tweeter speaker wire - Page 2

I looked through the Magico Q7 brochure and found nothing about shielding wiring or electrical components. The voice coil does have an added metal ring but that's for altering the inductance, not shielding. The aluminum case is for rigidity, again not shielding.

Whatam I missing?

google some more and don't cherry pick, if you're really interested get back to us when you understand 'smith charts'.
Coax is a high frequency transmission line, it's beneficial when used in a properly terminated system, which is not what you propose to do.

Yes, using it the manner you want to.

Here is an idea. Use standard speaker wire like everyone else does.

Well a solid aluminum case is an excellent RFI shield. But that does not imply that passive speakers are subject to RFI. Again the aluminum is used for rigidity and acoustical properties. The fact that it is also an RFI shield is irrelevant in this application.

Now if these were powered speakers I would have to agree the aluminum enclosure is an electrical benefit in addition to the acoustic and mechanical attributes.

And people here have been helpful to not only you but anybody else reading this thread.

You have been told by quite a few here that shielded speaker wires offer no benefit. You were given a link from Roger Russell that is an excellent guide to choosing speaker wire.

Some posting here have deep technical and electrical engineering backgrounds.

But you just don't want to accept the facts backed up by proven mathematics and scientific principles.

You have to ask yourself "what is ""better"" "?

There are two answers to that and you may choose either, but they don't normally coexist. And to make sense from replies, you need to be quite clear with which one it is your after.

Answer one is "Something that sounds better to me"

Answer two is "Something that's scientifically proven/technically better"

From the second perspective, finding a great cable is neither hard nor expensive, but you don't get any good looking ones, any fancy brand names and possibly no placebo effect from it. Although you could pull some cable braid over it and make it look more high end.

What you can do for the first perspective, besides the psychological part is to turn it into a filter in several ways. You can add a filter to kill any picked up high frequency contents, which you could make a nice box on the wire to hide, you can also pick sizes/material/placement of conductors to make it more inductive or more capacitive and have it roll off a bit in the high or low range. It needs to be at least 0.2dB to be noticeable, but's that quite possible to do. It does not make the cable technically superior, but it's quite possible to slightly counter something else going on in the electronics. (But it's a close to ridiculous sized change to be hunting when moving your speakers half an inch or hanging other curtains would change much more) Drawback of tuning a system is that it does not travel with the system if you change a single piece in the chain - while staying on the technical and neutral path, you can substitute any neutral component for any other neutral component and it will still play as intended.

If you open up close to any commercial speaker, you will find either the kind of boring cable you don't want recommendations for, or something branded and very expensive - but then you wouldn't have to open them, as they will have used that quite clearly for marketing purposes to help sell the speaker.

It's not flaming to give suggestions for the "Answer two". The problem with giving advice on "Answer one" is that none of us are you, and what may work for any of us in our setup quite likely won't do the same in yours, regardless if it's placebo effect or a weak filter function.

So, I'm sorry that we haven't been able to offer the kind of advice you'd been hoping for, but I don't think anyone has been wanting anything else than giving you their best honest answers.

If using RG6 coax had wonderful (magical) propeties as "speaker wire", wouldn't one think that boutique wire manufacturers would already be peddling it?

you can get a great deal of enjoyment out of this hobby without appealing to mysticism... many of us do...

as for "why you started this thread"... you have actually gotten the answer to your question several times, and people have told you why what you are trying to do isn't a better idea...

or did you really start this thread because you simply wanted positive reinforcement of what is obviously a poor choice?

There is no difference in Copper wiring. Sounds like someone has spent too much time reading all of the FUD out there, and drinking their Kool-aid.

The reason the signal travels in the space between the conductors has two parts.
1. The shield acts as an electro"static" barrier, so all the electric field is between the two conductors.
2. The magnetic field caused by each conductor cancels completely outside the shield. Note this only works when they are truly coaxial.

If you use the core only of two coax cables, you lose both benefits and might as well go with a pair of 18 guage single wires twisted very loosley. THe e field and M field will be outside both conductors.
The only time that will be innacurate is if the amp is susceptible to rf intrusion, and there is a source nearby. I cannot state how much that occurs.
And then there's people like me..

Hey Glimmie, long time. How's everything by you ?
jn

Don't give them any ideas!

You mean the RFI getting back into the amp through the feedback loop? Yeah I did think of that. Could be a problem in some areas with strong RFI. So there may be some benefits to a shielded speaker cable.

That often comes up to try and discredit the Roger Russell paper. The point you people miss is that it is not about McIntosh at all. The data and observations Roger makes are backed up by traditional engineering practices. Just because you didn't like the sound of McIntosh speakers does not make the information he published any less accurate. That's why the scientific community has a system of peer review. Now when accredited professionals start to point out flaws in Roger's report WITH scientific data to back it up, then I and others in the field may take notice. So far that hasn't happened. The only challenges I have seen to date are from audiophiles with no technical background and who do not like what he is saying - or rather proving.

And another thing I always ask. With all the focus these days on faster computer networking, solar panel systems, all electric cars, why are these ground breaking discoveries relating to power transmission through copper wire only relevant in the niche high end audio market? Surely if there were any truth to these claims, the general electronics industry would be all over it. There would be hundreds of millions available in research grants to further the science of boutique wire.

A guy at my work just bought a Tesla. There is no mention of any special or superior wire used in it's electrical system. The stuff I saw "under the hood" looked like plain old hookup wire - probably made in China! Every fraction of a watt that is lost in wiring resistance, even to the brake lights, is lost mileage. Now wouldn't an upstart expensive electric car company want superior wire if it really existed?

Something just doesn't add up does it?
Edited by Glimmie - 12/17/12 at 10:41am

What is your concept of what science is/does?


Most likely, as afaik all blinded cable test having conducted over the last 15 or so years came up with: chance results. That is it. Nothing more.
So yes, science has been done to refute claims and affirm the hypothesis.

Actual science.

You don't, and you've made it very clear that you have no understanding of basic electronics or physics and you don't care to learn.

You don't have to show how clueless you are at every turn. It hurts to observe that.

Like what? Using OFCW instead of regular #6 AWG?

No, it is not a conclusion it is a statement and likely wrong. There are AP's with technical background out there, but being an audiophile does not necessarily include to believe in magic wires, treatments and various tweaks.
Some audiophiles, believe it or not, actual value evidence - member that word, EVIDENCE - to support their statements.

And then there are those to whom being an audiophile is a religious concept: believe any claim as long as it confirms your bias (usually: the more expensive the better, but not exclusively).

There's nothing special about transmitting an analogue signal of audio bandwidth that requires any new investigations/theory compared to what already exists in the fields of electricity/electronics. It's not a particularly difficult signal, there are thousands of engineers at work every day handling signal transmission that are hundredfold, if not thousandfold more demanding. Any electronics engineer will tell you that.

Cable manufacturers are good at pushing myths and blowing up the tiniest irrelevant fact into selling points that are hard to prosecute as fraud.
'You can measure it, yes? Then just listen to how good it makes things. You can't hear any difference? Sorry man, your ears are obviously not as trained as ours..."
Edited by Nightlord - 12/17/12 at 12:48pm

My concern would be...are they correct?

They may not be.

That is certainly true.

jn

There is plenty and it's been presented to you...you just don't want to know the truth.

My apologies.

That comment was far too broad. Yes there are audiophiles that are technical and do subscribe to scientific principles. I guess I am one of them myself.

But you know the type I'm referring to. They drive the S class or Beemer, have full country club memberships, drink the most expensive wines, etc. So they have a really hard time comprehending that a Radio Shack RCA cable just as good as an Audioquest. Now these folks are obviously really good at business or something. But if they subscribe to these cable myths, that are certainly not from a technical background.

Do you get power to your outlets, does your cpu drop random bits due to jitter, can you make a cellphone call, do we receive data from Voyager 1, what about tv images, MRI scans, electron microscopes and particle accelerators? These all test the theories you worry about daily. Heck, I would not dare to drive a modern car if knowledge was that frail with all the electronics and wires...

Particle accelerator...what the heck is that??

Let's keep it in the context of audio, shall we...most here will not understand what a storage ring lattice is, nor why you need the left hand rule for an e-beam synchrotron machine...

Most have no idea what the current will be at the far end of a speaker cable of a specific characteristic impedance while it is driving a terribly mismatched low z load. And do not have the capability of accurately measuring it to within the level of human hearing capability with respect to interaural time delays. IOW, to an accuracy below 20 usec.

So, no, most really do not understand.

jn

Then what kind of answer do you like?