A New Believer

04-12-11: Antipodes_audio
If the time relationships in a sound are unnatural then the brain is quickly fatigued trying to make sense of what it hears, and the music sounds confused. If the time relationships are accurate then the brain can make complete sense of what it hears, with singers/players/instruments occupying distinct and real spaces. These time-domain issues are two-fold; signal-smearing, and phase distortions...Unlike equipment design, cable design to get accurate timbre is not tough, but time-domain accuracy is hard, and every design is a trade-off.

Antipodes audio - I agree with you about the importance of time domain performance. You may be aware of this already, but there is a significant amount of science confirming that human hearing has very sensitive temporal resolution. Many estimates place the limits of human temporal resolution on the order of microseconds, and some estimates place it as low as 5 μs. That is a remarkable level of sensitivity.

Of course, it does not necessarily follow that our extreme sensitivity to temporal differences is a significant psychoacoustic factor in audio. But like you, I believe that it is.

Having said all that, I am still unclear about what design choices in cables influence their time domain behavior. Is it the materials? The geometry? The dielectric?

I'm not asking you to give up your "secret recipe," but can you share any generalizations about the virtues and vices of various design approaches?

Thanks,
Bryon

The main design characteristics we focus on to reduce time-domain errors are the conductor purity, dielectric, resonance control and geometry.

Antipodes - Thank you for addressing my question. FWIW, I am not one of the angry ones. I am just curious to learn more about cable design. I have always found the process of selecting cables a bit frustrating, because unlike other components in the audio chain, I have very little understanding of the ways in which cable design affects the resulting sound. Hence the question in my previous post.

If you are willing to elaborate further, I would be interested to hear your thoughts on how each of the design parameters you mentioned can affect the audible characteristics of a cable. For example...

It sounds like you are saying that time domain errors can be created by impure conductors, plastic dielectrics, and braided geometries. I gather that these observations are based on listening tests, which personally I have no problem with. My question is:

Do you have any hypotheses about why impure conductors, plastic dielectrics, or braided geometries would result in the time domain problems you mentioned, naming smearing and phase distortion?

It also sounds like you are saying that mixing two materials, e.g. gold and silver, helps reduce the resonance of each material, resulting in fewer time domain problems. Again, do you have any hypothesis about why that is the case?

Thanks,
Bryon

Antipodes - Thank you for taking the time to further respond to my questions. Some of the ideas you mentioned are things I am familiar with, some of them not. In both cases, your answers strike me as honest, and I appreciate that, especially from a manufacturer.

As far as the tone of this thread, it did jump off the rails a bit. IMO, the most fruitful and interesting conversations on A'gon are threads where people can disagree without being disagreeable.

Bryon