On Wed, 13 Nov 2002 14:05:59 GMT, chrisv
>On Tue, 12 Nov 2002 22:15:03 -0500, Keith R. Williams
>
>>In article
>>@hotmail.com says...
>>> Huh??? So, your speakers are placed only inches from you amps?
>>
>>No, there is a couple of meters of 16ga *ZIP* cord in between.
>>Now do you really want to defend monster cable? How about
>>"oxygen free" cable? What a maroon!
>OMG I just got this spiel from a salesguy. I needed some 75'
>component video cables, and asked the salesguy if they such long ones.
>Sales guy says they do, and proceeds to show me "Monster Video 3"
>cables. I see price tag. Price tag says $159. I say that's WAY out
>of line. Salesguy starts telling me about the high-purity copper in
>Monster cables. I tell salesman (in a nice way) to stick his $159
>Monster cables up his rear-end.
OK, here's where physics meets magic...;-)
In the case of speakers, the impedance of
the load varies with frequency, and with most
amplifiers, the frequency response varies with
a varying load (not to speak of distortion
characteristics...;-), so the impedance of the
connecting wire is an issue in the resultant
sound (we really can hear slight frequency-response
differences...). In this case, it is true that
different gauges and lengths (and connector
current capacity) will generally sound a bit
different (notice that I did not mention wire
material [assuming a good conductor metal...],
shape, covering material, etc...?;-). In the
case of high-impedance interconnects, the signal
high-frequency content can be reduced by using
long runs of higher-capacitance wire, so here
again the impedance of the wire can affect the
resultant signal (notice I did not mention
weird wire designs, excesses in connector
materials choices, etc. - simple choice of a
good cheap low-capacitance cable type suffices
to solve the problem...). In practice, for very
short runs, 16-guage ZIP cord often serves well
enough as speaker cable (I use much heavier gauge
wire with my very low impedance ribbon speakers,
but the effects of using smaller gauge wire could
well improve the sound by changing the frequency
response in a good way - this was true for my old
Quad electrostatics, BTW...]), and ordinary
cheap interconnects serve well enough for
reasonably short runs (I use cheap RS cables
in my rather good-sounding system - see:
www.David-Ruether-Photography.com/Audio.html) - but for
long runs, I would select cable for low
capacitance (or make my own...).