2. cables
  3. 1215950921

Cable elevators - conventional wisdom wrong?

Reluctant to put any considerable money in them, the reasons for using cable elevators seemed intuitively correct to me: decouple cables mechanically from vibration and insulate them from the carpet's static. I have therefore built cheap elevators myself using Lego building blocks. (Plastic with a more or less complex internal structure; moreover, there is enormous shaping flexibility, for instance you can also build gates with suspended strings on which to rest the cables)
In their advertisement/report on the Dark Field elevators, Shunyata now claim that conventional elevators are actually (very?) detrimental in that they enable a strong static field to build up between cable and floor causing signal degradation.
Can anyone with more technical knowledge than I have assess how serious the described effect is likely to be? Would there, theoretically, be less distortion with cables lying on the floor? Has anyone actually experienced this?
karelfd

Showing 1 response by shadorne

shadorne's avatar
Ag insider logo xs@2x
shadorne
7,477 posts
 
Cables are suspended in electrical power lines because they are not insulated. Air is the insulator. They use high voltages which tend to breakdown insulation jackets and the whole approach is just cheaper than more costly cables for long distances. I honestly can't see the benefit to having uninsulated speaker cables (speaker cables are so cheap it just does not make sense).

Assuming the speaker cable is already insulated then I can't think of one good technical justification to suspend it off the floor other than it looks really cool.

Here is an explanation of what they are used for and why they are needed in power lines.
More to discover