Geoffcin
01-04-2004, 09:26 AM
OK,
Cables, and cable theory gets a bum rap on this forum, and rightly so in some cases for it's unscientific approach.
We've just done some "home-brewed" science here, and I'd like to see what you think.
I use in my setup a moderately priced speaker cable, the Audioquest GR8. It is a 10 AGW thick cable using 8 LGC Copper conductors in a Helical Array. I wanted to see if a change to Nordost Blue Heaven cables would make any change. Nordost uses a proprietary flat array, and have been touted by many people as one of the best in the business. They are also priced accordingly.
One interesting thing, and one I would like Skeptic's opinion on, is an artifact that we saw when testing;
To make it easier to switch out the cables I moved my amp out of the rack, and placed it on a milk carton in front of my CRT TV. The cables were about 6" from the front of the TV, and much to my surprise they affected the picture! The GR8's seemed to be acting like an electromagnet, and you could follow the bass line with the distortion on the screen! The Nordost didn't seem to produce this effect nearly to the same degree.
The specs for capacitance, resistance and inductance for these cables are within a few hundredth of a percentage of each other, but the electromechanical effects seem to be radically different.
Now my question is; Can this electromagnetic effect affect the sound?
If it can, then shouldn't we have a more open mind regarding what can, and cant be heard regarding cables, as I know of no specs to determine what is going on here.
Cables, and cable theory gets a bum rap on this forum, and rightly so in some cases for it's unscientific approach.
We've just done some "home-brewed" science here, and I'd like to see what you think.
I use in my setup a moderately priced speaker cable, the Audioquest GR8. It is a 10 AGW thick cable using 8 LGC Copper conductors in a Helical Array. I wanted to see if a change to Nordost Blue Heaven cables would make any change. Nordost uses a proprietary flat array, and have been touted by many people as one of the best in the business. They are also priced accordingly.
One interesting thing, and one I would like Skeptic's opinion on, is an artifact that we saw when testing;
To make it easier to switch out the cables I moved my amp out of the rack, and placed it on a milk carton in front of my CRT TV. The cables were about 6" from the front of the TV, and much to my surprise they affected the picture! The GR8's seemed to be acting like an electromagnet, and you could follow the bass line with the distortion on the screen! The Nordost didn't seem to produce this effect nearly to the same degree.
The specs for capacitance, resistance and inductance for these cables are within a few hundredth of a percentage of each other, but the electromechanical effects seem to be radically different.
Now my question is; Can this electromagnetic effect affect the sound?
If it can, then shouldn't we have a more open mind regarding what can, and cant be heard regarding cables, as I know of no specs to determine what is going on here.