• Welcome to The Audio Annex! If you have any trouble logging in or signing up, please contact 'admin - at - theaudioannex.com'. Enjoy!
  • HTTPS (secure web browser connection) has been enabled - just add "https://" to the start of the URL in your address bar, e.g. "https://theaudioannex.com/forum/"
  • Congratulations! If you're seeing this notice, it means you're connected to the new server. Go ahead and post as usual, enjoy!
  • I've just upgraded the forum software to Xenforo 2.0. Please let me know if you have any problems with it. I'm still working on installing styles... coming soon.

surely you jest?

malsackj

Well-Known Member
Check any good handbook of physical constants and you will find that silver has much lower resistivity than copper. In fact, silver has the lowest resistivity of anything that is solid at room temperature, and is thus suitable for making wires.

However, the practical solution is to use thicker copper. Still, to avoid the debilitating nature of skin effects, the best solution is to use silver plated copper wire.

Of course, not to be overlooked is the fact that copper is reddish, and so will tend to brighten or warm up the sound, while silver, being white, will tend towards a neutral presentation, which can be tweaked with additional brightness by selective use of gold-plated jacks and plugs.

The type of wire insulation used can grossly affect sound quality. For example, rubber-type insulation acts as a shock absorber that dampens dynamic peaks (such as turning the crack of a rim shot into something more like a thud). It also has a high coefficient of friction, which slows the passage of sound through the wire causing the musical pitch to be lower.

The best wire insulation is Teflon, which is a very firm material with a very low coefficient of friction. This allows the sound to slide easily through the wires without dampening the peaks or slowing it down.

The colors of wire insulation should be selected according to light spectrum wavelengths and absorption. Generally bright colors are reflective. Therefore, bright colored insulation will reduce high frequency loses by reflecting high-frequency audio back into the wires thus maintaining clarity and brightness.

Dark, absorptive colors should be used for low frequency wire insulation. By absorbing and carrying some of the low frequency energy dark colored insulation actually increases the effective diameter of the conductor - a good thing for improving the high current flow needed at low frequencies.

You should also rack your signal sources above your amplifiers, and rack the amplifiers higher than the loudspeakers. This is so that the electrons don’t have to struggle uphill through the wires to get the sound out. You’d be amazed at the difference that can make.

Also, both loudspeakers should be placed to the same side of the amp, so that the cables are subject to the same Coriolis forces owing to the earth’s rotation; failure to observe this can result in truly nasty phase shifts.
 
It would be much harder than sending the sound threw a pipe but I am sure we could get someone to say it can be done.
 
malsackj, how can you forget the holy grail of all cable believers? The CABLE BURN-IN!!! :angry-tappingfoot:
 
DIYer said:
malsackj, how can you forget the holy grail of all cable believers? The CABLE BURN-IN!!! :angry-tappingfoot:

my buddy Richard will not let me live that down. You see Two weeks ago we were assisting on a video production and they were trying to do green screen. The front fill lights were creating shadows on the green screen so I placed four lights on the green screen to cancel out the shadows. We also needed to use a dimmer to allow some variable light levels. I am sorry to say that we hooked up 1600 watts of light into a dimmer for 1000 watts, and after 6 hours of use it popped. Oh Well the next day I disassembled and found that two wire nuts had melted and fused together. Evan the 12/3 wires were hot to the touch that day.

It was good fun. Still waiting to see the end result. I have also since replaced the hardware for our next adventure in Sound and light. Most of the time I run 3 300 watt halogen tourch lights to set a mood and dimmed lighting for drinks. This time was an exception that had only 10 minutes of planning on the location because of lack of communication from the forces at large.
 
The Burn-In Lie

This widely reiterated piece of bullshit would have you believe that audio electronics, and even cables, will "sound better" after a burn-in period of days, weeks, or even months (yes months). Pure garbage. Capacitors will "form" in a matter of seconds after power on. Bias will stabilize in a matter of minutes (and shouldn't be all that critical in well-designed equipment, to begin with). There is absolutely no difference in performance between a correctly designed amplifier's (or preamp's or CD player's) first hour and 1000th-hour performance. As for cables, yeech... We're dealing with audiophile voodoo here rather than science.

Loudspeakers, however, may require a break-in period of a few hours, perhaps even a day or two, before reaching optimum performance. That's because they are mechanical devices with moving parts under stress that need to settle in. (The same is true with reciprocating engines and firearms.) That doesn't mean a good loudspeaker won't "sound good" right out of the box, any more than a new car with 10 miles on it won't be good to drive.


Audio Critic - Top 10 Audio Lies

Rope
 
I'd read a few months back someone in Stereophile claimed that, along with burn-in, a cable will "polarize" with both its speaker and the amp, and if you ever break the connection it would take weeks to "build it back up". Because of this, direct A/B comparisons and blind listening tests could not be usefully done. How convenient.

I let my subscription expire after one year... :roll:
 
Botch said:
I'd read a few months back someone in Stereophile claimed that, along with burn-in, a cable will "polarize" with both its speaker and the amp, and if you ever break the connection it would take weeks to "build it back up". Because of this, direct A/B comparisons and blind listening tests could not be usefully done. How convenient.

I let my subscription expire after one year... :roll:

Sterophile gives the straight dope, compared to The Absolute Sound, which I will add, has more snake oil drivel than any publication i've been exposed.

Rope
 
So if I literally burn wires and nuts that does not qualify as a burn in?

If I was to add my CO2 on the wires to chill them, would they now be superconductors?

We were running our cables and electrical opposite of the rotation of the earth would this have caused the wires to heat more?
 
Rope said:
Sterophile gives the straight dope, compared to The Absolute Sound.

Rope
Oh, agreed! When I started thinking about building my system, I bought an issue each of Sound & Vision, Home Theater, Stereophile, and The Absolute Joke; I subscribed to the first three. But, after reading a few issues of StereoDefile I realized they were a bit too religious too (although I like their music reviews).
I'll probably keep the first two for a few more years, though. :handgestures-thumbup:
 
I find it interesting that Sound and vision did an article on testing the room with True Audio RTA.

?? did they take that from the forum???? They missed SH's diy microphone and wrote about the Behringer???

How about the Hometheater shack and REW.
 
malsackj said:
So if I literally burn wires and nuts that does not qualify as a burn in?

If I was to add my CO2 on the wires to chill them, would they now be superconductors?

We were running our cables and electrical opposite of the rotation of the earth would this have caused the wires to heat more?

No, no, no silly man. You must have a direct lightening hit for the purpose of burn-in, and then cool with liquid nitrogen.

Bear in mind, this must be done while all the planets are in alignment, or the electronics involved cannot reach their full sonic potential.

Rope

Oh, forgot to mention, stand on one leg whille doing three full rotations with your eyes closed.
 
Rope said:
malsackj said:
So if I literally burn wires and nuts that does not qualify as a burn in?

If I was to add my CO2 on the wires to chill them, would they now be superconductors?

We were running our cables and electrical opposite of the rotation of the earth would this have caused the wires to heat more?

No, no, no silly man. You must have a direct lightening hit for the purpose of burn-in, and then cool with liquid nitrogen.

Bear in mind, this must be done while all the planets are in alignment, or the electronics involved cannot reach their full sonic potential.

Rope

Oh, forgot to mention, stand on one leg whille doing three full rotations with your eyes closed.


Funny you mention cooling, 'cause that's what I was thinking about when reading that teflon is a better cable insulator b/c of low friction and that you should rack your gear in a way that helps the electrons. This guy should put his gear in a deep freeze, that will also help the electrons. Problem would be that the sound would be to "Cold".
 
One time, I had a salesman (who also owned and built the speakers he sells that I happened to be demoing) tell me he wasn't comfortable switching out one of his tube amps with one of the receivers he was using for another (but different) set of speakers. My reasoning was I don't have tubes in my setup, so a basic receiver would give me a better idea of the speakers' performance. He told me the reason why he didn't want to switch the receiver out with his tube amp was the way the inductors on the speakers were broken in.

I thought electrons were electrons and pretty much a speaker is not going to know whether it's a $3500 tube amp or a $500 receiver that's supplying power to them. I probably would have bought a pair of his speakers if he hadn't spewed out that malarkey.
 
But a tube runs on a plate charge with 480 volts, And you need to make sure that the speakers coil and magnet can handle the voltage and the low current to drive the sound. Your receiver has transistors and uses low voltage and high current there for his speakers are not correct for the job.

I would have to charge you extra to change out the configuration to support receivers.
 
malsackj said:
But a tube runs on a plate charge with 480 volts, And you need to make sure that the speakers coil and magnet can handle the voltage and the low current to drive the sound. Your receiver has transistors and uses low voltage and high current there for his speakers are not correct for the job.

I would have to charge you extra to change out the configuration to support receivers.

Puuuuuft. All he needs is a johnston converter, and a diesel spark plug wrench for the installation.

Rope
 
Diesels dont have spark plugs, There is no such tool. Diesels use glowplugs.

Or is that the glowbugs? hmmmm

I think my plugs are fowled ?? better get the oil out.
 
Back
Top