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.
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?
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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. |
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 |
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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...... :) |
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. |
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.” |
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 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 ? |
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? |
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... |
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 ? |
More good stuff. Taking a page from Brilliant Pebbles? They say they aren’t Magic Crystals, so maybe not. 😬 Incorporated into selected Furutech products, NCF features a special crystalline material that has two ‘active’ properties. First, it generates negative ions that eliminate static. Second, it converts thermal energy into far infrared. Furutech combines this remarkable material with nano-sized ceramic particles and carbon powder for their additional ‘piezoelectric effect’ damping properties. The resulting Nano Crystal² Formula is the ultimate electrical and mechanical damping material. Created by Furutech, it is found exclusively in Furutech products. No other manufacturer goes to the expense and effort that Furutech does to develop and produce high-end audio accessories and cables, and NCF is a cumulative result of 30 years of research and development of Pure Transmission high-end audio grade products. Furutech has produced decades of unrivaled innovation within the audio industry. We have enabled listeners all over the world to get closer to their favorite music by making it sound as crystal-clear as possible. We have accomplished this enviable feat through careful research based upon solid scientific principles, and exhaustive listening tests to confirm those results. For example, we have pioneered the use of many revolutionary technologies in our legendary line of Furutech products—the Floating Field Damper, the Two-Stage Cryogenic and Demagnetization Process and many, many others. Now we’re set to transform the audio industry with crystals. These aren’t “magic” crystals, mind you, but a new crystallized material that actively generates negative ions to eliminate static and converts thermal energy into far infrared. There is nothing mysterious about the way these crystals work—quite simply, they improve audio performance in a very specific and measurable way. |
But wouldn’t that nano-tech surface treatment require exactly the same electrical parameters as the base carrier to work well ? Otherwise something as elementary as an impedance mismatch would produce reflections that could really complicate an already complisticated situation. So the idea is have a conductor surface as smooth as a still pond at nightfall that could, say, yield a staggeringly good reflection and not a jumbled chaotic mess akin to noise ....fascinating stuff indeed. The potential if that could be achieved is simply bogglistical eh. |
Postscript: Furutech is also the company that fills or covers the tiny physical imperfection on the surface of wire using some kind of nano tech. You know, to produce a level playing field for the current traveling on the surface. Similar to the Audioquest technique of highly polishing the wire surface, one assumes. That’s assuming current does actually travel on the surface, which is completely up for grabs. Also, the crystal grains deformed by the pulling through the die operation that lie beneath the surface - what about them? Do they sweep them under the carpet. |
...technology that optimally aligns the crystals while reducing the number of crystal-grain boundaries resulting in a tremendously efficient conductor. Gee, someone with a lot of solid engineering expertise went through a lot of high priced trouble to reduce the effect of crystal-grain boundaries. So if more is better, or in this case, less is better, would be kinda interesting to speculate what kind of benefit could occur if there were no "crystals" or "crystal junctions" at all eh. But that is the stuff of science fiction ain’t it, though it would make for a very fascinating thought experiment. |
This just in from Furutech, “Alpha OCC-DUCC Speaker Bulk Cable DSS-4.1 Furutech’s α (Alpha) OCC‐DUCC is one of a select few of conductors that Furutech engineers have found to excel in sound reproduction. α (Alpha) OCC –DUCC is constructed using a combination of DUCC Ultra Crystallized High Purity Copper and Furutech’s world famous Pure Transmission α (Alpha)-OCC. Furutech DUCC Ultra Crystallized High Purity Copper -- supplied and regulated with strict quality control by Mitsubishi Materials Industries -- is one of the best conductors Furutech engineers have found for signal transmission. (MMI is the leading manufacturer of the highest-purity oxygen-free copper in the world) Mitsubishi process this extremely pure oxygen-free copper with new technology that optimally aligns the crystals while reducing the number of crystal-grain boundaries resulting in a tremendously efficient conductor. Straight OCC’s benefits are its larger “fibrous” crystals in which one dimension is longer than the other two so as to create as few crystal junctions as possible. Thus, OCC’s sensitivity to directionality; one path exhibits the least resistance. Furutech’s world famous Pure Transmission α-OCC is the result of further processing with the Alpha Super Cryogenic and Demagnetizing treatment. However, DUCC purity goes a significant step further. Mitsubishi Materials designed the new conductor to optimally align the copper crystal grain structure in addition to reducing crystal grain boundaries. As a result, DUCC is less sensitive to directionality than OCC.“ |
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I know there is difference between a Sony receiver and Krell FPB amplifier Be careful what you compare to try and draw a valid conclusion on something else. I know there is a difference between a Yugo and a Lamborghini. Means nothing about cable. None of this "theory" matters if you can't pick out the premium cable every time with the lights out. It should be easy, since it makes an obvious difference. |
Becoming iron actually doesn’t guarantee it will become a black hole. Far from it. Only compressed stars with mass greater than 3-4 solar masses will become black holes. The rest will become something else, a Neutron Star. Of course, no iron or any other elements exist in a black hole as they have been crunched down to their basic subatomic particles. A black hole with the mass of the Earth would fit in the palm of your hand. |
In the autumn of 1884, Károly Zipernowsky, Ottó Bláthy and Miksa Déri (ZBD), three engineers associated with the Ganz factory, determined that open-core devices were impractical, as they were incapable of reliably regulating voltage.[10] In their joint 1885 patent applications for novel transformers (later called ZBD transformers), they described two designs with closed magnetic circuits where copper windings were either wound around a ring core of iron wires or else surrounded by a core of iron wires. Then there's the utterly unique thing about iron. iron is the destination gateway for black holes. No matter which direction they come from (there are two directions in activity to get to a black hole) They either move up to being iron and then black hole, or they move down to iron, and then a black hole. (just one way of phrasing it) That hysteresis and the permeability, the unique parts of it re the table of elements. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permeability_(electromagnetism)#Values_for_some_common_materials Is there something beyond the normal considerations that we are simply not 'getting'? Something about... hysteresis, permeability and time-space? Something seems to be saying that if you want to understand black holes, you have to properly and fully understand iron, and to fully understand iron, that you must consider all of what a black hole really is. Now..isn't that ...just..interesting. |
Skin effect to the rescue! Mystery solved! The current travels inside the conductor. In the case of a fuse, if the current traveled outside the fuse wire it would not melt when required. Hel-loo, people! Distribution of current flow in a cylindrical conductor, shown in cross section. For alternating current, the current density decreases exponentially from the surface towards the inside. The skin depth, δ, is defined as the depth where the current density is just 1/e (about 37%) of the value at the surface; it depends on the frequency of the current and the electrical and magnetic properties of the conductor.Each 3-wire bundle in this power transmission installation acts as a single conductor. A single wire using the same amount of metal per kilometer would have higher losses due to the skin effect. Skin effect is the tendency of an alternating electric current (AC) to become distributed within a conductor such that the current density is largest near the surface of the conductor, and decreases with greater depths in the conductor. The electric current flows mainly at the "skin" of the conductor, between the outer surface and a level called the skin depth. The skin effect causes the effective resistance of the conductor to increase at higher frequencies where the skin depth is smaller, thus reducing the effective cross-section of the conductor. The skin effect is due to opposing eddy currents induced by the changing magnetic field resulting from the alternating current. At 60 Hz in copper, the skin depth is about 8.5 mm. At high frequencies the skin depth becomes much smaller. Increased AC resistance due to the skin effect can be mitigated by using specially woven litz wire. Because the interior of a large conductor carries so little of the current, tubular conductors such as pipe can be used to save weight and cost. |
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A few comments. The subject of the thread is speaker cables or wires, and the audio signal, not power cords. Also, why do cables with shielding often sound worse than cables without shielding if shielding is supposed to be all that? Finally, the subject is how electricity works; shielding is pretty much another topic or sub-topic. |
There are differences that can matter mainly shielding from noise, ability to establish a sound electrical contact on both ends and ability to deliver current when needed. None of this is rocket science and requires just a good quality power cord designed to do the job well which has some cost but need not cost a fortune. Current delivery will in practice matter more for power amps whereas shielding and ability to make a good contact may matter more in general. |
almarg For the record, I disagree with just about everything in Geoff’s recent posts in this thread. However I have no interest in engaging in further discussion of these matters, as I would rather focus on threads and discussions that have the potential to be constructive. >>>>Thanks for not engaging me on this subject, Al. You’re the best. By the way, if you disagree with just about everything I said surely I must be on the right track. 🤗 |
For the record, I disagree with just about everything in Geoff's recent posts in this thread. However I have no interest in engaging in further discussion of these matters, as I would rather focus on threads and discussions that have the potential to be constructive. Before taking my leave of this thread, though, I'll quote a statement by a world renowned author, consultant, lecturer, and expert on numerous branches of electrical engineering, Ralph Morrison. This was quoted by member Jea48 in another recent thread, entitled "directional-cables-what-does-that-really-mean?" Geoff participated extensively in that thread. Ralph Morrison And this from Wikipedia, which Jea48 also quoted in the thread I referred to: "In physics, the Poynting vector represents the directional energy flux (the energy transfer per unit area per unit time) of an electromagnetic field. The SI unit of the Poynting vector is the watt per square metre (W/m2). It is named after its discoverer John Henry Poynting who first derived it in 1884. Oliver Heaviside and Nokolay Umov also independently discovered the Poynting vector. I will have no further comments in this thread. Regards, -- Al |
Given how that the term determined is used, as in... determined by the dielectric or insulation material ...and the definition of determined as used implies... ascertain or establish exactly, typically as a result of research or calculation Mr Geoff has a point....and a good one....not to say there isn't some affect, which there is, but definitely not ascertained or established exactly....or wholly. Just sayin’ eh. |
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Let’s look at the first electricity article published on the PS Audio website more closely. Here are two excerpts (in quotes) along with my comments. “Also as we saw, the “signal” moves down the wire’s outer circumference, and not inthe wire. Therefore, the velocity of propagation of the signal (versus the velocity of the actual electrons) is determined by the dielectric or insulation material that the electromagnetic wave is predominantly traveling through. The slowing effect of the dielectric varies with frequency, throwing another variable into velocity of propagation—but giving us a way to play with it.” >>>>>The signal moves (mostly) inside the wire. If it didn’t wire would not be directional and there would be no differences among conductors, or among purity of the metals. If it doesn’t make sense it’s not true. Furthermore, the signal doesn’t contain frequencies. It’s not the music waveform. The velocity of propagation is constant for a given conductor material, e.g., copper. That velocity is a high percentage of the speed of light. “In one tested cable, the speed of a 20,000 Hz signal is about 110-million m/sec. The speed of a 20 Hz signal is about 5-million m/sec, or about 22 times slower. In other words, the impedance of a cable rises as we lower frequency due to the VP dropping, and capacitance value. Each is determined by the dielectric and the design spacing.” >>>>>The “audio signal” is not a frequency nor does it have frequency components in it. The “audio signal” is a current, an electromagnetic wave. It is not (rpt not) the music waveform. We also know that the signal (electromagnetic wave) travels at different velocities in different materials. In copper the electromagnetic wave travels at a high percentage of the speed of light. That’s because the signal is composed of photons. In free space the electromagnetic signal, e.g., satellite signal, travels at the speed of light. We also know the drift velocity of electrons in copper is a constant. It can be calculated. It’s something like a meter per hour. And the direction of electron drift is the same as the direction of current, which alternates. |
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Steve, you must have missed my post. There are many errors in the first article. My original post was, Geoffkait: “Whoa! Somebody flunked electricity big time!. The audio signal is not the music waveform and electrons don’t travel through the cable. And magnetism is produced by current moving through wire, not by electrons. The B field is the induced magnetic field. Hel-loo!” |
if I were PS Audio I wouldn’t have posted the error-fraught Belden engineer article on his website. Maybe he didn’t know any better. Maybe he assumed it was accurate since it was an engineer from a wire company and was trying to give credibility to his web site. Who knows? Maybe he was letting the Belden engineer speak for him. That’s the perception. |
@kijanki - OK - it’s got one little error (or perhaps he has a different perspective on things ?) But the rest of the info seems valid - hopefully? Perhaps you can take it up with Galen Gareis ? @geoffkait - if you actually read the first article you will see that they are written by an Engineer from Beldon Wire. They are simply posted on the PS Audio site Belden has applied all their design and manufacturing capabilities to high-performance audio cables for the audiophile market. Engineer Galen Gareis is the lead on the Iconoclast line of high-performance audio cables, and is happy to explain the science behind cable design. Regards - Steve :-) |
@williewonka These PS Audio articles are good primer except for possible errors like this: The electromagnetic field is strongest nearest the wire, decreasing with the square of the distance moving out away from the wire.It is not the square of the distance but just distance (linear fashion). Magnetic field of wire carrying current B = I x u0 / (2 x pi x r) where I is magnitude of the current in the wire and u0 is permeability of free space. Inverse square law applies to single point magnetic field and not to long wire carrying current. |
