Since everyone was gracious enough to tell me about their speakers...I am curious about speaker cable. It seems, from some of the things I have read, that it can make a huge difference in sound quality. Has anyone noticed a change in the sound when using, or changing, their speaker cable? More specifically, has anyone tried the SP-200 speaker cable from AV123?

Thanks all!

Incog

It makes a huge difference in sound when I'm using a speaker cable verses when I'm not.

At one point in my life, I delved into inexpensive boutique wire. I had Apeture wire that resembled Monster cable, or the big stuff at Home Depot. I went to MITerminator cable, with the "Box" along the cable. I did not notice any difference. I still have those....in their box in the attic. I now run Taralabs Prism 2+2 bi-wire. I bought that when I had B&W 602's and decided to bi-wire them. Another waste IMO!

Point: don't blow a big portion of your budget on "Snake oil". Buy decent quality cable (such as what Ascend Acoustics has on their website), but use the money to upgrade other areas of your system instead.

The expensive stuff looks nice, but I ain't lookin' at 'em, I'm listenin' to 'em!

There’s been a fair amount of discussion about speaker cables in the Saloon. At one end of the spectrum you've got people who believe a cable shoot-out analysis that showed that round-jacket, 14-gauge extension cord wire from Home Depot performed admirably even when compared to some very high dollar wire. At the other end, you’ve got people buying or custom-making some interesting and expensive constructions, based on electronic practice usually associated mostly with ‘radio frequency’ current, which they swear made an immediate and great improvement using all kinds of descriptive words about how it affected their soundstage. Then you’ve got accessories, like little ‘tripods,’ from people who say, “… laying audio cables on an artificial fiber carpet will immediately dull the sound of your stereo.” Who are you going to believe?

Coming from an engineering background, I would say that the number one important characteristic of speaker cable, beyond such things as ‘it shouldn’t short out,’ is low resistance between amplifier and loudspeaker. One aspect of an amplifier's ability to control a loudspeaker is its damping factor. If you add as much as 10% or 20% of a loudspeaker’s impedance as a resistance between the amp and the speaker, the effective damping factor to the loudspeaker really starts falling off. This is also true of the effective watts delivered to the loudspeakers.

Since I just had be non-conformist, and I wanted to save money, I bought a reel of surplus video cable online. I didn’t care much about the center conductor, I wasn’t going to use it anyway, but the double layer, silver tinned copper shield has a resistance of 1.1 ohms per 1000 feet. That means, for a speaker run of 50 feet, the signal travels 100 feet round trip and the cable interjects only 0.11 ohms in the signal path. That’s about 2% of the impedance for a 6-ohm nominal rated loudspeaker. As a secondary and very minor feature of using this cable, ‘skin effect’ arguments become unnecessary because I’m essentially using a flexible, hollow ‘pipe’ as my conductor. If this made a difference to audio-frequency signals it would be more than a minor issue, but the fact that people don’t argue with me about skin effect in my cable is a nice feature.

I use cobalt speaker cable that replaced some cheap monster cable. http://www.cobaltcable.com/product/speaker_cables.htm.
not sure if I heard a difference or not but it is well made and looks cool...

Incognito:

I found this cable interesting so I made a 7’ pair.
http://www.venhaus1.com/diycatfivecables.html
If you want to try them yourself, send me a private message.

Ratshack 12 gauge. I used the savings on some nice banana plugs and a college fund.

Carol Superflex 12ga from Home Depot. It runs $.44/ft. Don't waste your money on hi-end marketing, it's hype, pure and simple.

I bought 2 50 ft. 14 ga spools of monster on sale a year ago, only $19.99 per spool. It works well for home theatre because it is thin enough to hide, but a low enough ga to give a decent sound.

By the way, how rude of me. I am new to the sight have only been posting for a couple of days, but have been completely stoked on my 950/7100 set up for a year now, just call me
Spatula.

I've tried Monster XP cable and cheap stuff from Home Depot. Couldn't hear a difference. Monster cable was flexible as a shoelace, but that was the only difference I could see. Home Depot wire was noticeably stiffer, but still plenty flexible for me.

OOOOOps, After checking last night I discovered that my cables are 12 ga, not 14.

I use a cable that has 3 wires solid core in 18 gauge. I use 2 for positive and 1 for negative. The soundstage is incredible. Hmmmm, I think that may have something to do with my speakers.

I use BetterCables for everyone of my cables!

I've used Home Depot/Rat Shack Cable for a loooong time prior to getting some BetterCables. It's been years since I was suckered into Monster Speaker cables.

I have yet to find speaker cable that makes a world of difference.

I am using SP-200 to drive may main and center channel. The SP-200 were a significant improvement over my aging Monster cables. I am in the process of auditioning Signal Cables Ultra Single Wire (http://www.signalcable.com). For surrounds I and using Cobalt In-wall cables.

Vik

I've always been of the opinion that being able to distinguish between cables (or electronics for that matter) is dependent upon the quality of the other components in the system. If you've got speakers and components of average performance, you may not be able to hear any difference between one set of speaker cables or another. In my experience, I have been able to tell differences in speaker cables and interconnects. Sometimes, differences are perceived as better, just because it's different. What matters most is what sounds right to you....if you can accomplish this with Home Depot speaker cables, save your money and buy some DVD/CD's!! If you try some more expensive/exotic cables and your listening experience improves, then it's money well spent. BTW, I use Outlaw Interconnects and Tara Labs Prism Bi-Wire speaker cables.

One of the problems with comparing the change of any part of a system to its previous state is this: our brains are not fixed-reference analytical devices. Our brains are somewhat ‘auto-correcting with drifting reference’ when it comes to sensory input. If I brought 101 audio enthusiasts to a listening room, ask them to listen carefully for a while, ask them to step out while I put in a different set of cables when actually I really leave everything unchanged, then brought the people back for a second listen, how many would say the ‘change’ made the sound better, worse or made no difference?

To really have a fair A-B (or A-B-C-etc.) comparison, one has to have an equivalent run and environment for each cable, be able to switch between cables rather quickly (about 1 second?) and have the listeners blind to which set of cables are being used at a given moment. Then one needs to run through a long pseudo-random, but carefully planned, series of selections between the cables being compared and see if a particular set is ranked consistently better or worse than another.

Then, as harp795 points out, you may not find out which cables give the most accurate transference of the signal, but what type of transference do most people prefer for a given setup/environment.

I tend to think that cables that cause the least modification of the signal are the best. If 3 of 5 compared styles that did that, then I would think that any comparison of the 3, with a large enough statistical sample, would show no preference between them. Interestingly enough, some very esoteric cable can be shown, via properly engineered testing, to alter the signal more so than simple, low-gauge, good quality copper cable.

In the February/March 2004 and April/May 2004 issues of the absolute sound, 16 kinds of speaker cable are compared with interesting results.

Isn't cheap and Monster (that overpriced and overhyped stuff) an oxymoron?...

-THTS

Man oh man...best answer of them all!...

-THTS

BB4TB:

Good point however, there are people who will dislike you for pointing out things like the proper A/B test procedure. I sure am not the one but there are number of people who will argue against you by questioning things like how well the equipments were set up or room acoustics and how good the speakers were and …etc. If they find out which speakers were used they’ll blame on that or try to find excuse to discredit the result by nitpicking on bunch of things. Basically there isn’t much anyone can do to people like that to change their mind which makes me want to ask this question. Is there a terminology to describe people like that? I mean in some sort of audio term.

Audio Snob might do it, but I am partial to the classics like Jackass. A Jackass is stubborn, close minded, opinionated, a follower, yeah Jackass works for me. How about Audio Jackass or an "AJA".

Of course on the other end of the spectrum we have those who refuse to admit that there could be a real audible difference if it can't be proven with the scientific method used. In other words, if it can't be measured it doesn't exist. To my way of thinking, this person is just as much a stubborn jackass, but just with a different paradigm. I say keep an open mind, measure what you can and try to figure out why you may be hearing what you perceive.

I completely agree, perception is really the bottom line. How you perceive what you hear is different to everyone else and the individual must decide if the cost is worth it. I believe that what is trying to be conveyed is that an "AJA" is the individual that even after a blind A-B-C side-by-side test with a multiple random shoot out still refuses to look at the results. Instead the AJA makes multiple excuses such as components make, speakers not being revealing enough etc... If they are side by side in an A-B-C test with identical reasonably high-end equipment with the same passages played for each, the results should speak for themselves.

AJA is a good one!
It is also important for the observers to be aware of the difference between objective claims and subjective ones as much as some manufactures will try to blur the line by rubbing it with snake oil.

While we are at terminology discussion, would “psychoacoustics” be of any relevance to people thinking they hear things that are not scientifically measurable?

Spatula, I was recently told by someone who has conducted numerous A-B-C tests in a controlled environment that some “audiophiles” showed up only once and wouldn’t talk to him anymore after being humiliated (in their own perception) for not being able to tell the difference between their boutique audio products and the common hardware store goods. Will this make a case of AJA?

Thanks, it just popped into my head.

With your question on my opinion of Psychoacoustics being relevant in this case, not really. Psychoacoustics really isn't thinking you hear something that is not there or cannot be measured, it is more the art of masking or removing sounds that are not alledgedly in the audible range or are buried by a louder sound producing the same frequency.

EXAMPLE, remember "Minidisc" and Digital Compact Cassette, "DCC" (Not DAT), in the mid to late 90's? These two formats were based on Psychoacoustics. Both held less than half of the information available on a CD, but yet they were able to play the same minutes of identical music as a CD. This was achieved by removing the information that was alledgedly measured to be out of the audible range and any other information that was being masked by louder sounds on the same frequency. Minidisc only used 40-50% of the information as a CD, DCC 20-35%. As you know, both of these formats failed miserably. Audiophiles claimed the sound was compressed, artificial sounding and a step backwards in technology. Most people could not tell the difference. The reason that this was even attempted was that each format was compact and recordable.

Now, were these so called Audiophile's really AJA's, we will never know because I do not believe the format was ever taken seriously enough for a formal blind side by side against CD. I personally thought that they sounded like crap, but I might be being an AJA myself because I never did a blind side by side.

Almost forgot, as for the "Audiophile Slayer", If he used the same kind of cables and ESPECIALLY SPEAKERS (I think we can all agree that all speakers ARE NOT created equal) for both set ups, than yes I think we have an AJA. If the Audiophile Slayer stacked the deck in his favor than he's the AJA, because he proved nothing.

Good Convo Spiker

Absolutely!

I think that both a technical instrumented analysis and true A-B comparisons with a statistically large enough sample audience are valid comparisons. Both these methods compliment each other. If listening trials consistently point out differences between products, it gives the instrumentation group a reason to hunt for the cause. When the instrument based analysis finds a performance difference between products, the A-B listener group is beneficial for learning if the technical difference between products causes a perceptible difference. If the two methods reach an agreed consensus regarding a product or an issue, that leaves those that continue to insist otherwise 'without a leg to stand on.' I'll say again, both methods are valid and have a place and role.

Beyond that, you will still have your own perceptions and preferences.

A difficulty arises, for example, when you have four different reviewers (too small a sample to be statistically accurate) in four different magazines try several different cables over the course of year and all end up praising different products for different reasons and may even contradict each other. Sometimes these reasons are dubious because reviewers are subject to the vagaries of expectation-influenced perception like the rest of us. This process lends some, but little, true aid to the person trying to choose between the many products out there and leaves plenty of snake oil for sellers to hide behind. Isn’t it contrary to a publisher’s advertising revenue interests to report over and over again (if true), “We find no practical or overall statistical performance difference between using Extra Wonderful Cable at 40 dollars per foot and Quite Good low-gauge copper at 40 cents per foot?”

I think debating the speaker wire thing is like debating what came first, the chicken or the egg.
It goes on forever. I do find it interesting that despite all of the big bucks that one can spend for electronics and speakers, Cheap, 12g lamp cord is very hard to beat. However if high priced wiring trips your trigger, fire away. I spent my coins on a new Ford GT

Yeah, but does it have a Bose radio?

You mean "I hear no Highs I hear no Lows, oh my god it must be Bose!?!?!?"

Whew, you want 2 year waiting list?

Yeah, it takes that long to install the Bose radio.

Two words: Dan Gurney.
(Ford GT40 LeMans champion who invented the champagne spray podium celebration)

Let us not forget the value of high quality DC trigger wire. As has been said many times," the system is only as good as the weakest link." This often overlooked connection deserves the same quality audiophile grade interconnects to insure true high fidelity.

Make sure you use gold plated 3.5mm mono mini-plugs. The wire specs should include using a shielded, high strand count, ultra-low oxygen copper wire with professional grade crimped terminations. Try to keep the length to a practical minimum to avoid unnecessary interference. An investment that will bring enormous dividends to you and your family.

Allan

That’s a valid point. Corrosion resistant coating and solid construction is important. BTW, how much should a 3 foot cable like that cost? I’d say around $ 10 each. What gets me is why some companies charge 3 times as much for same kind of product.

When the quantity of a product in a typical system is so low, as in the case of DC Trigger wire, I believe cost should not be an object.

I hope someone has the expertise to give us a DIY solution that will help keep the cost under $100. Have a nice day...

I recently changed my main L/R and CC speaker wire from Monster XP to AudioQuest Type 6 with bi-wire for the mains. I noticed a difference ritht away. The highs were smoother and the mid range was fuller. Maybe I'm full of it, but to me it was worth the money.

Without venturing into the debate over how much difference can be made by one cable or another, I just wanted to relate a simple experience I had the other day that showed me how difficult it would be for me to do a fair A/B comparison in my own setup:

I moved an inch or two.

I was driving for several hours the other day and I happened to have my ears/brain in ‘analytical mode’ as I was listening to some music I enjoy. In the midst of trying to critically listen to the way the music sounded in the car compared to the same music played on my home system, I sat up a bit. The positioning of my ears was raised one or two inches relative to the inside of the car. There was a noticeable difference in my perception of the ratio of different frequency ranges within the music had to one another. In the parlance of audio-speak, I would say that some parts of the upper mid-range filled in and that the bass was better defined … yet I had changed nothing about the system itself or the level at which the music was playing back.

If I were in my home, and had changed cables, then sat down for comparative listening with my ears as much as an inch or two displaced from where they were previously, my comparison of the two sets of cables would be flawed. This doesn’t take into account anything else that my have changed in the environment, or my sinuses, or any number of other variables that went unnoticed, while I was changing from one set of cables to the other.

This is one reason why, in my mind, people can honesty relate their experiences and yet sometimes not be able to offer truly valid information about the performance of one cable compared to another. I think that subjective comparisons fall short unless there is a sufficiently large number of blind, independent samples that are in agreement by a large majority. Yet, for subjective comparison within my own system, I have only my own flawed perceptions to go by. Se la vie?

hence the need for testing equipment and microphones... muhahah.