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


My cables are laying on the floor (in a mess), would raising them off the floor really make much of a difference? The problem is they are quite wide and too long  http://mgaudiodesign.com/planus3.htm so any suggested props are appreciated!  Cheers
spoutmouzert

Showing 2 responses by drbarney1

Has anyone calculated what difference such things done to make cables unreasonably expensive makes? Let us take an example. Many cable manufacturers warn us of high frequency rolloff caused by skin effect. They make cables like ribbons or bundle them in litz configuration where each strand of wire in individually insulated so every conductor is too thin to be affected by skin effect. But here is some physical calculation of how much rolloff can be expected with 8 gauge speaker wires in series with a 4 Ohm speaker. (I use magnetic planar speakers which do not vary in their reactance the way dynamic drivers do.) Skin effect will cause 4 meters of 8 gauge wire to have a resistance of 0.0164 Ohms at 20 kHz compared to a DC resistance of 0.00842 Ohms where more current can go through the center of the wire. Put this in series with 4  Ohms and calculate the difference between 4.0164 and 4.00842. Take the ratio and the log of this ratio times 20 and the skin effect attenuates the signal less than 1/200 dB.
That is why I am a little suspicious of over-priced cables and the questionable physics describing why you need them. The placebo effect is another matter which does not help.
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.
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I have a suggestion. Does the insulator on a speaker cable store and re-release an electric field capable of doing something to the sound? A way to find out is connect one cable pair to an amplifier but not to a speaker. If you use tube amplifiers, especially SET, you won't hurt the amplifier and it should be safe with much solid state. Connect another cable pair to a speaker, the more sensitive the speaker the better' but not to an amplifier. Tape the two cables against each other so the amplifier voltage in one cable pair is able to store the electric energy in the dipole molecules in the cables connected to the speaker. Turn up the music on the amplifier to the one set of cables and place your ear against the speaker with its disconnected cable. I do not think you will be able to hear the micro-volt effect of molecular dipoles tilting and returning to normal. That is one test where there is no danger of any placebo effect in a listening test.