![]() It's their nature to retain it (footnote 2). Capacitance and inductance, on the other hand, really throw a kink into designing a cable which resembles our theoretical ideal, because they're storage elementswhich means that they have a strong ( ahem) resistance to surrendering all of the signal they carry. Resistance, which refers to how hard it is to push current flow through a cable, is the easy one to design around, and is seldom a problem for metallic cable designs. Second, no matter how you design the cable, you have to deal with the trinity of resistance, inductance, and capacitance. You're probably already hip to the fact that such a simple-sounding description is an impossibility here in the material world, but why?įirst is the physical nature of metallic cableits molecular structure alone ensures that noise will be added to the signal. Ideally, cables would perform their job without adding anything to the signals they're carrying, and would deliver up all of the signal going in. No matter how great the components, if you don't got no cables, you don't got no sound. They transmit the signals from source components to the amplification chain and then on to the speakers. What are cables supposed to do? On the most superficial leveland also at the deepest, most functional levelthey're supposed to connect everything together. Instead, I tore my finger on a splinter while crawling around to connect the speakers, and then sat bleeding onto the couch, enthralled listening to Beethoven piano sonatas. DeMille had directed the encounter, clouds would have parted, a ray of light would have fallen on my speakers, and choirs would have sung hosannas. ![]() Forget veils lifting, windows opening, or any of the tired old audio clichés: I'm talking about nothing less than communionan act of sharing thoughts or feelings in spiritual fellowship. These were products unlike any in my experience. My dalliances with cables of the week lurched to a screaming halt last year, when I received a set of Transparent Audio Reference interconnects and speaker cables. My problem is that it all makes perfect sense while I'm listening to designers expounding upon them only several hours later do I do a double take: "Hey, wait a minute! How did that traffic cop get into the wire in the first place?" This is because I try to keep an open mindwell, certainly one that's unburdened by any real grasp of theory. I love 'em allespecially the really goofy ones. Far from finding that there's one true path to audio nirvana, I have a boundless gullibility when it comes to cable technology theories. In my experience, however, I've heard audible differences among the available interconnects and loudspeaker cablesno matter how much I might devoutly wish otherwise. Regular folk, like my friend Randywho has one child in college and two more in high schooljust purse their lips and bite their tongues to keep from commenting on the whole subject. Others hold that, differences in resistance, capacitance, and inductance aside (footnote 1), the whole high-end cable market is just an exercise in mass self-delusion. I don't mean to laugh at you, but.bwah ha ha haaa!" Who can blame them? Even in the hi-fi camp, there are those who are convinced that wires are no more than hideously expensive tone controls. Nothing is more guaranteed to amuse non-audiophiles than the subject of high-end cable pricing.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |