mean they are listening to the basic acoustic signature of the room colouring the music rather than the music itself.

[jomari]

Originally Posted by mattym

this whole argument irritates me a little, as the benefits (perceived or otherwise) are missed totally by the vast majority of users as they have no acoustic treatments in their rooms, which mean they are listening to the basic acoustic signature of the room colouring the music rather than the music itself.

good point mattym, but they've mostly asked these speakerwire questions a million times to further tweak their rooms, yet find no interest in acoustic treatments whatsoever. sure speaker wires are important, sure a good 16 gauge or lower is 'standard' yet they dont care about the reflective coffee table in front of their center, or even bother about picture frames right next to their fronts.

as i mentioned a while back, the line of importance someone taught me was
speakers
pre/pro (including your receiver)
ACOUSTICS

but then again, we also have to consider the Wife factor, as well as reality checks, showing that most of these HT's are built in bedrooms, living rooms, and not dedicated areas.