Second Round of Questions on Speaker Cables

To the deniers - it’s fine to have an opinion and to express it. You might enjoy more civilized discourse if you lessened the mocking narrative.

@ionna22 you seem to rely heavily on certain electrical equations but you might also consider the following:

All wires are antenna - they receive and radiate.

All wires exhibit both inductance and capacitance and these aspects change the nature of how they transmit a signal.

Wire are thought to transmit the signal on the skin of the conductor - geometry and metallurgical aspects are known to affect that transmission.

Though we’re talking about speaker wire here, the same considerations are true for power cords which also introduce braiding to the equation. Wire in your wall is solid copper (or aluminum). Code requires your power cable to be braided for flexibility. Braiding magnifies the potential for skin effects, inductance and capacitance.

I don’t want to suggest that all speaker cables sound radically different. They generally do not. But, there can be substantive differences in their sound, system dependent. It’s also true that some very simple and inexpensive solutions can produce more than acceptable results. But that does not negate the value that some of us ascribe to expensive speaker wire.

So, plenty for the denier to consider and the audiophile to obsess over.

Regards,

I should add that I agree there is a point where it becomes ludicrous. I’ve seen power cords for $100k. Seriously. There’s only so much that can be done at the cable level regardless of whether speaker, power, digital or interconnect. No system needs such an expensive solution but particularly wealthy enthusiasts often need bragging rights. 

But the fulcrum tilting toward ludicrous differs greatly for all of us. It still doesn’t negate that there can be differences, and some substantive, between cables.

I am glad to see my comments sparkled such a discussion. Hopefully some folks will now have a desire to learn more about acoustics.
I was educated and worked in the field for 40+ years. 
I was building my own amplifiers and speakers (building one right now), and performed various sonar and antenna calculations.
I would not dare to discuss a topic I do not fully understand.

@mgrif104 All said above about role playing factors, is true. I can add to the list:
- temperature factor
- wire attachment and placement (affects oscillation) 

But all those factors are quite negligible in our application. Because of two factors, mainly - amplitude and frequency range of an audio signal.
We can compare with impact of a wire resistance (it actually plays much bigger role). Does it really makes a notable difference if your wire gauge is 10 or 12? The resistance of 10 ft copper piece is 0.012 and 0.015 ohms, respectfully. Compare with a speaker nominal impedance of 4-8 ohms.
Other factors mentioned play much, much lesser role.
Think of why audio or power cables do not have any shielding (speaking of antennas).

As an experiment, connect oscilloscope and/or spectrum analyzer to you speaker terminals. (It is quite entertaining, actually). Record same audio signal using different wires. Compare. I bet you will see no difference.

Oh, by the way, what about headphone wires? the wires inside of a speaker box?

Good luck, with all due respect.

@jaybe 

Long story but during an attempt to see if the Tellurium Q Black Ultra II speaker cables were a legit vendor being sold on Amazon " the owner and designer Geoff wrote me back personally. ( Nice guy). I wrote him my experience with his product and he liked it so much he put it on the Tellurium Q Facebook page. I wrote"

"

An English friend introduced me to them and while looking at the Black II I saw the Ultra for a decent price and the size I needed ( 2.5 m). I must say I was a little bit reluctant when I read about the 50 to 100 hours of break in time.  To avoid disappointment I set my expectations low; telling myself ok you may not hear a big difference but it's coming !  I was so impressed with the sound right out of the box . I'ld never heard that speaker leads can open up a sound stage but I craned my neck turning to look down the hall looking for a new instrument being played with Peter Gabriel's song " Red Rain". 

   Thanks for that ; I'm saving my Penny's  to buy the Silver Ultra ! "

@jaybe FWIW i second @mike4597 recommendation on the Fidelium cables--i bought into the concept after talking with Jeff at Silversmith audio--he also is an engineer and spent much of his career in the Navy dealing with underwater acoustics.  The concept is complete neutrality.  However, i also agree with those who think you need to perfect your room and speaker placement first before going down this road--i took that advice from Jim Smith, the author of "Get Better Sound" in a long phone conversation.  His firm belief is that room is the biggest and most important influence on the sound.