Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Speaker Wire Makes a Difference!

Counsellor, while the statements on the Mapleshade site concerning their audio "products" are notable for their sheer mendacity(I particularly enjoyed reading about their bi-wire jumpers to replace the "bad-sounding" brass ones),I concede that the relatively lesser screwings delivered to their customers(e.g.$5 a foot instead of $100 a foot)constitute audio misdemeanors rather than felonies.

That's very good, John!

Well, an excellent audio placebo effect for a paltry $5/foot is a deal!

There's a 30 day return policy on Mapleshade products. Why don't you try some of their speaker wire and report back? Shipping charges on wire are pretty light.

In reply to:

---

You've visited the NRC labs and conducted a real double blind test to demonstrate that "Speaker DOES NOT Make a Difference," right? Why not tell us about it.

---

I don't have to visit.
The studies have already been done and published.
If you are interested in reading the results, i can give you some journal references for you to research.

In reply to:

---

There's a 30 day return policy on Mapleshade products. Why don't you try some of their speaker wire and report back? Shipping charges on wire are pretty light.

---

I highly doubt you would consider my opinion worthwhile , even though i am not trying to spite anyone, but i'm always interested in testing things for fun if i can do it cheaply or free.
I will head over to the Mapleshade site and peruse.
The Canadian duty/shipping issue is often a deterrent from such a venture though.

On the contrary, Chess. If you tell me you have personal experience with something, I'd value your opinion very much. It's the philosophical statements of matters of faith and belief that I find a bit dubious.

If you say I have CD Player X, hooked it up to system N, and it sounded better than CD Player Y, I'd believe you ... CDP (X) in that system sounded better to you than CDP (Y) in that same system. If you said, I listened to it, and found CD(Y) to have loose blowsy bass, reedy mids and upleasant highs, I'd know what you're talking about and wouldn't doubt you.

If my experience with CD(Y) differed, I wouldn't call you a liar, or deluded by poor testing methodology, I'd say, my experience differed, maybe you had a bad example of CD(Y), ... like that.

If you tell me, CD(X) can't be better than CD(Y) because all the wise men who have tested them and reported in magazines CD(Y) is better, then I'd say, "what do you know."

2x6spds
You might be a lawyer trying a logical argument, but in the world of science, personal experience means nothing.
If scientists only ever believed their own personal experience before accepting a theory, science would never be where it is at today. I can't even imagine trying to reproduce work done by Einstein, but some people have. Most have reviewed his theories and found no real flaws in his data and hence accepted his theories.
Such is the way of science.

In reply to:

---

If you say I have CD Player X, hooked it up to system N, and it sounded better than CD Player Y, I'd believe you

---

You shoudln't. Ever.

In reply to:

---

If you said, I listened to it, and found CD(Y) to have loose blowsy bass, reedy mids and upleasant highs, I'd know what you're talking about and wouldn't doubt you.

---

Again, you shouldn't believe me at all. You should believe your own ears. Not my subjective opinion.

In reply to:

---

If you tell me, CD(X) can't be better than CD(Y) because all the wise men who have tested them and reported in magazines CD(Y) is better, then I'd say, "what do you know."

---

We are not talking about some magazine written by Joe Blow who has been a self professed audiophile for 20 years.
We are talking about journal papers, with real numbers. Studies done on real people who have ears the same as the rest of the world. Those numbers show that people cannot tell the difference between different brands of wire (assume same gauge and core material).

The suggestion you make about personal experience of CDPx vs CDPy is based on SUBJECTIVE opinion, biased by whatever biases our minds carry from minute to minute, day to day.
Do they sound different?
A blind test with more than just you and it would certainly give us an easy answer to such a question.
In the meantime, we can use our own ears to decide if there is a difference, but if you can accept the fact you know details like price, brand, etc., then you have to accept the fact what you are hearing is NOT an objective measurement.
Of course we would like to think it is, but it simply is not. As a lawyer you should know that of the most objective people we have in society today, judges, even have certain biases about rulings (some judges easier on deadbeat husbands or first time offenders, etc.).

The tests about speaker wire that i know about are not MY personal experience, but they are another scientist's personal experience coupled with data as tested in the most UNBIASED manner possible.
THAT is why i believe those journal papers over someone's 'opinion' in regards to cable influences.
There is nothing to doubt here, electronically or by human hearing standards.

As for my personal experience, i believe i talked about this quite a long time ago and i think it was in a personal post to someone. Lets see how much my opinion is taken as fact here.
I have heard 3 types of cables before, years ago on a roomates system (Dynaudio speakers, Pioneer receiver, Yamaha cdp) when he was trying to find 'better' cables for his system. He asked my opinion (one set of Nordost vs Audioquest vs generic if i remember correctly) and after hearing the three i gave him my choice. I didn't know prices but i liked the looks of them. I don't ever remember hearing any differences but the fact that i chose the ones that looked good is a bias. The fact that i did not hear any significant difference to choose one set over another again only shows that if there is actually any difference at all, it is so incredibly miniscule that it is no where near worthy of the verbose and exaggerated reviews that cables get today.

To put things in a completely different perspective, if a $100,000 microphone and listening system cannot measure any differences in signals or frequencies between cable brands, how is it that people continue to believe their $2000 Axiom system and $1000 receiver can pick it out?
I know the Axioms are very detailed but really....

On an off topic, where did you ever come across those Merak speakers? ebay only now? Still in RS?
I have a friend locally who was asking (something very within his price range).

Expounding on your lawyer theme, my DA friend told me that it is common knowledge among jurists that eye-witness testimony is the least reliable type of evidence (most likely to be inaccurate) yet is the most persuasive with juries. You can't always trust your senses, much less those of someone else (I can't believe I ordered M60s without ever hearing them).

Similarly, our perceptions of sound quality are tainted by preconceptions about speaker wire. If two wires both have copper strands amounting to the same length and the same thickness, HOW could there be a difference in sound quality?

The wires do not create the signal nor do they reproduce it. They are like the air around us - it carries sound waves but doesn't produce them. It carries sound waves but doesn't register them. Does the air anywhere in the world affect the quality of the sound waves which it transmits? Air is air - copper is copper.

I've never posted a legal opinion, I joined this board because I own and enjoy Axiom products. I don't know or care what you all do for a living, so why don't we just focus on why we're all here, to talk about sound reproduction, and Axiom speakers.

I have no understanding of how wires and electrons really interact. I suspect that you all have no idea either.

You could analogize, does water care what different pipes of the same diameter are made of? But, wires are not pipes and copper is not air, and electrons are not water.

So, we hear, "trust your own ears," but also the criticism that reliance on such experience is worthless and subjective.

What I was saying is that I do trust my ears, and what I hear. I also said that I would trust your report as to what you hear to be an honest report, no more.

I hear a difference between the Mapleshade Clearview Golden Helix speaker wire connected to my center channel speaker relative to the Radio Shack speaker wire I used before.

My 10 year old JVC 6 disc changer sounded MUCH better than a Cambridge Audio D500SE which I had for a short while.

Just because I have no explanation for these perceived differences, I won't discount my experience.

Get a set of Mapleshade speaker wires or interconnects, try them yourselves, listen and let us know whether your subjective listening tests reveals any difference in sound. There's a 30 day money back guaranty.

In reply to:

---

have no understanding of how wires and electrons really interact. I suspect that you all have no idea either.

---

I do. I have a degree in it. I have a background in RF communications which heavily focuses on transmission theory. I have a background in circuit design which focuses quite a bit on how electrons and wires interact. I have a background in EM which covers the way these interactions create fields that interact with the world.

I'm telling you that the level of difference is so trivial as to be irrelevent. But every time I've said that, you've dismissed me, so I'm not going to bother again.

I don't really want to dive into this debate, since I haven't done the research or compared speaker wire myself. On the side that thinks expensive cable doesn't matter, it seem we often here "copper is copper". Is this really true? Are there different levels or quality of copper? Is some copper not as "pure" as copper used in other wires and therefore the pure one makes for a better wire?

Zarak,
Most companies advertise (and i would suspect then to use) cables with a core of 99.9xxxx% OFC (oxygen 'free' copper). Some also adverstise this as the level of copper purity (i.e. copper w/o any other significant amounts of metals).

The cable comparisons usually debated comes from using same gauge, OFC brands which all tout they have the 'purest' copper cores.

Would people be able to hear the differnence between 2 copper cables (same gauge) different brand?
No. The results show statistical random selection.

Would people be able to tell the difference between a copper core and a silver core?
Now that is a good question to ask.
Perhaps Alan knows if this has been tried at the NRC before.