Can speaker cables damage amplifiers?

That's a falacy, mine sound great with my Krell. However, have heard Goertz cables do awful things with it, and perhaps it was oscillation. It certainly was distortion. Why don't you e-mail Krell about it, I'm sure they'll answer you.

By who, a dealer who happens not to carry MIT cables? Hmmmm....I have a Krell amplifier, and gurantee that MIT cables have caused zero damage to it. Rather, they have made it finally perform to its full potential, to the point where I feel genuinely sorry for Krell owners who don't use MIT.

It's my understanding that if a speaker cable's own charactersitic impedance is too low, that this is what allows the wave to reflect back into the feedback loop of the amplifier.

As I recall of a semi-recent Harry Pearson review of a Spectral amplifier, he thought the specified use of MIT cables was total hogwash, and was hell bent on using Nordost Quattro Fil interconnect and SPM speaker cable instead. Said it was the only way to get the best performance out of the amp. Personally, I don't think Mr. Pearson can hear much above about 6 kHz anyway, so it's possible he'd want all the high frequency boost he could get. Just my rack'n'pinion...

I know what I hear, and the Goertz speaker cables were distorted in a way, and to a degree, that no other cables I've tried have exhibited. Since speaker cabling was the only thing I was changing, I don't see how the distortion was geing caused by anything else. I don't know whether the amp was beginning to oscillate or not, but I do know that the strained distortion I heard gave me the feeling that I was hearing the two poles of the cable in proximity much too close to each other (with very little dielectric functionality/pole separation) over the cable's entire length.

Marlec, have you tried MIT cables?

Your experience with the Goertz is identical to my experience with it, with my Krell. I suspect you would love MIT cables. They kill the Cardas Neutral Reference cables I've been trying for a while.