Optimum Gauge for Networks

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Mr Roland:
You are obviously quite correct. I apologize for my pretentious remarks. I will now go turn on the light switch in the kitchen and walk around to the front of the house to wait for the 60Hz power to get there and turn the light on. I will bring a stop watch and report back my findings.
Regards.

[rolandr]

Mr WunHuanglo:

I have presented material from an article apparently overlooked by many in audio and the engineering community.

Several important points are brought out. It looks into propagation of electricity as electromagnetic fields guided by the wire. Goes into skin depth transmission in detail... that is what happens to transmission inside the actual wire. Explains attenuation of the fields as it penetrates the wire... makes sense since the field is not going into a theoretical vacuum. Defines skin depth as the depth at which attenuation is down 8.69 dB. Explains the degree of transmission slowing down is directly related to depth of skin. The lower the freq the deeper the depth of skin....in other words low frequency can penetrate more...To my ears it has always been like that!!!. Gives numbers relating freq, skin depth and velocity of transmission. A fat enough cable will allow maximal skin depth to occur and cause a larger time difference to occur between the arrival of low vs high frequencies.

Prof Malcoln O.J. Hawksford is a well recognized member of the AES having published many articles in the JAES and often heading its functions.

This is the best we nonengineering types can do with this heavy material. I refer you to the above listed article in which I am sure you enginneering types will get much more out of it. I am also sure, once you do that, you will take the time out to further educate us.

Respectfully

Roland

[rolandr]

Mr WunHaunglo:
We non engineering types do not keep articles such as this handy although we do seem to know and remember the material more than engineering types!

DAN:
I am trying to locate the article for you. HI FI News and Record Review only allows back ordering issues a few year back. I looked in the JAES site where Prof Hawksford has many published articles but this one was not listed? By the way he chaired the JAES 2001 pro meeting. He is at the Univ of Essex in England. In regards to using non cupper wire the numbers provided are for skin depth in CUPPER wire. Here are the numbers again

FREQ----------SKIN DEPTH-----------VELOCITY
HZ---------------d,mm-----------------v,m/s
50-------------- 9.35----------------2.93
100--------------6.61----------------4.15
1000-------------2.09---------------13.12
10,000-----------0.66---------------41.50
20,000-----------0.47---------------58.69

A good test may be using Power and Light 1" thick solid core 10 gauge thick strand cupper cable lets say 50-100 feet and comparing it to its equivalent thickness bundle of thin insulated solid core. Again I don't make a big deal of this but those are the numbers. I will pass on the article as soon as can obtain it. Look to see if local libraries carry HFN/RR.

[RClark]

holy cow guys---------as engineers we all know that if we pour a glass of water into the ocean it will raise the level----------but will it really affect our boating pleasure??????--------thats about how much the wire issue contributes to audio..............RC

[marcuswilson]

Roland,

The figures you give are either wrong or being used for the wrong purpose.
It is true that different frequencies 'appear' to travel at different speeds in wire, but it is caused by the effects of capacitance and inductance of the wire. You will find that each type of coaxial cable has a 'velocity factor' which can be calculated from the physical properties of the cable. This is a number, always less than 1, which you multiply with the speed of light to get the velocity of a signal through that cable.
The speed of light is aprox 297600000 m/s and cable velocity factors go down to about 0.7

The numbers you give are absolutely ridiculous.

In normal wires, like speaker cable, electrical signals travel at very close to the speed of light.

The figures you give say that a 50Hz signal goes 2.93 m/s and a 20KHz one at 58.69 m/s. This means that using 10M of speaker cable the 20KHz arrives 3.24258 seconds before the 50Hz signal. This is obviously wrong and I could easily measure the time difference between signals like these in many miles of such wire to be nil with the standard test equipment I posess.

Your ears are not sensitive enough to hear the frequency/time difference that may exist in any wire you may use for your speakers. The time shifting of wires would be far less than the other time shifting processes involved in the other parts of your reproduction chain, let alone the recording chain.

Skin effect is a provable and measurable phenomenon, but is insignificant at audio frequencies. It caused signal loss, not delay. Unless you use plasma speakers, the time anomolies in the mechanical components of your speakers will be at least 1000 times more frequency/time distorting than any cable.

The effects you hear have other causes.

Marcus.

[rolandr]

Guys:

You are all missing the point the above numbers only can occur at MAXIMAL skin depth. As mentioned several times, this would require a very FAT HEAVY GAUGE cable indeed. Certainly would not play a role in 10, 12 gauge type wire!!!!!. I have a copy of the Professor's article sent by a friend from overseas. If interested in a copy let me know. Will be very busy for next few days but will get to it eventually.

[StuWelwood]

The only way that such ridiculously low velocities could ever make sense is if they represent electron propagation. Electric wave propagation velocity is essentially constant. And, yes, I took all of those classes that involved Maxwell's equations, vector calculus, quantum physics... Absolutely without question, skin effect is insignificant at audio frequencies. Even if all else were ideal, there is not a single chance that anyone could hear the results of skin efffect at audio frequencies. Pure hocus pocus. In fact, it would be extremely difficult to measure the change of resistivity, if possible at all. The glass of water in the ocean analogy seems appropriate.

[dennis gilliam]

Now maybe the light will be shed on the "fool wanting hi-end cables & his soon-to-be-parted-money" segment of todays' HI-FI biz.

$3K for a set of speaker interconnects? I think not.

Gold-plated connectors? Fine, if you live where the humidity is severe and corrosion is likely

14ga SJ cable? You bet, with Neutrik Speak-ons as well. OFC instead of that? If you like, it can't hurt.

Litz? Flat? Multi-strand? Coaxial? Get a life!

Your biggest error in wiring speakers is using too small a wire size for the distance involved. 4-Ohm stuff can have some amazing current peaks you don't wan't lost in heat. Even 16-Ohm systems will have an impedance somewhere in it's operating range lower than you think.

Obey your ears, don't lie to yourself or practice "aural denial"

DG

[marcuswilson]

Roland,

I think you are missing the point. What you are talking about is irrelevant in the real world.

[Steve Burger]

Personally I don't really care too much about all this but I do care that I believe the level of respect shown others here could be better. THIS IS NOT THE AUDIO ASYLUM where people seem to get off on abusing each other! Why don't you all agree to disagree without being disagreeable and LET GO!