A POINT OF VIEW: The best sounding cables I have heard were a bare set of wires.

[Neil McCauley]

Paul McGowan writes:

The best sounding cables I have heard were a bare set of wires. Hardly practical in the real world, cables without shielding and insulation sound better than those with them.

We insulate cables so their conductors don’t electrically touch each other. We shield them with tin foil or woven metal to protect them from noise.

None of these techniques of isolation and noise reduction improve sound quality. Air is the best insulator and a noise free environment what we hope for if we want to avoid shielding. Unfortunately, dangling conductors in the air is as impractical as hoping for a noise free environment. Insulation and shielding are necessary evils.

The problem with insulators is energy storage. When a signal is passed along the conductor they cover, small portions of the signal are stored then released in the insulation. This effect can be measured and enumerated using what’s known as the Dielectric Constant. If we’re building a capacitor we want that number high. If it’s a cable, the lower the number the better.

Of the readily available insulation materials, Teflon has one of the lowest dielectric constants—far lower than standard insulation. But Teflon’s expensive and hard to work with, which is why it’s used sparingly.

In our ongoing discussion of break-in, I suspect it is this dielectric constant that changes with signal.

You can follow Paul at http://www.hifianswers.com/tag/ps-audio/

[bumpy]

Paul McGowan writes:

The best sounding cables I have heard were a bare set of wires. Hardly practical in the real world, cables without shielding and insulation sound better than those with them.

We insulate cables so their conductors don’t electrically touch each other. We shield them with tin foil or woven metal to protect them from noise.

None of these techniques of isolation and noise reduction improve sound quality. Air is the best insulator and a noise free environment what we hope for if we want to avoid shielding. Unfortunately, dangling conductors in the air is as impractical as hoping for a noise free environment. Insulation and shielding are necessary evils.

The problem with insulators is energy storage. When a signal is passed along the conductor they cover, small portions of the signal are stored then released in the insulation. This effect can be measured and enumerated using what’s known as the Dielectric Constant. If we’re building a capacitor we want that number high. If it’s a cable, the lower the number the better.

Of the readily available insulation materials, Teflon has one of the lowest dielectric constants—far lower than standard insulation. But Teflon’s expensive and hard to work with, which is why it’s used sparingly.

In our ongoing discussion of break-in, I suspect it is this dielectric constant that changes with signal.

You can follow Paul at http://www.hifianswers.com/tag/ps-audio/

I couldn't agree more and this is exactly what I am running in my system. A proprietary blend of silver wires, each one isolated in air, and contained loosely within its own thin PTFE tube, are bundled together in air and held within a protective outer tube.
The magic is in the blend of different composition silver wires. The slight downside, as alluded to in the original post, is that the cables are not very flexible, but this is a small price to pay for a beautiful sound - probably up there with the best.

http://sw1xad.co.uk/sw1x-acoustic-aero-speaker-cables/

[SW1X]

I couldn't agree more and this is exactly what I am running in my system. A proprietary blend of silver wires, each one isolated in air, and contained loosely within its own thin PTFE tube, are bundled together in air and held within a protective outer tube.
The magic is in the blend of different composition silver wires. The slight downside, as alluded to in the original post, is that the cables are not very flexible, but this is a small price to pay for a beautiful sound - probably up there with the best.

http://sw1xad.co.uk/sw1x-acoustic-aero-speaker-cables/

Greetings,

There is slightly more to it than a couple of bare wires, where bares wires are a good starting point. In practice designing a cable is more an art than science. It is virtually impossible to design ideal conductor- trial and error approach is the only friend here. Apart from lowest loss dielectrics, those wires need to be carefully chosen as conductor material (silver, copper, tin, alu alloys all sound quite different, where purity is secondary) and its geometry also are factor of crucial importance. All those factors (dielectric, conductor material and geometry) need to be carefully combined otherwise one may end up with a sound that tilted one towards one frequency extreme or another, sound flat, thin or slow... - the list of deficiencies is infinite here. The whole cable needs also to be optimised for impedance. Then and only then we have a cable that transfers all (almost all) musical information.

http://sw1xad.co.uk/conductor-design-some-comments-on-the-importance-of-wiring/

S

[Neil McCauley]

Greetings,

There is slightly more to it than a couple of bare wires, where bares wires are a good starting point. In practice designing a cable is more an art than science. It is virtually impossible to design ideal conductor- trial and error approach is the only friend here. Apart from lowest loss dielectrics, those wires need to be carefully chosen as conductor material (silver, copper, tin, alu alloys all sound quite different, where purity is secondary) and its geometry also are factor of crucial importance. All those factors (dielectric, conductor material and geometry) need to be carefully combined otherwise one may end up with a sound that tilted one towards one frequency extreme or another, sound flat, thin or slow... - the list of deficiencies is infinite here. The whole cable needs also to be optimised for impedance. Then and only then we have a cable that transfers all (almost all) musical information.

http://sw1xad.co.uk/conductor-design-some-comments-on-the-importance-of-wiring/

S

Fair enough for us in the industry. What can 'civilians' be reasonably expected to make of this though i wonder?

[SW1X]

Unfortunately, the vast majority of the industry is not really interested in designing conductors that are harmonically matched, are hand made nor use of the finest materials (there are a few and rare exceptions though).
That is a sad fact no matter how one would like to twist it. Otherwise we would not have this discussion now.

S

[RothwellAudio]

In practice designing a cable is more an art than science. It is virtually impossible to design ideal conductor- trial and error approach is the only friend here. Apart from lowest loss dielectrics, those wires need to be carefully chosen as conductor material (silver, copper, tin, alu alloys all sound quite different, where purity is secondary) and its geometry also are factor of crucial importance. All those factors (dielectric, conductor material and geometry) need to be carefully combined otherwise one may end up with a sound that tilted one towards one frequency extreme or another, sound flat, thin or slow... - the list of deficiencies is infinite here. The whole cable needs also to be optimised for impedance. Then and only then we have a cable that transfers all (almost all) musical information.
I think it's only fair to point out that this flies in the face of conventional engineering science.

[SW1X]

I think it's only fair to point out that this flies in the face of conventional engineering science.

That is perfectly possible that it does. Most products tend to be over-engineered and unsuitable to reproduce music. That applies also to machine made cables with tight dielectrics around conductors. I hope that my engineer colleagues do not get offended me saying this though.

S

[SW1X]

Sorry, forgot to mention those tightly PTFE insulated silver plated copper conductors that are offered under many brands. Those conductors are perfectly engineered without a doubt but how do they sound?
Well, it does not make any sense to discuss the sound in theory.

[farflungstar]

Townshend Fractal cables are bare wires suspended in tubes. They've had mainly positive reviews but are said to be a little on the lean side of neutral which is why I haven't gone that route (they're bloody expensive).

[SW1X]

Townshend Fractal cables are bare wires suspended in tubes. They've had mainly positive reviews but are said to be a little on the lean side of neutral which is why I haven't gone that route (they're bloody expensive).

We do something very similar with our SW1X AERO line of cables. The differences are that we use multiple (minimum 6 and up to 28) carefully selected & harmonically matched silver (or/and copper in the coming AQUA and TERRA lines) conductors of various geometry individually insulated i.e. air suspended in carefully selected tubes. We also keep those conductors as far as possible from each other.

The musical performance is breathtaking especially with the performance level 3 (min 12 conductors)