The Physics of Electricity


Can anyone explain clearly in either common parlance or technical terms the difference between a $1,000.00 cable and/or speaker wire versus a $20.00 (or so) one? What does wire "do" in an expensive cable/wire that an inexpensive cable/wire does not? Does it conduct more or "better" electricity?
llanger
We have enabled listeners all over the world to get closer to their favorite music by making it sound as crystal-clear as possible.


Don’t want to seem like I’m nit-picking or anything but wouldn’t simply clear be mo bettah than crystal-clear....like just cut out the middle man ditch the crystal and go directly to clear. Kinda makes sense eh, or am I missing something ?

And then there are the phase shift issues that are at the heart of the manner in which damping functions. Jeez they could gone whole hog on the ultimate and simply invented a mechanical diode or something that has no phase shift ( cause that is the ultimate ...no out of phase decay... )....and fixed it real good. And yeah a mechanical diode is apparently impossible but we are just dreaming and being a bit silly here, aren’t we ?
tobor007,and all...

It should be easy, since it makes an obvious difference.
The problem is that no two hearing systems in a human are the same, and no two minds tied to the mechanics of the individualized ear are the same, and no two people program their hearing the same way.Hearing is half auto and half programmed.

put in a set of earplugs and drive downtown, get out of your car in a parking lot at a mall or what not..and then pull the plugs out. At first, all you will hear is a subsonic to high frequency cacophony of noise.

EVERYTHING coming in, no selectivity at all.

Over about 2-3 seconds, your ear programming will come on line, and curve fit itself to the scenario at hand. Your brain will erase the subsonic out of the equation, the blood in your veins, all of that, the wind..and then set itself up to decode what is going on in that space in front of you and then you will also ad in some conscious control. You can test this all day, and it will play out to your conscious realization exactly the same way, each time. all in that three seconds or so. What happened is that it stopped pedaling when you put the earplugs in, Over time... it shut off.

You take the ear plugs out.... and it slowly turns itself back on in the presence of all that sound.

So YES, a person can hear the filter and mind in unconscious and semi conscious modes..one can hear it do it’s thing.

There are some fundamental inferences, but everyone will have individualized them, re the intake into their ’system’..

good hearing is kinda equivalent to excellent rumination and intellect.

We now..hopefully all know we can’t allow people who don’t hear any of it and don’t understand how this works...we can’t allow them to apply their minimum of ignorance (worst:malice) to the equation and screech about ’charlatans’.

The simple straight forward Logic and reason that surrounds the complex equation --- would not allow such a thing...
taras22294 posts08-06-2019 10:39am
We have enabled listeners all over the world to get closer to their favorite music by making it sound as crystal-clear as possible.

Don’t want to seem like I’m nit-picking or anything but wouldn’t simply clear be mo bettah than crystal-clear....like just cut out the middle man ditch the crystal and go directly to clear. Kinda makes sense eh, or am I missing something ?

>>>>>Uh, Furutech was making a bad pun, aren’t all puns bad?, inasmuch as they were speaking about their “crystal” cable damping technique. 

By the way, Noone has been able to answer my Pop Quiz that asked the question, why do external vibration of audio cables hurt the sound?
Well, it depends who you ask. If you look up Dr Wiki he says the following....which given the currency that defines Dr Wiki's world is pretty well just the bog standard interpretation ( which mostly seem to be variations of you're messing with my magnetic field dude..).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetically_excited_acoustic_noise_and_vibration

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microphonics

But if one were to present that to the experts in certain patent offices they will say that the effect doesn't exist and all talk about it is just plain hooey.

So pray tell, what are your views on the subject ?
Those 2 links provide good info, unfortunately nothing that answers my pop quiz question that concerns vibration in cables. The first article is not relevant to vibration in audio systems actually. The subject of the first article is electromagnetically excited acoustic noise, which is a horse of a different color.

To whit,

“Electromagnetically excited acoustic noise is audible sound directly produced by materials vibrating under the excitation of electromagnetic forces. Some examples of electromagnetically excited acoustic noise include the hum of transformers, the whine of some rotating electric machines, or the buzz of fluorescent lamps. The hissing of high voltage transmission lines is due to corona discharge, not magnetism.”
Sorry but a bit more confused than normal....the original post spoke of external vibrations not vibrations in cables.

So maybe defining the terms more strictly might be good eh.
Actually the original post (The Physics of Electricity) asked, what makes an expensive cable better than an inexpensive one, does one “conduct more or better electricity?” The mention of Vibrations came later on. Plus there’s another similar thread that asked the burning question, do vibrations affect inert electronics like solid state amps.

In any event, my pop quiz was do external vibrations affect the signal in cables and if so how? It’s very similar to the question why do external vibrations affect solid state amps? I’m going to help you out. What is needed is to first establish what the audio signal in wires and cables actually is and how vibrations could physically or electrically affect it.
When we talk about electricity and cables, we talk about resistance , capacitance and inductance. Pardon my English. :)
Cable capacity or inductance can differ 10X even. For example, If one cable has 3X bigger capacity then the other, it will sound differently (the current flow will be different using simple words). That’s obvious and clear for everybody I hope. Cables capacity or inductance or resistance depends on materials used for construction (metal, insulator etc.), geometry of the cable. This is the reason why power cables and in general cables sound so differently. There are other factors like vibrations, RF....  that affect cable performance and it depends how well a cable is constructed and that is reflected in price. Signal in power cables is not only 50/60Hz but many other frequencies superimposed that are "smuggled" into the system and contaminate the sound. Some cables filtrate, attenuate RF by their geometry... 
Price tag... hm... more expensive cables are usually better constructed, better materials, better geometry applied and so on. Generally, cables are way overpriced...There are not so expensive cables sounding very good (Lessloss, for example. Louis should buy me a beer :) ) and very expensive cables that suck. Cables are also system dependent and most important..... listener dependent. Listeners preference...... :)


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Let’s briefly recap why expensive cables might be better than some stock run-of-the-mill cables.

High purity copper or silver
Gold content
Long grain copper conductors
High performance dielectric material
Advanced welding techniques for connectors
High silver content of connectors
Highly polished solid core conductor surfaces
Conductors controlled for directionality
Conductors and connectors are cryogenically treated
White jackets in lieu of black or color

@geoffkait - you omitted cable geometry

Hi-end cables from companies like Cardas, Kimber and Nordost all utilize more complex cable geometries to improve sound quality.

Regards - Steve
Good catch. I didn’t necessarily mean my list was all inclusive. Shielding geometries, active cables, damping, magic boxes, all sorts of special innovations by various manufacturers pop up. My list is a good place to start. 🤗 Actually, the case could be made for LACK of complex geometry being a valued characteristic, e.g., Anti Cables.

 It will produce a different kind of sound depending on the capacitance and impedance variations, whether for better or for worse. They may have received a better sound if they paid a lot for their cable. The cable they prefer likely sounds better too if they prefer the way it looks. Those are just my thoughts on the matter. You should start off with a basic cable provider to see if it's within your budget. Once you have adjusted your system appropriately, you can experiment with different cables.