It's Simple

Ian (ieales), thanks for providing the outstanding paper referenced in your post just above. It does indeed reinforce the notion that a given cable will tend to sound different depending on what it is connecting and the system it is being used in, as you stated at the outset of the thread. And as I illustrated with three specific examples in the first of my posts dated 2-27-2018 in this thread.

It has long been my feeling that many audiophiles overattribute intrinsic sonic characteristics to cables, power cords, and various tweaks, when their sonic effects result primarily from interaction with the associated hardware. Those effects thus tending to differ among different applications, which in turn is often a significant contributor to weak correlation between performance and price.

Thanks again. Best regards,
-- Al

Kijanki, the calculation of a 6 db difference you provided in your post yesterday was correct, but it was for the wrong thing :-)

Note that in Ian's calculation there is also a 6 db difference between the 4 ohm situation and the 8 ohm situation -- the voltage drop **in the cable** of 10 millivolts vs. 5 millivolts!

Best regards,
-- Al
 

Ian, your calculations are of course correct, and I would note for the record that Belden 1311A is AWG 12 (12 gauge) wire.

However as I'm sure you'll agree two of the expressions that were used in the calculations were not written correctly:

4Ω: 4 / (2 x 0.02) = 0.990V across the speaker
8Ω: 8 / (2 x 0.02) = 0.995V across the speaker

Should have been written as:

4Ω: 4 / (4 + (2 x 0.02)) = 0.990V across the speaker
8Ω: 8 / (8 + (2 x 0.02)) = 0.995V across the speaker

Best regards,
-- Al
 

Jim (Jea48) and Shadorne, thank you kindly!

And thanks very much to Ian as well. Your lengthy second post makes many excellent points IMO, some of which indeed point out variables whose potential influence on cable and component comparisons is commonly under-recognized.

Your reference to Rod, btw, I assume is to Rodney Herman, co-designer of the original SOTA turntable. The one I purchased in 1983 still functions as well as ever, by the way!

Another thing your post does, when juxtaposed with the responses by some others earlier in the thread, is to reinforce a perception I’ve had for some time that some here are much too quick to hurl accusations of trolling. Which can often turn what might have been a constructive and informative thread into a series of pointless exchanges of insults and ugliness. The "believers" and the "non-believers" are often equally culpable in such exchanges, IMO.

Thanks again. Best regards,
-- Al

Roberjerman, you may not have noticed that Kijanki referred to the inductive reactance of a certain cable as being 1 ohm at 20 kHz, not to its inductance being 1 ohm. As you may realize, inductive reactance is the impedance presented by an inductance at a certain frequency, and it has a magnitude that is measured in ohms.

And of course 1 ohm will certainly not be insignificant relative to the impedance of some speakers at 20 kHz, especially many electrostatics. Some Martin-Logan models have impedances of 0.4 ohms at 20 kHz, which would cause a 1 ohm cable reactance to have dramatic consequences. On the other hand, though, low cable inductance doesn’t have to cost a fortune.

ieales 2-26-2017
Another’s opinion on a particular cable may not be valid unless they have a very similar system.

There is a significant degree of truth in this statement, especially given the use of the word "may." As many audiophiles recognize, cable behavior is often system dependent to a significant degree, and in particular may depend on the characteristics of what the cable is connecting. Some examples:

1)In the case of the speaker cable Kijanki referred to, a speaker having high impedance at high frequencies, such as many dynamic speakers, will be relatively insensitive to the inductive reactance he described. While other speakers, such as many electrostatics, will be very sensitive to it. That has no particular relation, by the way, to the sound quality or musical resolution of the speakers; it just relates to their sensitivity to cable differences.

2)If an interconnect having relatively high capacitance is compared with one having relatively low capacitance, and if everything else is equal, the higher capacitance cable will produce a duller and more sluggish response in the upper treble region if used as a line-level interconnect (especially if it is driven by a component having high output impedance), due to the interaction of cable capacitance and component output impedance; while the exact opposite result will occur if those same two cables are compared in a phono cable application and driven by a moving magnet cartridge, due to the interaction of cable capacitance and cartridge inductance.

3) It is easily possible for digital cable "A" to outperform digital cable "B" in a given system when both cables are of a certain length, and for cable "B" to outperform cable "A" even in that same system if both cables are of some other length. That may result from differences in the arrival time of signal reflections which occur at the RF frequency components that are present in digital audio signals as a result of less than perfect impedance matches, and cable-related differences in ground loop-related noise that may be riding on the signal, both of which can contribute to timing jitter at the point of D/A conversion. The happenstance of the relationships between cable length, signal risetimes and falltimes, cable propagation velocity, component susceptibility to ground loop-related noise, the happenstance of how closely the impedances of both components and the cable match, and the jitter rejection capability of the DAC, all figure into that.

Regards,
-- Al