Here's my experience: I participated in a cable test in a shop a couple of years ago that included the administrator actually announcing which interconnect cable was used as they changed... a totally UN-blind test! The cables being used varied in price from around 30 bucks to 2000 bucks for a one meter pair. Literally everyone could hear that the $2000 cable was dramatically superior!! BUT, at the end it was revealed that the cables were never actually changed. The $30 cable was in place for the entire test. ;) In addition to the above, I have participated in and administered blind testing of RCA interconnects on several occasions. In these tests no one ever consistently correlated/identified RCA interconnect cable changes/sound quality regardless of the type of music/equipment used. So, I have to admit that re exotic cables I'm pretty much in the "it's snake oil" camp! ;)
i believe it, they always harp on about data etc. etc. if there is a difference it should be measureable with instruments. why have i never seen the measured differences? science doesnt lie. science doesnt operate on belief its simply measureable facts. ah yes im betting the demo show's the differences between shielded cables is all another gimmick. i wonder if he knows theres royalty free music that you can play anytime you like. th-cam.com/video/H-8bXR-nXC0/w-d-xo.html&ab_channel=KissAnalog pretty sure this vid shows the test he is doing. btw the gentlemen in the vid is an electric engineer and designs power supplies. funny thing is the scientist in the vid addresses the test he just did lol.
It appears so logical that the electric signal conducted is always precisely the same. Thank you for confirmed my thought. Expensive cables are scams, even if they are beautiful. That video is also a scam.
Yes, you are right. A lot of these cables cost a few Dollars to produce and are sold for US$1000s of Dollars with ridiculous claims. Of course you need snake oil arguments to make people pay with such insane margins. I've also gone through many professional blind tests being official qualified member and had to get my hearing tested by a professional audiologist every year. Yes, forget about power cables, short distance RCA cables, optical cables, and even speaker cables at short length, as long as they are of decent quality. Obviously cable length matters and I wouldn't use a thin cheap speaker cable if the length was 50 feet as it would cost on the damping factor and perhaps some loss of dBs. Getting the noise floor to a minimum doesn't cost expensive cables also. And this video is completely unprofessional. Come one, using some Pioneer tuner set to a given frequency of 105MHz The ENERGY of captured RF is so tiny that it wont affect any power amp with near 0 Ohms output impedance. NO, if he wanted to be credible he would use an actual setup and use an RF transmitter in the room and measure the amp output with some 1kHz (an other) sine wave if there was any effect of that RF signal causing any change. Nobody wants to do proper blind tests or proper measurements on this topic because they already know they will fail. If FM radio signal capturing was such a big issue, why do they not consider the topic in their internal speaker wiring and cross-over filters where the two wires are not in proximity and antenna effects can be much bigger?
All this test has done is prove how good or bad those cables work when used as an antenna. How they work as speaker cables with both ends terminated and voltage driving the speaker is an entirely different thing. You need blind testing under controlled conditions to see if people can actually hear a difference, and that's where things usually fall apart for cables making a difference.
This is why I don't trust GR-R. You demonstrate a speaker wire can act like an RF antenna (which I agree, it can and does), and THEN claim the induced noise affects "the sound" without connecting these wires between an amp and a speaker. Gary correctly points out THAT would the REAL test of whether the induced noise is "audible" or not.
I didn't get very far into this experiment before I had to ask, "Why don't you just test for cable effects by identical signals nulled at the ends of a sample? We engineers do this all the time when looking for very small signal differences due to inequality. The resulting difference is the contribution of the sample cable. Big difference = not so good cable. The standard used could be an agreed essentially lossless bit of conductor. Also, for the cognoscenti, we don't care a wit about what the sample can conduct; we care a lot about what it changes. Null testing is a thing.
@@Raumweiter - I would think that on average, most recording engineers are also audiophiles. That alone ought to make a difference in the results which are supposedly heard.
I want to see these cable gurus run a double blind ABX test. They can use their own cables. I'm open minded. If they can show they can identify a statistically significant difference in those conditions, then I'll believe them. Until then, I remain unconvinced
I have a great deal of skepticism as well. My mind goes back 40-60 years ago pertaining to the power of the amps, composition of the drivers, and composition of the cables. Have our ears improved along with the testing equipment? I understand annoying hmm & feedback but the cost of some of these cables according to the test equipment is negligible.
Danny, the ability of a speaker wire to pickup electromagnetic energy is of no consequence to audio because neglecting other factors, the audio information riding on the RF carrier must be detected (demodulated) to recover the audio signal. The signal strength meter only shows the RF carrier level which cannot be heard unless there is something to detect the audio signal riding on the carrier, either a diode in the case of AM or a frequency discriminator in the case of FM, neither of which is part of an amplifier or speaker. To prove this, put the cables between an amplifier and speaker in the usual fashion and listen for noise without playing anything. If you can't hear and measure anything different with the different cables, there is no audible or measurable difference between the cables. The reason that the big cable showed less signal strength is because it has some additional capacitance and possibly also inductance which acts as a filter, but this is of no consequence in the application as I just stated. Also, while noise can be radiated or conducted, the potential for noise from the power wires being conducted to the speaker wires is nil, because of the filtering within the power supplies. If it was being conducted through the power supply, it would result in clearly measurable and potentially audible results depending on the amplitude of the noise at the amplifiers output, degrading the signal to noise measurement.
Fights between individuals, as well as governments and nations, invariably result from misunderstandings in the broadest interpretation of this term. Misunderstandings are always caused by the inability of appreciating one another's point of view. This again is due to the ignorance of those concerned, not so much in their own, as in their mutual fields. The peril of a clash is aggravated by a more or less predominant sense of combativeness, posed by every human being. To resist this inherent fighting tendency the best way is to dispel ignorance of the doings of others by a systematic spread of general knowledge. With this object in view, it is most important to aid exchange of thought and intercourse.
Also any wire will pick up RF. The wires you are using are opened ended, it needs to be terminated as it would be in the circuit. Put an 8 ohm resister across the open ended wires and redo the test. Your 4th wire measure the capacitance and you may find it reject the frequencies in the 100 MHz range.
@@rf0022 Yes, any electromagnetic field will induce a voltage in a wire. And you are also right that the terminating impedance will affect the voltage across the wire, but the tuner does terminate the cable with either 300 ohm or 75 ohm impedance depending on which antenna terminals Danny used. And also the extra capacitance and also possibly inductance in the 4th big cable is why the voltage is reduced. None of this matters however because the audio modulated on the FM carrier cannot be detected as there is no such mechanism in the amplifier or speaker. This was a faulty demonstration of any influence of RF energy affecting the sound of a speaker cable. The only way to demonstrate if there are any differences between speaker cables relative to their capacity to pickup RF/EMI is to use them in the usual fashion between the amplifier and speaker playing nothing and listen for anything different between the cables.
I dont believe the RF was the intent of this experiment. The point was rather you believe speaker wires are all the same. Danny demonstrated this beautifully. The "best" speaker wire had almost no absorption of bled noises.....kind of like a filter of unwanted signal. Danny is correct to show the wires are not the same when it comes to insulation from bled noises.
I send all my cables to a to a ancient temple in Tibet. The cables stay with monks for 3 weeks The monks meditate and pray with the cables. This makes A huge difference In sound quality and it also offers me a more emotional connection with my cables Which also results to better sound It's a very spiritual experience you should try it. I also have friends that are flat earthers And since the Earth is flat they use flat cables and they elevate these cables off the floor using petrified wood blocks this creates the famous plateau effect Which they say dramatically improves sound quality.
@ReaktorLeak OMG thank you so much for the tip. I just put some of my wives clear quartz healing crystals on my cables one crystal for every foot of cable. I am truly blown away at how crystal clear the sound is it's simply amazing.
Seems to me this demo is completely irrelevant. All it shows is how good the cables are as radio antennas. The cables would behave completely different when one end is connected to an 8 ohm or less impedance at one end and the other end is connected to a very low impedance output of an amplifier. It's like determining how fast cars would do in a drag race by measuring the rpm of the tires while the cars are jacked up and the tires are spinning in the air.
Good analogy and they will behave different under a load, but the RFI and EMI issues are not at all irrelevant. There can be quite a bit of an impact on the sound.
@@rhubarb99999 If it were irrelevant then adding an element like ERS paper on the cables would have no effect. But in reality, it does. So you better rethink you're belief system.
@@dannyrichie9743 I think it's you who needs to rethink your beliefs. I posted this to the guy in the video and I will say it to you and ANY one who believes this snake oil crap! (I still say SNAKE OIL. I will challenge you to come to St Petersburg Fl. Bring your stereo and speakers. I will go to home depot and buy wire and solder connection to them to fit your equipment and we can do a blind listening. I still say you will not be able to tell the difference PERIOD!!! Oh yea no one selling that snake oil has yet to take the blind challenge, Are you game!!!)
@@universe9496 We've done blind test out the wazoo. You damn near have to be deaf not to hear the differences. But keep telling yourself the world is flat enough and you will truly believe it.
I guess you'd be shocked to find out that most recording studios where your music was recorded and mixed use pretty standard cable. It's not dirt cheap cable but it's not $30 a foot. Probably a couple of dollars a foot. And you should see the mass of wires behind some of those consoles.
I had read that most recording studios use active loudspeakers: active biamplified speakers with active crossovers. That would totally eliminate passive crossovers and speaker wire. That would probably not apply to all the music that has been recorded over the years.
this just proves that we are a bunch of monkeys which repeats that what we have heard and come to a conclusion about. Same story about people who learn something, like, they dont use expensive cables in the recording studio, and that that music was never mixed for audiophile system. Now, you think you are smart and have got 1 up on the rest with selecting your theory based on one practitioner who has come to this conclusion then run around and tell everyone how your mindset works on the matter in that the recording is not mixed for an audiophile system. And while you may be quiet right, the point it, for whatevery system you migh have at your home, hifi or high end, everything makes a difference and its not about your thinking and resort that makes out the difference and your so very strict knowledge about what is bullshit and what is not decided upon one theory of some coffee drinking theorist, who has probably never heard a high end system and comes out and spits out theories about that things does or does not matter. The same shit for the opposites, they have seen the light at the end of the tunnel and go preach about some theory which has come to their attention. We really are a bunch of monkeys. Some for the money, some for their own right to be right. If there was even one company who knew how to make good sound, if they had the fact on what made good sound they would have made it long ago. The business is to make you think that you are right, then to be confident in your beliefs, so that they then can bend you over and keep you as a disciple of their theory so that their theory manifests itself as the truth in this world.
While it's interesting to note that the different cable geometries can result in measurable differences in RF signal capture (all the antenna engineers just said "well duh!"), the test rig did its measuring here with a circuit specifically designed to receive those signals at the modulation frequencies. Just because an unterminated wire pair can capture RF out of the test environment (act as an antenna) doesn't mean that the signal will have any significance when applied in the actual circuit use case. The voltages involved between an amplifier output and the detected RF signal is likely on the order of 3 or 4 orders of magnitude (or more), and that RF signal is orders of magnitude above the ears ability to hear. There may be secondary effects on the circuitry of a poorly designed amplifier, akin to oscillations outside the audible range loading the circuit devices and affecting their performance on audible signals. Different amplifier topologies will also react differently (e.g. class D amplifiers of necessity employ filters to remove aliasing that would also wipe out any of these rogue RF signals.) In the end, it comes down to how you define whether something "matters". Just connecting random copper lengths to an RF input is barely the start of a proper test rig. If the assertion is that this specifically should be applied to speaker wire, at a minimum you need to have both ends attached to the typical terminations (amplifier output stage and speaker input - likely crossover components but ultimately a transducer voice coil). Only then are any measurements realistic and potentially of concern.
I was wondering the same thing - how an unterminated pair of wires work as an antenna is a completely different thing to being used to conduct voltages in a complete circuit to drive a speaker. These tests don't prove those cables make any difference to how the speakers will sound. The only way to know is for blind testing in controlled conditions. Floyd Toole has done plenty of research into how people rate speakers in controlled conditions, and when people can see a speaker they will give different results to when they can't. The same goes for cables.
This is actually my new fav audio cringe/hate watch channel. Idk how someone so clearly brilliant and passionate about technical audio science could spout this stuff day after day with a straight face. But ultimately I’d do the same thing to increase hate comment interactions and owned an audio store to profit off the wealthy suckers while they guzzle down all the yummy yummy snake oil straight from the snake oil source💀
Yeah the voltage in speaker wires is so high, that effect from these interferences really doesn't affect that much to the output. It is like you scoop water from a river with a teaspoon. It really doesn't affect the total flow. Case is different with 1vpp signals with active speakers. There the signal cable insulation and cable quality really matters. And this is the main reason I naturally prefer passive speakers over actives.
Yeah, but in that sort of case you know that you have to match the cables to the cosmic background radiation, otherwise you will have terrible audio quality!!!!!
@@oldaudiograndpa1055 Yes, and consider the gravitational mass effect of nearby ferrous metals in carpet tack strips and flooring/framing nails on the cable.
Whether the cables improve sound quality or not, this is a terrible "experiment" to prove anything. I'm pretty sure my speaker response rolls off long before 88 Mhz anyways. And an RF signal through an 8 ohm load produces approximately 0 watts of power anyways.
@@Lauren080508 You guys don't get it. What is noise? It's not hiss or hum that you hear, it's degradation of your noise floor. Since you aren't aware of what affects your noise floor, just keep on rocking with whatever compromised cables you have.
Unfortunately I don't think this is wholly accurate unless there is a load on it completing/closing the circuit. Opened ended wires act as an antenna based on the length and twist index and available frequencies to cause ingress.
Unfortunately I don't think this is wholly accurate unless there is a load on it completing/closing the circuit. Opened ended wires act as an antenna based on the length and twist index and available frequencies to cause ingress.
I have tried some on loan from much more well heeled friends. For my ear/brain combo all that really matters is a very basic level of quality (essentially OFC). After that my opinion is atmospheric pressure, barometric pressure fluctuation, and relative humidity have a greater potential for impact. I could see the former having a demonstrable effect but the latter two... well...
@@aman-mn5kc ????, they heard fm stations being picked up by the speaker wires and transmitted to the speakers? so without an fm tuner their low quality speaker wire was able to extract the music from the ~ 90 MHz carrier signal.....amazing
I use 9ft. 16 ga. extension cords for speaker cables. Resistance, capacitance, inductance are all measurable characteristics of electrical conductors, including speaker cables (and electrical extension cords). Get yourself some nice new 16 ga. cloth-braid extension cord, tin the exposed copper wire ends with solder, connect cord to speakers and receiver/amplifier, and enjoy!
I bought some monster cables for my media setup. When the store could not sell them for the 300 bucks they asked I got them for 80. The connections are great Im happy I am happy on my studio unit I have HD extension cord I tinned the end put on banana plugs and the're fantastic I thing all tolled 28 bucks or so
I've got 64 year old ears, so I used 2.5mm twin and earth domestic power-cable for my workshop speakers. My music sounds beautiful coming from my 1972 Goodmans Magnum K2's. No clicks, buzzes, hum, RFI or anything like that, just lovely music.
May i ask if you use two wires on the plus or the minus? I was thinking of doing the same with the garden type because they are very flexible and very cheap I could use also extension power cable also very cheap and flexible
So, RF coupling affects the noise floor, and how you can hear the decay of instruments, correct? Just plug your cables into a speaker, but don't connect any amp. Then you have the RF at the speaker input. What will you hear?
I presented this idea as a reply to another comment: A more significant test than RF pickup on unterminated wire would be very simple. Since the amplifier output impedance is very low, disconnect the speaker wire from the amplifier and short the leads together. The speaker wire that produces the least amount of audible noise through the speaker when not connected to an amplifier and the leads shorted is the best speaker wire.
It really is amusing how Danny refers to people that follow scientific principals as flat earthers while providing pseudoscience "proof" like this. Not unlike the many "flat earth proofs" out there.
Yeah, it is kind of ironic that it is the opposite of what you'd think. Those guys have a preconceived belief system and refuse anything that contradicts their beliefs.
@@dannyrichie9743Sorry to say, but I really think it's you that the irony is lost on. Belief defies scientific explanation, such as trusting on faith the biased opinion(usually based on expectation, group confirmation and in this case pseudoscience) of others. These opinions never stand up to scientific evaluation.
Danny Richie says the dude that wants to sell the idea rf that range far beyond human hearing (megahertz) really influences cables. You’re not scoring points at all, perhaps just stick to building speakers
@@MichelLinschoten Sorry if that one is hard for you to get your head around, but that stuff really does effect the sound, especially on front end gear and digital signals. And I enjoy helping other reach higher levels of performance with their systems at every aspect.
He's attempting to illustrate his point in a visual manner, as people tend to believe seeing is believing. His point being cables act as either filters or an aerial, with regards RFI transmission and affecting the noise floor. So, he's SHOWING you WHY cables can make a difference. Out of the 4 shown, which one would people probably choose? Which would *sound* THE BEST?
@@stephenfurley1025 simple answer, double blind testing accounting for the ability of the listener to properly and subjectively hear the music to determine if there are truly ANY differences that are audible. Yes, thereay be some rf interference but the question is does it affect the audio in any audible way and any properly done double blind tests and analyzing sound with a microphone that can pickup noise far outside of human hearing has demonstrated and PROVEN that no, it's not. All he's doing in the video is demonstrating that there is an effect, he isn't demonstrating if the effect is audible or meaningful in any way.
@@RoseGold823 I never said that it wasn't, but if you're trying to find out if the differences are truly audible or just psychological then you need to make sure you're doing it right. If you're doing it for your own home and your own system then that's absolutely fine to let that psychological bias take hold of your ears. I never said there was anything wrong with that, simple fact is that as I've said in many comments on this video psychology does go into how things sound to you and if it helps you feel like the sound is better then it's up to you if that "sound" is worth it. I'll never fault anyone for buying these products. The difference is, hearing is only telling you how it sounds to YOU. It doesn't answer the question about actual subjective sound quality outside of how your brain changes the signal coming from your ears or how it sounds to people who don't have a psychological response to price tag or marketing. The ultimate test would be to listen, but properly, with double blind testing. What "sounds good" to you and what actually affects the quality of the vibrations leaving a transducer are two completely different things. Both can be determined by listening and you sound pretty stupid for not realizing this.
I will argue that in basic systems, it is more difficult to hear differences between cables. However, if you have a high end, revealing system, the differences are pretty obvious. It's not voodoo. I understand not wanting to spend major money on cables; I am the same. I build my own cables for a fraction of the cost and yes, the differences are outstanding compared to the monoprice cables I used to sport. Instead of turning a deaf ear, you might want to listen to Danny. He knows what he's talking about and you can learn a lot from him.
@@LunarLightLtd1 Nope. I own a pretty high end system. I used to have Kimber 8TC speaker cables and had lots of noise from my speakers. Speaker cables were not responsible for this. It was a ground loop coming from my pc's power supply that once managed to break, my system went dead silent. Afterwards, I've changed speaker cables to lower priced Chord Carnivals and also went XLR all the way. I can't hear noise even if I stick my ear to the tweeter. So, myth busted..!!
@@nicholasstathopoulos8192 we're talking about two completely different things buddy. Ground noise and shit in the signal won't magically disappear with good cables. It's still being conducted on the line. Good cables will prevent other distortions from being radiated or conducted from rf, emi, and the like. So, myth not busted, we're discussing two different things.
All i can say is i can attest on what Danny is explaining. I used to get radio signal from my neighbors CB transmissions while playing my music. I learned later is to move the speaker wires around until i couldn't hear these CB transmissions. The same thing happened in the 70s with our TV set with a antenna on the roof.
Have you heard of ferret core filters? It's at the end of all your computer plugs and on many other electronics, it's the bulge, (cylindrical form) it's to hamper the rf signals.
I totally agree with you about the general behavior a cable can have, acting as a filter or antenna. But as a engineer of electronics, I widely disagree with the testing setup you chose to demonstrate potential effects of loudspeaker cables on your stereo: For your video, you connect the cables to the antenna input of a tuner. Off course, the tuner input stages, used to deal with those very low antenna voltages will pick up the noise as any antenna signal. And, yes, twisted or even shielded cables will result in lower input signal to get amplified by those FM input stages. But in real life, we do connect those cables into the output of an amplifier, from there going into the speaker. Both power amp-out and speaker in-are low resistance (4-16 Ohm for the speaker, and most often a fraction of this on the amp output). This will shortcut the high frequencies with such antenna-like low voltages completely if the amp is built properly with a grounded housing. My conclusion and experience: if anny noise from the air creates noise in your system fed-in from the speakercables, something is wrong with the amp - and, yes, it can happen with cheap gear or a damage in the electronics. A totally different thing, not adressed by you here, is that twisted cable designs can positively impact cable capacity and inductivity, resulting in finer details getting to the speakers more accurately. But also here, I doubt the extreme promises of the audio accessory industry and the dealers, lurking for some extra revenues. And what nobody tells us is the fact that complicated twisting makes the effective cable lengt go up by a factor, resuling in higher Ohms between amp and cable - not a good thing at all! Looking at the speaker cables at large concerts (huge speaker arrays and power amps), they mostly use non-twisted but very large diameter cables, made from good copper, connected with the professional Speakon plugs that provide extremely good connection with the amp and the speaker terminals. What makes those cables a bit more expensive than the "Wallmart telephone string" is the shere diameter and the highly ruggedized and flexible and robust outer hull. Some years ago I spoke whith a nice sales guy of a famous German cable company, seeking for some advice. In a nutshell, he told me "Yes, we also produce some of those multiply twisted loudspeaker cables just because we have the machinery for it. We sell those cores to different companies that finalize the cables, attach some golden bananas, and sell it for incredible prices to all those idiots in the market that would better spend their money to improve their room acoustics."
I think what all this boils down to is CABLE ARCHITECTURE. If you took notice Danny used a variety of cable from straight wired zip chord to increasingly complicated braided multi-stranded, multi-cored wires. What happens as you increase the complexity of the cable is a reduced noise floor, because the braids act as a faraday cage on the neutral, which is where most of the noise tends to be. In my own recent experiments making RCA, and speaker cables I have found a profound difference when the signal wires are shielded by the neutral, that is, wound as close as possible to 90 degrees around the signal wires. Results were a much reduced noise floor, cleaner, clearer, sound, more detail and nuance. For all the naysayers I suggest you actually build your own cables before you criticize Danny's findings. You don't need to spend a lot of money to get stellar results if you DIY, either. I have been utilizing Steeve Reeve's designs, in particular his RCA cabes, and his speaker cables with fantastic results. He explains the engineering behind the design in easy to understand terms. Check them out here. DIY Speaker Cables - The "HELIX IMAGE" Speaker Cable
I have recently had to plug my entire sound system to a new electrical circuit because my preferred "convenient "circuit was far too noisy .Even buying a circuit regulator did not help(though I don't know if that was my fault for buying too big a wattage device?) Do you think that Helix Image cable would resolve the problem?
@@johnh539 Not sure if it will help? Sounds to me like you have more serious issues than just the RCA cables themselves. Make sure you route all power cables away from sources, and also keep them separate from your rca cables. Make sure equipment is grounded if it need be, and also keep sources like pre amps away from power amps. Think long and hard about separating cables and making the back of your equipment with cabling and the like as tidy as you can. Hope this helps?
@@karlcotleanu486 thanks for your advice. I have never understood grounding Hif where do you ground to , can I attach it to the metal flames of my furniture?If I have separates do they all have to be earthed to different 'say Frames 'or do you form a loom and ground them as one?
Thank you so much for this video. I recently viewed it and realised I had spent far too much money on braided, unscreened power cables. Because I only heard marginal improvement over bog-standard cables, I mistakenly believed there was little point bothering with 'better' cables. After viewing your video, I purchased two very cheap (£23 each) screened power cables which transformed my Echo Studio speaker from just about OK to almost hi-fi. I have since replaced all my power cables and it's transformed the music. I also replaced my speaker cables with CAT5. What a difference that made! This has been the cheapest major upgrade to my system ever. Please keep sharing your knowledge and experience.
If you can repeat the same with a 8 ohm resistor connected to the other end of the cable, and show the same results, that would be amazing....Or you connect an open cable to a speaker and you can hear something from the speaker. Show me.
If your amp is sensitive to RF coming in on the speaker leads you have bigger problems than speaker cables. My dad had an old Fisher tube reciever that picked up the neighbors linear amped CB. I slapped a 1pf cap on the speaker outputs and that went away. I suspect that those braided wires are acting as tiny capacitors.
@@dalemcgaffey4272 Actually it did. My suspicion is that the almost 30 year old crossover had some going bad in a non-linear way. We could hear the noise on the headphone output, but only if the speakers were on. Disconnecting either conductor caused the noise on the headphones to stop. This was not common mode noise. Never saw the like of it again though and it has been more than 30 years. One of the speakers made a much larger contribution to the problem, like 20db more than the other. The speakers were a miss matched pair of AR 10" 2 ways.
@@jdrissel What you were experiencing with the Fisher receiver and the neighbor's linear amped CB was the RF being picked up by the speaker cables and getting into the receiver's RF sections and being detected and amplified. Similar to a crystal radio that doesn't even need a tuned front end but just detects the strongest AM signal and has enough power even to drive an earphone. I was into CB and ham radio back in the 60s before converting into an audiophile. The 1pf cap was enough to kill the RF signal enough to not be a problem.
@Mdmchannel auto corrupt strikes again. Sorry for any confusion. When I posted that it was 1 picofarad in its abbreviated format. I had to backspace and un-correct it when I typed it and apparently it was auto-corrupted sometime after I submitted it. This makes me wonder about the admissibility of anything posted online. I don't have to wonder about posts here. This is at least the third time a comment of mine has been auto-corrupted.
Yours too? This must be some kind of mass hallucination, I mean some guy on tube has just proven that cables are riddled with a previously undiscovered audible rf using the vu meters on an old receiver-you can’t argue with that!
I have done many tests working as a sound engineer, both live and in studio, attempting some level of blind testing. @manthropology - there is definitely a 'it sounds better because I just spent $100 on 8ft of cable' effect- which is a well known part of psycho-acoustics. Ultimately the speaker cable's practical measure is its efficiency to tranfer power over a given length and the capacitance over that length. The thinner and longer the cable, the greater the voltage drop- basically a resistor- that steals power from the speaker. And running two conductors beside each other will always result in some capacitive effect, that shunts high frequency to ground. Zip cord is of course crap because the thin wire over long length acts as a resistor (voltage drop) reducing power transfer to the speaker and can lose some HF due to capacitance. So heavy gauge cable, results in higher capacitance because with so much copper surface radiating EMF, resulting in HF loss and lower resolution in subtle trailing reverb. Braided cables provide high power transfer with many combined smaller conductors, while reducing parallel surface area by braiding together. The RF is irrelevant in a closed, relatively high (by magnitudes) voltage circuit. In large scale live sound, thick cable HF loss is secondary once system equalization comes into effect. But multiconductor braided cable (in-studio tests) definitely gives the best of both worlds, with higher power transfer and lower capacitance, which improves high-end response and reduces HF smearing caused by time domain shifts - thus clearer reverb trails. With line or level, RF is one of other significant factors, but there's a whole other level of chicanery going on in this area too (Monster cable among many). However have worked with braided quad conductor (Canaire Star Quad) cable that was well worth the premium. I have never used a 24 strand, which may be worthwhile for very high power levels, but a commercial studio (short of very high-end facility) would defer to the practicalities of diminishing returns.
The question is "Do cables matter?" I guarantee you that I have the answer. It is YES. It matters. How can I be so certain? Easy. Because I know EVERYONE commenting on this is NOT using "zip cord" for speaker wire or RCA cables from the dollar store. The difference between those $40k cables vs Amazon Basic cables is the performance of your audio rig. Just like a Toyota Corolla will not benefit much from premium race fuel and high performance tires, a McLaren will not perform at it's best with regular fuel and retreads.
I'd love to hear an explanation of how inserting 8 ft of fancy boutique speaker wire in series with hundreds of feet of 16 gauge magnet wire in the crossover and even smaller wire in the voice coil makes any difference.
@@jeffferguson2598 That is why some folks rebuild their crossover with better materials. And fyi, think it like a commute to work. Traveling on a freshly paved freeway and then a speedbump at work vs the exact opposite. And car audio enthusiast uses electronic crossovers to keep the signal clean.
I'm the first to acknowledge there are subtle differences between cables. However, this isn't the way to measure those differences, and even then, just because you can measure the difference it doesn't follow that you can hear the difference!
Yes. A listening test is always best. There may in fact be audible differences to some ears. Especially those of us without much frequency loss yet. Due to age or misuse.
@@michaelwildsmith4446 Haha, yup. I'm sure it's just a coincidence that copper cables are described as having a warm, rich sound while silver is described as cool and analytical. Nothing to do with the appearance of the metal at all. Nope. /s
I'm not going to discount the possibility that speaker wire may make a difference in sound. I worked with one technician who said his ears were so fine tuned that he not only could tell the difference in audio cables, he could tell the direction the copper was drawn when the cable was made. Myself and the rest of the shop had all they could do to not laugh out loud. Most of my life though, I was employed in the computer or Information Technology field. I did work for awhile as a professional audio technician. I've also built my own amplifiers and speakers. I can't say with absolute certainty, I have heard the differences in proper speaker wiring, but the fact is I don't have the same test conditions, or the listening room as he has. You have done yourself somewhat of a disservice in this explanation. I don't want to be mean here or suggest you don't know your business. My point is this test isn't correct. Sure, an unshielded, unterminated pair of wires can pick up Radio frequencies. Even doing twists throughout the length of that black cable can slightly attenuate picking up high frequency magnetic waves. The comparison of microvolt signals to a standard 1 watt @ 1 meter (2.83 volt) speaker sensitivity test would show you the tiny 10 to 50 microvolt signal you picked up is thousands of times weaker. This translates to well below human hearing threshold for sensitivity. No doubt though, once you connect the speaker wire to an amplifier and the other end to an 8 or 4 ohm speaker, even that radio wouldn't be picked up. Going further into your presentation, yes line noise can affect the quality of sound from an amplifier. It not only gets picked up, it gets amplified. Do I doubt your word that the best speaker wire will improve quality? No & yes. From what you say and experience in your hearing test lab, you may be right. From this tuner test I would say, I would have to say your findings are suspect.
I remember when Hi Fi choice did a blind listening test on 20 cables using a group of their readers Cables from £20 to £1000 a metre BUT with a piece of household solid core "twin and earth" thrown in as a bit of a joke When all the results were in and aggregated (no small task, I think they had 6 listeners) The twin and earth came in......third. A lot of egg on a lot of faces, and they've not run that type of test in the 20 years since. There's a big difference between the bell wire interconnects and speaker wire often supplied and thicker, screened, oxygen free stuff, there's even an audible difference (very slight warmth in multi) between solid core and multi strand. But that's as far as it goes in terms of sound quality in my experience. Put the money into better speakers, it'll make a far more profound difference
@@dannyrichie9743 Strangely never measurable, and nobody talks about the internal speaker wiring You hear what you like, I've tried most things from Audioquest, QED, Van Den Hul and Cabletalk over the years. Much arse is spoken, I defy most people to tell one decently screened 79 strand OFC multistrand from another. And there's, realistically, no reason why they should be able to.
@@dannyrichie9743 Strangely never measurable, and nobody talks about the internal speaker wiring You hear what you like, I've tried most things from Audioquest, QED, Van Den Hul and Cabletalk over the years. Much arse is spoken, I defy most people to tell one decently screened 79 strand OFC multistrand from another. And there's, realistically, no reason why they should be able to.
Yep. I used to install audio systems in cinema auditoriums. Big room, very long cable runs, big power. We field tested a whole bunch of different cable. Our conclusions? Unless you're dealing with a REALLY long run of cable (like, over 50 metres) then regular old decent quality 240 volt 2-core flex is just fine. If it's good enough to carry 240 volts at 10 amps then it's well good enough to use as speaker cable. It costs about $1.50 a metre at any hardware store. Plus, as many others have pointed out, the bottle-necks in most systems are: a) how the signal is transferred from the output transistors to the speaker terminals inside the amplifier b) how the signal is transferred from the terminals to the crossover and/or drivers inside the speaker cabinet. Most home stereo amps use either micron thickness tracks on the board or very small gauge cable to carry the signal from the output transistors. Some better quality amps may use solid copper busbars, but even in the biggest power units these aren't more than 3mm wide and are totally un-shielded. Most speakers use fairly small gauge cable to carry the signal from the terminals to the crossover network, which is itself a bottleneck as it's a circuit with tiny connectors and micron thickness copper tracks. Even if you're wiring directly to the drivers the size of the connecting lug is the determining factor. Using any cable larger than that lug is superfluous to requirements. In all these scenarios the use of fancy expensive speaker cable is utterly pointless. Yes, I've got a decent system at home. Bi-amped, big power amps, the whole bit. What am I using as speaker cable? 240 volt 2-core flex. Cost about 10 bucks. It sounds fantastic. Spend your money on better components - don't waste it on ridiculous overpriced ancillary garbage. That $250 you spent on cables could have gone toward a better cartridge for your turntable - and that would be a difference you can actually hear. Anyone who says they can hear a difference with their fancy expensive cable is justifying the reason they wasted their money, nothing more.
I hear a difference on the cables that I’ve changed.., I don’t go by measurements... I try them and listen.., I check my opinion with giving my wife a blind test..... Best results so far are with power cables..
The tuner caught my eye immediately. Looks like a pioneer tx7500. Fantastic. Got one new back in the 70s when they were worth having, because FM stations still offered quality music well recorded and transmitted. Around here, there are no good FM stations anymore, so I sold it recently, in its original box with manual.
The network world figured this out years ago, which is why there are standards for network cable. These extra twist/braiding significantly reduces noise and based on cable type Cat5e, vs Ca6, Cat6a, Cat7, allows for more bandwidth for the same distance of wire.
The problem with most network cables is they carry high-source impedance leakage currents, which causes increased clock phase noise for digital signals, and the impact of clock phase noise is audible.
@@hugobloemers4425 Actually, RF impacts all of these cables, and even more so for digital in the networking world. While it may not prove they will sound tonally different, twisted pair will reduce noise and is a proven fact. You cannot send 10Gb of even 1Gb of data for 100 meters on Cat3. While the Cat6 and higher use the same copper, it is the amount of twist they use and the termination which allows higher bandwidth and reduce rf over the 100 meters. While there are some shielded network cables, the majority are unshielded and use twist (or you can use braiding) to reduce interference. IEEE creates these standards and can be verified on IEEE.org.
@@mickyd3 This is nonsense. Cat 3 cables don't encounter crosstalk issues until 16,000,000hz. Audio stops at 20,000hz. 20,000 vs. 16,000,000. Cat 6 cables don't encounter crosstalk issues until 250,000,000hz. Cat6a cables are clean to 500,000,000hz. So each of these cables, which are differentiated by their construction, all have different bandwidths they can pass without any alteration or issue. We can measure this. We don't take a ScanSpeak 18W and exclude it from our system due to it's poor response at 15,000hz. We consider the application of the driver and understand the frequencies it will pass and we are uninterested in it's performance at 15khz because that signal will be filtered out by our crossover network or DSP. We also don't choose our drivers based just on one response, we look at THD, impedance, and spl all over frequency as well as other things. So then why should we take cables meant to transmit amplified analog signals to drivers and consider ONLY their performance 15,980,000hz outside of their passband. Or in the case of Danny's test the lowest FM radio frequencies are 88,000,000hz... so that's 87,980,000hz outside of the passband of the cables.
@@OpeKoney Actually, it's across all frequencies, especially when these are run near electrical panels which is obviously 60hz. Your information is incorrect. There are standards to keep all Cat3 and higher cables away from high current such as electrical panels. We (Datavox) install these all of the time ,so my team is very well informed on these standards
The tighter the twist, the smaller the wavelength of noise a twisted pair cable can cancel. Any fairly well twisted cable will eliminate noise of consequence to the audio band.
Danny, this vid is almost 2 yrs old, but still completely holds up. Firstly, cable management is extremely important that you don’t cross especially a speaker or interconnect over a power cable, but any cables pretty much. This particular test proves the rejection of RFI and EMI and how higher quality cables absolutely matter. I think you proved that beyond a reasonable doubt by showing your OCC high quality Copper 24 strand cable rejects all outside interference. Thanks, Danny.
This is a good example of why noise rejection is important for interconnect and line signal cables. Speaker cable inductance and capacitance are important factors, but it is not for noise rejection as shown in this demo.
That is not correct. Loudspeaker cables can pick up gigahertz RF from CPUs e.g. computers, etc. where they literally act as an antenna, and feed it *backwards* into the amplifier, only to be re-amplified as a larger magnitude of....noise.
@@stephenscharf6293 Speaker cables inductance and capacitance are of no significance to the sound because of the very low values and the associated impedances involved. While they can and do act as antennas and pickup RF energy, a well designed and built amplifier's output impedance even at RF frequencies is low enough such that the RF level should be low enough such that the RF voltage fed back to the input is not sufficient to be detected by the front end circuitry. A simple test with a .1uF capacitor placed across each speaker output can be done if one suspects such an RF problem.
Wire termination gives me another idea. Since amplifier output impedance is very low, Danny's RF pickup test should be conducted with the leads at the end of the speaker wire shorted together. I know what the result will be.
I would be all about an even deeper dive. I am working on my ascent to decent cables. I just need to learn how to get what is good, not what is expensive, because I am poor. Ha ha. I learned a bit about this noise-floor issue. I use my computer as a source. I had gotten a high quality USB ethernet, then through 25 feet of Cat 5, then through yet another USB. Not only did it work, it immediately sounded better. I could hear the lack of noise, though I hadn't noticed the noise before. It was almost like a loudness filter, because I could listen at much lower levels and still hear definition. I don't want it to be this way, but it just is, and I want BETTER. . . I'm an avid DIY man, and would like to create my own cables, if I can do it, but how to test. Your method with a tuner is an interesting one, and seems like a nice way to do some testing, though likely incomplete.
@@azharzaidi3264 I actually ran across an improvement, by strange and horribly ugly experimentation, before. I was using 16 ga "zip cord", run parallel with 12 ga 3 conductor, outdoor-type extention cord. The zip cord is longer than the extention cable, and wrapped around it, loosely. This sounds better than either bu themselves. I will not say it is great, though. Point to take - Never listen to me! LOL
The signal on a USB cable is digital data, not audio. Digital data does not become an audio signal until it passes through a DAC Digital to Analog Converter. The only way to add noise to the audio while it is still in digital form is to change the digital data that is converted to audio without changing the digital data that controls the transmission of the data between devices, which is not likely. Were you using the DAC in the computer and sending analog audio to your headphones or your amplifier, or were you connected to the DAC in your amplifier?
@@paulsebring6930 Actually the digital signal is very fragile and more effected by RFI and EMI than just about anything else in the chain. All that noise still has to be handled in the D/A conversion process. So there can be and is a huge amount of difference in USB cables.
Here's a few things experience has taught me over thr years. 1) people usually underestimate the importance of the connectors/plugs. You can have the best quality RCA cable and ruin it all with RCA plugs that introduce connection resistance, especially on the mass ring. So don't fall for fancy cable talk unless you take a look at the connection itself. 2) cable capacitance has a huge impact on a turntable's or rather cartridges' performance through cable capacitance when you run an MM cartridge. 3) exotic devices with stranger electrical input/output parameters will react to cables with different conducting parameters like inductivity or capacitance. Know your devices before you buy a connection. 4) less is more. Choose a cable that is as short as you can get away with. Also, choose a cable that can be arranged without putting additional strain on device sockets. Don't try to forcefully bend a very stiff cable into a radius it isn't designed to be arranged in. 5) don't cross signal cables close over power cables. You don't want to introduce some strange AC hum into your signal paths through induction.
The radio antennae idea is just focused on induction which is probably not what you were aiming for. And yes different wires are going to pick up a signal differently if made of different materials and different mechanical features. But what you were probably trying to prove is that a signal degrades more if it is conducted down a "cheaper' cable. Maybe another way to "show" a difference would be to send a signal from a record player to a digital audio card and use software to display what was received by the card. Maybe there would be a different wave pattern for the cheaper cable - maybe not. People might see the difference.
It would be interesting to measure the cables on a LCR tester, I would hypothesize that the higher capacitance on the braided cables (more pairs braided, more surface area on conductors in close proximity to each other) is shorting out the RF. I would bet if you whack a .001uf ceramic across the rf input it would also null out the RF signal without being something that would significantly impact frequencies within the audio band. No doubt in my mind that the cables will measure different as you are trying to explain, im just questioning if we were to simulate higher capacitance would that also have a similar effect.
Blind testing seems like a proper way and since the system has such a low noise floor it may be a good test bed. I changed my speaker cables in my system and my son immediately picked up a change but I think it may have been related to the better speaker connectors rather than the wire itself. I don’t know what it was but it did sound clearer and more open - voodoo maybe but that was my personal experience. My concern with the measurement only crowd is regarding if the right measurement(s) are used or even exist. I mean to say we observe or perceive things everyday where there are no measurements that you can point to in order to validate the observation.
Yeah, it's usually the engineer types who believe in measurements by machines and others who simply believe that they have noticed differences by changing various cables in their systems. Personally, I think that various aspects of wiring/cable do have an impact on ultimate sound quality coming out of a speaker system. It's really just a question of how much of a difference and if that difference is audible. The other problem is the virtually infinite possible combinations of cable/equipment that can have unique interactions. Synergy between equipment like amplifier and speaker is one such example that I have personally experienced in very clear ways.
Anything is an antenna. Two long speaker cables act as antennas feeding your speakers. Power cables pick up noise, which feed your system. Your speaker cables not only carry the noise from your amp to your speakers, but they also then pick up airborne noise (RFI & EMF) and transmit that noise to your speakers.
I think you 3 missed the point. Yes a plain pair of low quality copper, two cable speaker wire side by side will act as an antenna. What Danny is pointing out is that a high quality copper multi strand cable constructed in a braid acts to cancel out RMI and EFI ( translation...noise! ) The cable wont make your system sound better, a bad cable will pick up noise and make your system sound bad and not what the equipment should sound like... For the record I think insanely expensive cables are nonsense. Just use a well constructed cable made from high quality wire.
@@neilhunter6096 then why when I have nothing but a speaker cable hooked up to my speaker cannot hear this magical noise? Is after the amplifier so it's not like the amplifier is going to be amplifying this noise
Not here to argue, just learn. So we have a $250 14 or 12 gauge cables from amp to post on speaker. But how about the thin cables between the posts and the crossover? Aren’t those important or influence sound? How about the thin traces on the pcboard? Or direct point to point solder and thin wires on DIY crossovers? Or the thin wires from the speaker coil to the cone?
ive been watching many vids for the past 3 years for and against sound quality regarding cables. in the beginning i sat on the fence about it all mainly because i didnt know or have any knowledge on the matter. one day you would have Gene from Audioholics telling us that cables dont matter ,then you would have paul at Ps Audio and you telling us that all cables make a difference. Well after 3 years and a lot of swapping cables and making my own high end power cables ,i can definitely report back and agree with everything you and paul and all others tell us that they do make a difference.i couldn't hear much in the beginning until i purchased the same speaker cable as you. i also made up a power cord using cable from a supplier here back in the UK. the difference in sound between my old power cable and the new one is very easy to hear.you wouldn't even had to be into hifi to hear the difference, my wife could if i asked her to listen.so i for one now agree with you guys.thanks for the time and effort to educate us all.
As a graduate from EE, I have to say the conclusion of this experiment is highly unjustifiable. Yes cheap cables pick up interference but does it matter? That interference can be measured by instrument doesn't mean it can be heard by human ears. First, if the frequency of the interference is outside the spectrum perceivable to human ears, it doesn't matter at all. For example, if the interference frequency is 100KHz, human ears cannot hear it at all. Second even if the frequency of the interference is within the spectrum perceivable to humans, is the strength of the signal strong enough to be perceived by human ears? If the signal / interference ratio is higher than 85-100 dB, the interference can be ignored totally.
@@dannyrichie9743 I can definitely tell you I am not as ignorant as you are. Those balanced cables or shielded cables make sense only for small signals such as the input for pre-amplifiers. Although the noise strength is small, the gain of the pre-amplifier is large and after the amplifier, the noise level can be too much. Yet after speaker cable, there is no amplifier. The noise picked by speaker cables is added to the speakers directly. There is no amplification at all to the noise picked by speaker cable. The noise is just simply too weak to be applied to speakers for people to hear.
So.....you are proposing that the RF energy floating around pretty much everywhere has an effect on the analog audio signal carried by a speaker cable? Uh....I don't know if I am buying this theory. Yes this demonstration does prove that some speaker cables make good FM radio antennae's while others do not. The audio signal is a bit different from RF energy. I am not saying that cables do not matter even though I have not been able to hear any significant perceivable difference myself. I am not convinced by this parlor trick. It proves nothing about differences in sound. Proof would be if you can show a difference between input and output of an audio signal over different cables. I have yet to see anyone provide this sort of proof.
No parlor tricks here. The demonstration was real and highlighted just one of the differences in cables. This one was just easy to show. And the proof is in the pudding, as they say. There are clear audio differences.
@@dannyrichie9743 well it would be foolish of me to outright deny that there are differences in audio signal transmission between cables. However there is a clear lack of evidence and your demonstration proved nothing related to actual transmission of an audio signal. An FM carrier wave at 104 MHZ is not going to have an effect on the audio signal. They are two completely different things from a physics point of view. As I said already "proof" would be demonstrating a measurable and significant difference in output of an audio signal between two different cables. However I am hesitant to dismiss the lack of measured differences to mean you don't hear a difference because we may just not be measuring the right things. Interesting video and I meant you no disrespect by calling your demo a parlor trick. I just feel like many folks that do not have a background in electrical/RF engineering would be sufficiently confused to believe you actually proved anything other than some some speaker cables are better antennas than others.
@@JHuffPhoto You're thinking about this. I like that. The proving that cables are different in one aspect (being an antenna or filter) doesn't prove an audible difference, but it does prove them different in that regard. And that does effect the signal transfer. The real test is to perform listening tests and comparisons to know if there is an audible difference. I've done this a LOT. However, that still doesn't prove anything to the nay sayers. So proving anything to the masses is tough.
@@dannyrichie9743 I have learned that it is never wise to simply dismiss someone's experience outright. However I do have a few questions. Ok so you say that the RF rejection characteristics have an effect on the transmission of the audio signal. How would you explain this effect (in technical scientific terms) and measure it in a scientific way? An effect that is at -130db from the signal level will likely not be audible so how would you propose to measure this effect and determine the level relative to the input signal.
@@JHuffPhoto Good question. I don't have the means to measure it, but it is pretty easy to hear on a good system. And some things that we do are just really tough to measure.
This episode of GR-Research is badly contrived. The response of a 300 ohm RF input in the FM broadcast band to attached cables bears no resemblance to their use as speaker cables. I postulate that the response of the tuner's VU meter is simply a function of the VSWR on the cables. The parallel lines and twisted pairs have an RF impedance of about 100 ohms, so they are matched fairly well with the 300 ohm input, and signals will pass. The interleaved audiophile cable's RF impedance is much lower, 30 ohms or less, so the VSWR is higher, and less signal can couple into the receiver. An audio amplifier's output impedance is not 300 ohms, so we can draw no conclusions about this test. Mr. Richie keeps bragging about the low noise of his reference audio system, and he is apparently giving credit to these cables. So why doesn't Mr. Richie connect an audio analyzer to his amplifier's output, and swap this collection of speaker cables in and out, as he did here, and show us how the noise floor of his amplifier goes up and down. Surely, this is the acid test. Show us a demonstrable improvement in performance that audiophile speaker cables make in your audio system, where they are being used as speaker cables, and forget this irrelevant test where speaker cables make poor FM antennas.
Just picked up a new pair of speakers last week, the Dynaudio Emit M20, absolutely love them. When I purchased these speakers, I asked the guy if they had any speaker cables that are decent and wouldn’t break the bank. He went out the back and came back out with about 3 meters of this really thick 4 core triple shielded copper cable made in Japan, which he threw in for free! For now I’m just using the bare wire connection and using 2 out of the 4 cores in the signal path per channel. I have noticed that there is still a bit of hiss in the noise floor, but I’m chopping that down to the rest of my gear.
Listening to this video through my headphones with wires connected to my smartphone designed to use the headphone wire as the FM receiver antenna. Sounds great. Might be because I can't hear FM radio signals in the MHz range, or that the energy from the FM radio signal is near zero and won't drive the headphones, and if there was enough energy to move the drivers, they couldn't reproduce MHz. I just don't know.
You are 100% right. This is total hogwash, obviously. There are many videos, and articles by the experts in this field that totally dispute his "findings". PROOF? HA..
Speaker cables do not need shielding since the signal from your amp is so large and the impedance of your speaker is so low, that any additional RF noise and outside interference will be insignificant
I just watched the best speaker cable for a FM antenna test at a certain frequency between 87 MHz and 108 MHz. Why not run a reference audio signal from 20Hz to 20KHz and look at it on an oscilloscope? -16 dB of FM signal may produce a signal on a FM tuner (it is demodulated and amplified) but will not have an effect on a speaker cone and BTW RF signals are hitting your speakers all the time even when there are no wires connected. I have witnessed how expensive cables sounded better to the seller and owner but not to the guy that wasn't willing to shell out the cash. However I will agree there are proper cables for a particular application and should be used as such. I am in lockdown on Christmas Eve trying to entertain myself, already had enough to drink and eat.
The source of the signal is the amplifier. Not free space. The power ratio of amplifier to air is a whole lot of dBs. But also the frequency range is way off too. I do agree the inductance of the cables has an effect especially if 1 lead is longer than the other. But I would expect the effect is negligible. Your test only demonstrated that the inductance of the cheaper cable is higher than the braded cable.
I just found your channel and I'm immediately grateful and intent on immersing myself in your videos to advance my personal & professional knowledge of audio reproduction and how to achieve much better results, especially in my home studio and media room--not to mention my own bedroom, which hasn't been optimized in any way as of this writing. PLEASE, may I implore of you; however, to NOT presume that your subscribers won't be capable of (or willing to try) following you through the intricate minutiae of a technical deep dive into the pertinent aspects and scientific relevancy behind professional and "audiophile" quality sound reproduction. I know I'm not the only audio / electronics geek & total tech junkie out here with a true appreciation AND affinity for the relevant chemistry, physics and other crucial knowledge regarding the effects of acoustics and/or sound propagation on spectral & sonic characteristics of audio at the listening position. I am excited about the possibility that you might reconsider delving deeper into this topic further because, though this was a fantastic eye-opener and quality primer on the subject matter, I KNOW you've got a tremendous amount of knowledge & WISDOM to impart. I, for one, would like to pick your brain--so don't mind if I continue to leech as much from your channel as you'll willingly provide! Thanks, from Frisco, Texas! Cheers and best wishes for your continued success.
I'm curious about "low mass" connectors making such an improvement, but the full length tin plated copper leads on all the cross over components are twisted together in a mess and gobs of tin/lead solder are applied. Seems kind of contradictory.
OK. I just found this video and had a good chuckle. The question of whether or not cables matter isn't even a question, really. Of course cables matter. And even then, most of these cable "gurus" will fail a blind AB test. So, for arguments sake we will just say that cables do matter. The real question/issue here is one of ECONOMICS. What these thieves are charging for this "magical" cable is nothing short of criminal activity. There is no possible way these cables should cost what they do. "Oh, but this cable is made from triple quadruple super-duper pure copper, woven by Narnian Nymphs along the banks of the river Alph". Yeah and... LOL! Like somehow that will justify the thousands of dollars they are trying to bilk us out of. So, I am going to submit that cables do matter - to a point. But don't be fooled by these high-end cable thieves. Apply the rule of common sense and pick the cable that is appropriate for your application. If your cable run is only a few feet, the Narnian rip-off cable isn't going to make a difference! At least not enough to justify the cash outlay. This is my honest opinion - feel free to do whatever you feel is best for your system.
Thanks for the proof! I'm totally convinced. I prefer to add low voltage DC batteries to my speaker cables to magnify the flux capacitor luminessance. I'm absolutely convinced it makes a difference. My research proves it.
I like the video, but would it be better to connect the cables in the system to the speakers and turn up the volume too 10 and listen for noise Obviously without a signal source, and then compare the cables.. Regards
FM is broadcast in Megahertz (1,000,000) range, amps put out hertz to kilohertz (1,000). I fail to see how my stereo will pick up interference from a frequency it can not receive.........
It seems like the real take-away here is actually not the cables themselves at all, but rather the fact that twisting the wires (in this case weaving them) can actually have some limited beneficial effect for canceling out noise on those cables. Now, we also know that this can vary based on the number of twists per foot. The same principal of signal crosstalk cancelation is employed in computer networking cables as well. UTP cable (Unshielded Twisted Pair) Ethernet cable does a certain number of twists per foot internally for the purpose of eliminating or canceling out signal crosstalk where the single flowing down one strand in the cable has the potential to interfere with the signal flowing down another strand in the cable right next to it. So, if you want your cable to act as a filter rather than an antenna, there appears to be a benefit to having a certain number of twists per foot among the wires that make up that cable to help accomplish that.
I have never had a noise problem in any of my HiFi systems in over 40 years, so I don't know what anybody is talking about when it comes to RF interference because it's a problem I have never had.
The experiment would be cleaner if the speaker cables were terminated at a free end with some 8 Ohm resistor or even shorted (simulating connection to an amp output).
The radio is a high impedance circuit while the output transistors dampened by a 8ohm speaker is a low impedance circuit. The tiny current created over lets 0.2 ohm resistance in transistors gives a miniscule voltage. In the radio circuit the resistance would be in the thousands of ohm so using Ohm's law, voltage = current x resistance(high value here from the high resistive impedance radio circuit) would give some useful voltage affecting the VU meter in this example. There is no measurable voltage beeing able to build up since its shorted out by the low impedance of the speaker circuit..
@@IliyaOsnovikov You cant affect any circuits in the amplifier without voltage. So its a hard proof that any speaker cable can't act as an antenna. Also in class D you have output capacitors in parallell with the speaker shorting out any RF. Regarding signal cables there might be some thruth to this since input impedance is much higher.
I used this recipe and am happy with the results. I am a little dubious about how much better they are than zip cord. But it is very cheap and kind of fun and you have a sense of accomplishment once you're done diyaudioprojects.com/Power/Low-Inductance-DIY-Speaker-Cables/
What gets me is that in most speakers, the internal wiring is often standard run of the mill electrical wire, and sound is only as good as the worst component and often thats internal wiring or the crossover components and board. Maybe if you got some ultra sensitive speakers youll notice but i think for most people its not an issue at all. Sure if youve upgraded everything to top standards and wanna pay for the last 1% of performance its might be worth but otherwise not so much, in my opinion
In my recording studios, I have always used heavy duty 3 core electrical cable, and I would only use 2 cores out of the three. I have always had a good result with that. But I’m not a technician. Also I use to have that Tuner in my home set up, It was a nice piece of kit. 😁
Hi, ok I get the point, but if the special cable acts as a “RF filter” then if we attach the cheap cable to the end of the special cable during the experiment there should be no increase in signal , other wise it’s just acting has a coaxial cable and not has a filter, maybe GR can do this extra experiment.And I believe that cables make a difference just not sure this is a conclusive experiment, cheers
Well he kinda does it already. Because he mentions, that his body is functioning as an antenna picking up signal/noise while holding the cables. It doesn't negate his argument, because the tested cable is carrying any signal that is being put through it. Whether it comes from his body or a different cable.
Sorry not convinced, if you contact the chipset cable in the world to loudspeaker with out any amp connected you will not hear anything coming from your speaker , no noise no radio station, there is noise on the cable but you will not be able to hear it At all it is simple not significant when you listen to music, inter connects are different because what they pick up is amplified a lot but speaker cable , sorry no
Yes there is noise on any system but not because of speaker cables , they add noise but it has a so small that it will be no be possible to hear , it will be like hearing a man talk from 50 miles away , just do the experiment disconnect your cable from the amp and see if you can hear anything at all
@@dedyvideo You are speculating on it's audibility. I'm speaking from experience. And the point of this wasn't just to show a difference on speaker cables. These same differences take place with all the cables in the system.
@@johhnyappleseed9989 We've done the side by side comparisons. We've even used average listeners as test subjects, and the differences are easy to hear especially with tube connectors.
That tuner looks like a mid 70's Pioneer TX-7500 model. I bought one back in 1975 while stationed in Germany. It's now sitting in my crawlspace. It was a great tuner back in the day.
A lot of people were very dismissive of this video and some have good points but there’s a very valid point here as well! The one significant difference between cables is noise rejection! He’s not the usual audio cable guy talking about silly differences between fancy expensive cables! He’s even showing a clear example in a fairly short cable!
I had to give up when you got to the 'rf on the mains gets through...'. Hmmm. You say that an inductor attenuates HF. The x-former is a very large value inductor, so what is the attenuation of RF as it enters your system through a traditional (non-SM) PSU? Oh, have you considered testing a nice lab-standard Faraday cage for your listening room to eliminate pesky RF.... should be not much more than your 'reference' cables 😉
Agreed! It's a racket.Cables are good for fine tuning.The big player here is source.Ìt seems to cable manufacturers have found the Philosopher's stone, and now turn Copper into Gold!
@Chris Kay I love how people just say stuff based on.... well, nothing. Just 'cause you think that. Ever test various cables? Or read any White Papers? Or easier still, just talk to someone who designs this stuff, or at a minimum understands it? The greatest thing about ignorance is that it can be replaced with knowledge. There is, unfortunately, no known cure for stupidity....
@@shodan6401 The point is that, even if cables do make any kind of difference, that difference is so small that it is actually highly disputed by many who work in the field of sound reproduction. So his point is, even if that small difference does exist, the cost required to achieve it, is prohibitive for about 99% of audiophiles. Of course someone as stupid and pretentious as you just wouldn't understand that.
@@shodan6401 Any opinion can only be based on your own experience! As I said I think cables "do" make a difference! Especially speaker cables! Switching from 2.5mm cable to 6mm cable i.e lower gauge cable made a " night a day " difference to my speakers!
You have to look at your system in points of quality restrictions. That can be your source, amp, cables, internal parts, etc. I wouldn't recommend anyone spending $5k on a pair of speaker wires if they're using bad old gear and crappy speakers. Yet I also would not recommend lamp cord being used by someone with expensive gear. I recommend trying different gear until you find your happy place. Then enjoy your gear.
The test did show how different wire configurations change radio reception. The next test needs to demonstrate how this becomes audible. Common low frequency radio bottoms out at 30 kHz, which is above human audibility. Further, that is 30kHz of electromagnetic radiation, not sound. The human ear cant hear electromagnetics period, so what component acts like a receiver that translates the data into an audio signal? This isn't flat earth criticism. When we wanted to SEE that the earth was round, we took a picture that we can see . . . Radio waves are essentially light outside the visible spectrum, so when we are supposed to hear something, what good is a picture?
well if the frequency would be in hearing range you could hear it..... BUUUUUT. a radio singnall induse SOOOOo small signal there is no fucking way anyone would hear it on a speakers un amplified :) wtf. hes from another world.
@@joppepeelen Even if the frequency was in the "audible" range, you would not be able to hear it. Electromagnetic radiation is not audible at any frequency, it is fundamentally different than sound waves. Some devices are sensitive to radio, but there are a number of steps that must happen in order for this to result in sound. We have been shown that wires can be used as an antenna, what hasn't been shown is what device receives the radio waves, translates them to audible noise, and then amplifies them inside the signal chain of the speakers.
Howdy. Your clip addresses one major aspect in High End. The noise and how it deteriorates instrument fade outs. I am with you. I believe fade outs are important in presence and space perception. Regards.
I am a stupid audiophile. There are cable that do make an audible differece to me over a period of time (days). An the right ones can improve the audible experience of my system. As an idiot I always hope, the more money I spend the better the results are. Boy, would it be easy. Sadly this is not always the case. Some were fancy and cost more, which i hoped would improve the experience, did make it worse. Therefore against my expectation, sometimes a more expesive cable is not worth the money. But the make a difference for sure! Explain this with the placebo effect! The most idiotic thing an engineer explained to me: „Actually, I can hear a difference, when you swap the cable. But I know, I can not explain it technically, it can not exist, therefore it has to be a placebo-effect knowing you swapped something.“ Even my father 76 can hear the difference, even when he complains about the ammound of money I spent on a cable (3 figues a set of cables) Now, bite the keyboard, woodears!
There is bigger woo than that. I know a guy who lived 2000 years ago who was resurrected and who will come back to resurrect us all! Your cable woo can't beat my resurrection woo! :-)
@@FOH3663 I call BS on this....Does FM INDUCTION really have a lot to do with the NOISE floor OR, as I understand it, equipment related. The CHAIN is only as strong as the weakest link. So, if your equipment NOISE is much louder than INDUCTION noise, this video is meaningless, IMO. If you have a $50K system, small improvements like "rejection of FM noise or induced voltages may be worth going after. FM frequency is MUCH different than music! CLEAN Power is more likely the culprit. I run my amps 220V and that helps somewhat and cleaning this up is very difficult; especially if you have large AMPS.
Human hearing at absolute best is stated as being 20 - 20,000 Hz, yet you are testing a length of cable passing the 100 MHz band of an FM signal? Totally irrelevent.
The test was to show this effect as it applies to cables in general, not just speaker cables. And the FRI signal does affect everything in the signal path so it isn't a matter of whether we hear the signals in the mHz ranges but how it affects the ranges that we do hear. Totally relevant.
This test only shows how much RF noise is picked up by different cable geometries, nothing more, nothing less... This test doesn't show anything about how a cable in and of itself affects the sound quality of the music signal flowing through it, this test ONLY shows how much different types of cables can pick up additional RF noise. While this IS one relatively minor aspect to consider in finding a good cable, there are many other, even more important cable "qualities" to consider first. One question to ask here though, is if the braided cables act as filters of high frequencies, then (theoretically at least), wouldn't those same cables slightly attenuate the subtle details of the highs in the music signal passed through them, at least of the musical harmonics above 20KHz or so?... The frequency harmonics of music from 20KHz to at least 40 or maybe 50KHz or so still add some life, depth, and realism to the overall sound and tone of certain musical instruments for example, and that has been talked about for decades in the hi-fi audio industry, so you wouldn't really want a cable that filters out any of the high frequencies would you??... Any thoughts on that?
As per your first paragraph, correct! It was to show just one aspect of the cable. And the braided cables can filter out some of that RFI without effecting the audio signal and everything that we want to be maintained.
Ferrite rings were the first thing I tried too. Fortunately for me not only did I do the research unlike most I actually pulled the trigger and took the punt. My room is now quieter than with what stereo setup sounded like. But the astonishing thing is I'm now running nine channels 😊
Here's my experience:
I participated in a cable test in a shop a couple of years ago that included the administrator actually announcing which interconnect cable was used as they changed... a totally UN-blind test! The cables being used varied in price from around 30 bucks to 2000 bucks for a one meter pair. Literally everyone could hear that the $2000 cable was dramatically superior!! BUT, at the end it was revealed that the cables were never actually changed. The $30 cable was in place for the entire test. ;)
In addition to the above, I have participated in and administered blind testing of RCA interconnects on several occasions. In these tests no one ever consistently correlated/identified RCA interconnect cable changes/sound quality regardless of the type of music/equipment used.
So, I have to admit that re exotic cables I'm pretty much in the "it's snake oil" camp! ;)
i believe it, they always harp on about data etc. etc. if there is a difference it should be measureable with instruments. why have i never seen the measured differences? science doesnt lie. science doesnt operate on belief its simply measureable facts. ah yes im betting the demo show's the differences between shielded cables is all another gimmick. i wonder if he knows theres royalty free music that you can play anytime you like. th-cam.com/video/H-8bXR-nXC0/w-d-xo.html&ab_channel=KissAnalog pretty sure this vid shows the test he is doing. btw the gentlemen in the vid is an electric engineer and designs power supplies. funny thing is the scientist in the vid addresses the test he just did lol.
I agree! All wire sounds the same when used for music signals.
It appears so logical that the electric signal conducted is always precisely the same. Thank you for confirmed my thought.
Expensive cables are scams, even if they are beautiful.
That video is also a scam.
Yes, you are right. A lot of these cables cost a few Dollars to produce and are sold for US$1000s of Dollars with ridiculous claims. Of course you need snake oil arguments to make people pay with such insane margins. I've also gone through many professional blind tests being official qualified member and had to get my hearing tested by a professional audiologist every year. Yes, forget about power cables, short distance RCA cables, optical cables, and even speaker cables at short length, as long as they are of decent quality. Obviously cable length matters and I wouldn't use a thin cheap speaker cable if the length was 50 feet as it would cost on the damping factor and perhaps some loss of dBs. Getting the noise floor to a minimum doesn't cost expensive cables also.
And this video is completely unprofessional. Come one, using some Pioneer tuner set to a given frequency of 105MHz The ENERGY of captured RF is so tiny that it wont affect any power amp with near 0 Ohms output impedance. NO, if he wanted to be credible he would use an actual setup and use an RF transmitter in the room and measure the amp output with some 1kHz (an other) sine wave if there was any effect of that RF signal causing any change. Nobody wants to do proper blind tests or proper measurements on this topic because they already know they will fail. If FM radio signal capturing was such a big issue, why do they not consider the topic in their internal speaker wiring and cross-over filters where the two wires are not in proximity and antenna effects can be much bigger?
Snake oil works well on cowboy boots.
All this test has done is prove how good or bad those cables work when used as an antenna. How they work as speaker cables with both ends terminated and voltage driving the speaker is an entirely different thing. You need blind testing under controlled conditions to see if people can actually hear a difference, and that's where things usually fall apart for cables making a difference.
Ohhhh... You're one of those people. Hahaha
@@jason4547 Yes fortunately.
@@garyl5128 My people.
@@jason4547 One of those that actually wants to test it properly?
This is why I don't trust GR-R. You demonstrate a speaker wire can act like an RF antenna (which I agree, it can and does), and THEN claim the induced noise affects "the sound" without connecting these wires between an amp and a speaker. Gary correctly points out THAT would the REAL test of whether the induced noise is "audible" or not.
I didn't get very far into this experiment before I had to ask, "Why don't you just test for cable effects by identical signals nulled at the ends of a sample? We engineers do this all the time when looking for very small signal differences due to inequality. The resulting difference is the contribution of the sample cable. Big difference = not so good cable. The standard used could be an agreed essentially lossless bit of conductor.
Also, for the cognoscenti, we don't care a wit about what the sample can conduct; we care a lot about what it changes.
Null testing is a thing.
This should be up voted
yep. Audiophiles and recording engineers don´t have a lot of overlap in knowledge ;) demistify the vodoo
We'll have more on this subject as time permits.
@Dave Reite It was a great illustration of just one of the aspects of the differences of various cables.
@@Raumweiter - I would think that on average, most recording engineers are also audiophiles. That alone ought to make a difference in the results which are supposedly heard.
The other day I let an accapella ensemble sing right into the cables. It sounded awesome.
I want to see these cable gurus run a double blind ABX test. They can use their own cables. I'm open minded. If they can show they can identify a statistically significant difference in those conditions, then I'll believe them. Until then, I remain unconvinced
I have a great deal of skepticism as well. My mind goes back 40-60 years ago pertaining to the power of the amps, composition of the drivers, and composition of the cables. Have our ears improved along with the testing equipment? I understand annoying hmm & feedback but the cost of some of these cables according to the test equipment is negligible.
@@miroslavkelekovic2507 No, they did not.
ABX on a oscilloscope and you still wont find anything.
we did a blind test with several cables , one had a key as part of the conductor and no one could tell the difference
you are not open minded…. you are just egoistic idiot…
Danny, the ability of a speaker wire to pickup electromagnetic energy is of no consequence to audio because neglecting other factors, the audio information riding on the RF carrier must be detected (demodulated) to recover the audio signal. The signal strength meter only shows the RF carrier level which cannot be heard unless there is something to detect the audio signal riding on the carrier, either a diode in the case of AM or a frequency discriminator in the case of FM, neither of which is part of an amplifier or speaker. To prove this, put the cables between an amplifier and speaker in the usual fashion and listen for noise without playing anything. If you can't hear and measure anything different with the different cables, there is no audible or measurable difference between the cables. The reason that the big cable showed less signal strength is because it has some additional capacitance and possibly also inductance which acts as a filter, but this is of no consequence in the application as I just stated. Also, while noise can be radiated or conducted, the potential for noise from the power wires being conducted to the speaker wires is nil, because of the filtering within the power supplies. If it was being conducted through the power supply, it would result in clearly measurable and potentially audible results depending on the amplitude of the noise at the amplifiers output, degrading the signal to noise measurement.
Fights between individuals, as well as governments and nations, invariably result from misunderstandings in the broadest interpretation of this term. Misunderstandings are always caused by the inability of appreciating one another's point of view. This again is due to the ignorance of those concerned, not so much in their own, as in their mutual fields. The peril of a clash is aggravated by a more or less predominant sense of combativeness, posed by every human being. To resist this inherent fighting tendency the best way is to dispel ignorance of the doings of others by a systematic spread of general knowledge. With this object in view, it is most important to aid exchange of thought and intercourse.
Also any wire will pick up RF. The wires you are using are opened ended, it needs to be terminated as it would be in the circuit. Put an 8 ohm resister across the open ended wires and redo the test. Your 4th wire measure the capacitance and you may find it reject the frequencies in the 100 MHz range.
@@rf0022 Yes, any electromagnetic field will induce a voltage in a wire. And you are also right that the terminating impedance will affect the voltage across the wire, but the tuner does terminate the cable with either 300 ohm or 75 ohm impedance depending on which antenna terminals Danny used. And also the extra capacitance and also possibly inductance in the 4th big cable is why the voltage is reduced. None of this matters however because the audio modulated on the FM carrier cannot be detected as there is no such mechanism in the amplifier or speaker. This was a faulty demonstration of any influence of RF energy affecting the sound of a speaker cable. The only way to demonstrate if there are any differences between speaker cables relative to their capacity to pickup RF/EMI is to use them in the usual fashion between the amplifier and speaker playing nothing and listen for anything different between the cables.
I dont believe the RF was the intent of this experiment. The point was rather you believe speaker wires are all the same. Danny demonstrated this beautifully.
The "best" speaker wire had almost no absorption of bled noises.....kind of like a filter of unwanted signal. Danny is correct to show the wires are not the same when it comes to insulation from bled noises.
@@billjackson3257 that's pretty deep. I will never think of Radio Frequency the same
Btw.. ever see "they live" or "1984"
I send all my cables to a to a ancient temple in Tibet. The cables stay with monks for 3 weeks The monks meditate and pray with the cables. This makes A huge difference In sound quality and it also offers me a more emotional connection with my cables Which also results to better sound It's a very spiritual experience you should try it.
I also have friends that are flat earthers And since the Earth is flat they use flat cables and they elevate these cables off the floor using petrified wood blocks this creates the famous plateau effect Which they say dramatically improves sound quality.
LOL!!
HaHaHaHa
My cables are delayed, still on backorder due to corona.
@ReaktorLeak OMG thank you so much for the tip. I just put some of my wives clear quartz healing crystals on my cables one crystal for every foot of cable.
I am truly blown away at how crystal clear the sound is it's simply amazing.
Hahahahahahha hahahahahahha
Seems to me this demo is completely irrelevant. All it shows is how good the cables are as radio antennas. The cables would behave completely different when one end is connected to an 8 ohm or less impedance at one end and the other end is connected to a very low impedance output of an amplifier. It's like determining how fast cars would do in a drag race by measuring the rpm of the tires while the cars are jacked up and the tires are spinning in the air.
Good analogy and they will behave different under a load, but the RFI and EMI issues are not at all irrelevant. There can be quite a bit of an impact on the sound.
@@dannyrichie9743 Maybe if your house is next to an FM transmitter .. but irrelevant at speaker level.
@@rhubarb99999 If it were irrelevant then adding an element like ERS paper on the cables would have no effect. But in reality, it does. So you better rethink you're belief system.
@@dannyrichie9743 I think it's you who needs to rethink your beliefs. I posted this to the guy in the video and I will say it to you and ANY one who believes this snake oil crap! (I still say SNAKE OIL. I will challenge you to come to St Petersburg Fl. Bring your stereo and speakers. I will go to home depot and buy wire and solder connection to them to fit your equipment and we can do a blind listening. I still say you will not be able to tell the difference PERIOD!!! Oh yea no one selling that snake oil has yet to take the blind challenge, Are you game!!!)
@@universe9496 We've done blind test out the wazoo. You damn near have to be deaf not to hear the differences. But keep telling yourself the world is flat enough and you will truly believe it.
I guess you'd be shocked to find out that most recording studios where your music was recorded and mixed use pretty standard cable. It's not dirt cheap cable but it's not $30 a foot. Probably a couple of dollars a foot. And you should see the mass of wires behind some of those consoles.
and trought a bunch of "cheap" electrolitic capacitors, uggly silicon based op amp and noisy carbon film resistors ha ha ha xD
Belden, Canare, Mogami, mostly.
I had read that most recording studios use active loudspeakers: active biamplified speakers with active crossovers. That would totally eliminate passive crossovers and speaker wire. That would probably not apply to all the music that has been recorded over the years.
@@paulsebring6930 For pro audio we use symetrical connection. So WE have no issues with emi even at long câble length.
this just proves that we are a bunch of monkeys which repeats that what we have heard and come to a conclusion about. Same story about people who learn something, like, they dont use expensive cables in the recording studio, and that that music was never mixed for audiophile system. Now, you think you are smart and have got 1 up on the rest with selecting your theory based on one practitioner who has come to this conclusion then run around and tell everyone how your mindset works on the matter in that the recording is not mixed for an audiophile system. And while you may be quiet right, the point it, for whatevery system you migh have at your home, hifi or high end, everything makes a difference and its not about your thinking and resort that makes out the difference and your so very strict knowledge about what is bullshit and what is not decided upon one theory of some coffee drinking theorist, who has probably never heard a high end system and comes out and spits out theories about that things does or does not matter.
The same shit for the opposites, they have seen the light at the end of the tunnel and go preach about some theory which has come to their attention. We really are a bunch of monkeys. Some for the money, some for their own right to be right. If there was even one company who knew how to make good sound, if they had the fact on what made good sound they would have made it long ago. The business is to make you think that you are right, then to be confident in your beliefs, so that they then can bend you over and keep you as a disciple of their theory so that their theory manifests itself as the truth in this world.
While it's interesting to note that the different cable geometries can result in measurable differences in RF signal capture (all the antenna engineers just said "well duh!"), the test rig did its measuring here with a circuit specifically designed to receive those signals at the modulation frequencies. Just because an unterminated wire pair can capture RF out of the test environment (act as an antenna) doesn't mean that the signal will have any significance when applied in the actual circuit use case. The voltages involved between an amplifier output and the detected RF signal is likely on the order of 3 or 4 orders of magnitude (or more), and that RF signal is orders of magnitude above the ears ability to hear. There may be secondary effects on the circuitry of a poorly designed amplifier, akin to oscillations outside the audible range loading the circuit devices and affecting their performance on audible signals. Different amplifier topologies will also react differently (e.g. class D amplifiers of necessity employ filters to remove aliasing that would also wipe out any of these rogue RF signals.) In the end, it comes down to how you define whether something "matters". Just connecting random copper lengths to an RF input is barely the start of a proper test rig. If the assertion is that this specifically should be applied to speaker wire, at a minimum you need to have both ends attached to the typical terminations (amplifier output stage and speaker input - likely crossover components but ultimately a transducer voice coil). Only then are any measurements realistic and potentially of concern.
I was wondering the same thing - how an unterminated pair of wires work as an antenna is a completely different thing to being used to conduct voltages in a complete circuit to drive a speaker. These tests don't prove those cables make any difference to how the speakers will sound. The only way to know is for blind testing in controlled conditions. Floyd Toole has done plenty of research into how people rate speakers in controlled conditions, and when people can see a speaker they will give different results to when they can't. The same goes for cables.
@@garyl5128 It's why Julliard stated having blind judges during auditions.
This is actually my new fav audio cringe/hate watch channel. Idk how someone so clearly brilliant and passionate about technical audio science could spout this stuff day after day with a straight face. But ultimately I’d do the same thing to increase hate comment interactions and owned an audio store to profit off the wealthy suckers while they guzzle down all the yummy yummy snake oil straight from the snake oil source💀
Maybe you should have followed the link posted below the video: th-cam.com/video/ER_lqNFckxY/w-d-xo.html
Yeah the voltage in speaker wires is so high, that effect from these interferences really doesn't affect that much to the output. It is like you scoop water from a river with a teaspoon. It really doesn't affect the total flow. Case is different with 1vpp signals with active speakers. There the signal cable insulation and cable quality really matters. And this is the main reason I naturally prefer passive speakers over actives.
My cables sound so good i got rid of all my other hifi gear! No speakers, amps, Dacs nothing just cables!
Yeah, but in that sort of case you know that you have to match the cables to the cosmic background radiation, otherwise you will have terrible audio quality!!!!!
Also, listening to those cables on the 6th Tuesday of the month at 3:pm helps too, Hugely!!
Hahahahahaha ...
Make sure to pull your cables out and away from the walls.
@@oldaudiograndpa1055 Yes, and consider the gravitational mass effect of nearby ferrous metals in carpet tack strips and flooring/framing nails on the cable.
Whether the cables improve sound quality or not, this is a terrible "experiment" to prove anything. I'm pretty sure my speaker response rolls off long before 88 Mhz anyways. And an RF signal through an 8 ohm load produces approximately 0 watts of power anyways.
yep , i was thinking something similar, we are talking minute levels of energy which will produce negligible response in the speakers....
@@Lauren080508 You guys don't get it. What is noise? It's not hiss or hum that you hear, it's degradation of your noise floor. Since you aren't aware of what affects your noise floor, just keep on rocking with whatever compromised cables you have.
Unfortunately I don't think this is wholly accurate unless there is a load on it completing/closing the circuit. Opened ended wires act as an antenna based on the length and twist index and available frequencies to cause ingress.
Unfortunately I don't think this is wholly accurate unless there is a load on it completing/closing the circuit. Opened ended wires act as an antenna based on the length and twist index and available frequencies to cause ingress.
It's a completely relevant test. It demonstrates the effect of an increased noise floor, which can effect the perceived sound quality.
Now plug any of those cables into your speakers, with your amp disconnected/off. Do you hear anything? That's how much of a difference there is. None.
Exactly my thoughts, the noise emanating from my speakers with just the speaker wires connected is deafening!
!
I have tried some on loan from much more well heeled friends. For my ear/brain combo all that really matters is a very basic level of quality (essentially OFC).
After that my opinion is atmospheric pressure, barometric pressure fluctuation, and relative humidity have a greater potential for impact. I could see the former having a demonstrable effect but the latter two... well...
His friends did hear FM radio at home
@@aman-mn5kc ????, they heard fm stations being picked up by the speaker wires and transmitted to the speakers?
so without an fm tuner their low quality speaker wire was able to extract the music from the ~ 90 MHz carrier signal.....amazing
@@ziggy1ful
The silent treatment from my wife after I tell a bad joke, is the most deafening.
Different cables sound different if you believe they do. If you don't believe it, you won't hear it. I need say no more.
I use 9ft. 16 ga. extension cords for speaker cables. Resistance, capacitance, inductance are all measurable characteristics of electrical conductors, including speaker cables (and electrical extension cords). Get yourself some nice new 16 ga. cloth-braid extension cord, tin the exposed copper wire ends with solder, connect cord to speakers and receiver/amplifier, and enjoy!
And enjoy the noise? No thanks.
I bought some monster cables for my media setup. When the store could not sell them for the 300 bucks they asked I got them for 80. The connections are great Im happy I am happy on my studio unit I have HD extension cord I tinned the end put on banana plugs and the're fantastic I thing all tolled 28 bucks or so
Noise .... ???? @@dannyrichie9743
But an extension chord doesn't transform electrons into magical fairies.
I've got 64 year old ears, so I used 2.5mm twin and earth domestic power-cable for my workshop speakers. My music sounds beautiful coming from my 1972 Goodmans Magnum K2's. No clicks, buzzes, hum, RFI or anything like that, just lovely music.
May i ask if you use two wires on the plus or the minus? I was thinking of doing the same with the garden type because they are very flexible and very cheap I could use also extension power cable also very cheap and flexible
Nice to know I'm not the only person using vintage speakers in the workshop, I get a choice between Mission 720'a and TDL RTL3's :).
So, RF coupling affects the noise floor, and how you can hear the decay of instruments, correct? Just plug your cables into a speaker, but don't connect any amp. Then you have the RF at the speaker input. What will you hear?
The sound of positive thinking.
I don't hear anything through my tin foil hat that protects my brain from RF noise.
The sound of one hand clapping.
I presented this idea as a reply to another comment: A more significant test than RF pickup on unterminated wire would be very simple. Since the amplifier output impedance is very low, disconnect the speaker wire from the amplifier and short the leads together. The speaker wire that produces the least amount of audible noise through the speaker when not connected to an amplifier and the leads shorted is the best speaker wire.
An inductor would produce the best result, but make the worst speaker wire. The entire premise of this video is absolute garbage.
LOL!
@@mdocod in deed. This snake oil relies on the very subjective nature of human hearing , and that's why they can never pass a double blind test
Where’s the technical talk?
Where's the beef? 😁
It really is amusing how Danny refers to people that follow scientific principals as flat earthers while providing pseudoscience "proof" like this. Not unlike the many "flat earth proofs" out there.
Yeah, it is kind of ironic that it is the opposite of what you'd think. Those guys have a preconceived belief system and refuse anything that contradicts their beliefs.
@@dannyrichie9743Sorry to say, but I really think it's you that the irony is lost on. Belief defies scientific explanation, such as trusting on faith the biased opinion(usually based on expectation, group confirmation and in this case pseudoscience) of others. These opinions never stand up to scientific evaluation.
Danny Richie says the dude that wants to sell the idea rf that range far beyond human hearing (megahertz) really influences cables.
You’re not scoring points at all, perhaps just stick to building speakers
@@MichelLinschoten Sorry if that one is hard for you to get your head around, but that stuff really does effect the sound, especially on front end gear and digital signals. And I enjoy helping other reach higher levels of performance with their systems at every aspect.
@@dannyrichie9743 How does it effect the sound ? Please explain how it's even possible.
"we're not going to listen to it"... Literally the only test that actually matters for audio
The only test that only means something to you and has nothing to do with what the quality actually is.
@@lazyh-online4839 lol k. If listening to the audio isn't your ultimate test on sound quality then nothing more needs to be said.
He's attempting to illustrate his point in a visual manner, as people tend to believe seeing is believing. His point being cables act as either filters or an aerial, with regards RFI transmission and affecting the noise floor. So, he's SHOWING you WHY cables can make a difference. Out of the 4 shown, which one would people probably choose? Which would *sound* THE BEST?
@@stephenfurley1025 simple answer, double blind testing accounting for the ability of the listener to properly and subjectively hear the music to determine if there are truly ANY differences that are audible. Yes, thereay be some rf interference but the question is does it affect the audio in any audible way and any properly done double blind tests and analyzing sound with a microphone that can pickup noise far outside of human hearing has demonstrated and PROVEN that no, it's not. All he's doing in the video is demonstrating that there is an effect, he isn't demonstrating if the effect is audible or meaningful in any way.
@@RoseGold823 I never said that it wasn't, but if you're trying to find out if the differences are truly audible or just psychological then you need to make sure you're doing it right. If you're doing it for your own home and your own system then that's absolutely fine to let that psychological bias take hold of your ears. I never said there was anything wrong with that, simple fact is that as I've said in many comments on this video psychology does go into how things sound to you and if it helps you feel like the sound is better then it's up to you if that "sound" is worth it. I'll never fault anyone for buying these products.
The difference is, hearing is only telling you how it sounds to YOU. It doesn't answer the question about actual subjective sound quality outside of how your brain changes the signal coming from your ears or how it sounds to people who don't have a psychological response to price tag or marketing. The ultimate test would be to listen, but properly, with double blind testing. What "sounds good" to you and what actually affects the quality of the vibrations leaving a transducer are two completely different things. Both can be determined by listening and you sound pretty stupid for not realizing this.
Interesting. I now know expensive cables make bad antenna's.
All that money and you can't use it as an antenna?!
This is not proof, all he’s doing is showing how to use a standard wire as an antenna. Don’t mean you can hear the differences in cables
You are absolutely incorrect, but thanks for felling the need to post your opinion.
I will argue that in basic systems, it is more difficult to hear differences between cables. However, if you have a high end, revealing system, the differences are pretty obvious. It's not voodoo. I understand not wanting to spend major money on cables; I am the same. I build my own cables for a fraction of the cost and yes, the differences are outstanding compared to the monoprice cables I used to sport. Instead of turning a deaf ear, you might want to listen to Danny. He knows what he's talking about and you can learn a lot from him.
@@LunarLightLtd1 Nope. I own a pretty high end system. I used to have Kimber 8TC speaker cables and had lots of noise from my speakers. Speaker cables were not responsible for this. It was a ground loop coming from my pc's power supply that once managed to break, my system went dead silent. Afterwards, I've changed speaker cables to lower priced Chord Carnivals and also went XLR all the way. I can't hear noise even if I stick my ear to the tweeter. So, myth busted..!!
@@nicholasstathopoulos8192 we're talking about two completely different things buddy. Ground noise and shit in the signal won't magically disappear with good cables. It's still being conducted on the line. Good cables will prevent other distortions from being radiated or conducted from rf, emi, and the like. So, myth not busted, we're discussing two different things.
It demonstrates the effect of an increased noise floor, which can effect the perceived sound quality.
All i can say is i can attest on what Danny is explaining. I used to get radio signal from my neighbors CB transmissions while playing my music. I learned later is to move the speaker wires around until i couldn't hear these CB transmissions. The same thing happened in the 70s with our TV set with a antenna on the roof.
Have you heard of ferret core filters? It's at the end of all your computer plugs and on many other electronics, it's the bulge, (cylindrical form) it's to hamper the rf signals.
I think the "square" Earth globe says it all..........
A definite improvement over flat earth, yes?
I’m a flat earth believer but I still believe in speaker cables making the difference in sound.
Square Earth??? No Balls! ;-)
@@jogmas12 That actually makes loads of sense.
@@matilija I have done my due diligence on the research into both, the earth is proven flat and the right speakers cables can make a difference
I totally agree with you about the general behavior a cable can have, acting as a filter or antenna.
But as a engineer of electronics, I widely disagree with the testing setup you chose to demonstrate potential effects of loudspeaker cables on your stereo:
For your video, you connect the cables to the antenna input of a tuner. Off course, the tuner input stages, used to deal with those very low antenna voltages will pick up the noise as any antenna signal.
And, yes, twisted or even shielded cables will result in lower input signal to get amplified by those FM input stages.
But in real life, we do connect those cables into the output of an amplifier, from there going into the speaker. Both power amp-out and speaker in-are low resistance (4-16 Ohm for the speaker, and most often a fraction of this on the amp output). This will shortcut the high frequencies with such antenna-like low voltages completely if the amp is built properly with a grounded housing.
My conclusion and experience:
if anny noise from the air creates noise in your system fed-in from the speakercables, something is wrong with the amp - and, yes, it can happen with cheap gear or a damage in the electronics.
A totally different thing, not adressed by you here, is that twisted cable designs can positively impact cable capacity and inductivity, resulting in finer details getting to the speakers more accurately. But also here, I doubt the extreme promises of the audio accessory industry and the dealers, lurking for some extra revenues. And what nobody tells us is the fact that complicated twisting makes the effective cable lengt go up by a factor, resuling in higher Ohms between amp and cable - not a good thing at all!
Looking at the speaker cables at large concerts (huge speaker arrays and power amps), they mostly use non-twisted but very large diameter cables, made from good copper, connected with the professional Speakon plugs that provide extremely good connection with the amp and the speaker terminals. What makes those cables a bit more expensive than the "Wallmart telephone string" is the shere diameter and the highly ruggedized and flexible and robust outer hull.
Some years ago I spoke whith a nice sales guy of a famous German cable company, seeking for some advice. In a nutshell, he told me "Yes, we also produce some of those multiply twisted loudspeaker cables just because we have the machinery for it. We sell those cores to different companies that finalize the cables, attach some golden bananas, and sell it for incredible prices to all those idiots in the market that would better spend their money to improve their room acoustics."
Exactly.. All well said..
I think what all this boils down to is CABLE ARCHITECTURE. If you took notice Danny used a variety of cable from straight wired zip chord to increasingly complicated braided multi-stranded, multi-cored wires. What happens as you increase the complexity of the cable is a reduced noise floor, because the braids act as a faraday cage on the neutral, which is where most of the noise tends to be.
In my own recent experiments making RCA, and speaker cables I have found a profound difference when the signal wires are shielded by the neutral, that is, wound as close as possible to 90 degrees around the signal wires. Results were a much reduced noise floor, cleaner, clearer, sound, more detail and nuance.
For all the naysayers I suggest you actually build your own cables before you criticize Danny's findings. You don't need to spend a lot of money to get stellar results if you DIY, either. I have been utilizing Steeve Reeve's designs, in particular his RCA cabes, and his speaker cables with fantastic results. He explains the engineering behind the design in easy to understand terms. Check them out here. DIY Speaker Cables - The "HELIX IMAGE" Speaker Cable
I have recently had to plug my entire sound system to a new electrical circuit because my preferred "convenient "circuit was far too noisy .Even buying a circuit regulator did not help(though I don't know if that was my fault for buying too big a wattage device?)
Do you think that Helix Image cable would resolve the problem?
@@johnh539 Not sure if it will help? Sounds to me like you have more serious issues than just the RCA cables themselves. Make sure you route all power cables away from sources, and also keep them separate from your rca cables. Make sure equipment is grounded if it need be, and also keep sources like pre amps away from power amps. Think long and hard about separating cables and making the back of your equipment with cabling and the like as tidy as you can. Hope this helps?
@@karlcotleanu486 thanks for your advice. I have never understood grounding Hif where do you ground to , can I attach it to the metal flames of my furniture?If I have separates do they all have to be earthed to different 'say Frames 'or do you form a loom and ground them as one?
Thank you so much for this video. I recently viewed it and realised I had spent far too much money on braided, unscreened power cables. Because I only heard marginal improvement over bog-standard cables, I mistakenly believed there was little point bothering with 'better' cables. After viewing your video, I purchased two very cheap (£23 each) screened power cables which transformed my Echo Studio speaker from just about OK to almost hi-fi. I have since replaced all my power cables and it's transformed the music. I also replaced my speaker cables with CAT5. What a difference that made! This has been the cheapest major upgrade to my system ever. Please keep sharing your knowledge and experience.
what you probably heard was a slightly louder signal due to a lower resistance cable.
i dont buy this experiment either.
I upgraded the speaker wires this week, from the one strand very thin cables to 12 gauge, honestly, can't hear much of a difference if at all.
And not one second of music was harmed during this test…Or heard for that matter.
If you can repeat the same with a 8 ohm resistor connected to the other end of the cable, and show the same results, that would be amazing....Or you connect an open cable to a speaker and you can hear something from the speaker. Show me.
If your amp is sensitive to RF coming in on the speaker leads you have bigger problems than speaker cables. My dad had an old Fisher tube reciever that picked up the neighbors linear amped CB. I slapped a 1pf cap on the speaker outputs and that went away. I suspect that those braided wires are acting as tiny capacitors.
That is total bullshit. Not across the speaker terminals. It wouldn't do a damn thing.
@@dalemcgaffey4272 Actually it did. My suspicion is that the almost 30 year old crossover had some going bad in a non-linear way. We could hear the noise on the headphone output, but only if the speakers were on. Disconnecting either conductor caused the noise on the headphones to stop. This was not common mode noise. Never saw the like of it again though and it has been more than 30 years. One of the speakers made a much larger contribution to the problem, like 20db more than the other. The speakers were a miss matched pair of AR 10" 2 ways.
No, they are acting as antennas.
@@jdrissel What you were experiencing with the Fisher receiver and the neighbor's linear amped CB was the RF being picked up by the speaker cables and getting into the receiver's RF sections and being detected and amplified. Similar to a crystal radio that doesn't even need a tuned front end but just detects the strongest AM signal and has enough power even to drive an earphone. I was into CB and ham radio back in the 60s before converting into an audiophile. The 1pf cap was enough to kill the RF signal enough to not be a problem.
@Mdmchannel auto corrupt strikes again. Sorry for any confusion. When I posted that it was 1 picofarad in its abbreviated format. I had to backspace and un-correct it when I typed it and apparently it was auto-corrupted sometime after I submitted it. This makes me wonder about the admissibility of anything posted online. I don't have to wonder about posts here. This is at least the third time a comment of mine has been auto-corrupted.
In my house the lamp cord is dead quiet too.
Yours too? This must be some kind of mass hallucination, I mean some guy on tube has just proven that cables are riddled with a previously undiscovered audible rf using the vu meters on an old receiver-you can’t argue with that!
I have done many tests working as a sound engineer, both live and in studio, attempting some level of blind testing. @manthropology - there is definitely a 'it sounds better because I just spent $100 on 8ft of cable' effect- which is a well known part of psycho-acoustics. Ultimately the speaker cable's practical measure is its efficiency to tranfer power over a given length and the capacitance over that length. The thinner and longer the cable, the greater the voltage drop- basically a resistor- that steals power from the speaker. And running two conductors beside each other will always result in some capacitive effect, that shunts high frequency to ground. Zip cord is of course crap because the thin wire over long length acts as a resistor (voltage drop) reducing power transfer to the speaker and can lose some HF due to capacitance. So heavy gauge cable, results in higher capacitance because with so much copper surface radiating EMF, resulting in HF loss and lower resolution in subtle trailing reverb. Braided cables provide high power transfer with many combined smaller conductors, while reducing parallel surface area by braiding together. The RF is irrelevant in a closed, relatively high (by magnitudes) voltage circuit. In large scale live sound, thick cable HF loss is secondary once system equalization comes into effect. But multiconductor braided cable (in-studio tests) definitely gives the best of both worlds, with higher power transfer and lower capacitance, which improves high-end response and reduces HF smearing caused by time domain shifts - thus clearer reverb trails. With line or level, RF is one of other significant factors, but there's a whole other level of chicanery going on in this area too (Monster cable among many). However have worked with braided quad conductor (Canaire Star Quad) cable that was well worth the premium. I have never used a 24 strand, which may be worthwhile for very high power levels, but a commercial studio (short of very high-end facility) would defer to the practicalities of diminishing returns.
An audio guy is testing cables as Antenna. Pretty fair :)
The question is "Do cables matter?" I guarantee you that I have the answer. It is YES. It matters. How can I be so certain? Easy. Because I know EVERYONE commenting on this is NOT using "zip cord" for speaker wire or RCA cables from the dollar store. The difference between those $40k cables vs Amazon Basic cables is the performance of your audio rig. Just like a Toyota Corolla will not benefit much from premium race fuel and high performance tires, a McLaren will not perform at it's best with regular fuel and retreads.
I'd love to hear an explanation of how inserting 8 ft of fancy boutique speaker wire in series with hundreds of feet of 16 gauge magnet wire in the crossover and even smaller wire in the voice coil makes any difference.
@@jeffferguson2598 That is why some folks rebuild their crossover with better materials. And fyi, think it like a commute to work. Traveling on a freshly paved freeway and then a speedbump at work vs the exact opposite. And car audio enthusiast uses electronic crossovers to keep the signal clean.
I'm the first to acknowledge there are subtle differences between cables. However, this isn't the way to measure those differences, and even then, just because you can measure the difference it doesn't follow that you can hear the difference!
Especially with the limited hearing of age 50+ listeners.
Yes. A listening test is always best. There may in fact be audible differences to some ears. Especially those of us without much frequency loss yet. Due to age or misuse.
@@MR.ROBOTVOLTRON with the expensive cable always sounding best.....when you know it's the more expensive one.
@@michaelwildsmith4446 Haha, yup. I'm sure it's just a coincidence that copper cables are described as having a warm, rich sound while silver is described as cool and analytical. Nothing to do with the appearance of the metal at all. Nope. /s
I'm not going to discount the possibility that speaker wire may make a difference in sound. I worked with one technician who said his ears were so fine tuned that he not only could tell the difference in audio cables, he could tell the direction the copper was drawn when the cable was made. Myself and the rest of the shop had all they could do to not laugh out loud.
Most of my life though, I was employed in the computer or Information Technology field.
I did work for awhile as a professional audio technician. I've also built my own amplifiers and speakers. I can't say with absolute certainty, I have heard the differences in proper speaker wiring, but the fact is I don't have the same test conditions, or the listening room as he has.
You have done yourself somewhat of a disservice in this explanation. I don't want to be mean here or suggest you don't know your business.
My point is this test isn't correct. Sure, an unshielded, unterminated pair of wires can pick up Radio frequencies. Even doing twists throughout the length of that black cable can slightly attenuate picking up high frequency magnetic waves. The comparison of microvolt signals to a standard 1 watt @ 1 meter (2.83 volt) speaker sensitivity test would show you the tiny 10 to 50 microvolt signal you picked up is thousands of times weaker. This translates to well below human hearing threshold for sensitivity. No doubt though, once you connect the speaker wire to an amplifier and the other end to an 8 or 4 ohm speaker, even that radio wouldn't be picked up.
Going further into your presentation, yes line noise can affect the quality of sound from an amplifier. It not only gets picked up, it gets amplified.
Do I doubt your word that the best speaker wire will improve quality? No & yes. From what you say and experience in your hearing test lab, you may be right. From this tuner test I would say, I would have to say your findings are suspect.
I remember when Hi Fi choice did a blind listening test on 20 cables using a group of their readers
Cables from £20 to £1000 a metre BUT with a piece of household solid core "twin and earth" thrown in as a bit of a joke
When all the results were in and aggregated (no small task, I think they had 6 listeners)
The twin and earth came in......third.
A lot of egg on a lot of faces, and they've not run that type of test in the 20 years since.
There's a big difference between the bell wire interconnects and speaker wire often supplied and thicker, screened, oxygen free stuff, there's even an audible difference (very slight warmth in multi) between solid core and multi strand.
But that's as far as it goes in terms of sound quality in my experience.
Put the money into better speakers, it'll make a far more profound difference
Actually the differences go way beyond that.
@@dannyrichie9743 Strangely never measurable, and nobody talks about the internal speaker wiring
You hear what you like, I've tried most things from Audioquest, QED, Van Den Hul and Cabletalk over the years.
Much arse is spoken, I defy most people to tell one decently screened 79 strand OFC multistrand from another.
And there's, realistically, no reason why they should be able to.
@@dannyrichie9743 Strangely never measurable, and nobody talks about the internal speaker wiring
You hear what you like, I've tried most things from Audioquest, QED, Van Den Hul and Cabletalk over the years.
Much arse is spoken, I defy most people to tell one decently screened 79 strand OFC multistrand from another.
And there's, realistically, no reason why they should be able to.
@@DomRivers67 Actually there are a lot of reasons why they sound different and listening test confirm it.
Yep. I used to install audio systems in cinema auditoriums. Big room, very long cable runs, big power. We field tested a whole bunch of different cable. Our conclusions? Unless you're dealing with a REALLY long run of cable (like, over 50 metres) then regular old decent quality 240 volt 2-core flex is just fine. If it's good enough to carry 240 volts at 10 amps then it's well good enough to use as speaker cable. It costs about $1.50 a metre at any hardware store.
Plus, as many others have pointed out, the bottle-necks in most systems are:
a) how the signal is transferred from the output transistors to the speaker terminals inside the amplifier
b) how the signal is transferred from the terminals to the crossover and/or drivers inside the speaker cabinet.
Most home stereo amps use either micron thickness tracks on the board or very small gauge cable to carry the signal from the output transistors. Some better quality amps may use solid copper busbars, but even in the biggest power units these aren't more than 3mm wide and are totally un-shielded.
Most speakers use fairly small gauge cable to carry the signal from the terminals to the crossover network, which is itself a bottleneck as it's a circuit with tiny connectors and micron thickness copper tracks. Even if you're wiring directly to the drivers the size of the connecting lug is the determining factor. Using any cable larger than that lug is superfluous to requirements.
In all these scenarios the use of fancy expensive speaker cable is utterly pointless.
Yes, I've got a decent system at home. Bi-amped, big power amps, the whole bit. What am I using as speaker cable? 240 volt 2-core flex. Cost about 10 bucks. It sounds fantastic. Spend your money on better components - don't waste it on ridiculous overpriced ancillary garbage. That $250 you spent on cables could have gone toward a better cartridge for your turntable - and that would be a difference you can actually hear. Anyone who says they can hear a difference with their fancy expensive cable is justifying the reason they wasted their money, nothing more.
When cable manufacturers start giving proper measurements I will buy them. Until then I believe thick copper to be the best.
I'm sorry that your world is flat as well.
Ahh yes the one believing in magical cables without measurements is the educated one. You can't pick when you believe in science and when you don't.
@@marcusm5127 To be fair, in most cases you probably don't even need thick cables, but I doubt that's what Danny meant.. :-)
I hear a difference on the cables that I’ve changed.., I don’t go by measurements... I try them and listen.., I check my opinion with giving my wife a blind test.....
Best results so far are with power cables..
@@tigertiger1699 ahaha mate, you should do a standup comedy
The tuner caught my eye immediately. Looks like a pioneer tx7500. Fantastic. Got one new back in the 70s when they were worth having, because FM stations still offered quality music well recorded and transmitted. Around here, there are no good FM stations anymore, so I sold it recently, in its original box with manual.
rtel123 looks like my TX9500 mk2 . Got one boxed in a back room, lovely example of old Pioneer kit.
@@kjbunnyboiler TX8500 MK2
The network world figured this out years ago, which is why there are standards for network cable. These extra twist/braiding significantly reduces noise and based on cable type Cat5e, vs Ca6, Cat6a, Cat7, allows for more bandwidth for the same distance of wire.
The problem with most network cables is they carry high-source impedance leakage currents, which causes increased clock phase noise for digital signals, and the impact of clock phase noise is audible.
Audio versus RF (tuners) => apples versus oranges, audio versus network cables => apples versus peaches
@@hugobloemers4425 Actually, RF impacts all of these cables, and even more so for digital in the networking world. While it may not prove they will sound tonally different, twisted pair will reduce noise and is a proven fact. You cannot send 10Gb of even 1Gb of data for 100 meters on Cat3. While the Cat6 and higher use the same copper, it is the amount of twist they use and the termination which allows higher bandwidth and reduce rf over the 100 meters. While there are some shielded network cables, the majority are unshielded and use twist (or you can use braiding) to reduce interference. IEEE creates these standards and can be verified on IEEE.org.
@@mickyd3 This is nonsense. Cat 3 cables don't encounter crosstalk issues until 16,000,000hz. Audio stops at 20,000hz. 20,000 vs. 16,000,000. Cat 6 cables don't encounter crosstalk issues until 250,000,000hz. Cat6a cables are clean to 500,000,000hz. So each of these cables, which are differentiated by their construction, all have different bandwidths they can pass without any alteration or issue. We can measure this.
We don't take a ScanSpeak 18W and exclude it from our system due to it's poor response at 15,000hz. We consider the application of the driver and understand the frequencies it will pass and we are uninterested in it's performance at 15khz because that signal will be filtered out by our crossover network or DSP. We also don't choose our drivers based just on one response, we look at THD, impedance, and spl all over frequency as well as other things.
So then why should we take cables meant to transmit amplified analog signals to drivers and consider ONLY their performance 15,980,000hz outside of their passband. Or in the case of Danny's test the lowest FM radio frequencies are 88,000,000hz... so that's 87,980,000hz outside of the passband of the cables.
@@OpeKoney Actually, it's across all frequencies, especially when these are run near electrical panels which is obviously 60hz. Your information is incorrect. There are standards to keep all Cat3 and higher cables away from high current such as electrical panels. We (Datavox) install these all of the time ,so my team is very well informed on these standards
The tighter the twist, the smaller the wavelength of noise a twisted pair cable can cancel. Any fairly well twisted cable will eliminate noise of consequence to the audio band.
Cables matter a lot to the people selling them.
Danny, this vid is almost 2 yrs old, but still completely holds up. Firstly, cable management is extremely important that you don’t cross especially a speaker or interconnect over a power cable, but any cables pretty much. This particular test proves the rejection of RFI and EMI and how higher quality cables absolutely matter. I think you proved that beyond a reasonable doubt by showing your OCC high quality Copper 24 strand cable rejects all outside interference. Thanks, Danny.
This is a good example of why noise rejection is important for interconnect and line signal cables. Speaker cable inductance and capacitance are important factors, but it is not for noise rejection as shown in this demo.
That is not correct. Loudspeaker cables can pick up gigahertz RF from CPUs e.g. computers, etc. where they literally act as an antenna, and feed it *backwards* into the amplifier, only to be re-amplified as a larger magnitude of....noise.
@@stephenscharf6293 Speaker cables inductance and capacitance are of no significance to the sound because of the very low values and the associated impedances involved. While they can and do act as antennas and pickup RF energy, a well designed and built amplifier's output impedance even at RF frequencies is low enough such that the RF level should be low enough such that the RF voltage fed back to the input is not sufficient to be detected by the front end circuitry. A simple test with a .1uF capacitor placed across each speaker output can be done if one suspects such an RF problem.
@@MrsZambezi Tell that to John Atkinson of Stereophle who measured its impact.
Wire termination gives me another idea. Since amplifier output impedance is very low, Danny's RF pickup test should be conducted with the leads at the end of the speaker wire shorted together. I know what the result will be.
I would be all about an even deeper dive. I am working on my ascent to decent cables. I just need to learn how to get what is good, not what is expensive, because I am poor. Ha ha.
I learned a bit about this noise-floor issue. I use my computer as a source. I had gotten a high quality USB ethernet, then through 25 feet of Cat 5, then through yet another USB. Not only did it work, it immediately sounded better. I could hear the lack of noise, though I hadn't noticed the noise before. It was almost like a loudness filter, because I could listen at much lower levels and still hear definition.
I don't want it to be this way, but it just is, and I want BETTER. . . I'm an avid DIY man, and would like to create my own cables, if I can do it, but how to test. Your method with a tuner is an interesting one, and seems like a nice way to do some testing, though likely incomplete.
Benjamin Anthony, please share when you find a solution if you don't want to start cable manufacturing, i.e.
@@azharzaidi3264 I actually ran across an improvement, by strange and horribly ugly experimentation, before.
I was using 16 ga "zip cord", run parallel with 12 ga 3 conductor, outdoor-type extention cord.
The zip cord is longer than the extention cable, and wrapped around it, loosely. This sounds better than either bu themselves. I will not say it is great, though.
Point to take - Never listen to me! LOL
Just braid some cables together and hook up a descent connector
The signal on a USB cable is digital data, not audio. Digital data does not become an audio signal until it passes through a DAC Digital to Analog Converter. The only way to add noise to the audio while it is still in digital form is to change the digital data that is converted to audio without changing the digital data that controls the transmission of the data between devices, which is not likely. Were you using the DAC in the computer and sending analog audio to your headphones or your amplifier, or were you connected to the DAC in your amplifier?
@@paulsebring6930 Actually the digital signal is very fragile and more effected by RFI and EMI than just about anything else in the chain. All that noise still has to be handled in the D/A conversion process. So there can be and is a huge amount of difference in USB cables.
Here's a few things experience has taught me over thr years.
1) people usually underestimate the importance of the connectors/plugs. You can have the best quality RCA cable and ruin it all with RCA plugs that introduce connection resistance, especially on the mass ring. So don't fall for fancy cable talk unless you take a look at the connection itself.
2) cable capacitance has a huge impact on a turntable's or rather cartridges' performance through cable capacitance when you run an MM cartridge.
3) exotic devices with stranger electrical input/output parameters will react to cables with different conducting parameters like inductivity or capacitance. Know your devices before you buy a connection.
4) less is more. Choose a cable that is as short as you can get away with. Also, choose a cable that can be arranged without putting additional strain on device sockets. Don't try to forcefully bend a very stiff cable into a radius it isn't designed to be arranged in.
5) don't cross signal cables close over power cables. You don't want to introduce some strange AC hum into your signal paths through induction.
The radio antennae idea is just focused on induction which is probably not what you were aiming for. And yes different wires are going to pick up a signal differently if made of different materials and different mechanical features. But what you were probably trying to prove is that a signal degrades more if it is conducted down a "cheaper' cable. Maybe another way to "show" a difference would be to send a signal from a record player to a digital audio card and use software to display what was received by the card. Maybe there would be a different wave pattern for the cheaper cable - maybe not. People might see the difference.
It would be interesting to measure the cables on a LCR tester, I would hypothesize that the higher capacitance on the braided cables (more pairs braided, more surface area on conductors in close proximity to each other) is shorting out the RF. I would bet if you whack a .001uf ceramic across the rf input it would also null out the RF signal without being something that would significantly impact frequencies within the audio band. No doubt in my mind that the cables will measure different as you are trying to explain, im just questioning if we were to simulate higher capacitance would that also have a similar effect.
Blind testing seems like a proper way and since the system has such a low noise floor it may be a good test bed. I changed my speaker cables in my system and my son immediately picked up a change but I think it may have been related to the better speaker connectors rather than the wire itself. I don’t know what it was but it did sound clearer and more open - voodoo maybe but that was my personal experience. My concern with the measurement only crowd is regarding if the right measurement(s) are used or even exist. I mean to say we observe or perceive things everyday where there are no measurements that you can point to in order to validate the observation.
Yeah, it's usually the engineer types who believe in measurements by machines and others who simply believe that they have noticed differences by changing various cables in their systems. Personally, I think that various aspects of wiring/cable do have an impact on ultimate sound quality coming out of a speaker system. It's really just a question of how much of a difference and if that difference is audible. The other problem is the virtually infinite possible combinations of cable/equipment that can have unique interactions. Synergy between equipment like amplifier and speaker is one such example that I have personally experienced in very clear ways.
It s a loudspeakers cable !!! Not an antenna!
Anything is an antenna. Two long speaker cables act as antennas feeding your speakers. Power cables pick up noise, which feed your system. Your speaker cables not only carry the noise from your amp to your speakers, but they also then pick up airborne noise (RFI & EMF) and transmit that noise to your speakers.
@@neilhunter6096 l was an am band dx er. I m an encyclopedia on antennas.
I think you 3 missed the point. Yes a plain pair of low quality copper, two cable speaker wire side by side will act as an antenna. What Danny is pointing out is that a high quality copper multi strand cable constructed in a braid acts to cancel out RMI and EFI ( translation...noise! ) The cable wont make your system sound better, a bad cable will pick up noise and make your system sound bad and not what the equipment should sound like... For the record I think insanely expensive cables are nonsense. Just use a well constructed cable made from high quality wire.
@@neilhunter6096 then why when I have nothing but a speaker cable hooked up to my speaker cannot hear this magical noise? Is after the amplifier so it's not like the amplifier is going to be amplifying this noise
@@johnlastname2895 because it's bullshit
Not here to argue, just learn. So we have a $250 14 or 12 gauge cables from amp to post on speaker. But how about the thin cables between the posts and the crossover? Aren’t those important or influence sound? How about the thin traces on the pcboard? Or direct point to point solder and thin wires on DIY crossovers? Or the thin wires from the speaker coil to the cone?
All of those things effect performance.
ive been watching many vids for the past 3 years for and against sound quality regarding cables. in the beginning i sat on the fence about it all mainly because i didnt know or have any knowledge on the matter. one day you would have Gene from Audioholics telling us that cables dont matter ,then you would have paul at Ps Audio and you telling us that all cables make a difference. Well after 3 years and a lot of swapping cables and making my own high end power cables ,i can definitely report back and agree with everything you and paul and all others tell us that they do make a difference.i couldn't hear much in the beginning until i purchased the same speaker cable as you. i also made up a power cord using cable from a supplier here back in the UK. the difference in sound between my old power cable and the new one is very easy to hear.you wouldn't even had to be into hifi to hear the difference, my wife could if i asked her to listen.so i for one now agree with you guys.thanks for the time and effort to educate us all.
As a graduate from EE, I have to say the conclusion of this experiment is highly unjustifiable. Yes cheap cables pick up interference but does it matter? That interference can be measured by instrument doesn't mean it can be heard by human ears. First, if the frequency of the interference is outside the spectrum perceivable to human ears, it doesn't matter at all. For example, if the interference frequency is 100KHz, human ears cannot hear it at all. Second even if the frequency of the interference is within the spectrum perceivable to humans, is the strength of the signal strong enough to be perceived by human ears? If the signal / interference ratio is higher than 85-100 dB, the interference can be ignored totally.
Man, there are a lot of ignorant people posting here, and you are one of them. Why do you think they make balanced cables or shielded cables?
@@dannyrichie9743 I can definitely tell you I am not as ignorant as you are. Those balanced cables or shielded cables make sense only for small signals such as the input for pre-amplifiers. Although the noise strength is small, the gain of the pre-amplifier is large and after the amplifier, the noise level can be too much. Yet after speaker cable, there is no amplifier. The noise picked by speaker cables is added to the speakers directly. There is no amplification at all to the noise picked by speaker cable. The noise is just simply too weak to be applied to speakers for people to hear.
So.....you are proposing that the RF energy floating around pretty much everywhere has an effect on the analog audio signal carried by a speaker cable? Uh....I don't know if I am buying this theory. Yes this demonstration does prove that some speaker cables make good FM radio antennae's while others do not. The audio signal is a bit different from RF energy. I am not saying that cables do not matter even though I have not been able to hear any significant perceivable difference myself. I am not convinced by this parlor trick. It proves nothing about differences in sound. Proof would be if you can show a difference between input and output of an audio signal over different cables. I have yet to see anyone provide this sort of proof.
No parlor tricks here. The demonstration was real and highlighted just one of the differences in cables. This one was just easy to show. And the proof is in the pudding, as they say. There are clear audio differences.
@@dannyrichie9743 well it would be foolish of me to outright deny that there are differences in audio signal transmission between cables. However there is a clear lack of evidence and your demonstration proved nothing related to actual transmission of an audio signal. An FM carrier wave at 104 MHZ is not going to have an effect on the audio signal. They are two completely different things from a physics point of view. As I said already "proof" would be demonstrating a measurable and significant difference in output of an audio signal between two different cables. However I am hesitant to dismiss the lack of measured differences to mean you don't hear a difference because we may just not be measuring the right things. Interesting video and I meant you no disrespect by calling your demo a parlor trick. I just feel like many folks that do not have a background in electrical/RF engineering would be sufficiently confused to believe you actually proved anything other than some some speaker cables are better antennas than others.
@@JHuffPhoto You're thinking about this. I like that. The proving that cables are different in one aspect (being an antenna or filter) doesn't prove an audible difference, but it does prove them different in that regard. And that does effect the signal transfer. The real test is to perform listening tests and comparisons to know if there is an audible difference. I've done this a LOT. However, that still doesn't prove anything to the nay sayers. So proving anything to the masses is tough.
@@dannyrichie9743 I have learned that it is never wise to simply dismiss someone's experience outright. However I do have a few questions. Ok so you say that the RF rejection characteristics have an effect on the transmission of the audio signal. How would you explain this effect (in technical scientific terms) and measure it in a scientific way? An effect that is at -130db from the signal level will likely not be audible so how would you propose to measure this effect and determine the level relative to the input signal.
@@JHuffPhoto Good question. I don't have the means to measure it, but it is pretty easy to hear on a good system. And some things that we do are just really tough to measure.
I still want to go into the listening room.
This episode of GR-Research is badly contrived. The response of a 300 ohm RF input in the FM broadcast band to attached cables bears no resemblance to their use as speaker cables. I postulate that the response of the tuner's VU meter is simply a function of the VSWR on the cables. The parallel lines and twisted pairs have an RF impedance of about 100 ohms, so they are matched fairly well with the 300 ohm input, and signals will pass. The interleaved audiophile cable's RF impedance is much lower, 30 ohms or less, so the VSWR is higher, and less signal can couple into the receiver. An audio amplifier's output impedance is not 300 ohms, so we can draw no conclusions about this test.
Mr. Richie keeps bragging about the low noise of his reference audio system, and he is apparently giving credit to these cables. So why doesn't Mr. Richie connect an audio analyzer to his amplifier's output, and swap this collection of speaker cables in and out, as he did here, and show us how the noise floor of his amplifier goes up and down. Surely, this is the acid test. Show us a demonstrable improvement in performance that audiophile speaker cables make in your audio system, where they are being used as speaker cables, and forget this irrelevant test where speaker cables make poor FM antennas.
Just picked up a new pair of speakers last week, the Dynaudio Emit M20, absolutely love them. When I purchased these speakers, I asked the guy if they had any speaker cables that are decent and wouldn’t break the bank. He went out the back and came back out with about 3 meters of this really thick 4 core triple shielded copper cable made in Japan, which he threw in for free! For now I’m just using the bare wire connection and using 2 out of the 4 cores in the signal path per channel. I have noticed that there is still a bit of hiss in the noise floor, but I’m chopping that down to the rest of my gear.
Okay so try a few experiments and see if the noise floor drops.
Connect the unused cores, at only one end, to the amplifier negative ie black terminal. They will then act as a signal shield.
Listening to this video through my headphones with wires connected to my smartphone designed to use the headphone wire as the FM receiver antenna. Sounds great. Might be because I can't hear FM radio signals in the MHz range, or that the energy from the FM radio signal is near zero and won't drive the headphones, and if there was enough energy to move the drivers, they couldn't reproduce MHz. I just don't know.
You are 100% right. This is total hogwash, obviously. There are many videos, and articles by the experts in this field that totally dispute his "findings". PROOF? HA..
@WESTEL Audio ;) yeah, but I also microwave my headphones for 100 hours on low to make sure they're burned it
Speaker cables do not need shielding since the signal from your amp is so large and the impedance of your speaker is so low, that any additional RF noise and outside interference will be insignificant
I just watched the best speaker cable for a FM antenna test at a certain frequency between 87 MHz and 108 MHz. Why not run a reference audio signal from 20Hz to 20KHz and look at it on an oscilloscope? -16 dB of FM signal may produce a signal on a FM tuner (it is demodulated and amplified) but will not have an effect on a speaker cone and BTW RF signals are hitting your speakers all the time even when there are no wires connected.
I have witnessed how expensive cables sounded better to the seller and owner but not to the guy that wasn't willing to shell out the cash. However I will agree there are proper cables for a particular application and should be used as such. I am in lockdown on Christmas Eve trying to entertain myself, already had enough to drink and eat.
The source of the signal is the amplifier. Not free space. The power ratio of amplifier to air is a whole lot of dBs. But also the frequency range is way off too. I do agree the inductance of the cables has an effect especially if 1 lead is longer than the other. But I would expect the effect is negligible. Your test only demonstrated that the inductance of the cheaper cable is higher than the braded cable.
And that inductance is a RF filter.
I just found your channel and I'm immediately grateful and intent on immersing myself in your videos to advance my personal & professional knowledge of audio reproduction and how to achieve much better results, especially in my home studio and media room--not to mention my own bedroom, which hasn't been optimized in any way as of this writing.
PLEASE, may I implore of you; however, to NOT presume that your subscribers won't be capable of (or willing to try) following you through the intricate minutiae of a technical deep dive into the pertinent aspects and scientific relevancy behind professional and "audiophile" quality sound reproduction. I know I'm not the only audio / electronics geek & total tech junkie out here with a true appreciation AND affinity for the relevant chemistry, physics and other crucial knowledge regarding the effects of acoustics and/or sound propagation on spectral & sonic characteristics of audio at the listening position.
I am excited about the possibility that you might reconsider delving deeper into this topic further because, though this was a fantastic eye-opener and quality primer on the subject matter, I KNOW you've got a tremendous amount of knowledge & WISDOM to impart. I, for one, would like to pick your brain--so don't mind if I continue to leech as much from your channel as you'll willingly provide!
Thanks, from Frisco, Texas!
Cheers and best wishes for your continued success.
Record 2 different cables, then sum the 2 signals out of phase. This should show any differences.
In the 60's kids were used for moving antennas and for changing channels.
😂😂😂😂😂
I'm curious about "low mass" connectors making such an improvement, but the full length tin plated copper leads on all the cross over components are twisted together in a mess and gobs of tin/lead solder are applied. Seems kind of contradictory.
I use regular #12 Romex and ground to the AC outlet. Speakers sound awesome. Also, I don’t hear any buzzing from my next door neighbors leaf blowers.
OK. I just found this video and had a good chuckle. The question of whether or not cables matter isn't even a question, really. Of course cables matter. And even then, most of these cable "gurus" will fail a blind AB test. So, for arguments sake we will just say that cables do matter. The real question/issue here is one of ECONOMICS. What these thieves are charging for this "magical" cable is nothing short of criminal activity. There is no possible way these cables should cost what they do. "Oh, but this cable is made from triple quadruple super-duper pure copper, woven by Narnian Nymphs along the banks of the river Alph". Yeah and... LOL! Like somehow that will justify the thousands of dollars they are trying to bilk us out of. So, I am going to submit that cables do matter - to a point. But don't be fooled by these high-end cable thieves. Apply the rule of common sense and pick the cable that is appropriate for your application. If your cable run is only a few feet, the Narnian rip-off cable isn't going to make a difference! At least not enough to justify the cash outlay. This is my honest opinion - feel free to do whatever you feel is best for your system.
Thanks for the proof! I'm totally convinced. I prefer to add low voltage DC batteries to my speaker cables to magnify the flux capacitor luminessance. I'm absolutely convinced it makes a difference. My research proves it.
You should be kind to the stupid, is your flux capacitor the valve version or wind powered.
Damn, judging by the comments, avoiding creating a big controversy did really work out well... 🤣
There is no controversy. just derision.
I like the video, but would it be better to connect the cables in the system to the speakers and turn up the volume too 10 and listen for noise Obviously without a signal source, and then compare the cables..
Regards
FM is broadcast in Megahertz (1,000,000) range, amps put out hertz to kilohertz (1,000). I fail to see how my stereo will pick up interference from a frequency it can not receive.........
So where is the frequency response of a speaker before and after?
Isn't the FM signal neglectable small compared to the speaker signal?
I use twisted RG-8 pairs to my speakers from now on. I don’t want microvolt radio signals rectifying in my output stage.
How much good green bud do you have to smoke to be able to hear that RF coming out of that speaker wire? SMH
He's on acid, not bud
It seems like the real take-away here is actually not the cables themselves at all, but rather the fact that twisting the wires (in this case weaving them) can actually have some limited beneficial effect for canceling out noise on those cables. Now, we also know that this can vary based on the number of twists per foot. The same principal of signal crosstalk cancelation is employed in computer networking cables as well. UTP cable (Unshielded Twisted Pair) Ethernet cable does a certain number of twists per foot internally for the purpose of eliminating or canceling out signal crosstalk where the single flowing down one strand in the cable has the potential to interfere with the signal flowing down another strand in the cable right next to it. So, if you want your cable to act as a filter rather than an antenna, there appears to be a benefit to having a certain number of twists per foot among the wires that make up that cable to help accomplish that.
I have never had a noise problem in any of my HiFi systems in over 40 years, so I don't know what anybody is talking about when it comes to RF interference because it's a problem I have never had.
You don't realize how much of a problem it is until you remove it.
The experiment would be cleaner if the speaker cables were terminated at a free end with some 8 Ohm resistor or even shorted (simulating connection to an amp output).
A speaker isn't a stable load.
The radio is a high impedance circuit while the output transistors dampened by a 8ohm speaker is a low impedance circuit. The tiny current created over lets 0.2 ohm resistance in transistors gives a miniscule voltage. In the radio circuit the resistance would be in the thousands of ohm so using Ohm's law, voltage = current x resistance(high value here from the high resistive impedance radio circuit) would give some useful voltage affecting the VU meter in this example. There is no measurable voltage beeing able to build up since its shorted out by the low impedance of the speaker circuit..
@@mordante01 So? Why does it matter?
@@IliyaOsnovikov You cant affect any circuits in the amplifier without voltage. So its a hard proof that any speaker cable can't act as an antenna. Also in class D you have output capacitors in parallell with the speaker shorting out any RF. Regarding signal cables there might be some thruth to this since input impedance is much higher.
@@impuls60 Exactly, that's why good interconnects come with shielding, while speaker cables don't.
If they do make a significant difference , why don't you replace all the internal wiring in your speakers with it ?
Really good question.
You'd also need to open up your amp and redo the wires in there.
@@redstang5150 And all the circuit board connections.
He does
I would love it if you could do a video on how to make these cables.
th-cam.com/video/8jEzBfp_d1I/w-d-xo.html
@@neilhunter6096 So all I need to do is place an order for a 10,000 foot run :)
I used this recipe and am happy with the results. I am a little dubious about how much better they are than zip cord. But it is very cheap and kind of fun and you have a sense of accomplishment once you're done
diyaudioprojects.com/Power/Low-Inductance-DIY-Speaker-Cables/
There are many experts at plaiting - most of them are Mums. ('Moms' in US...)
@@biomandanman Ha ha, well, all I thought you wanted to see is one of these braiding machines at work!! They look incredible don't they?
What gets me is that in most speakers, the internal wiring is often standard run of the mill electrical wire, and sound is only as good as the worst component and often thats internal wiring or the crossover components and board. Maybe if you got some ultra sensitive speakers youll notice but i think for most people its not an issue at all. Sure if youve upgraded everything to top standards and wanna pay for the last 1% of performance its might be worth but otherwise not so much, in my opinion
that is what i always thought
Yes, exactly! A fact lost on most ppl..
In my recording studios, I have always used heavy duty 3 core electrical cable, and I would only use 2 cores out of the three. I have always had a good result with that. But I’m not a technician. Also I use to have that Tuner in my home set up, It was a nice piece of kit. 😁
Hi, ok I get the point, but if the special cable acts as a “RF filter” then if we attach the cheap cable to the end of the special cable during the experiment there should be no increase in signal , other wise it’s just acting has a coaxial cable and not has a filter, maybe GR can do this extra experiment.And I believe that cables make a difference just not sure this is a conclusive experiment, cheers
Well he kinda does it already. Because he mentions, that his body is functioning as an antenna picking up signal/noise while holding the cables. It doesn't negate his argument, because the tested cable is carrying any signal that is being put through it. Whether it comes from his body or a different cable.
reading the comments on this video makes me so happy that I've never spent money on cables! thanks guys, i really appreciate it
Sorry not convinced, if you contact the chipset cable in the world to loudspeaker with out any amp connected you will not hear anything coming from your speaker , no noise no radio station, there is noise on the cable but you will not be able to hear it
At all it is simple not significant when you listen to music, inter connects are different because what they pick up is amplified a lot but speaker cable , sorry no
In my experience and likewise for thousands of others, it is very easy to hear the effect of the noise on the system.
Yes there is noise on any system but not because of speaker cables , they add noise but it has a so small that it will be no be possible to hear , it will be like hearing a man talk from 50 miles away , just do the experiment disconnect your cable from the amp and see if you can hear anything at all
@@dedyvideo You are speculating on it's audibility. I'm speaking from experience.
And the point of this wasn't just to show a difference on speaker cables. These same differences take place with all the cables in the system.
@@johhnyappleseed9989 We've done the side by side comparisons. We've even used average listeners as test subjects, and the differences are easy to hear especially with tube connectors.
@@johhnyappleseed9989 how do you know?
That tuner looks like a mid 70's Pioneer TX-7500 model. I bought one back in 1975 while stationed in Germany. It's now sitting in my crawlspace. It was a great tuner back in the day.
A lot of people were very dismissive of this video and some have good points but there’s a very valid point here as well! The one significant difference between cables is noise rejection! He’s not the usual audio cable guy talking about silly differences between fancy expensive cables! He’s even showing a clear example in a fairly short cable!
I had to give up when you got to the 'rf on the mains gets through...'. Hmmm. You say that an inductor attenuates HF. The x-former is a very large value inductor, so what is the attenuation of RF as it enters your system through a traditional (non-SM) PSU?
Oh, have you considered testing a nice lab-standard Faraday cage for your listening room to eliminate pesky RF.... should be not much more than your 'reference' cables 😉
Or putting a tinfoil hat on 😂😂
Cables do make a difference! But I think there's a cut off point! If you are spending thousands on cables you're being ripped off. Just my opinion! ;)
Agreed! It's a racket.Cables are good for fine tuning.The big player here is source.Ìt seems to cable manufacturers have found the Philosopher's stone, and now turn Copper into Gold!
@Chris Kay I love how people just say stuff based on.... well, nothing. Just 'cause you think that. Ever test various cables? Or read any White Papers? Or easier still, just talk to someone who designs this stuff, or at a minimum understands it? The greatest thing about ignorance is that it can be replaced with knowledge. There is, unfortunately, no known cure for stupidity....
@@shodan6401 The point is that, even if cables do make any kind of difference, that difference is so small that it is actually highly disputed by many who work in the field of sound reproduction. So his point is, even if that small difference does exist, the cost required to achieve it, is prohibitive for about 99% of audiophiles. Of course someone as stupid and pretentious as you just wouldn't understand that.
@@shodan6401 Any opinion can only be based on your own experience! As I said I think cables "do" make a difference! Especially speaker cables! Switching from 2.5mm cable to 6mm cable i.e lower gauge cable made a " night a day " difference to my speakers!
You have to look at your system in points of quality restrictions. That can be your source, amp, cables, internal parts, etc. I wouldn't recommend anyone spending $5k on a pair of speaker wires if they're using bad old gear and crappy speakers. Yet I also would not recommend lamp cord being used by someone with expensive gear. I recommend trying different gear until you find your happy place. Then enjoy your gear.
The test did show how different wire configurations change radio reception. The next test needs to demonstrate how this becomes audible. Common low frequency radio bottoms out at 30 kHz, which is above human audibility. Further, that is 30kHz of electromagnetic radiation, not sound. The human ear cant hear electromagnetics period, so what component acts like a receiver that translates the data into an audio signal?
This isn't flat earth criticism. When we wanted to SEE that the earth was round, we took a picture that we can see . . . Radio waves are essentially light outside the visible spectrum, so when we are supposed to hear something, what good is a picture?
well if the frequency would be in hearing range you could hear it..... BUUUUUT. a radio singnall induse SOOOOo small signal there is no fucking way anyone would hear it on a speakers un amplified :) wtf. hes from another world.
@@joppepeelen Even if the frequency was in the "audible" range, you would not be able to hear it. Electromagnetic radiation is not audible at any frequency, it is fundamentally different than sound waves.
Some devices are sensitive to radio, but there are a number of steps that must happen in order for this to result in sound. We have been shown that wires can be used as an antenna, what hasn't been shown is what device receives the radio waves, translates them to audible noise, and then amplifies them inside the signal chain of the speakers.
Howdy.
Your clip addresses one major aspect in High End. The noise and how it deteriorates instrument fade outs. I am with you. I believe fade outs are important in presence and space perception.
Regards.
I am a stupid audiophile. There are cable that do make an audible differece to me over a period of time (days). An the right ones can improve the audible experience of my system.
As an idiot I always hope, the more money I spend the better the results are. Boy, would it be easy. Sadly this is not always the case. Some were fancy and cost more, which i hoped would improve the experience, did make it worse. Therefore against my expectation, sometimes a more expesive cable is not worth the money. But the make a difference for sure! Explain this with the placebo effect!
The most idiotic thing an engineer explained to me: „Actually, I can hear a difference, when you swap the cable. But I know, I can not explain it technically, it can not exist, therefore it has to be a placebo-effect knowing you swapped something.“ Even my father 76 can hear the difference, even when he complains about the ammound of money I spent on a cable (3 figues a set of cables)
Now, bite the keyboard, woodears!
There is bigger woo than that. I know a guy who lived 2000 years ago who was resurrected and who will come back to resurrect us all! Your cable woo can't beat my resurrection woo! :-)
You win!
When Danny says "hey let's twist one up," he doesn't mean what you think he means.
Indeed, ... that last one in particular was quite the Hog Leg, ... just sayin'
@@FOH3663 I call BS on this....Does FM INDUCTION really have a lot to do with the NOISE floor OR, as I understand it, equipment related. The CHAIN is only as strong as the weakest link. So, if your equipment NOISE is much louder than INDUCTION noise, this video is meaningless, IMO. If you have a $50K system, small improvements like "rejection of FM noise or induced voltages may be worth going after. FM frequency is MUCH different than music!
CLEAN Power is more likely the culprit. I run my amps 220V and that helps somewhat and cleaning this up is very difficult; especially if you have large AMPS.
Human hearing at absolute best is stated as being 20 - 20,000 Hz, yet you are testing a length of cable passing the 100
MHz band of an FM signal? Totally irrelevent.
The test was to show this effect as it applies to cables in general, not just speaker cables. And the FRI signal does affect everything in the signal path so it isn't a matter of whether we hear the signals in the mHz ranges but how it affects the ranges that we do hear. Totally relevant.
This test only shows how much RF noise is picked up by different cable geometries, nothing more, nothing less... This test doesn't show anything about how a cable in and of itself affects the sound quality of the music signal flowing through it, this test ONLY shows how much different types of cables can pick up additional RF noise. While this IS one relatively minor aspect to consider in finding a good cable, there are many other, even more important cable "qualities" to consider first.
One question to ask here though, is if the braided cables act as filters of high frequencies, then (theoretically at least), wouldn't those same cables slightly attenuate the subtle details of the highs in the music signal passed through them, at least of the musical harmonics above 20KHz or so?... The frequency harmonics of music from 20KHz to at least 40 or maybe 50KHz or so still add some life, depth, and realism to the overall sound and tone of certain musical instruments for example, and that has been talked about for decades in the hi-fi audio industry, so you wouldn't really want a cable that filters out any of the high frequencies would you??... Any thoughts on that?
As per your first paragraph, correct! It was to show just one aspect of the cable. And the braided cables can filter out some of that RFI without effecting the audio signal and everything that we want to be maintained.
Measuring microvolts at 100MHz is no indication of what is going on with your audio speakers.
It illustrates how well some speaker cables pick up noise and how some filter it out. All of which is audible.
@@dannyrichie9743 Okay, but you got pretty good ears for 100MHz!
@@JohnSmith-qi6co It is what it does to the signal that is audible.
You can use cheap cables with ferrite rings to achieve what most of these high end cables claim to do in the RF region.
Not at all.
Ferrite rings were the first thing I tried too. Fortunately for me not only did I do the research unlike most I actually pulled the trigger and took the punt. My room is now quieter than with what stereo setup sounded like. But the astonishing thing is I'm now running nine channels 😊