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Sheikh Yerbouti

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Some**** Somewhere in Summertime
Well, if you want to waste your money, then that's fine by me.

If you've a spare 10 mins YouTube - The Truth about Monster cables, Best Buy & Future Shop

LOL my money's hardly the issue. All I said to the OP was "try & get some speaker cable thrown in if you can cos it'll probs be better than what you've got now" :|
I don't see why that statement has got you so riled up lol.
If you're happy to run your own speakers off bell wire, fill yer boots, it's no skin off my nose :D between you & me I wouldn't admit it to anyone who knows about HiFi though :thumbsup:

Here is a 21 page thread discussing this very topic. Suffice to say that the "it matters" faction outnumber the "it's all bollocks" brigade rather substantially :D
 
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ilovepiano

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I don't see why that statement has got you so riled up lol.


LOL, coz I don't like seeing people chuck good money away on things that are pointless!



If you're happy to run your speakers off bell wire, fill yer boots, it's no skin off my nose :D between you & me I wouldn't admit it to anyone who knows about HiFi though :thumbsup:


I don't run speakers off bell wire. My monitors run off balanced XLR leads :p
 

Sheikh Yerbouti

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LOL, coz I don't like seeing people chuck good money away on things that are pointless!
Well, first off, like I've said several times, I suggested that the OP try and get speaker cable thrown in for nothing.
Nobody in their right mind would recommend spending big money on speaker cable to go in the back of a 100 quid amp :axe:
I would have thought that was obvious even to you.

Secondly, as I've been saying all along "sound quality improvements" can't be absolutely "proven" one way or the other because they are totally subjective, but the vast majority of the global HiFi & audiophile community (myself included) disagrees with you about the effects of speaker/RCA cables on the sound of a system.

I don't run speakers off bell wire. My monitors run off balanced XLR leads :p
ROFL so you're giving "informed" opinions on HiFi speaker cable, yet you don't actually use it in your own system... hmm... :axe:
 

Art Awreet

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On an even more different note, what is everyone's view on Wireless speakers? Do they make the big floorstanders with wireless and is there any loss in sound quality?
 

blue jammer

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I'm with Tim on the cheapo cables thing - unless you are a dog, you ain't gonna appreciate any extra frequencies.

Wireless is something I'm totally against for networking and anything pretty much, ever since getting a pair of wireless headphones and first thinking 'ahhh these are comfy and no wires!' - only for them to cut out at different times and you having to switch A=B on the selector if they went out of sync - and the battery only lasted 3 hours which is ok for your average joe who doesn't DJ/make music :crazy:

My best tip for buying owt is research whatever it is online first - there's always plenty of sites with reviews to check out - see what other people say about the things you are after, that way you can get more of an idea and you'll get a cheaper price online than in places like Richer Sounds, which thesedays is a waste of time as most of their stock tends to be end of line or seconds anyhow.

:thumbsup:
 

Sheikh Yerbouti

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I'm with Tim on the cheapo cables thing - unless you are a dog, you ain't gonna appreciate any extra frequencies.

Who said owt about "extra frequencies"? :crazy:
It's a question of frequency "response" not audible range :crazy: and also signal degradation :crazy: You don't need to be a dog to notice either of those :|
Loudspeakers: Effects of amplifiers and cables - Part 4 | Audio DesignLine

If you say cables don't affect the sound of a system, you might as well say the choice of amp won't affect the sound, because it's all one big circuit at the end of the day!

Here are the results of a test into the effect of speaker cables on sound, taken from a presentation made tothe Reproduced Sound conference of the Institute of Acoustics.
The experiments were done by 2 Russian engineers, accompanied by the founder of Cerwin Vega (hardly "some bloke in his garage")
Loudspeakers: Effects of amplifiers and cables - Part 5 | Audio DesignLine

There's a lot to read (it's a proper scientific study) but here's an extract... :D

"However, when they replaced the 8 ohm resistive load with a passively crossed-over loudspeaker system, they were surprised to see the results as shown in Figure 6.8. With the more complex load, all the plots had changed. After changing the load to the low frequency loudspeaker, all the plots changed again, as shown in Figure 6.9. The distortion patterns were noticeably different, not only between the cables, but also between the input and output ends of each cable. The implication here is that the cables change the way that the complex load is seen by the amplifier. Voishvillo reported that upon seeing this, Czerwinski exclaimed "But they're only short cables!"

Another bit from the end of the chapter (before they move on to discuss the effects of splitting the frequency range... multi-amp setups and the like)

"As the evidence presented in this chapter has shown, loudspeaker cables seem to be sensitive to the equipment to which they are connected, and vice versa. Furthermore, the entire systems seem to be sensitive to their environment, at least in electromagnetic terms."

To sum up, more expensive cable does not guarantee "better" sound (whatever that means).
But I'm afraid anyone who claims speaker cables & interconnects won't have an effect on the sound of a HiFi system is just plain wrong.
:D
 
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U31

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Dec 18, 2007
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Kiss me brown eye
I agree with Scott and ILP here..
I used to fart with hi end seperates in the 80's and 90's until i realised the only person i was fooling was myself...

My £100 Aiwa i have now does everything as well as what i used to spend thousands on -complete with ofc and gold connectors.

I agree with the EQ statement though, although the aiwa does have one in built...
 

blue jammer

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Who said owt about "extra frequencies"? :crazy:

That wasn't quoted from anyone in this thread, it was from something I remember reading about high end frequencies.

"Polk simply has the lowest inductance of any cable ever made, which means it is the "fastest" cable, and it is also the cable with the most extended high frequencies."

All these special cables are about as much use as those special glass stands to place your CD player on that the "specialist" hi-fi shops sell for hundreds of pounds when the same results can be achieved from placing the CD player on an old Yellow Pages (which are free) :D

(imo of course) :LOL:
 

Sheikh Yerbouti

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That wasn't quoted from anyone in this thread, it was from something I remember reading about high end frequencies.

"Polk simply has the lowest inductance of any cable ever made, which means it is the "fastest" cable, and it is also the cable with the most extended high frequencies."

All these special cables are about as much use as those special glass stands to place your CD player on that the "specialist" hi-fi shops sell for hundreds of pounds when the same results can be achieved from placing the CD player on an old Yellow Pages (which are free) :D

(imo of course) :LOL:

LOL but nobody in this thread ever said anything about "special cables"...
Nor is it all to do with high frequencies.
See the study extracts in the above post.
The question is, "does speaker cable affect the way a system sounds".
The answer is yes. Not opinion. Fact.

If you're getting separates for the first time, it's daft connecting up your amp and speakers with any old shite cable you have lying around, if for free (or cheap) you can get some that's designed to do the job.

As for CD Player stands, there's never been any scientific evidence to support (geddit) the idea that you need anything other than a rigid base to stand a CD player on. That's totally different to the cable argument though, because the speaker cable argument is backed by proven facts.

That's not to say manufacturers won't exploit it to turn a coin (like the glass CD player stands) of course they will. But to say "cables don't make a difference" is not only factually wrong, it's really daft as well.
 

Sheikh Yerbouti

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Some**** Somewhere in Summertime
I agree with Scott and ILP here..
I used to fart with hi end seperates in the 80's and 90's until i realised the only person i was fooling was myself...

My £100 Aiwa i have now does everything as well as what i used to spend thousands on -complete with ofc and gold connectors.

I agree with the EQ statement though, although the aiwa does have one in built...

:rofl:
Has it got high speed dubbing?
 

U31

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Dec 18, 2007
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Kiss me brown eye
There probably are discernible differences in sound with high end vibration free stands, oxygen free cable, £1000 amps etc, its just the bang for buck i'm on about here- and the expense was unjustifiable when i sat down in the cold light of day.
my 100 quider is enjoyed just as much as the expensive gear was...
 

ilovepiano

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But I'm afraid anyone who claims speaker cables & interconnects won't have an effect on the sound of a HiFi system is just plain wrong.
:D


I don't think anyone is claiming that cables and interconnects won't have an effect. It's a question of cheap vs expensive and there being no audible difference.

Obviously if you had half a mile of single strand copper wire, it's not going to perform the same as half a mile of wire that's 6 inches thick.

Providing the wire is thick enough for the job, you will NOT hear a difference. And thick wire doesn't mean it has to be expensive.
 

Sheikh Yerbouti

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There probably are discernible differences in sound with high end vibration free stands, oxygen free cable, £1000 amps etc, its just the bang for buck i'm on about here- and the expense was unjustifiable when i sat down in the cold light of day.
my 100 quider is enjoyed just as much as the expensive gear was...

Completely different argument.
Law of diminishing returns applies obviously :axe:
But it doesn't alter the fact that on a low-end separates system (which is what the OP was after advice on) a few quid spent on speaker cable could well have a noticeable effect on the sound, compared to the same setup with the speakers connected with bell wire... or "ripped out of the dishwasher"