Yeah Nipper - you haven't been looking hard enough. It's pretty common practice in high end amps.
My speaker cables are "Groneberg Quattro Reference" and the cables inside the Odyssey Audio amps are also of this type. Case re-opened.Originally Posted by Nipper
Yeah Nipper - you haven't been looking hard enough. It's pretty common practice in high end amps.
If you're talking boutique amps, then it's likely there to keep up with the image, not becasue it really matters.
Audio_by_Goodwill
Michigan, USA
AbG
Amen to that.
I disagree. I have never seen a McIntosh with boutique wire. It's not common practice, just limited to boutique amps.
In the old days "high end" was defined by performance...most of what I see as "high end" now is defined by appearance or marketing.
Levinson did use silver plated with Teflon insulation. IMHO that is just good quality wire.
Your neighbors called. They like your music.
Do you guys ever go to audio shows? Read the lit?
Yes, many of the amps (and speakers) that use fancy wire are "Boutique." Does not mean they are expensive, tho. Some are, some are not. But if we are talking of fancy wires, why leave out "fancy" amps?
Never said it mattered, just that it's done.If you're talking boutique amps, then it's likely there to keep up with the image, not because it really matters.
Dunno, we can all disagree I hope.
I just feel boutique amps concentrate on image.
Doesn't mean a boutique amp can not have a reasonable price, or adequate specs.
If it makes you happy do it. I'm not into what we in the industry call "gingerbread" which is things done to help sell the item rather than improve performance.
The fact that many if not most of the best amps don't use special wire argues to me it isn't necessary.
I could see, for instance, silver windings in the secondary of an output tranny. Stepping down voltages could lead to resistive losses. Silver speaker wire carries a way stronger argument than a silver power cord. Unnecessary IMHO, but at least makes more sense.
But 6 inches of fancy wire inside an amp is likely to have negligible effect. OTOH quality wire over crap will probably help the amp maintain it's specs long term.
I just consider it unproven that most wire is any better quality. I have seen a zillion experiments. Most sounded no better, some worse. But if it made the owner happy, it didn't cost much.
My only argument is against people like Monster running a zillion percent markup. Anybody who sells at an honest price I got no quarrel with. I may not buy it, anybody who wants is free to.
Your neighbors called. They like your music.
Hmm, I believe some primers are in order:
Skin effect - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dielectric_strength
Litz wire - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Twisted pair - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
From these we see that while the Litz wire has a lower skin effect it's basically meaningless at audio frequencies in a typical HIFI/HT app, so turning the zip cord into a twisted pair reduces the potentially audible differences to those that can be attributable to its higher inductive and capacitive reactance due to the larger gap between the twisted pair's conductors, ergo using a thin insulation with a high dielectric strength is desirable to minimize L, C, R distortion.
Fortunately, the pioneers of electrical power distribution were forced to work all this out early on to minimize the various distortions that increase with increasing distance and AFAIK magnet winding wire construction is still as good as it gets (and why driver VC construction uses it), so for me to potentially improve on my 'el cheapo' DIY cables, i.e. make them technically lower in distortion, I'd have to make them from magnet winding wire, which I recommend for lower current apps such as HF systems or where I want to add some high SQ series resistance.
For long runs where a single conductor size causes unacceptable distortion, Litz wire construction is theoretically the way to go, though certain measured test docs I once had access to indicated that for typical HIFI/HT apps it's not worth the extra cost/effort until > ~12 ga is required and judging by decades old audio signal wire size charts that only spec'd. a twisted pair they apparently came to the same conclusion. Even then, twisting isn't required until 'X' feet is exceeded at 'Y' impedance for 'Z' gauge wire.
For example, an 8 ohm speaker doesn't need a twisted pair cable until its one way run is > ~15 ft/22 ga and > 95 ft/14 ga.. Since my test cables are ~15 ft one way and the speakers are nominally 4 ohm, technically I didn't need to twist them since they needed to be > 30 ft long, ergo good quality zip cord would have been fine for the app.
All that said, if the signal source is distorted enough that adding any more in series with it sums to something audibly perceived as for the worse, then of course reducing and/or altering the wiring system's distortion characteristics (i.e. its L, C, R properties) is a viable tweak that the boutique cables address and why I recommend twisting regardless of length just in case.
Me, I'd rather do it with acoustic solutions as far as practical and only then fine tune them with electronics. This has been/will always be my recommendation, but if one has the desire/means/perseverance to test as many different expensive cables as it takes (and/or those tweaks that defy physics as most of us understand it) to find the best perceived performance, then who am I to try and talk them out of it?
GM
Loud is Beautiful if it's Clean! As always though, the usual disclaimers apply to this post's contents.
2 kHz (give or take) is where human hearing peaks (most efficient), so wide BW distortion must be below the signal's noise floor around/at this frequency.
The higher the signal impedance, the higher the speaker's effective impedance, ergo the higher its system Qt.
GM
Loud is Beautiful if it's Clean! As always though, the usual disclaimers apply to this post's contents.
It's true that the largest component is 2KHz.
But just to make it more clear or more muddy....
A Square Wave = The sum of odd harmonics of a sine wave where the amplitude of each is 1/n where `n' is the harmonic number. Now take "n" to infinity and you have a perfect square wave.
First a square wave is theoretically impossible in a constrained frequency domain.
So for a 2KHz square wave with amplitude of "1V" for argument's sake:
A 2KHz square wave =
1V-2KHz sine wave + 0.3V-6KHz sine wave + 0.2V-10KHz sine wave +
0.142857V-14KHz sine wave + 0.111111V-18KHz sine wave + 0.090909V-22KHz sine wave
+ etc,etc. ad infinitum....
...but we're only interested in getting the highest reproducible frequency unadulterated
...to the speakers.
...and the blips in the example appear to be in the "audible" range at significant amplitude
...to hear.
I'm not really drawing any conclusions....and thanks GM for the primer links...
It's just that I'm glad I took calculus based physics in college.
Posting Permissions
Bookmarks