2. cables
  3. 1016944241

What is the purpose of

Hi. I am fairly new to Audiogon and if this question has been discussed before, I apologize. Reading this you will realize I know practically nothing about electronics, and even less about component design. When you look inside a piece of equipment, you usually see very thin wires used, to say nothing about the fuses commonly seen, with a wire about the width of a hair. Then, when the signal finally reaches the speakers, there is usually more very thin wire throughout the crossover. So what is the point of buying (sometimes) obscenely expensive interconnects and speaker cable? Isn't the audio signal chain only as strong as its weakest link? Or am I missing something obvious? Any answers or comments would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
xrayz
sean
6,231 posts
 
Your analogy is completely logical and TRUE. However, any steps taken to improve the system will benefit the end result. However, those benefits may not be fully manifested until everything has been "worked to death" and the system has been "tweaked whole hog".

Keep in mind that there are many proponents of "small gauge" wire and even remove larger wires to replace them with "hair fine" conductors. Like anything else, you can find people on both sides of the fence. There are even those that sit and walk on top of the fence. Sean
Post removed 
dekay's avatar
dekay
5,354 posts
 
I am one of those "thin" wire people. There are also obscenely expensive IC's and speaker cables that use such thin wire and, of course, more reasonably priced ones. Even though I prefer thinner cable in general (the largest that I use, other than for power cords, is 26 gage in a single run) it is the sound of a cable that should be the issue (not how thick it is).
More to discover