Changing to thicker speaker wire . Bigger difference ?

[richteer]

Originally Posted by Twitch9

How can wire make a difference in sound it's a electrical current, the only factor with this is resistance and a thicker gage wire will help this problem not your fancy over priced cables that you payed extra for a name.

With respect, you're clearly speaking from a position of ignorance (and I don't claim to be an expert). Resistance is not the only factor at play: you're forgetting about capacitance and inductance, not to mention cable topology and dielectric type.

What you're saying is that you've never actually listened to different cables, and refuse to do so becuase there'd be no point 'cause "they all sound the same", whereas I and others are arguing from the position of first hand empirical observation. I know you're wrong stating that cables don't make a difference, because I've heard it for myself. There's no self-deluding going on here.

How about you try this: go to a decent audio specialist and ask to listen to different cables in one of their systems. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. And no, Best Buy et al do not count as audio specialists.

[richteer]

Originally Posted by btf1980

I think the OP is missing the bigger picture. Before spending tons of cash on "better" cables, maybe you should upgrade your Onkyo HTIB first. Isn't that kind of like putting fancy rims on a daewoo? Just get a better car first, if you get my drift.

In the context of this thread, this is very good advice!

[Johnny Vinyl]

Originally Posted by richteer

With respect, you're clearly speaking from a position of ignorance (and I don't claim to be an expert). Resistance is not the only factor at play: you're forgetting about capacitance and inductance, not to mention cable topology and dielectric type.

What you're saying is that you've never actually listened to different cables, and refuse to do so becuase there'd be no point 'cause "they all sound the same", whereas I and others are arguing from the position of first hand empirical observation. I know you're wrong stating that cables don't make a difference, because I've heard it for myself. There's no self-deluding going on here.

How about you try this: go to a decent audio specialist and ask to listen to different cables in one of their systems. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. And no, Best Buy et al do not count as audio specialists.

Excellent response Rich!

John

[CasualKiller]

This is mostly in response to the monster vs coat hanger comment above but it will prove an interesting read to all involved here. The Wall Street Journal conducted its own blind test to see if people really could tell the difference, well read for yourself:

http://tech.yahoo.com/blog/null/65929

[got rice]

From reading the post he OP is asking whther increasing the guage of the speaker wire will improve the sound. The answer is yes to a certain degree once the maximum conductivity is achieved it doesn't matter how much bigger you go. But from 22AWG to 14AWG there will be an improvement

Howver there is another discusion as to whether these areas being equal
1. Speaker gauge the same
2. hardware (copper, silver,gold) is the same

and the maufacturer of the speaker wire being different. There is scientific evidience that the more expensive speaker will produce a better result.

I completey disagree with this argument that Anjou Nordst, or any other high end speaker cable will offer a signifigant improvement in sound.

Copper is Copper, no matter how you fabricate it. It still passes the current the exact same. Show me a scientific study where the more expensive speaker wire produces an improvemnet in sound. These people who say that they have first hand experince, are being completely subjective. There is no way to tell the difference.
As far as why people with 10-15 thousand dollar speakers don't use cheap wires, its because of aesthetic and the perception of sound quality improvement. Also the cheapies degredate the overall HT presentation. JMO

[CasualKiller]

Here's your scientific study, and just an FYI these guys main source of income is designing electrical prototypes for everyone from Motorolla to NASA, and analyze electrical and magnetic fields for prototypes.

Here's the main company:

http://www.analysisplusinc.com/


And the cable research:

http://www.analysis-plus.com/design_whyhollow.html

http://www.analysis-plus.com/design_whitepaper.html

And just an FYI all copper is not the same, it has over 350 commercial compositions.

[got rice]

Originally Posted by CasualKiller

Here's your scientific study, and just an FYI these guys main source of income is designing electrical prototypes for everyone from Motorolla to NASA, and analyze electrical and magnetic fields for prototypes.

Here's the main company:

http://www.analysisplusinc.com/


And the cable research:

http://www.analysis-plus.com/design_whyhollow.html



He is
http://www.analysis-plus.com/design_whitepaper.html

And just an FYI all copper is not the same, it has over 350 commercial compositions.

So where is the bind test study of between these prototypical speaker cables and less expensive copper cables. This isn't a third party labratory observation.

[CasualKiller]

**** Edited, believe what you want, I have provided proof, feel free to provide any to support your claims.****

[Twitch9]

Originally Posted by richteer

With respect, you're clearly speaking from a position of ignorance (and I don't claim to be an expert). Resistance is not the only factor at play: you're forgetting about capacitance and inductance, not to mention cable topology and dielectric type.

What you're saying is that you've never actually listened to different cables, and refuse to do so becuase there'd be no point 'cause "they all sound the same", whereas I and others are arguing from the position of first hand empirical observation. I know you're wrong stating that cables don't make a difference, because I've heard it for myself. There's no self-deluding going on here.

How about you try this: go to a decent audio specialist and ask to listen to different cables in one of their systems. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. And no, Best Buy et al do not count as audio specialists.

I have listened and installed more systems then you have ever seen, i've been in the business for over 20 years and with your ignorance thinking i shop at bestbuy and have never seen of or listened to almost every type of cable on the market your wrong. I understand you got ripped off on cables and you want to defend the big mistake you made but here is the reality of it, speaker wire is designed the same and your ears and everyone else's will never notice the difference in the cable unless you have a bionic ear, depending on age and standard hearing loss over years.

Now what i will tell you is a little known secret in your Audio specialist defense, Why do better cables sound different in the stores, well here is your reason and i know this as fact because i worked in the for many years. When they switch the cables they also switch the settings on the receiver or amp that has been fully adjusted to the room for the absolute best sound or a small difference in the EQ, this makes the speakers sound better and people like you buy them. It's really not hard to fool the public into a sale ask your local BB why they push over priced cables on the consumer, it's the biggest money maker and they make the most commission. Audio stores don't need to sell the speakers they sell themselves and they don't make allot on them they want to sell the cables to hook them up, that's why they will spend so much time going over the cables you need before you leave the store, they don't want you to do research on them and find store like Monoprice. Most people who shop at higher end audio stores already have the speakers, receiver or amp picked out so it's an easy sale but the consumer always forgets about the speaker wire or they think what they have is alright to use until your Audio specialist gets a hold of him.

So next time you make remarks about someone on the forms you should know a bit more of there background.

[Twitch9]

Originally Posted by CasualKiller

**** Edited, believe what you want, I have provided proof, feel free to provide any to support your claims.****

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

some reading material for you.

have fun

[Twitch9]

From sound and Vision

An Honest Answer from Sound & Vision (2001)
Here's an answer by Ian Masters in the May 2001 issue of Sound & Vision, page 36 Q&A.
Note: I saw no speaker wire advertisements in this issue!
"Cheap Wire
Q. Would it be okay for me to use single conductor wire as speaker cables running through the attic or under the house? Does stranded wire provide some sonic benefit? It would be far cheaper and easier for me to run 12-gauge wire to a plate with banana receptacles and then use specialty cable at each end to patch to the amplifier and speakers. Jon Schwendig, Santa Clara, CA
A. There are a lot of myths about speaker wires, but in the end it's thickness that counts, and 12 gauge should be heavy enough for any reasonable domestic application. I've taken several comparative listening sessions over the years, and the sort of wire you want to use involves no sonic degradation that I (or anybody else in the tests) could hear. You could even wire the whole distance from amp to speakers using 12-gauge, but it would probably be more convenient to use something more flexible for the actual connection to components. Specialty audiophile cables would serve that purpose nicely, although more modest cables would work just as well."
The Big Picture
The industry has now reached the point where resistance and listening quality are not the issues any more, although listening claims may still be made. There is big money to be made in wire, not only speaker wire but all kinds of exotic wire—hookup wire, audio cables, power cables and a wide variety of speaker wire including the new term of “speaker cables.” The term cable implies more robust and heavy duty qualities than wire.
I have learned from one wire company that much of this exotic wire is not manufactured in the USA at all. It comes from places like Taiwan and China. It can be bought in industrial quantities at surprisingly little cost and sold for tremendous profits. Custom runs in large quantities, can be purchased having any number of different features and are not a problem for versatile wire manufacturers. It can even be made with various terminals already installed.
The strategy in selling these products is, in part, to appeal to those who are looking to impress others with something unique and expensive. There is also pride of ownership and the belief that if it costs that much it must be good. It will always sell to those who want the latest thing and would spend as much for a Rolex watch as they would for wire. Of course, there are ordinary watches that will tell time accurately they but don’t have that name or that price.
Another part of the strategy is to capitalize on the lack of truth in advertising, particularly the whole truth. Perhaps the two words “truth” and “advertising” are on opposite extremes but half of the truth can be worse than a lie. I don’t think the average consumer is any match to cope with the persuasive sales “hype” of professional salesmen praising a questionable wire science and doubtful benefits.
When confronted with the truth, believers do not want to hear about it. They want to remain in the magical world of fantasy where they think they can hear improvements in their wire, often arrived at by making listening tests without adequate controls or understanding of the problems involved. One of the prime tools in creating such a faith for the average consumer is by capitalizing on fear and ignorance as in many other things that aren’t readily apparent. There is fear that the wire currently in use is not good enough. There is ignorance because most people do not have scientific knowledge in this area and lack adequate measuring equipment to prove otherwise.
Logical Conclusions?
We have been told by advertising that the exotic speaker wires offer fabulous advantages over ordinary lamp cord. It would seem reasonable that using this same wire for lamps would also enhance their performance. In the same vein as wire literature, you can have your light bulb reproduce light faithfully, finally allowing you see light the way it should be seen and bring out the natural performance of your table lamp. It may offer greater warmth, detail, brilliance, definition and speed by providing wider bandwidth and reduced skin effect. Just imagine what it might do for your electric razor and microwave!

[got rice]

Originally Posted by CasualKiller

**** Edited, believe what you want, I have provided proof, feel free to provide any to support your claims.****

I appreciate the EDIT... this will conclude any further discusions with you.

[CasualKiller]

All I read was a page full of biased opinions from 1 man and no physical evidence.

Clearly someone who equates audio frequencies with lamp and electric razor performance is a moron, I don't care what company he works for.

[solarrdadd]

Originally Posted by Twitch9

I have listened and installed more systems then you have ever seen, i've been in the business for over 20 years and with your ignorance thinking i shop at bestbuy and have never seen of or listened to almost every type of cable on the market your wrong. I understand you got ripped off on cables and you want to defend the big mistake you made but here is the reality of it, speaker wire is designed the same and your ears and everyone else's will never notice the difference in the cable unless you have a bionic ear, depending on age and standard hearing loss over years.

Now what i will tell you is a little known secret in your Audio specialist defense, Why do better cables sound different in the stores, well here is your reason and i know this as fact because i worked in the for many years. When they switch the cables they also switch the settings on the receiver or amp that has been fully adjusted to the room for the absolute best sound or a small difference in the EQ, this makes the speakers sound better and people like you buy them. It's really not hard to fool the public into a sale ask your local BB why they push over priced cables on the consumer, it's the biggest money maker and they make the most commission. Audio stores don't need to sell the speakers they sell themselves and they don't make allot on them they want to sell the cables to hook them up, that's why they will spend so much time going over the cables you need before you leave the store, they don't want you to do research on them and find store like Monoprice. Most people who shop at higher end audio stores already have the speakers, receiver or amp picked out so it's an easy sale but the consumer always forgets about the speaker wire or they think what they have is alright to use until your Audio specialist gets a hold of him.

So next time you make remarks about someone on the forms you should know a bit more of there background.

Howdy, I've seen your gallery and I really like your setup as you can tell from my rating of it. I'm curious, what kind of speaker cables do you use? By Brand (if any) and gauge please. I have another question for you. you said that (i'm paraphrasing) the folks at best buy and other audio stores are crooks because they do the old equalizer switcheroo on the cables to fool (us) idgits into buying the the high dollar speaker cables over the "standard cheap" ones. ok, lets say that's true, then they must do the same thing for their speakers, amps, receivers, disc players, and probably everything else in the store. Also, do you beileve (or know this for a fact, since you seem to know about the best buy scam) all of the folks who review A/V equipment, not just the lower end stuff but the really expensive high end stuff, to include the high end speaker cables, interconnects etc., they too must be lying to us because they are obviously getting paid by the company of the product to tell us what we want to hear so we will buy their stuff even though in truth that nice denon 1909 and those beautiful paradigm speakers you have are really not good at all and you must have fallen for some dishonest salesperson or some lying a/v reviewer and you bought it. I guess the same is true for me and all of my stuff, wow, what a sucker I was to have bought the stuff i bought based on all of the reviews and even listening in the store. hey, and what about the forums does that mean that people are not telling us the truth about anything there as well?

do you see where i'm going with this, YES, there are some people in this world who are bad and will lie to get you to buy something just to make a buck off of you. they will tell you that this is better than that when they know the only difference is the price and the size of their commision (by the way, best buy hasn't worked for commisions in years) I agree with you that those people exist in the world, but, it's not everyone. it's not every best buy, or anyother chain that the entire chain is corrupt. monoprice is another place to buy your goods and we don't know that they are telling the truth with what they say about their product. if you could buy 5 pairs of speaker wires from monoprice for what you paid for one from monster and monoprice tells you that their speaker wire is the same as monster, one, how do you know it's true? you only know two things, it's cheaper and they told you it's the same, so if monoprice could get lots of people on their side against the "high priced bad guys" then they would sell lots of stuff because they are on your side right? No, they are in business to make money like every other business or they would be a not for profit business and just give the cables away. Almost everyone of these places has a return policy. I say, buy what you want based on what you either have read in a review by an a/v pro, actually heard or check out some forums as well as what the maker of cables or whatever have to say at their site. buy it, if when you get to your system where hopefully you won't be dishonest with your self and switch any equalizer settings and not tell yourself and if the product works like it says and your happy with the way it sounds, looks performs then keep it. otherwise send/take it back for a refund.

I'd like to think there are honest people in the a/v world and that they are not all crooks, because if they are, then it stands to reason that eveyone in everyother industry is a crook and a lier which ultimately makes all of us, yes you and I, liers and crooks and I'd like to think I'm honest (relatively speaking, we're not talking about dating cause that's different!) and I'd like to think your honest too,

now, back to my original question, what kind of speaker wire are you using brand and guage please. Oh yes, I still do love your setup, those speakers still look great and I still love that center channel! In spite of this post I hope on that level, we're still cool!

[Driver_King]

Originally Posted by DJBlueRay

Thinking of changing speaker wire on my 7.1 Onkyo. Will I really hear a difference when I do. Firedog guys recommended swapping to new from factory supplied. Doubling the guage. Any help would be appreciated

If you are running long lengths, 14 gauge or 12 gauge wire should do just fine. I would get a roll or two of this and 14 of these (7 pairs for your receiver and 7 pairs for your speakers if you ever want upgrade to speakers with banana plugs). I'm pretty sure you'd be able to quickly notice a difference in sound with everything setup. I would also look at this for properly positioning your subwoofer and avoiding any annoying line noise from the subwoofer as well as possible sound improvements.

[crazyBLUE]

Originally Posted by Driver_King

If you are running long lengths, 14 gauge or 12 gauge wire should do just fine. I would get a roll or two of this and 14 of these (7 pairs for your receiver and 7 pairs for your speakers if you ever want upgrade to speakers with banana plugs). I'm pretty sure you'd be able to quickly notice a difference in sound with everything setup. I would also look at this for properly positioning your subwoofer and avoiding any annoying line noise from the subwoofer as well as possible sound improvements.

Wow stopped and watched 3 Blu's and 21 posts later we are back to where we started ! I am not saying this to be JUMPED ON either ! I have some reading to do !!

[-DLS-]

I can't really say if higher end speaker wire is different from my Monoprice ones. I have done a lot of little tweaks to improve the sound of my system in my room except upgrade speaker wire. I have been using 12AWG Monoprice since my first Polk Monitor setup - kept them or my Paradigm Monitors and still using them for my Studios. I would love to try some higher end cables if I can take them home to try them out. I don't know if I would shell out more cash for new ones though unless I notice a huge difference.

As for what Twitch_9 was saying about stores like BestBuy - I had a similar experience of how a salesman makes their speakers sound nice for customers. I listened to some speakers at Visions, which is a store in Canada similar to BestBuy or Futureshop and all the speakers were hooked up to an employees older 200wpc Carver amp that they use for the store. It sits on the top shelf off all the receivers where most people wouldn't notice it. They only sell Pioneer, Harman Kardon and Onkyo receivers and the salesman even told me they don't usually tell customers that it's running off a separate amp unless they ask or when someone like me notices it. But like solarrdad said just because one store will trick people - doesn't mean they're all are the same. Of all the times I have listened to speakers in store I've never even asked what speaker wire was being used but I will try to remember for future trips to the store just to see what type or brands most are using.

[richteer]

Originally Posted by Twitch9

I have listened and installed more systems then you have ever seen, i've been in the business for over 20 years and with your ignorance thinking i shop at bestbuy and have never seen of or listened to almost every type of cable on the market your wrong. I understand you got ripped off on cables and you want to defend the big mistake you made but here is the reality of it, speaker wire is designed the same and your ears and everyone else's will never notice the difference in the cable unless you have a bionic ear, depending on age and standard hearing loss over years.

So my guess was correct then: rather than actually subject yourself to listening to various cables to see for yourself whether or not there's a difference, you try to impress me with your 20+ year experience rhetoric. Right...

I bought my cables after I listened to them--without payikng a penny--not before. If I hadn't heard a difference I thought was worth the expense, I would've kept my hard-earned cash in my wallet.

Now what i will tell you is a little known secret in your Audio specialist defense, Why do better cables sound different in the stores, well here is your reason and i know this as fact because i worked in the for many years. When they switch the cables they also switch the settings on the receiver or amp that has been fully adjusted to the room for the absolute best sound or a small difference in the EQ, this makes the speakers sound better and people like you buy them.

And now your inexperience exposes itself.

1. When I audition cable (and other equipment) changes in a store, as often as not it is me switching the component, not the salescritter.

2. The sort of gear I listen to doesn't even have tone controls and the like, so there's no way they can be manipulated.

3. Before I spend any money, I insist on an in-home demo. Pray tell, how could the salescritter pull the EQ-switcheroo you allude to in my own home when a) my equipment has no EQ controls, and b) they're not present to fiddle with the controls anyway?

So next time you make remarks about someone on the forms you should know a bit more of there background.

Good advice. If I can say this without sounding like an arrogant jerk, perhaps you should check out my system before trying to educate me on high end audio.

[Drew664]

Let me ask a question.

Do both sides of the argument agree that the listener's ears are the biggest factor in cable switching? Isn't there only like 10% of the population that have 'golden ears' and those are the people that can tell a difference?

Maybe you guys are missing the bigger, yet simpler picture - the listener.

[richteer]

Originally Posted by Drew664

Do both sides of the argument agree that the listener's ears are the biggest factor in cable switching? Isn't there only like 10% of the population that have 'golden ears' and those are the people that can tell a difference?

Some of the cable differences are indeed small and only readily noticed by critical listeners, but a lot of the differences are also quite dramatic, noticable by just about anyone. And FWIW, the most expensive cable isn't always necessarily the best in a given system. One day when I was auditioning some cables the salescritter and I switched between two interconnects. One was noticablely better--day and night stuff--but the one we all preferred was the cheapest. We all preferred the $300 IC rather than the $1300 IC, in that system.