ok this is for all the ppl who tell me they can hear a difference in cables...


what is there in the construction that makes them sound different,
how does electricity running throuh Copper make something sound different. what do they do to the copper to make it soud different.

how can someone engeneer a pice of metal to recognise cirtain frequancys in music and change them to make it sound better???

i want HARD PROOF ppl!


let the fun begin

Actually good cable doesn't make the sound better at all. A good pcs of cable will transmitt from A to B in min loses and thats how it works. Many people had mistaken for that. Actually what it being recorded in there, the cable must be able to carry it through with min loses. Poor cable will lose most of it during transmittion. What I mean is those fine details in each frequancys. Material and construction in cable are most important. And there is many grade of copper or silver.

a moderator starting a flame war

Of course there's differences between cables (ie resistance/capacitance/inductance conductor arrangement etc) however the general conjecture of "scientists/engineers"* is that these differences between two reasonably specified cables is so minute as to be inaudible (i've posted some excellent links before so search ) and when the differences are clearly visible this occurs well outside the audible specturm (queue 1 marketing gimick called skin effect).

I don't think you'll find too many FACTS being thrown up by pro cabellists becuase these are based on feelings or memories rather than scientific measurements

*in general except for the stupid ones j/k

Before i chuck in my tuppence, let me relate you a story. This happened just a week ago, last Thursday.

I'm good mates with a guy in Nelson here called Francis Hong. He runs the only chinese restaurant here that actual makes authentic chinese and not sell-out westernised food, and ever since i went to Hong Kong i cant stand westernised chinese food. Anyway, since i go there for lunch all the time (Szecheun BBQ Pork Soup, mmmm) i meet a lot of his mates who call by, it seems to be the hub for all the local chinese older guys.

One of them is called Sonny, and he came by one day and he asked me if i sold banana plugs, and i said sure... he gave me the speaker cable he wanted to attach the banana plugs to. Now before i tell you how much it cost him, let me tell you what it was made of.

This 'speaker cable' was quite clearly made from two different coloured peices of 8AWG power wire, about 4m long, that had been laid next to each other, and heat shrunk with blue heatshrink encasing them. That was it. Nothing uber fancy. I could make one identical for probably $18.

Now why i mention that, is because he bought this from a local 'high end' hifi shop who shall remain nameless. They had made it up to order for him. He had been told in no uncertain terms that these wonder cables would make his bass more dynamic and lead to a nice increase in overall musicality. And the price? $1400. Fourteen f*cking Hundred! For a couple of bits of 8AWG wire and some heatshrink! :shock: And this poor guy had taken the salesman's advice and dropped the cash on a cable that the guy had whipped up in probably 5 minutes in his spare time. $1400!!! I was almost spewing, i couldnt beleive it... :evil:

Now to my point : These arguments always end up with us being able to scientifically prove that there is no way the physical differences of well built cables are enough to cause a big enough change to the sound to cause the ear to hear it. Then the 'audiophiles' always maintain that they can hear a difference, so damn the science, damn the evidence, because their ears are the most sensitive measuring devices known to mankind, or quite probably any other species in the universe... i dont know why Cape Canaveral doesnt hire a couple hundred audiophiles and ditch the radar scopes, with ears that obviously can sense things that $300,000 measuring equipment cant i bet they would have found signs of extraterrestrial life decades ago.

But i digress. I dont care one hoot if some 'audiophile' wants to spend the GDP of a small african country on his speaker cables because he thinks some mojo-jojo construction makes the cable generate audio fairy dust : thats their prerogative, and their money, and they can do what they like, however ignorant or foolish it may be. But when innocent, ignorant consumers like Sonny get misled, nay, flat out conned into spending their hard earned money that the hifi guys KNOW arent worth a 50th of what they are selling them for, and literally lie thru their teeth about the benefits, i get really, really riled. I was honestly about 5 seconds away from taking Sonny and his cable to the dealer and seeing just how far we could insert his crap up where crap normally comes from :evil:

Blackrazor what you have say may be a cheat to sonny. But in a real world, good cable does make a different. I mean really good cable, like tara lab, MIT or audioquest have a listen to them. I myself have own many pairs of top of the line interconnects. I won't be silly enough to buy good cables if I can't hear any different. $1,400 for 4 meter pair, in audiophile world that should be just aentry level. I have 1 pair of interconnect in 1 meter pair and that cost me $3000.00. To be frank, no hard feeling, have a good listen to those cable, they are always more musical. As I have mention before They don't improve your sound system at all. All they do is to get from A to B point in min loses. That is where your system repond to a more complete fine details in each frequancys, in that way you will have a more complete respond from what is actually being recorded.

I'd hate to have ears like some of you guys do. To not be able to enjoy music without spending all this money on cabling, etc. Sometimes things go too far IMO. Enjoy music for what it is.


Edit - lol I shouldn't be posting something like that in an SQ forum eh

Audioquest : Have you ever heard of psychoacoustics? If so, i'd do some real, REAL hard research into it, and save yourself a packet load.

BD's question still stands : What supposedly makes a cable 'sound better' (or affect the signal in an audibly lesser manner than any other well built cable for instance)? I have to this date never seen anyone, even the manufacturers themselves, come up with any concept that hasnt been immediately shot down in flames... on the other hand, i've seen page after page after page of bullcrape marketing claims from those same high end manufacturers you talk about, that any idiot with even the most rudimentary of electrical understanding can see is a load of bollocks.

Case in point : cable directionality. Why the heck should i buy a cable that is directional and therefore would rectify any AC signal (such as say, oh, transmitted music) that went through them??? Thats not rocket science, you learn that stuff in Electronics 101! Do MIT, Tara Labs and Audioquest market directional cables as being a good thing? Yessir, they do. Is cable directionality provable by even the most dropout electronics student to be a load of bollocks? Yes is is.

Again, the question remains : What makes a cable sound better? What physical aspects make it provide an audibly cleaner path to the signal? And if its an 'unmeasurable' quality, how the heck do they know how to design them? Guesswork? :roll:

Ears slash gullibility slash stubborness :hehe:

BTW on another note, have a read of this : http://www.avrev.com/news/0904/13.tara.html

Tara Labs got their ass busted when Customs raided their asses for selling their cables as 'handcrafted in the USA' when in actual fact they were being made on a machine system in China :roll:

either way, its a combination of lots of things, but I'd hate to need to justify spending all this money on components and cables in particular, to be able to enjoy the music.

I dont mean to be rude, Blackrazor I think you had read too much, but please listen to them, not by just reading it on papers. I belive I enjoy music like you do, but at a different level. My point still stand, it doesn't make any improvement to the original signal. All they do is to get from A to B point with min loses with more complete fine details on each frequancys in the signal. I listen to them not base on reading on them.

sorry talk to you later guys, going for my show alien vs prediator.

Are there different grades of copper? It is one metal that it is possible to refine to over 99.995% (or whatever I can't remember the correct percentage) absolute purity as far as I know all copper undergos this process after smelting.

On a side note, in an issue of Australian Hi-Fi, a company believed that treble goes better through thin cable and bass better through thick cable. I can't remember the company name but this cable (for home use), was connected so it could be connected in twelve different ways!

I'd like to see some evidence as to what actually makes it sound better....... thicker cables? Doubt it, higher purification of copper - unless you like listening to frequencies in the Gigahertz, then i doubt it...
They way they join the cabling to the plugs? Possible, if it was compared with an exceptionally crap one then maybe... i've never heard the difference and i've tried a lot of cabling, made my own, etc, the only time it sounded bad was with interference or bad solder...
Aaron

I totally agree with audioquest that cable doesn't make your system a better system but it help to get the most your system is capable of doing.

Well,are cable just cable??? nop, not that I know of. cable are made of metal insulated in some insulative material. Then the matel will transmit the electron from point A to point B.insulaters will keep them from short cercuit. well yes but that is not all the story.

Different material dave their own distinct charactoristic. which will then determine by their Inductant Capacitant and resistant. and that alone make a huge diffirent.

To fully understand the different between good stuff and cheap sh*t you will need to understand and apriciate the process of making good cable. good cables are morethan just dumb luck that can't be proven. instead every thing can be proove both sonically and scientifically. Who say those can't be proven??

Firstly we will have to start from ore extraction. How Pure can the material be at the starting point? different Grade of matel are determine by purity of the material. What does purity of material mean to audio signal transmition you may ask??????? Say copper is a good conductive material but when mixed with the not so good one like tin or lead the electron flow eill get jam up. it will increase the over all resistant of the cable.

the next one is grain with in the piece of metal. coper is coper then how does the same purity of coper sound different? Inorder fro electron to travel from point A to point B it will have to go through the conductor which in this copper for example. Say big grain VS normal grain material how does it make different? take your car for example . would your car drive smother on a asphalt road or concrete road? The different grain size will have the same effect on electron flow. Sau matel A have 50 grain per square millimeter and metal B have 10 grain persquare millimeters. to travel to the same distant, electron travell through matel A will have to pass thrugh 50 obstrucle between grains while electron passing thrugh metal B will have to go thrugh just 10 obstrucle. Electron travell thrugh metal A will arrived at the destenation tired and exhosted while electron passing thrugh metal B will arrived in good shape.
This can be easily proven in any lab with electron microscope.

Since the metal arrive that the cable manufacturer in big lump of what ever material it is. the process of making them a small wires will makeeffect to the material grain formation. If the Formation on their road say >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> then Which way should the electron go. electron aren't stupid, they can apirciate the right way that will make their life easier. This again can be proven in a lab with electron microspe.

here come to the last bit ---> the insulation. well their job is basically pervent short cercuit. it should have nothing to do with electron flow at all you may think. Wrong wrong wrong. it is one if the most important part in the cable equation. different material when interact with the conductors will have its own distinct charactors. ingeneral this will absob energy and later release the dirty energy stored in it with the signal flow. this will resulted in un leveled sound. in general good insulation should have minimal interfereant to the signal flow. this can be proven with a good L/C meter.

Weather cable have effect on sound or not will have to let you here for yourself. I have been designing my own cable after owning many if them some are expensive enough to buy a complete car audio system. I use lots science in my design So unless you have enough scientific to back your self up don't try to show other people that your ears are stupid. Phycho acustic alone is not enough for explanation of all your points. a lot of people have better ears than yours which will be able to pickup the different in the blind test. Your ears can be trained to be that good too but it will take you some time

Oh well you may ask why I brought Audioquest Sky for A$3000 when I can actually imitate it for much less? Purity of the silver yes I can match it but not the grain size and grain structure. So unless I spent 3K on the original AQ I will not be able to get those sound at all. Well we are talking home hi-end here. So unless you have a good enough system you wouldn't be able to here the different anyway

[quote="Blackrazor"]
What supposedly makes a cable 'sound better'

They don't improve your sound system at all. All they do is to get from A to B point in min loses. That is where your system repond to a more complete fine details in each frequancys, in that way you will have a more complete respond from what is actually being recorded. Have a good listen to it rather than full of your reseach and quoting. Anyway have you compare or ever have listen to a good pair of cables? If not please, please try. If any one time you are here. Please pm me, I will gave you a live demostration switching in between good and entry level cables. No books, no paper, just listen. It's different, even my son can tell. :hehe:

All I want is a good pair of cables, it doesn't matter to me where is it made from. Anyway what's wrong with China. I will be more worry if the cables that are made in N.Z :hehe: :hehe: :hehe: But oyster should be good there. :wink:

nope wrong, the differing levels of the aforementioned variables are only so slightly changed that the difference is not audible

why was this discussion even brought up again? i know the actual question was different, in tthat they asked "what is it that actulaly causes the changes" but really... its just going to end up as another endless debate with no winner.

GolfBHT and Audioquest, i have already SAID that there are measurable differences between cables, what i'm saying is that the differences are so relatively MINOR that they make no AUDIBLE difference! As an analogy, a picometer is 1000x smaller than a nanometer, an easily measurable difference... but if you're trying to see the difference with your EYES, can you? Hell no. Despite the fact its a measurable difference, its not a NOTICEABLE difference.

I always dislike the implication that because i dont beleive in cable sound that i'm some kind of audio ignoramus who only gets his info from books. I've 'heard' and blind tested more types of cables than most of the cable lovers have had hot dinners, we sell them instore for heavens sake... Car audio is about 30% of our store : the other 60% is hifi. I've listened to B&W Nautilus speakers, i've been round to customers places to help them set up their Krell pre and power amps to connect to their B&W Signature 800's they bought of us with the Nordost $6000 cables they bought while overseas, and did the Nordost make the slightest difference? Hell no. I've got a pretty good set of ears, but unlike most 'audiophiles' i am very skeptical of performance claims that have no scientific basis, and therefore i'm not so susceptable to the psychoacoustic effects that happen when you think something WILL sound better in some way.

But a few rather simple questions for the cable lovers to answer :

• What point is it if i use 99.999999% OFC copper or silver, or even solid gold block, if the speaker voice coil is made form either spun aluminium as is common, or from standard spun OFC copper? Its like having a solid gold exhaust pipe when your engine's made of b-grade steel, it doesnt do jack

• Dielectric flux happens, but have you ever looked at how much of a relative change is? The phasing issues cause by even cheap crapty plastic insulator are about the same as if you moved your head 2mm to one side. Whoop de doo. You gonna go buy a neck brace so you can cancel out those phasing issues that arise from you moving your head a couple of mil?

• Cable directionality. Please enlighten us ignorants as to the benefits of a directional cable, and how they work.

• Copper grain retarding electron flow??? WTF? So a bigger grain slows down a signal from being 0.75x the speed of light to 0.7499999999999995% the speed of light, yay for you, you actually think thats a big enough lag for you to hear it? Heaven forbid your ears should be more than 0.000001mm off center from the location of your speakers then, because thats about how much difference that would make.

Cable makers can come up with all the pseudo science they like, but the reality is that if a perceived change is only going to impede the signal by a factor of 0.001% or less like most of them are, then you wont, nay, CANT hear it... 99.9999% of the population cant even hear a 1% difference.

Who cares, it all goes out the window when you turn the key anyway!

thats probly the smartest thing you have ever said Pete....



anyway ppl enought with the arguing, i want PROOF!!!

no one has come close yet.

o.k o'k Blackrazor, so you are a seller, I am a buyer. Isn't that good? Together we are making the world spining. Willing buyer and willing seller. I only buy what I think is worth for me to buy, tested before I buy, listen before I buy, I don't listen to those sales man telling me that how good they are. Every cable come with it own signature. Same like you and everyone of us, test before buying it. I belive I am no sucker to that. Proving it, is listening to them, that is hard prove. Many company claim that they are the best in cable, only 2 company I had come across which I really like the result of it. They are Audioquest SKY and MIT 350 and the 750. Eversince I did not change it anymore, or will ever change it in the near future. Answering your sure but later. I am more a use them test them kind of guy.

But thats what i dont get : If its eminently provable that there are no cables that change the signal in an audible manner, why do people rely on what their ears tell them, especially since psychoacoustics has such a major effect on that?

Anyway AQ my rant is not at you, its the sales persons who tell people that they must have flash cables for their system to sound good, which is and always has been a load of fraudulent snakeoil BS.

I truly agree with you, sales person who is the one miss leading the consumer. Cable does't make your sound system sounds better or improve the sound it at all. A good construted pair of cable will try to transfer what is being recorded in a CD and bring the audio signal From A to B in a min loss.

Thanks Fudd, I aim to please

Agreed. My point i'm trying to make is that the difference between a $100 cable that transmits the signal with 99.95% accuracy, and a $3000 cable that transmits the signal with 99.98% accuracy, isnt enough to be audible anyway

ok blackrazor and audioquest you 2 are banned from this thread, i dont want it to turn into a crapfight or just useless post's back and forth, i just want someone to show me some proof!

No fight! Proof working on it. I'll be back!

Proof is hard to provide either way, because a minor electrical difference exists and the 'proof' can be tailored to suit both sides of the argument by changing the reference point or such.

The main proof in my mind is that RC has a standing $10k challenge similar to his amp one, and so far noone has picked the difference between $50 cables and whatever esoteric high end ones they bring along, including cable manufacturer representatives... if two or three hundred 'audiophiles' cant hear the difference in a controlled blind test, i say there is none

Bobby_Digital:

Want some proof? Please come to the next CAASQ and I will proof it to you. Anyway those highend cable are in my car system for the comp!!!! I will setup my car for this ABX test. no arguement here, we just want to have some valid proof. Cable to be tested will consist of AQ sky & Viper, MIT T330 Plus, Monster Interlink 400M kII, Rockford fosgate twisted pair technology and you can bring your own cable if you like. How does sound?

sounds good! ill be in for that

Yeh!!!! at last! Solid Proof.

How are you planning on doing that? Do you have an ABX switcher? If you just manually plug and unplug the cables, unless you can do it in a couple of seconds, it takes too long and the listeners ear adapts to the environment in that time

I will simply say this:
I have done a cable comparison too many times to count in the home system.
I have brought people in who have absolutely no interest as such in hifi but know I have a "fancy system".

The proposition is simply put "There is a raging controversy in the hifi world as to whether cables can make an audible difference to the sound you hear. What do you think?"

And then we swap 2 pairs of cables connecting the CD player to the pre-amp, simple operation requiring a few seconds.

The last time was between Monster 400s and Stinger Dreams as it happens, both decent quality cables. This just weeks ago with my next door neighbour after a thread on this subject *cough* elsewhere....

The next door neighbour has no axe to grind, no price to justify, no placebo to massage, etc

10 seconds with the second cable "Well, I'm amazed, wouldn't have thought, there IS a difference". It has NEVER failed to happen that way.

I DON'T see it as so much a performance "tool" but as a tuning tool. If you are chasing outright performance, do it by any other means.

In a car installation, the difficulties of getting a handle on this as a tuning method are for most just impossible.

In the end for car use, I just go with something "decent" on the basis it will do less in the area of loss in the signal than something cheap, as well as providing durable connection, be noiseless etc. and sensible "tuning" is out of the practical question.

As for $3000 as a tuning device, not my money......

No further posts from me on the subject.

that still dosent tell me what makes a good cable.

ok say i wanted to design a cable, or if i am just going out to buy some, what do i look for? what makes a cable sound how it should?

everyone keeps telling me they can " hear" a difference but no one is telling me why they are heareing a difference, i want facts!

Look at the staging, then the imaging. The harmonics in each frequancy will be more refine and into details. Harshness and grainne will be gone too. It will shift when it being change from entry level cable to a better cable. Look for single strand than mutiple stand in interconnect, Teflon insulation is so far the best. Best possible PSC (perfact suface copper)copper. Solderless connection, cold press (terminate in high votage) for interconnects. You will find some of this in the market.

And every pair of cables need to be run-in for at least 70hrs.

Sorry to say that your ear is still not train yet.

why??
what effect on the copper does electricity have to mutate it in 70 hours into some unbelivable better sounding metal??
what happened in 140hours?
or is this a way of getting around an ABX test with new cables?



please if you want to comment in here, please back it up with something

Does the testee know which cable is which before you plug it in? If so, its not an ABX test, you just brought psychoacoustics into the mix.

If RC and many other engineers that i know of can do ABX tests to hundred of people with ten grand at stake and still have noone able to pick the difference, then my money is on you having flaws in your testing methodology rather than the cables having any sonic difference.

I just did an impromptu test instore to show how susceptable people are to psychoacoustics... theres a guy who comes in quite often who's a bit of a hifi nut, he buys nice cables and tube amps and the like. Anyway, i showed him a nice Pioneer/Wharfedale system for his spare room, which he quite liked the sound of... Then i showed him a B&W/Onkyo System, which he listened to and said it sounded much clearer and more defined... the thing was that i had just pressed play on the Pioneer system again, but he was expecting the sound to come from the B&W/Onkyo system.

He found it sounded better purely because he thought it would, the system that was playing was identical both times.

Gave me a break it a holiday today need to yum cha.
Running-In: As with all audio components, audio cables require an adjustment period. This is often mistakenly referred to as "break-in". However, break-in is properly used to describe a mechanical change-engines break-in, loudspeaker and phono cartridge suspensions break-in. A cable's performance takes time to optimize because of the way a dielectric behaves (the way the insulating material absorbs and releases energy), changes in the presence of a charge. Cables will continue to improve in sound or picture quality over a period of several weeks. This is the same reason amplifiers, preamplifiers and CD players also require an adjustment period. The key difference between "adjusting" and "breaking-in" is that things don't "un-break-in", however, electrical components do "un-adjust". Several weeks of disuse will return a cable to nearly its original state.
The run-in time is essentially the same for all cables. However, the apparent need for run-in varies wildly. As with amplifiers and other components, the better the cable, the less distortion it has, and therefore the less there is to cover up the obnoxious distortion caused by being new. Since human perception is more aware of the existence of a distortion than the quantity, the better the cable, the worse in some ways it will sound when new, because the anemic forced two-dimensional effect resulting from being new will not be ameliorated by other gentler distortions. Please be patient when first listening to any superior product.
No getting around, I am no cheater. Please gave a litter respect for that my wealth comes from my creditbility.

Blackrazor, the listener had no idea if one was supposed to be better OR different for that matter, I just said "Do you think there is a difference?".

The neighbour had never even heard of the concept, never mind the brands.

By the way, at the hi-fi ship I wiorked in many years ago, if I'd pulled a stunt like that I would have had my severence pay made up on the spot.....

No story Just facts, I have many storys too. But no story. :hehe:
Wire-Just Getting From Here A To B There
On the face of it, nothing could be easier than just getting an audio, video or digital signal from one place to another-no amplification, no conversion of mechanical energy to electrical energy or vice versa. The truth is, every cable must transfer a complex multi-octave signal without changing any of the information carried in that signal.

Damage Control
We all like to describe how a good component improves the performance of our system, a perfectly legitimate comment. Unfortunately, buried in this statement is often the misunderstanding that the better component actually improved the signal in some way. There are certain areas of digital processing where this is possible, but in the analog world signals don't get better, they only get worse. The substitution of a superior component improves a system only because it causes less damage.

Cables, like all components, should be chosen because they do the least damage. This "damage" comes in two basic forms: a relatively benign loss of information, or a change to the character. A visual analogy might illustrate this distinction: consider "perfect" as a totally clear pane of glass. Since no component is perfect, the best we can strive for would be analogous to a pane of glass with a light gray tint. Lower quality components would have a darker gray tint. These various densities of gray tint would represent various amounts of lost information.

If the glass were tinted green or yellow or red, these colors would represent changes in character. We are far more likely to notice, and be bothered by, a light colored tint than a denser gray tint. It is this mechanism of character versus quantity that causes much of the confusion in the pursuit of higher performance.

Just copy and paste from other sites...

http://www.avalon.co.nz/audioquest/aq_theory5.html
http://stereos.about.com/od/homestereotech...cables_tech.htm

Machine can't tell what is natural, only human ears can, like yours and mine.
Chain Analogies, Synergy, Enhancement and Other Lies
We have all heard the truism that "a chain is only as strong as its weakest link."Certainly this is true of a chain, but it becomes a misleading lie when applied to the world of audio and video. The quality of sound coming from your speakers and the quality of picture from your video monitor have both been compromised by some degree of distortion in every component, starting with the microphone or camera. No one actually believes that if you changed every piece of equipment except the proclaimed "weak link"-that there would not be any change in the sound or the picture. No matter how bad a CD player might be, no one would argue that you couldn't hear the difference if you changed speakers. It is worth noting that some components are more cost-effective to change than others, or that a particular complaint will not be eliminated until a specific component has been changed. These truths might seem like an approximation of the chain analogy but the chain story has so much strength because it is an absolute, and it absolutely doesn't apply.

The logic of a good system is very simple: Every component matters! The electronics, the speakers, the cables, even every solder joint, all cause damage. Each component is like one of the dirty panes of glass in this illustration. Each one blocks a bit of the view. The quality of the final performance, or the clarity of the view, is the original signal minus the damage done by all the pieces in-between. Improving any one of the components will improve the performance. Cleaning any one of the glass panes will allow a clearer view.

All cables require a break-in period - even so-called "lampcord" cables that are often supplied with speakers. "Break in" is a
misnomer. What's really happening is that the insulation (or dielectric to give it its proper name) is being "formed". This "forming" is caused by
the dielectric absorbing energy from the conductor when a signal is present (i.e. when current is flowing). Every cable requires something to
separate the negative conductors from the positive conductors - a dielectric. However, because the dielectric is in direct contact with the
conductor, it will interact with the conductor whenever a current flows, absorbing energy from the conductor. What the dielectric does with that
energy once absorbed depends upon its quality. PVC releases the energy back into the conductor a split second later, causing a kind of
"smearing" of the signal. In contrast, Teflon absorbs significantly less energy in the first place, turns most of the energy into heat, and whatever
energy remains is released back into the conductor virtually instantaneously. This causes significantly less damage to the signal which is why -
all things being equal - a cable with Teflon insulation will sound better than the same cable using a lesser dielectric. This absorption of energy
causes the molecules in the dielectric to be rearranged from a random order into a uniform order. Once the molecules are fully rearranged, the
cable is said to be "broken in". The dielectric will now absorb less energy from the conductor, causing less harm, and improving performance. To
ensure that the cable stays "broken-in", there must be a signal present in the cable at all times. It's obviously not practical to have your system
playing 24 hours a day every day, but you can at least leave the components switched on. Even when there is no music playing (i.e. there is no
current flowing down the cable), there is a potential present. This will ensure that your cables (as well as your components) remain at the peak
of their performance. However - and this is the important bit - if there is no signal present in the cable at all (i.e. if the all the components are
switched off, or if the cable is disconnected), the molecules will rearrange themselves back into their random order. In other words, the cable is
almost like new again!

Make life easy right? True no story just facts! :wink:

What load of absolute tripe I shouldn't even bother to respond to this the only affect that a signal going through a cable will heat it up slightly thats it all this will do is increase its resistance slightly

You're boss must have been pretty up tight then

Martin and me know each other quite well, he's one of my friends dads, and we were having a discussion about whether his speaker cables were worth what he paid for them when he bought them in Canada... i just pulled the stunt to made my point, he just laughed and said he'd get me back one day


Hmm, a 'tech guide' from a high end cable manufacturer, and an article written by a sales manager for Monster Cable. No doubt completely and inaccurate and impartial. Excuse me while i bugger off to the Marlboro website to get the impartial lowdown on tobacco smoking :hehe:


It doesnt have to tell if its natural, it just has to measure the waveforms. Thats all sound is, a wave form. It's not telling you if it sounds good, its just comparing two wave forms, and the waveforms are the same regardless of cable.

Before you tell me sound isnt just varying air pressure, think carefully, because if you cant even admit that then theres no point even bothering to discuss this :?