"Robert Morein" wrote in message


It is very easy to make a speaker cable which will degrade signal.

This is true, but the question in audio is never whether there is *any*
degradation, but whether the degradation is audible. Audio measurement
technology has progressed to the point where they are incredibly sensitive -
10 to 100 to perhaps even 1,000 times more sensitive than the human ear. I
have a simple audio laboratory and I can measure all kinds of bizarre
things, such as the microphonics of interconnects. So what?

Science tells us that for a listening test to be a reliable indicator of
audibility, it must have a minimum of three variables under control:

(1) The listening test must be adequately level-matched
(2) The listening test must be time-synchronized
(3) The listening test much be bias-controlled.

Morein tells us again and again that:

(1) Morien is a reliable critic of scientific methodology,

(2) Morein has a strong background in engineering, and

(3) Morien has a sophisticated personal scientific laboratory.

So, there is no logical, theoretical or practical reason why Morein's
listening tests would not meet at minimum the three simple requirements
stated above. If he doesn't do things right, its because he's got a lazy
ass, pure and simple.

Excessive spacing of the conductor pair is a mistake that has been
made in expensive cables, but never in cheap ones.

AFAIK, that's true. The benefit of putting the conductors close together is
that it increases mutual inductance between the conductors, which ironically
decreases series inductance that can lead to high frequency losses in the
audio band. These losses are *always* measurable, but whether or not they
are audible depends on the application.

As for the rest of it, I conducted the following personal experiment.
I hooked up an old KLH Research 9 speaker via 35 feet of 16 gauge
zipcord, and compared it to a 12 foot run of a fairly inexpensive
speaker cable. The 35 foot run of zipcord sounded noticeably muddier
than the 12 cable.

So what experimental controls did Morien apply to this listening test? None
are stated. Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that none were applied.
How does this square with Morein's claims of technical competence and
ability?

This suggests to me that some differences arising from speaker cables
may be within a factor of 10 of audibility.

Any engineer will tell you that a factor of 8 or 10 is a reasonable safety
factor. Therefore, this would be a moot issue if there were *any* reliable
support for Morein's claims at all.

I suspect that if zipcord
can degrade the signal that much, there may be more to this than
total nonsense.

However, since the suspicions are based on unreliable listening tests, they
are merely vain speculation.

There are definitely some speakers that make special demands on speaker. For
example some planar and ribbon speakers have really bizarre impedance curves
at 10 KHz and above, significantly a range where its not unusual for a
speaker cable to have appreciable series inductance. On balance, most more
conventional speakers like my NHT 2.5i pair are themselves inductive loads
at 10 KHz and above. This tends to balance out the speaker cable's
inductance in this range.

I reacted by tripling the 23' runs in my main speaker setup with
parallel zipcord.

Note that Morein's main speaker setup seems to involve a pair of legacy
Acoustat speakers, a line of planar speakers that are well-known for their
bizarre and wildly atypical impedance curves.

I have not investigated whether exotically
constructed speaker cables can sound better.

One well-known and readily-available kind of cable that minimizes series
inductance is coaxial cable. Belden has some coax that is designed for use
with medium-wave radio transmitters that has 10 or 11 gauge center
conductors, very heavy pure copper braid shielding, and a good combination
of low capacitance and inductance. I think it runs around $1 a foot from
Belden distributors. I've posted the Belden part number here a number of
times in the past.

But I think some might
be within that factor of 10 that may become audible under some
circumstances, with some speakers.

Morein arguably has all of the resources to make a credible claim of speaker
cable reliability. For some reason he has failed to get his act together to
do this for years and years.

However, if he develops these claims with the wildly-atypical Acoustat
speakers that he uses, they will still be largely irrelevant to the rest of
us who have more typical kinds of speakers.