Pardon me, I have to take a moment to bludgeon the sensors on my BS Detector. They are screaming so loudly that I have to silence them just to respond.
On 10/21/04 16:45 ET, bcf1963 said...
Ernie,
Ken sent me copies of their white papers. Although
I applaud them for a scientific look at the details,
I think they miss the important points as I'll
discuss below.
In general they do a nice job of discussing skin
effect, and even compute the skin effect at 20KHz,
then they make the jump and compute the impedance
of the cable based only on the conductivity of
the skin effect area of the cable. This is an
issue, because even if skin effect is an issue,
skin depth still has about 70% of the signal not
flowing in the skin, so this makes round cable
look excessively bad and their cable look good
at audio frequencies.
In other words, their claim is crap. Are they comparing their wire with round cable that has some thirty or more conductors, each with its own skin? Read on; they do not.
They also compare their cable to a single conductor
round wire. This is another bad comparison.
In other words, their comparison is crap.
None of us use a single conductor cable, as the
flexibility is not acceptable. If you take multiple
conductors into account with the skin depth, their
cable is no better than a cable of a moderate
number of round conductors.
Did I already say that their comparison is crap?
They also tend to forget about low frequencies.
Their 18 gauge cable will perform like round
18 gauge at low frequencies.
They sure DO forget about low frequencies. Like, say 1000 Hz!
If they are talking about skin effect at 20 kHz, which NONE of us (except my poodle) can hear, then their comparison is crap. In many cases of physical properties, effects change on the order of three to six dB per octave; let's be charitable and say the effect lessens at three dB per octave. That means that the skin effect will have about 14 dB less effect at 1 kHz than it does at 20 kHz (and 28 dB less of an effect if it is 6 dB/octave). Now, just how massively impressive is the advantage given by skin effect with their wire, that 14 to 28 dB LESS of an effect in the middle of the audible range is worth even thinking about?
In my mind the worst
gauge equivalent of the cable in the frequency
range of interest is the determining factor.
Their 18ga flat wire will perform equivalent
to 18ga moderately stranded round wire at low
audio frequencies.
Ken said: "Our 18 guage cable will out perform any 16 guage standed speaker cable available on the market."
Ken, that is gauge, not guage.
bcf, Ken does not say it performs equivalent(ly) to 18 ga; he said it outperforms 16 gauge. He does not even limit the frequencies at which he claims it will do so.
Wait: maybe this claim is crap.
Ken also says "Look for the white pages." He means white papers.
The other issue they totally ignore in their white
papers is the impedance of their connectors and
connector system. Looking at the pictures on
their website, I don't see how they are going
to get good contact from the flat conductors to
banana plugs, RCA's etc. Looks like they are
relying on flat spring contacts over a fairly
large area. The fact that the conductors are
unprotected copper, means they will oxidize fairly
rapidly, and even if the connection is good at
first, I don't think they will create a good long
term connection. Crimp connectors work well on
round cable even with no solder, because the force
is great enough to implement a gas tight seal,
resulting in the copper not oxidizing. This seems
to be missing from the DeCorp system.
So maybe, like I said, their claim is crap.
Lastly when the 75ohm characteristic cables are
discussed, they don't do anything to show that
their cables exhibit 75 ohms over the frequencies
of interest. They also do not address how they
keep the 75 ohm impedance during the transition
from flat wire to connector. From the pictures
on their site, I think the connectors and lack
of shielding are going to be the weakness in their
component video, and RF flat wire solutions.
If they want to show their cables at 75 ohms,
they should show a dB loss per foot as a function
of frequency, as well as a capture of a screen
shot of a test of their cable and connectors on
a Time Domain Reflectomer (TDR) showing the impedance
not only of their cable, but connectors as well.
They can't do that because their claims are crap.
So how come nobody has climbed all over Ken for posting a clear and obivous advertisement here? I have seen other threads where every response addressed that fact (notably one for satellite installations), but nobody seems to have even noticed! Do we need this product so bad that we won't ask him to buy an ad on the site and otherwise quit pushing his stuff in a thread?
