On 11/10/03 12:01, Mark W said...
Here's a question for everyone I have always had
on this debate. I am not a firm believer in cables
making a difference in the quality of the sound.
Also note, I am not a prfessional installer but
a guy who only does simple systems for family
and friends and who gets paid in beer only. So,
there are my qualifications, or lack of any.
If I look inside any of my audio and video gear,
the wires in side are all 18-20 gauge max. Inside
the speakers, the wire diameter is also small.
So, can the interconnect cables do that much
better? Only so much information can go into
them from the source and the speaker wires can
only accept so much as well.
Could it be compared to a water line. Supose
you hade an interior house water pipe of 1" that
fed to an outside house with a diameter of 12"
and this was hooked up to a sprinkler head whose
inlet piping was only 1". Would more water come
out of the sprinkler head using a 12" hose verses
a 1-2" hose?
Over simplification but this is something I've
pondered before.
Mark
The water pipe analogy is a good one that alot of people get wrong. It works when you are talking straight conductors but when you start talking coax and high frequencies things change due to the inductive capacitive properties. For the water pipe analogy if you run water at 70 psi through 100 feet of 12" inch pipe you will have more preasure at the sprinkler head then if you ran it through a 1" pipe. This is due to the fact that water flowing in 1" pipe is going to have a higher ratio of contact to the pipe surface which causes friction and turbulance which over a 100' pipe will result in a lower preasure at the sprinkler head, lower preasure=lower flow. Relate this to audio electronics substitute preasure for power which is wattage. This is similar to the scenario you mentioned with the smaller wire in the equipment. For short runs it will not have a big effect but run it over 100' of 22awg and you will not have much power left at your speaker lower wattage=less sound. There will be different effect over the frequency range of the audio. The bass will sound better with bigger cable but at high frequencies you will start to notice the effects of the capacitive and inductive properties of the cable.
