HenryK

Re: Thank you for your in depth analysis and subsequent learned opinion

RussB

I'd never heard of Jon Risch before I did that search. Do you work in audio electronics? (I'm an unemployed computer network administrator, with a history of r.f. design and development. Was a radio amateur since age 15.)

It seems to me that what Monster is proposing is that speaker wire is a transmission line. Fine. But they don't specify the characteristic impedance of their cable. If we want to keep standing waves off the line, we need to match the amp to the cable to the load. I think that they realize that this ain't gonna happen across multiple octaves, so they don't push their specs too much, because while their argument may be valid for one frequency, it falls apart over a wide frequency range with real components whose impedances vary.

Regarding subjectivity: I was told by an old Bell Labs / Stromberg-Carlson telephony engineer that Bell Labs (1950s?) used to test telephone systems from one end to the other by measuring test subjects' pulse, skin resistance, etc, while they listened to their systems for extended periods. They'd discovered that listening to distorted sound (presumably speech) had measurable physiological effects(!). They needed to find how much distortion was tolerable.

I guess that my ear is broken or I've never listened to a decent system, because I can't hear differences between different speaker wires (of short lengths).

HenryK

Mine is somewhat similar in that my education and general interests in the past have been in electrical eng specifically in electronics. I currently work in the R.F. field and am also a radio amateur since the age of 15. Small world?

I ran across M.r. Risch when I was a teenager and very interested in audio. If memory serves me correctly he wrote for Stereo Review and I always read that magazine. I lost interest in it all as I grew older and got busy with work and family. So it's really interesting to read his material again. From what I understand he is still very active in the audio field.

Ya Monster doesn't publish alot of info and as I say uses a lot of strong marketing to promote their product. To a large extent they a really no different then other manufacturers today. Your right about trying to hold a specifc parameter constant over the audio range, so there needs to be a compromise in general.

Your comments about the old engineer from Bell sort of put a smile on my face. The reason being all new technology basically goes thru this "test". Particularly as we move from analogue to digital, it always, what is the bare minimum that can be accepted by the general public as adequate. I have recently been involved in the introduction of digtal audio broadcasting (DAB)here in Canada and this debate is never ending particularly with broadcasters trying to utlize the minium amount of bit streams to develever "adequate" service.

With respect to the wire debat, I recall myself smiling at these claims many years ago about using 16 guage lamp cable vs. expensive speaker cables. I ws a great beleiver in good old 16 guage. After researching and experimenting, I can now vouch that after purchasing decent quality spekaer cable and swaping out the 16 guage wire it was indeed a noticable difference. After that I began A/Bing interconnects and again found subtle differences. In my case the electronics in my system was considered high end and so were the speakers I had. I suppose you may have hit the nail on the head with respect to the overall system quality, if your dealing with lower end stuff and in particular low quality speakers you may never hear the diference in wire. Although these days speaker design and quality is sgnifcantly higher then it was a decade ago.

As an interesting side note, I have recently modified a cross over network in a set of Paradigm mini monitors. The modification simply consisted of replacing an electrolytic cap in the cross over that feed the tweeter. The debate here revolves around using good quality non- polorized propolyene capacitors in the audio circuit. The existing capaictor was a cheapie and for the price or approx $3.00 you would hardly beleive such an upgrade would have had such a dramtic improvement in performance of the speakers. The high end became more natural and the complete sounstage was very focused in the placement of instruments and voices. After experiencing this latest in audio revolution, all I can say is listening is the ultimate test.

It be interesting to know what your audio equipment setup is.

RussB

Your improvement in sound with the replacement of electrolytic caps with non-polarized ones isn't surprising. Using electrolytic caps in such an application is naieve.

It's been decades since I dealt daily with such issues, but I found that careful component selection often made the difference between marginal circuits and exceptional ones. I remember one prototype high speed phase lock loop that had jitter (manifested as noise sidebands maybe 20-30 dB down in the output signal). We found that it was caused by garden variety carbon resistors. (Who'd have thought?) Replacing them with metal film resistors cleaned up the output signal by many dB.

My audio setups in both car and home are nothing special, but sound fine to me. At home I've got a garden variety Pioneer receiver driving a pair of large sealed enclosures with 15" woofers. In the car I use the stock head unit to drive a Sony amp, Sony 10cm coaxial fronts, Infinity 6.5in rears, and Rockford Fosgate 12" HXC subwoofer inside a QL sealed box.

I've always admired efficiency, and for that reason liked the various folded horn designs, especially the clever Klipsch, but it stayed out of my budget. These days, clean Watts are cheap, so the compact and inefficient acoustic suspension designs make sense.

I attended the Miami hamboree last weekend. Attendance looked diminished to me. Vendors acknowledged that their market has shrunk. I allowed my license to expire a few years ago, after not using it for maybe 20 years. Still, it was a great hobby.

I know nothing about DAB. What band, bandwidth, and modulation method are you using? (Maybe we should continue this in a different thread?)

Regards,
Russ Bellew<ul><li><a href="http://www.jt30.com/jt30page/micKcircuits/Resistor-noise.html">Composition carbon resistor noise</a></li></ul>

RussB

You prolly found this page already, but here's an interesting explanation:

(Also, http://www.dself.demon.co.uk/dipa.htm discusses multiple sources of subtle distortion in amps, including electrolytic caps.)<ul><li><a href="http://www.sic.shibaura-it.ac.jp/~sato/lab/plaza/chap556.html">Why does distortion occur in the AC electrolytic coloring waveform?</a></li></ul>

RussB

There *is* a phenomenon called "skin effect": as frequency increases, alternating currents tend to flow along the outside surfaces of conductors (as opposed to through their cores). It's been years since I've worked the math, but the gist is that skin effect is virtually non-existent at sub MegaHertz frequencies.

Is this what you meant by "time correction" that's built into Monster cables? Is this their Secret Ingredient?

I like your style: You oughta write ad copy for Monster Cable Company! (Your prose is only slightly more hyperbolic than theirs.)