Speakers more fussy about cables than amp?

Since an amp has no sound without a speaker nor a speaker without an amp how do you tell which is being fussy? Leaving aside cables with strange chacteristics which make amps unstable, which are rare these days, I think you have to talk about the combination of amp and speaker where cables are concerned.

Not really sure about what you are asking. Kind of obvious if the amp does not mate with the speakers, example 20 watt amp on a pair of 3.7 magneplanars or an amp that is not stable at 2 ohms with electrostatics, your dead in the water. Cabling is irrelavant if you cant power up the speakers correctly. So if all things are equal right amp with speakers the correct cabling is an obvious concern. Question is very general one could go in any direction. One could answer yes or no to your question and be correct. We need a little more meat on the bones to give you a better answer.

Stan, initially I interpreted the question in the same way as you did, as asking whether the speaker or the amp is more sensitive to cable differences. On further reflection, though, I think he is asking about whether the speaker may be more sensitive to cable differences than to amp differences.

My answer to that is, yes, it is conceivable in some circumstances. If the amps being compared have negligibly low output impedance, such as most solid state amps, and if the amps being compared have no problems supplying the required power and dealing with the impedance characteristics of the speaker, and if the amps being compared are high quality and have no significant sonic aberrations, then changing cables could conceivably make more of a difference than changing amps.

Speaker sensitivity to cable differences will increase if speaker impedance is low, speaker impedance fluctuates widely over the frequency range, speaker impedance reaches low values at bass frequencies or upper treble frequencies, the phase angle of the speaker impedance is highly capacitive at low frequencies, or if woofer damping is especially critical with the particular speaker, or if cable length is long. Several of those things can also increase sensitivity to amplifier differences, though.

Regards,
-- Al

I view both amplifiers and cables as components and I have gotten different sonic results when changing either. But I will say that it is surprising to me how much difference cable changes can make and I'm speaking of all system cables including intereconnects, power cords, speaker cables and digital cables.

I've also found that what power cord the amp uses can affect which speaker cables sound best with said amplifier.

Hey guys, I think I wrote my question rather ambiguously.

In my system, I've tried a couple different amps that seemed pretty fine. And found that speaker cables could make a big difference in presentation.

My conclusion/supposition is that when people talk about trying to find the correct amp-speaker combination, maybe it's rather the case that it's the speaker-speaker cable that's more of a variable!

...maybe it's rather the case that it's the speaker-speaker cable that's more of a variable!

Not to me it isn't.