Does raising speaker cables off the floor really make a big difference?

Theoretically there should be a difference due to transmission line affect with the floor acting as a dielectric, and if the cables lie on the ground, there is a asymmetric affect - the ground act as a dielectric on the bottom half of the cable, but the top half of the cable only has the air as the dielectric.  By lifting the cable up, things are more symmetric as the cable will "see" the bottom and top the same.  But of course as with anything that has to do with audiophiles, your ears make the final judgement, theories not withstanding. 

It's interesting to see prof don't hear difference in cable elevators.  First you have to be able to hear difference in cables first :-)  It's like saying I finished the race first but I crashed out on lap 8 out of 80.  

What about wi-fi?  Suspend them in the air will probably reduce jitter.  Of course there will be people saying jitter in digital don't matter.

Bi-wire makes a difference, that is if you system has the resolution for it.  Bi-amp will even be better.  Although not all "bi" is good.  

Most audiophiles, even reviewers are "beginners".

You forgot to mention that the best ones may not be "beginners", but they definitely are liars lols.

Perfectly put. Cheers.   ;-)

prof,

I think you missed my point.  What I was saying is you intentionally trying to be illogical out of being self-indulgence.  I think you enjoy doing it lols :-)

prof,

I guess I was right.  You couldn't admit to your self-indulgence.  Not that it's a problem :-)

I got your point andy. I think you missed the point of my reply. ;-)

I supposed you have your point, but I think at least I was right about the self-indulgence part although that's not the only thing.  But anyway, you have the right to exercise your "right".  

Not highly relevant to this thread, perhaps, but still a humbling experience that could be related.

As a matter of curiosity, would you be humbling if you didn't see any difference?

how long is the break-in period?

Theoretically, the break-in process is open-ended that is the cables continue to break-in as if "infinitely", that is again theoretically.  Practically, though it depends on one's system and one's hearing.  

I experimented with using beer cans as cable risers. I would drink a beer then used the empty can as a riser. And guess what? By the time I finished it worked.

Good idea. It works better than cable risers.

After my beer post, it actually turned some people into poet.  Geofkait cried.  prof admits the truth.  Who said beers don't work!

This thread is better than beers.  Better even than self-indulgence.

That is why I think blind testing should be used more often. Can the dielectric effect of the floor on a cable induce a large enough fraction of a micro-volt to hear in the speakers? I do not claim some things could never make a difference one can hear but let the claims be reasonable.

I understand where you’re coming from. The proof is in the pudding. And that’s what you’re hearing and that’s where the buck stops.

Why cables are so expensive? I don’t understand the cable manufacturing process so I don’t understand why myself. I suspect it has something to do with mass production (or lack of) - that is they probably don’t sell enough so they have to increase the price to make a profit.

Although I am not in the cable business, I do know a bit into high end test equipment such as those costing close to $70K per unit such as those coming from KeySight (formerly known as Agilent which formerly known as Hewlett Packard). Each unit is hand calibrated before it is shipped to the customer. If every single $300 dollar receiver from Best Buy has to be hand-calibrated, they probably won’t be in the business for long (I’ve heard that YBA designer Yves Bernard André listened to (or used to) to every single amp personally before they were shipped to the customer).

Having said all that, I don’t understand why some cables are so expensive. Is it all BS? Maybe some days I find out - BS or not lols.

I'll end with this quote:

"Extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence" by Carl Sagan

Hey, you eliminate one by one.  What you get?  Snake oil and believers.  

Damn, ain't getting easier.  Between Jekyll and Hide.  Close your eyes and pick one lols.  

It seems like the believers are having an upper hands at the moment.  The snake oil camp is having a break.  Sort of like the bulls vs. bears on the stock market.

Hey, maybe this thread is good for stock picking.  I need to find a correlation.  So market up if believers in charge, market down if snake oil camp in charge lols.

You guys playing the snake oil/BS cards probably have several audio scams in your systems right now yet you choose to pick on something as simple as risers to spout off about. I chuckle at your lack of understanding the very hobby you have bought your way into.

Not saying to agree or disagree.  But I'll end with this quote as previously.
"Extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence.".  

Hey, if this thread going on long enough, Mr. geoffkait might turn into a poet - like Mark Twain part II.  At least there's a plus of all the back and forth.  Regardless, my right ear is fairly deaf above 7KHz, so I have an inherent bottle-neck so cable risers or not, I'll just going to snake-oil whatever just for fun lols.

So is it a cloud?  Hey may be it's pre heliocentric universe?  Like watching soccer but you can't see the ball.

Maybe it's true there's an audiophile Darth Vader that created an empire for all the snake oils to thrive.  How else can you explain it?   I am dead serious.

Robert Frost proved that both fire and ice will end up with you dead.  That means both snake oil and believers will end up dead.  I guess my choice would be the less painful one or does it even matter - either way you're dead.

Hm ... is there a pill?  Oh ... I just realize ... maybe there's a DSP option.  You take it and you just get a perfect death lols.  

Nothing beats prof post :-)

I can't match prof word for word, since he already retires but I still have to earn money, so anyway, to save time, I plagiarize ... errrrr ... I mean paraphrase from a book.

In this book, there was a "real" story about a get together, or a convention, of a large group of well known scientists, or to be specific, a group of physicists specialized in the field of quantum physics.  Being a bit bored, they came up with a game that we all have one time or another played.  Basically, it's a game in which you can only get to ask "yes or no" question, and at the end you have to guess what it is.

Usually, for this game, everybody would agree first on an "object" so that people know to answer "yes or no" to the question being asked.  But being smart $$$ as they are, they want to make a slight change to the game to make it a bit interesting.  The change was at first, nobody would agree on any specific object, but whatever answer to the question asked thereafter has to be consistent with the previous answer.  So the second answer has to be consistent with the first answer, and the third answer has to be consistent with the second answer and so on.  So it goes that the first unlucky contestant after asking question after question, he noticed that it would take unusually longer and longer for the "yes or no" answer to come (as it would obviously since it gets harder and harder to be consistent after awhile), and also he could see some small laughter as if he was the object of a joke.  At the end, he was able to guess what the "object" was to the loud laughter of the entire room and of course he was let in on the joke finally.

Anyway, what does it have to do with cable risers?

I think prof already got me beat.  Maybe he can tell what that is.   

SkyWalker: "I don’t believe it".
Yoda: "That’s why you failed".

Even better than cable risers is no riser at all like this:
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/27HlB3_bvVY/hqdefault.jpg

I am waiting for cable levitators. 

I was gone for three minutes and pages and pages of prof musing.  I don't know.  Is it musing or just ranting ... hmmm ...  

... it keeps going ...

If I didn't see the tree fall ... does it exist?  If I can't hear ...  hear no evil, see no evil.  

My conclusion is prof exists in another dimension that comprises of all that is the total of the cybersphere.  His postings encompass all postings.  One poster is only one part of his existence (or dimension).  

It keeps going and going ... I am not worthy ...  bow to my overlord ...

I have to say this thread is almost like beers but not quite though :-)

OK, seems like trolling is in vogue here. We all know of people having multiple usernames. But very few know that there are multiple people sharing the same username lols.

That explains the mysterious phenomenon of why some people possess expertise in multiple disciplines lols. Some username in here seems to know things that can only be possible if he/or she were having multiple heads lols.  It's like they possess the wiki pages in their heads lols.