speaker cable, why is it never twisted Options

[Speedskater]

Some "Good Engineering Practices" can not be ABX tested. [********}

That is the usual cop-out which gets rejected time and again on this forum.

If you wish to make claims you need to provide proof. The burden is not on me to prove that such claims could never be right.

OK, I think I see where the problem is.

Nowhere in my excerpts or in the original papers do I or the authors claim that twisted pair cables sound better or even different than any or cable construction. The only claim is that they reduce the susceptibility to potential interference problems. This is very different than claiming better sound.

Each person can have their own view has to how big a potential problem this may be in a specific situation. But much of both Mr. Brown's and Mr. Ott's career has been spent studying EMI/RFI problems so I'll stick with their recommendations.

[Arnold B. Kruege...]

Mr. Krueger, out of curiosity, do you own an ABX comparator box as I suspected earlier?

Yes, actually several. After all, I invented them!

In-wall NEC CL2/3 rated speaker wire is always twisted pairs, at least that I've come across, so I tried to find if that's a stipulation in NEC Article 640, 400, or 725, but my Google powers faded on me so I gave up. [I provide that link in case anyone else wants to run with it.]

Another reason an in-wall wire might be twisted is it then can be encapsulated with another plastic sheath and the circular cross section then becomes easier to fish through holes without getting snagged.

Yes, I was trying to allude to that sort of thing. Not about sound quality, its about getting the job done quickly and easily.

@greynol, I take it you are considering the possibility of recording two segments by tapping the signal at the speaker terminals to then use fb2k ABX, right? [Yes, do that. Don't use a mic.] But my question is how do you time align the two recordings during the playback test? Manually?

Aligning recordings within a few milliseconds is pretty straight forward using any good audio editor.

Restarting from the beginning still may have a "tell", a giveaway, in that the listener would be subconsciously picking up on the different delays before the music starts.

If you switch quickly, time offsets of more than a few milliseconds are heard as an echo. If you don't switch quickly, listener sensitivity to small differences is hurt.

[Porcus]

This is a thread where I think the references to TOS#8 are not appropriate.
- First, the OP's question was why (s)he has hardly seen twisted speaker cables – even if the explanation were to serve sound quality, that is not a TOS#8 issue (TOS#8 would apply to a claim that it does in fact make a difference, not to intention). Now AFAIK there are quite a lot of twisted speaker cables, but the factual issue does not introduce any TOS#8 relevance.
- Second, suppose you have a case at hand where construction principles do matter sometimes but rarely – but can be safeguarded against, with a tried and tested construction at the extra cost of a cup of coffee? If the purpose is to save you from having to do the same job twice, why require that the job is done twice and then tested for difference?

(Would I get RFID issues by using a nonshielded cable from antenna? Anyone?)

(The RF field was quite strong, if I hovered the palms of my hands just above the keyboard of my PC it would type random characters..)

Did you wear your tin foil hat?

This post has been edited by Porcus: Nov 10 2012, 13:58

[greynol]

Post #5 was a bit of a borderline case. It was stated that one always should twist + and - conductors in order to reduce noise with what to me appears to be a clear implication that it will affect sound quality (why else would you care?). Post #10 did temper it by rephrasing to "if you have a interference problem," however.

This post has been edited by greynol: Nov 11 2012, 00:18

[splice]

Did you wear your tin foil hat?

I did wear my hard hat the day the antenna wire broke and fell on the house. It also trailed across the long grass next to the driveway and charred it, and I had to put a chair out on the access road to prevent anyone driving over the wire. Because it broke at the far end, the transmitter was still more or less correctly loaded so it didn't trip out. I had trouble convincing the studio that it had broken, they could still hear it OK on their off-air monitor.

My 2 cents worth on the speaker cable issue: Twisting won't hurt, but it won't make any difference from an audio quality point of view. There may be situations where it might reduce interference etc.

[Porcus]

Twisting cable also decreases its length - the harder you twist it the shorter it gets. So twisting speaker cable increases its resistance per foot slightly, and also makes it a little more expensive to produce.

Even 'non-twisted' ordinary stranded speaker cables often have each channel twisted around itself. I suppose that the spring effect is what makes them more resistant against a jerk (pun intended).

[splice]

... Even 'non-twisted' ordinary stranded speaker cables often have each channel twisted around itself. I suppose that the spring effect is what makes them more resistant against a jerk (pun intended).

That's a manufacturing issue. The individual strands are twisted to keep them in a round planform so the sheath can be extruded over them