To Loom or Not to Loom?

[DaveC]

Because it does not make any sense at all that mere wires should have as significant a sonic effect on what we hear as different substantive components.

I understand that point, but the same has been said for any part the signal goes through. Mere resistors? They can't sound different... Mere caps? Boutique caps are ridiculous BS! And on and on... So if this is the case everything has to sound exactly the same and yet, it does not.

I think what's closer to the truth is that everything makes a difference. Wire makes a BIG difference. As do caps, resistors, amplification devices, etc...

 

[DaveC]

Below is the transfer function of 4 speaker cables/wire

https://www.stereophile.com/content/minnesota-audio-society-conducts-cable-comparison-tests-0

I hadn't seen that one...

My interpretation is, I think the transfer function indicates effects on frequency response may not explain preferences.

 

[awsmone]

Don’t disagree but does show frequency changes which is interesting

 

[still-one]

Because it does not make any sense at all that mere wires should have as significant a sonic effect on what we hear as different substantive components.

It doesn't make sense to whom?

 

[NorthStar]

Daniel Overgaard Nielsen, Electronics engineering. Developing drones and UAVs for Danish Aviation Systems.

Engineering perspective:

"First thing: The difference between a good and a cheap cable may be a factor 0.5% in most cases. Between different cable lengths the signal loss is directly proportional to the length of the cable. So the by far cheapest way to get better performing cables is to use shorter ones. Half the length double the performance. But double the price will never have the same effect.
A cable have three electronic properties. For most audio cables the resistance and the inductance is not worth noting unless we’re talking old fashioned telephone lines of many kilometres. The capacitance how ever might be. A cable between a signal source and an amplifier of some kind will act as a first order low pass filter. To figure out how nice a cable is required for a specific situation you (in theory) need to now the specs of the cable that you are buying and the output resistance of the equipment driving the cable. The 3dB point "fc" of this lowpass filter is:

Where R is the output resistance in ohms and C is the total capacitance of the cable. If you start calculating a little you will find that a typical mid end cable is more than plenty, of you are using a 'short'(less than 100 meters) cable run. A 100 metres of commonly specced audio cable of 30pF/meter with a typical preamp that will have no more than 100 ohm of output impedance, the bandwidth is going to be greater than 500 kHz! In other words, don’t worry, you’re not loosing out.
The other aspect worth mentioning is the noise. Here again I'd much rather rely on a good line driver and a good differential input. A good op-amp will cost you a few dollars max and a cable insuring the same performance may not even be possible regardless of price. So to get the lowest possible noise make sure your source and load is balanced, and that the receiving component has a high resistance. This will solve both the problems mentioned above.
With regards to speaker cables there is a very simple way to get something from nothing. Two conductors placed close to each other act as a capacitor - ie blocks high frequency. If you buy thick oxygen free copper cables and split them in to two separate conductors, rather than having them sticked together, they will probably be as good a speaker cable as you can get. Just use tape or something to keep them spaced 5 cm or so apart, that should kill any real world capacitance between the two inductors. But again (as always) remember a hundred dollars extra spend won't dubble the performance, but cutting the cable length in half will.
Digital cables, as mentioned won't affect the signal. They either pass every bit, or they don't. Don't waste your money on HDMI cables. Optical cables however can be a bit costly. I do not know anything about optical signal transmission.
And last but not least.. Power cables? Look at your mains outlet? Do you think the wire in that wall is gold-plated, spun by virgins in moonlight? Naah didn't think so. Don't wast money on that gimmick. A special power cable will do nothing for your audio system.
I have never been able to tell one decent connector from another of the same type. Neither by measurement nor by ear. They are practically the same."

 

[NorthStar]

Lawrence de Martin, Chief Science Officer (1997-present)

"As a University trained engineer, I started out a skeptic - but after hearing unmistakable differences, I started investigating, and found many audible and measurable differences.
Another answerer talked about RFI suppression. In my own experience, I found that Silver Mica caps across both the amplifier input and speaker terminals improved the sound, but not in a Faraday cage; and the difference was greater in Manhattan than in the suburbs. Cables can improve RFI suppression dramatically, although this is partly correcting deficiency in electronic design.
Impedance mis-match can cause some minor phase and frequency response anomalies. In this case high priced cables can be worse, but a lot of people will interpret any change as improvement because they have no absolute reference. Audiophiles, audio engineers and designers do not go to enough acoustic concerts to know what REAL music sounds like!
The factor most people ignore is non-linear dielectric absorbtion. This is very well characterized in precision metrology. My Navy surplus General Radio Impedance Bridge can be used to sort line interconnects into “clear” and “muddy” by dissipation factor and residual null difference.
Interestingly, some cheap Shadio Rack RCA cables ended up in the “clear” pile.
I have also heard differences that were not measurable, but I am far more inclined to believe my ears after verifying these correlations.
I have been on an ear training regimen that changed how I hear and react to audio. For fifteen years I have listened more hours per week to live, acoustic music than to reproduction, and for six years I have listened more to unprocessed stereo pair recordings of concerts than to studio albums. In the last two years, I have listened to less than two dozen albums that were mixed and mastered because I now hear the distortion of every knob used in the studio production, and even the intention to splice.
Further, I have never been able to listen to digitally compressed files. MP3, AAC, YouTube and Spotify give me a headache and musical anhedonia, the inability to experience joy and pleasure from music. I suggest to anyone who listens to Internet music or even mixed and mastered WAV/FLAC, this interferes with your ability to hear differences between cables, amplifiers and HD formats.
You need to “break-in” your ears with season tickets to acoustic music."

 

[Ron Resnick]

It doesn't make sense to whom?

Sorry; I thought the structure of the sentence implied clearly that I was talking about myself.

 

[NorthStar]

I am not an engineer, I am a modest humble audiophile music lover with a deep emotional passion. I checked behind my hi-fi stereo sound system and the cables I am using the most are from Canare.

Canard in Canadian French means duck in English.

They are ultra inexpensive.

For speaker wires I use KimberKable, and also for some analog interconnects.
Those are much more expensive though. But to my ears they sound just fine.

AudioQuest are in there too.

I think if I would use a full loom I would be able to afford, music sound speaking, all KimberKable.