Coaxial Speaker Cables

[slipperyjim]

About 20 years ago, I was browsing in the technical library of the, then, Royal Aircraft Establishment and found an article in a professional journal (may have been the Audio Engineering Society) subjectively comparing speaker leads. I think the author used a variation of the Hafler test to measure cable induced artefacts. The, then current, horde of snake oil cables with attendant pseudo-scientific gobbledegook were included as well as some more mundane examples.

The upshot was that the humble URM67 heavy duty RF coax cable was the winner by at least an order of magnitude. As a result, it's easy to spot an ex RAE space department employee by their speaker cables.

Anyone here familiar with this article and can provide a reference?

[The Grand Wazoo]

I've never seen the article, but I used something like co-ax as speaker cables for about 7 years. It was very good. It was a pair of isulated inner conductors that I used as the pos. & neg, but I also connected both the screen and the foil screen to the neg. at the amp end.

[Barry]

About 20 years ago, I was browsing in the technical library of the, then, Royal Aircraft Establishment and found an article in a professional journal (may have been the Audio Engineering Society) subjectively comparing speaker leads. I think the author used a variation of the Hafler test to measure cable induced artefacts. The, then current, horde of snake oil cables with attendant pseudo-scientific gobbledegook were included as well as some more mundane examples.

The upshot was that the humble URM67 heavy duty RF coax cable was the winner by at least an order of magnitude. As a result, it's easy to spot an ex RAE space department employee by their speaker cables.

Anyone here familiar with this article and can provide a reference?

There were three articles by Cyril Bateman that appeared in Electronics World (formerly Wireless World): December 1996, p. 925; January 1997, p.52 and February 1997, p.119.

URM67 did very well in Bateman's comparative tests, though all the tests were measurements - no subjective listening tests were carried out. There is much irrelevant techno-babble in these articles.

URM67 is thick (~ 10mm dia.), stiff and unwieldy. It has silver plated stranded copper conductors. I knew someone who used them for a while, before changing them for something like QED79.

As far as I can see there is little advantage in their use, unless you live near a radio transmitter or a high power radar insulation. In those cases the use of coaxial speaker cables can be advantageous, as it reduces the amount of RF that can enter the power amplifier via the speaker terminals to cause mischief.

Regards

[slipperyjim]

Thanks for that. I don't remember it being Wireless World though. That would have registered. Also, I don't remember any irrelevant technobabble. It was purely technical. No directionality, pyramids or golden ratios or any of that new age crap. Mind you, it's a sign of the decline or Wireless World if it did.

[twelvebears]

This looks interesting and probably cheap enought to be worth playing around with LINK (http://www.tnt-audio.com/clinica/ubyte2e.html)