[Tech1] Hi fi Cables

[Robert Miles]

Would it be possible to post your ‘A piece of wet string’ article here Chris W? I for one would be interested in reading it.

 

Rob

 

From: Tech1 <tech1-bounces at tech-ops.co.uk> On Behalf Of Chris Woolf via Tech1
Sent: 01 August 2021 13:27
To: tech1 at tech-ops.co.uk
Subject: Re: [Tech1] Hi fi Cables

 

I did an article on cables many years ago for a certain audio magazine, which was titled "A piece of wet string".

It went into the theory behind cabling, and how the engineering generally made sure that the piece of wire had a negligible effect on performance. Speaker cables was the only area where it was possible to come close to problems. With moderate resistance cable the damping factor for passive speakers could be compromised. Fat, short cabling or active speakers solves that easily and inexpensively.

For fun, at the end of the article I gave the results for testing, quite literally, a piece of wet string. Reproduced below:

A metre of wet string “pair” soaked in a mildly salty brine and configured as a balanced line is …. a bit lossy.  From a typical 75ohm source and measured with a 10kohm load the signal was about –30dB but otherwise it was fine. Good quality and flat to beyond 30kHz. Tricky to keep the conductors apart and might be a bit unreliable on a hot day, so I doubt it’ll catch on.

There is absolutely no argument for "unicorn mane" magic material cables. Conventional twisted pair, perhaps starquad, and fat copper speaker cables are just fine. Mains cabling has absolutely no effect on audio gear. If you start finding that any of these statements aren't true then you need to look at the engineering of the equipment, not the cables.

Chris Woolf

 

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