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

This little echo-chamber you got going here, I know it must make you all feel normal. But you might want to stop, if only for a second, and imagine how you look to actual real normal people. As a friend told me just today, "Its like they sit alone in their room never bothering to see if anything they're saying is actually true." In other words, mental, deluded... pathetic.

Interesting question. Makes me curious to know which of those fine products you think I might actually find worth a try? Seriously. Which one?

Of course the Synergistic cable risers will work. Duh. Because 1: Synergistic and 2: ECT/HFT. Could probably just stick some ECT right on the cables. Why not? ECT works on everything else. After trying them on all kinds of things from my tone arm and motor to my laptop the surprise would be if they don't. According to SR website they tuned this particular HFT to this particular use. Which would be no surprise except for they call this red one HFT which is odd if you know ECT are all red and look exactly like this, while HFT are all gray or silver or black and none so far are red. PHT are black, blue, green and purple. Aside from color and size these are all the same thing, only they definitely are tuned, I can see this clearly under x-ray. Yeah, I have x-rayed them. That's the way I roll. Deal with it!

It seems like the believers are having an upper hands at the moment.

Its called listening. 

But you go ahead. Believe what you want.

$4.99 for 20???!?!?! Total ripoff!

$1.79 for 25!
https://www.acehardware.com/departments/building-supplies/gates-and-fences/electric-fence-parts/7191...

Thus the famous J Gordon Holt quote:
Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled signals yearning to be free!

I grew up in the 70's on Stereo Review and Julian Hirsch and so of course knew beyond any doubt that if the wire is thick enough and the frequency response is flat enough and the power is watts enough then that's all that matters. I mean this was beyond doubt. 

So when in the 90's with a good job and a remodeled listening room it was time to go shopping this was the frame of mind I was in. I would go and listen and find some good speakers, because speakers were different, because frequency response, see? And so speakers you audition. Everything else you can just buy by spec.

Totally convinced of this. Not a one of you professing disbelief can hold a candle to me back then. Not a one. Did any of you take your CD player to a store and ask to compare it side by side? I did. And interconnect. And amp. Made a real pest of myself. 

Oh and yes, ashamed to admit it but for a while there I made a real ass of myself spouting off in utter ignorance sounding every bit as much a loser wannabe noob as anyone around here today.

This all went on until one day by chance listening to one track on CD of all things it hit me. There was a quality to the sound of this particular recording that was different from my system and yet similar to some of the other really good systems I had heard. Nowadays I would say it was more liquid with less grain and glare. But back that vocabulary didn't exist for me back then. It developed only gradually over time and with a lot of effort listening to and comparing a lot of different things.

So I can sympathize with the people who have yet to develop the skill to listen. Its sad, knowing the better you listen the more you're able to build a truly great system, and appreciate the better music and recordings. If you can't hear, you can't do, and you just go on missing out.

Its not all bad of course. Not knowing what you're missing. How can you feel sad losing what you never had in the first place? Not to mention its easy to criticize when you haven't even the foggiest idea what it is you're criticizing. 

You can fell as good about it as you want. Just as long as you don't mind that nagging feeling that others really do know. But I'm sure that never happens.

What do you think is actually happening when you raise your cables from your floor?   What was affecting the sound with the cables on the floor?  How?  With what effects?

If for instance you are posting some constant sonic effect on the signal, what’s the explanation?   If it’s some constant background noise, presumably if you have your system on without music playing you should be able to hear this “noise.”


Do you?


 I have cable running through walls and along shag rugs.  I can’t hear a thing coming from my speakers when music isn’t playing so what might I expect to hear a difference with cables raised?

Well, that is a pretty low bar. Oh well. Pretend its serious, answer it serious.

What do you think is actually happening when you raise your cables from your floor?

We don't have to think, by which I think you mean guess, because this has been tested. If its distance then the higher the better. But testing with the same materials doing the lifting shows no such relationship. If its vibration then materials known to have excellent vibration control characteristics should work better. This has been tested and revealed to be not only correct, but the opposite. Materials with known bad vibration control characteristics actually work better. So its not vibration control. If its electric charges then known electrical insulators should work better.

Bingo! Ceramic insulators perform best of all materials tested. This suggests its something to do with electric charges.

What was affecting the sound with the cables on the floor? How?  

Again, evidence suggests it was electric charges. They do tend to propagate along surfaces, you know. There are even electrical standards used in industry by which these things are rated. When comparisons are made guess what? The insulators with the highest kV ratings sound the best.

With what effects?

The effects are the sound has grain, glare, backgrounds are less black, air around images less open, and the whole presentation is flatter, less 3D, and smaller. Ceramic insulators that raise cables up off the floor improve all these effects.

If for instance you are posting some constant sonic effect on the signal, what’s the explanation?   If it’s some constant background noise, presumably if you have your system on without music playing you should be able to hear this “noise.”


Do you?

Pretty sure you meant to say imposing not posting. Posting makes no sense. In any case you would be right, if only you were right about it being constant. Why would it be constant? What on Earth could possibly be adding a constant noise? We go to great lengths to design power supplies that are what? Constant! That's how hard it is to be constant!

Not to mention, if it was constant, well we sure wouldn't need elevators. We'd simply figure out what it is and filter it out.

So constant is the last thing it is. 

By the way, you see what I'm doing? Taking ordinary basic stuff everyone knows, really obvious stuff in fact, not the slightest bit exceptional or controversial, combining it with a few simple observations and then applying basic 101 level deductive logic. 

I have cable running through walls and along shag rugs.  I can’t hear a thing coming from my speakers when music isn’t playing so what might I expect to hear a difference with cables raised?

Well you could try and see for yourself. Or just read through the info on-line, including even in this very thread. No? Hmmm.  


Okay so here we go. Sorry if this is plodding slow and basic but... its really basic stuff. Its just connecting the dots thats hard.

Electric current cannot move through a wire without creating a proportional magnetic field around that wire. Also, magnetic fields cannot cross a wire without inducing a current in that wire. It then follows that electric charges anywhere near the cable will in some way however small induce a signal in the wire.

So there's one "why" right there. The music signal itself generates electric charges all around the cable. To the extent they are allowed to build up whatever noise and smearing they cause will build up as well.

But wait, there's more!

Insulators are imperfect. Insulators tend to absorb a small amount of energy which is then released back into the wire, the time delay smearing the signal. Air is a pretty good insulator. Carpet, wood, not so much. Nowhere near as good as the expensive carefully chosen dielectrics used in a lot of high end cables either. So there's another reason.

But wait, there's more- and this is the kicker!

Do you have any idea the size of the tiniest squiggles on a record? Its roughly the size of a large organic molecule. In other words, really, really small. Yet we hear these tiny details. When you drop something on the floor and look where it went, you know by sound alone where to look. When speakers are placed too near a side wall the imaging is ruined. With experimentation we learn sounds arriving within 3 to 5 milliseconds are responsible. Sound travels about one foot per millisecond. So we put our speakers three to five feet away from the side walls and the imaging is great.

We could go on and on all day like this. One after another, and not a one of em the least bit controversial or even secret. Just basic stuff everyone knows. Or if they don't, can confirm in like ten seconds with a web browser. A whole lot of things that may seem utterly unrelated until you realize what they all have in common is humans being able to discern incredibly tiny little details.

Well, some of us, anyway.

Getting cables up off the floor is a big enough improvement I've made stands for all of them, power cords and interconnects as well. It was first tested with wood, but paper or plastic cups would also work. Basically anything that gets them up off the floor is better than on the floor. Best of all by far however are ceramic insulators. 

The improvement with Cable Elevators is big enough everyone notices and I've even had people say they could hear the sound change one by one as they are removed or replaced. 

With your flat cables the trick would be to reduce sag by twisting them to vertical. Otherwise it would still work, it would just take more insulators. Search around on eBay, where there's a huge selection as they're sold as collectibles. I've tried various ones. They all work well and its nice to have a variety of sizes and shapes. Look around, you may even find some with slots that would fit your cables very nicely. 

Also its hard to tell from the pictures but ceramic insulators are all threaded inside as they are designed to screw down to be fastened typically on telephone poles. This makes it very easy to use a wooden dowel or whatever to hold them at whatever height or angle you want.