audioengr
Responses from audioengr
| Copper v. Silver The superiority of silver has more to do with the crystal structure than the fact that it is slightly more conductive. Also for designers like me that use bare wires, the oxides are less of a problem with silver than with copper. I believe that it... | |
| Another look at directionality in cables Marty at BFS discovered some interesting things about my cables in his system. As a result, I believe it is very system-dependent which direction sounds best and therefore I now recommend that both directions be tried in each situation. In general... | |
| After Market Power Cables - Gold or Snake Oil? M_Cassar - there is one other possible benefit of a power cable and that is filtering. This filtering can be only on the ground wire or the current-carrying wires. Ground-wire filtering makes a lot of sense, since there should not be any AC curren... | |
| After Market Power Cables - Gold or Snake Oil? Checkmate110 - You are correct, the total inductance from the panel is what matters. | |
| Is High End Cable Really Worth It and What Brand High-end wires do measure better and they sound better particularly for longer lengths. If you want to see some measurements and analysis, see the Audio FAQ page at this website:http://www.empiricalaudio.com | |
| RCA to XLR adapter, advantages of special boxes ?? Your signal from the CDP is a single-ended signal. In order to get a differential signal for the AES/EBU specification, you need two signals, one non-inverted and one inverted. The box that you speak of generates these two differential signals fro... | |
| After Market Power Cables - Gold or Snake Oil? Amplifiers demand current from the power-line when the capacitors in their power-supplies become momentarily discharged due to high-current transients in the music signal. This discharge condition must be quickly recharged from the power-line, thr... | |
| Best Speaker Cable Connectors I like the spades from Vampirewire.comDirrect gold-plated copper. | |
| Why Aren't All Cables Pre-Burned In? I plan to break-in my Empirical Audio cables as well, but I would have to delay shipment of them at this time. I get the feeling that folks want them quickly rather than broken-in. It only takes about 10-20 hours in a system anyway. | |
| Best Speaker Cable Connectors A well soldered or crimped Spade-Lug will always be lower resistance than bare wire, bananas or pins. It it what binding posts were designed for. | |
| Are silver coated cables a bunch of hype? I use silver-plated copper in my speaker wires because they are uninsulated and I dont want copper oxides on the surface of the conductors. Does not seem to impart any undesirable sounds. | |
| Why do digital cables sound different? Actually the SPDIF signal is digital, not dual-phase sinewaves. It appears more like a "trapezoidal" wave, which is a square-wave with controlled slew-rate rising and falling edges. This is to minimize radiated emissions for FCC regulations. The s... | |
| Interconnect length Capacitance is what you want to minimize in IC's. Going to .5m lengths will cut this approx. in half (connectors cause quite a lot of cap). Definitely recommended if you can do it. I have done a lot of simulations and listening tests and cap is th... | |
| XLR vs RCA Balanced connections have two signals, a positive and a negative signal, which are inverted versions of each other. They carry the signal currents. At the destination, these are subtracted from each other to create the signal. Any noise that is th... | |
| Power Conditioning done by IC's & Speaker Cables Stehno - I do believe that more organized, relaxed crystal structure can reduce sibilance. I actually just started offering a cable I call the "Perfect Crystal" (marketing talk), which eliminates most of the smll sibilance that my "standard" cable... |