In http://www.audioquest.com/new_cable_theory/ there are many things I consider snake-oil.
A small example, in page 5, it says:
WTF??? :eek:
Also:
Any truth to these claims?
Strictly speaking, this is true.
All cables deliver electrical energy along their length, hence ‘directional’
This may be an intentional use of language that the reader interprets to mean as ‘uni-directional’, which is quite a differant thing, or perhaps directionally biased.
The idea is somehow to create an impression that a piece or length of an undoped conducter has some sense of bias, a differance in conductivity in one direction compared to the other.
At present this is just not true, if you have a multiple speakers, it is possible to connect them such that they are out of phase with each other(one speaker pushing the other pulling) which can cause a degree of cancellation at certain frequencies dependant upon the distance between the speakers.
The first thing to consider is the actual signal to be delivered, because if cables were to have some kind of bias in one direction over the other, this would have to be reflected in the entire sound reproduction process, from recording right through to replay, and clearly this is not the case.
Analogue signals such as audio take up variations in response to the source, not the method of transmission.
The use of the word dielectric, whilst also strictly true, is also misleading.
Dielectric is a term used in electrostatics and most commonly found in high voltage cables(many thousands of volts) and in components such as capacitors.
The use of the word dielectric in terms of insulation only really matters when the charge storage capacity of a device or cable is a significant factor, which would mean very very long runs of cable, or extremely high voltages, or both.
The use of the word dielectric in audio is irrelevant, the charge storage capacity of speaker cables is so small as to be utterly insignificant.
I suspect that when one purchases very expensive speaker cables, the user might be dissappointed that, upon immediate installation, there is no differance and it takes a while for the victim to rationalize this wasteful acquisition, hence impression of improvement in sound over time.
The main thing to realise, is that to gain a reasonable competance and knowledge of electronics, and then a sub specialisation of audio electronics, takes time, commitment and lots of reading, maths, study and professional expertise.
Hi fi magazines try to flatter the reader into believing they might understand something about such matters, without all that hassle of going to college or university and actually learning.
Whenever a device reproduces a signal, distorion can be measured using instruments, and yet hi fi buffs will claim to hear differances in tone, sound, presence etc that even the most sophisticated analysing techniques cannot.
Human hearing is not particularly accurate, not sensitive, it is not linear, and the range is not wide, plus there are a huge range of bioligical differances between humans which makes the definition of absolute terms impossible.
On the other hand, spectrum analysers and other such equipment are very accurate, non-subjective, do not have personal biases or opinions, are orders of signal processing ability of magnitudes better than humans, and yet these devices will show up no discernable differance at all in test conditions when trying to pick up differances in things like speaker cables, speaker stands and the like.
Which do you believe, demonstrable scientific measurement or woolly non-qualified pseudo engineers ?
Directional? Isn’t an audio signal AC anyway? So assuming this were true, wouldn’t you get rectification of the signal no matter which direction the cable was oriented?
Anyway, they seem to be claiming that conductors act as diodes. If this were a measurable effect, it would be easy to detect and would be well-known. Note their use of such scientific and easily quantified properties as “relaxed” and “believable”. If “Believable” had units, this claim would be measured in mega-shovels of BS.
A reference to “surface treatment” is made in page 3. Surface treatment of the conductor is quite important, but only in the gigahertz range, where the skin depth is very small. (My dissertation was on high frequency resonators)
It is absolutely ridiculus to think that surface treatment will have any effect at audio frequencies.
Cables are indeed directional, so pay attention to those arrows! You should also do the following:
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Before installing the cables, cryogenically condition them at -90 °C for 24 hours. This will relieve molecular stress in the cables, thereby enhancing sonic integrity.
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“Break in” the cables by hooking them up to a 10 kHz square wave generator, amplifier, and resistive load. Allow them to break in for a minimum of 72 hours. This will enhance sonic integrity.
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Install a liquid helium dewer next to your stereo system. Construct a liquid helium heat exchanger for each cable. This will decrease the resistance of each cable, thereby enhancing sonic integrity.
Or to be more accurate…
Which do you believe, demonstrable scientific measurement or woolly non-qualified pseudo engineers who are trying to sell you something?
The entire field of super-quality audio cables is one of the biggest scams this side of holistic medicine.
There are only a few fundamentals you need to remember when buying audio cable:
- Buy one with good solid mechanical connections.
- Choose a conductor large enough for the power flowing through it.
- if pulling it through the walls, make sure you get cable rated for in-wall use
That’s about it. For speaker cable, 14 ga lamp cord will be indistinguishable from a $10,000 super-duper cryogenically prepared, uni-directional, oxygen-free, gold plated sucker cable. If you’re running really long distances, or using very high powered equipment, you might want to go down to 12 ga. Home Depot sells perfectly good 12 ga speaker cable for about 20 cents a foot. Spending a nickel more than that is a waste of your money.
For audio cables like RCA cables, suitable construction quality can be had from Radio Shack for $20 per cable. Radio Shack’s ‘gold’ cables are actually prettty good, and I wouldn’t spend any more than that for them.
For digital cables, who cares? It’s digital. Use any old RCA to RCA cable in your junk box. If the signal can get through, you’re good to go. Optical cables are more expensive, and don’t offer any measurable benefit that I know of, other than resistance to electrical noise (which, unless you operate your stereo next to a table saw, you probably aren’t going to hear anyway).
BTW, if you’re looking for improvements in your stereo’s sound quality, here’s the chain of ‘most effective to least effective’:
- Room treatment
- Speakers
- Electronics
- (Distant 4) cabling
The most important by far are 1) and 2). You’d be surprised how many ‘golden ear’ audiophiles waste money on fancy cables, but have their speakers set up in echo-filled rooms with no acoustic treatment at the first reflection points of the speakers, etc. This stuff costs pennies if you do it yourself, and can have huge effects on the quality of your sound.
A $1000 stereo in a well treated room will sound much bettter than a $100,000 stereo in a basement with untreated walls and floors. A $300 amplifier and a $2000 set of speakers will sound better than a $10,000 amplifier driven through a $1,000 pair of speakers. For good measure, I’ll hook the first set up speakers up with two rusty coat hangers, and it will still sound better.
Oops. I meant “one of the biggest scams since homeopathic medicine”. Mustn’t paint with too broad a brush.
Pffft! Amateur! 
I break-in my cables using a hexiprismatic field generator that induces strong molecular reversion and at the same time keeping the metaphasic radiation to a minimum.
This process enhances the cable’s response to nonlinear positron flux modulation.
If I don’t care too much about sound quality, I will simply use a beta-tachyon broad-spectrum warp field instead.
I agree with most of what Sam Stone has to say. I would probably put speaker quality before room treatment but that’s about it. There’s a good article at this link http://www.trueaudio.com/post_009.htm that does a good job of debunking at least one of the “monster cable” myths.
Hey! I’m working on the same thing!! I’m calling my patent attorney… :mad:
Good thing I caught this thread! I was about to rip down several hundred meters of cable that I just installed backwards! Not to mention the DirecTV guy would have looked at me funny were I to ask him if the RG6 was backwards or not.
It shouldn’t be a problem, but you should be aware that the sonic integrity will suffer a little. Installing cables backwards will cause distributive transposed oscillatory energy in the frequency domain to be reflected into the transmitter. Not a good thing. Installing cables forward, however, will allow the free valence electrons to exploit the cable’s quantized resonate tunneling effect. This will allow the electrons’ time-dependent quantum wave function to propagate at consistent velocity with virtually no phase distortion in the imaginary component of the Hamiltonian Operator.