On Thu, 14 Nov 2002 16:15:15 GMT, chrisv wrote:

>On Wed, 13 Nov 2002 15:34:14 GMT, d_ruether@hotmail.com (Neuman - Ruether)
>wrote:

[...]
>>www.David-Ruether-Photography.com/Audio.html) - but for
>>long runs, I would select cable for low
>>capacitance (or make my own...).

>Fine. Care to tell us how much speaker-cable capacitance it would
>take for a 20-ft cable to make a 1dB difference at 20kHz, and then
>compare zip-cord to expensive cable in that context?

You exerpted my post, leaving out the parts that
made it obvious I was referring to high-impedance
interconnects, not speaker cable, with the above...
There are different issues with low-impedance
amp-to-speaker wiring and high-impedance
shielded interconnects - in the first, there is no
capacitive-filtering effect, but there is an inductive
and resistence effect; in the second, there is little
inductive and resistence effect, but capacitance
becomes important...
The whole post was:

"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...)."