Do speaker cables make a difference?
I have been using 14/4 Audioquest in wall speaker cable.
Decided to try Kimber Kable 12TC not sure if I hear a big difference
Does anyone recommend a certain cable that brings big resolution to your system.
Speakers B&W 804 D3
Amplifier Michi S5
Streamer LUMIN D2
I like Straight Wire.
Lots of selection, decent pricing, looks good, great group of people to work with.
I have no idea if they make a difference I just wanted to throw them a shout out (they sound good in my system though).
ok ok okā¦ Iāll say itā¦ yes cables, all cables, make a difference but fix your room first. Working on optimal speaker placement and room treatments will reveal more of the differences in everything.
We concur!
Have been using StraightWire cables for years.
Very well built and relatively affordable.
And yesā¦all cables make a differenceā¦ not always for the better on occasion.
Looks great
Have you experimented with speaker placement for two channel audio?
It may be you can find a sweeter spot for serious audio sessions, then put them back for video?
Iād start by bringing them into the room and a little closer togetherā¦
Cables can make a significant difference, but if you donāt hear much (as with anything) I wouldnāt buy them
Iāve found branding is mostly luck ie you stumble on a brand, someone recommends, a dealer stocks, you see a good deal etc etc
There are loads of options, some seem to be better value than others - but the acid test is whether they sound obviously better, and then (if they are expensive relative to the rest of the system) are you getting good sound/Ā£/$/ā¬ vs changing something else
Short answer: No
Longer answer: Provided theyāre well made* and well terminated and of sufficient cross sectional area for the distance and power required, then no, they donāt make an audible difference.
*If they have really funky inductive or capacitive properties, then they may have an audible effect (not well made)
Buy decently constructed cables of at least 2.5mmĀ² cross sectional area or 4mmĀ² for longer runs, with quality terminations and youāll be sorted (or make your own).
If you want something that looks aesthetically fancy, then knock yourself out and spend more, but they wonāt sound any different to a competent, ordinary cable.
Figured I would test audioquest Robin Hood. Night and day difference from the Kimber cable brought my speakers to life with detail and clarity.
I would say the audioquest has much more synergy with my system
I found speaker cables to make a difference for sure.
Silver content increases brightness / highs.
Noticeable difference mass market vs high end cables - however it stalled for me in the medium price range vs very expensive - I did not hear a difference worth the super expensive cabling.
All my system is connected Shunyata or QED, except ethernet being Audioquest Vodka
For the speakers I settled with the QED Genesis Silver Spiral, organic / balanced sound, excellent bass control, great detail, decent ROI
I took my Castle Rocks to my friends place
He was thinking of Going from Rocket 44 to Rocket 88
I said, save your money, actually spend your money - on something else, youāll get better value and SQ putting the cash towards, say, new speakers
Having picked our jaws up off the floor, we did it again; back to the 44s then to the Castle Rock
He bought some Castle Rock - at twice the budget - heās delighted, weāre stunned - and they were a sonic bargain
Just a question from a purely curiosity perspective. Those of you whoāve tried different cables and found they made a difference - did you evaluate blind or sighted? i.e. did you know which cables you were listening to?
Graeme
I truly respect your opinion and principles and enjoy reading the majority of your posts.
However if you really could not hear a difference between say a silver stranded cable and a solid copper cable then I would be shocked.
And concerned.
Iām not a huge believer in cables but the difference between those two extremes were easily heard.
And difference between two similar material cablesā¦not really heard.
Just my observations in my system but the different material gave quite a profound change in character.
Nope, no double blind testing done.
Kevin, this is my primary concern where it comes to subjective claims around cables.
Silver has a resistivity of 1.59 X 10^-8 ohm.m Copper has a resistivity of 1.68 X 10^-8 ohm.m, a mere 5.6% difference. Compared to the impedance of a loudspeaker, the differences are negligible. Signal attenuation due to cable resistance is almost immeasurable by test instruments and way beyond the realms of human hearing perception. Thereās more contact resistance between the banana plug/spade and binding post than in the entire cable.
Thereās no scientific, objective, reason why copper and silver cables would sound different.
There is a multitude of reasons why, subjectively, in sighted listening tests, silver would be preferred.
There are numerous, deeply entrenched myths, popularised by years of audiophile press publication, about how silver sounds brighter, increases highs etc. If youāve read these and believe them, then in sighted listening tests, silver cables will sound different. As humans weāre subjectively fallible and wildly open to the power of suggestion.
Iāve got CCA cables, OFC cables and SPOFC cables to hand and I canāt hear differences between them.
My DAC measures ~119dB SINAD, amplifier ~113dB SINAD. Loudspeaker drivers are SoTA ScanSpeak Revelator and Illuminator with minimal distortion and very clean CSD plots in a treated room with speaker positioning +/- 3mm in 3m.
Even at age 52, my hearing is good out to 16kHz.
I still canāt hear the difference between silver and copper.
I canāt explain it Graeme.
But when the wife walks in and says WTH have you done now I kinda figured it was not just my earsā¦lol.
Tbh the solid copper speaker cable was a short lived experiment as it provided seriously bloated bass levels.
I donāt know what to say as I agree science says this should not be the case.
Itās not something Iām going to debate much as that was a phase quite some time ago and using some cloth covered GE copper stranded cables right now that I bought as loose wire and terminated myself.
By solid copper cable, are you talking about mains wiring stuff?
Mains cable is TPC (tough pitch cable) around 300-500 ppm oxygen, audio cables (OFC) are around 10ppm oxygen. Having said that, their resistivity differences are only about 0.5% - significantly less than the difference between silver and copper.
Insulation type and conductor spacing can have an effect if they radically affect capacitance, for instance. Also speaker cables should never be coiled up if theyāre too long as the effect on inductance can be quite dramatic.
Still, whilst these effects are measurable with test equipment, their perceived audibility is very questionable.
Apologies if you feel that Iām picking holes - as a scientist, my whole life revolves around objectivity, data, measurements, formulating hypotheses and challenging assumptions.
As an aside, I spent a few years in the police service back in the early '90s. One thing I learned is that human beings make notoriously unreliable witnesses. Iāll take video/photographic/forensic evidence all day, every day over eye-witness testimony 
Good Lord no Graeme.
No apologies requiredā¦ My job revolves around electrical troubleshooting so science and rigorous testing is paramount.
Industrial controlsā¦think 1000hp AC drives etc, high voltage stuff that can and will seriously hurt you if you are not on your gameā¦lol.
So sometimes it does irk me when I āthinkā I hear a difference but canāt rationally explain it.
I guess it really just means that contrary to popular belief I am human after all 
And as far as the solid copper core cable, not mains type wiring but this stuff.
A company called Anticables.
Their āspecialtyā is solid copper core cables.
Re police service, same here actually, and my missus still is.
She heard (unprompted) a difference with speaker cable upgrades = hence itās the law. period 
Somewhat unrelated but something that makes me always wondering:
First, to my understanding, a lot of todays benchmarks, measurements, tests are way beyond the capability of human hearing (f.e. ASR).
Second, all of us have individual hearing ranges or respective limitations.
I find it interesting that the individual human factor is very rarely taken into account into these discussions.
Hehe, despite my mainly science background, I have had lots of interactions with electrician/electrical technicians around process plant. Apparent mismatches in performance of air blowers due to faulty CTs in soft starters was a notable example. A client of mine nearly cooked a Ā£0.5m 650kW (870hp) assist air blower due to 'surgingāwith the duty blower from a mismatch in operating curves caused by the calculated motor load from the soft starter CTs. Only after āpolitely requestingā that their spark to go and ******* measure the current draw on each of the 3 blowers in the panels with a meter did he find discrepancies of 15 - 40% between the actual and SCADA reported values for power consumption 
My main site has 4 blowers rated at 1.1MW (1475hp) each running on 3.3kV, and numerous pumps of similar ratings. A lot of the electrical infrastructure is 33kV/11kV/3.3kV. In general, I stay away from lethal voltages and leave it to the HV specialists, though I have been āsecond manā a few times while HV breakers have been racked in and out .
āIsolatedā cable that can kill based purely on capacitive stored charged if not properly earthed is something I learned about in my early years in industry. Thirty-odd years later, I still stay away from that stuff!
The Anticabkes stuff looks interesting - they seem to show most of their cables with tight twisting. Would be interested to see how the self-inductance and capacitance compare to a ānormalā cable.
Ah, so you know exactly what I am referring to then.
We have subbies pull in and then Meg out all the HV cabling before we energise anythingā¦always entertaining to see switchgear blown right off the wallā¦
Our company makes production plastics equipment that usually run about 5 mill usd a pop for a complete unit so have to be on my toes!
But getting off topic now so I will zip it.
Different people perceive sound differently in absolute terms. Hearing sensitivity and frequency response vary enormously from individual to individual. Genetics, physiology age and environmental factors all play a huge part.
Test instruments are capable of measuring differences far smaller than our ability to audibly discern them.
