News travels fast!

PAC

A little humbled to see the publication of my first article here: 
http://www.downunderaudio.com/

news travels fast!

Docfoster

Good work! :-)

uglymusic

Excellent stuff Paul.

PAC

Thanks Guys. Its one of several to come!

Alan

Looks good Paul, well done!

PAC

Thanks Alan. Its a dry subject, but I feel often overlooked in favour of subjectivism. 

Docfoster

I was pleased to read point 2. I've always thought that too.

Brain_Dead

Sorry removed

Brain_Dead

Sorry removed

Alan

OOh - two heavy hitters circling before slugging it out...

(Its slightly different here to WigWam where Paul & Serge go at it!)

You chaps are going to have to monitor (or moderate) your own civility & respect levels in this discussion, as I have no idea what you are talking about! Play nice...

PAC

 no worries Alan, no slugging going on!

Thanks for the comments Colin, appreciated.

With respect to the silver/copper argument, you and I are both correct. My comments centre on the fact that two differing materials with respect to conductivity can share similar electrical characteristics by altering the size of one or both, but your point noted.  By decreasing the size of the silver strand (for argument's sake) so that we have a conductor of equal conductivity/m as a slightly larger copper strand, the intercation with the dielectric will indeed change slightly due to the size change, but will it change audibly?  I suspect that for the voltages being considered and the value of the dielectric dissipation for the same insulator, the effects would be all but inaudible. I was trying to keep things simple!  Regarding inductance, the value in Henry's for any given interconnect carrying such a tiny current is IMHO too small to be of significant merit when looking at bandwidth response, (not so in 'speaker cables though).

The statement regarding litz was with respect to external noise picked up, and your conclusion is of course correct in that the way to mitigate is with a Faraday Shield which was the point I was trying to make, ie shielded coax is superior for that reason.  

I take you point Colin about the example where a source component could be "bright" where that may not be in the recording.  My personal believe is that even for bright sounding sources, interconnects should not be designed to tame or otherwise alter the signal.  The more revealing or transparent the signal cables, the better IMHO. If that then points to a perceived brightness elsewhere in the chain which was previously attributed to cables or whatever then that for me would be a positive, as it helps isolate the source of the brightness in this example.  I wasn't suggesting that source components were bright, as most if not all these days should be capable of a flat FR.  

I don't agree at all though that the write up is biased. It was an attempt at honesty, and written in simple terms to appeal to a wider audience than audio engineers. That's often the problem with us engineers, we sometimes have difficulty in expressing things succinctly in layman's terms and when we do, we can be accused by others of over simplifying!

I think we both know Colin that there's much more to it, as you suggested, but I suspect most people would give up reading half way through if that level of design detail was entered into, plus even amongst engineers there is not always agreement about what effects are significant enough to be of real concern.  I applaud any designer for looking at things with the eye of perfection, but often the detail at those levels of perfection does not always translate to audibly significant effects IMHO.  I'll be more careful in future to qualify comments so that whilst remaining simple, further explanation where necessary will be given.  That should at least keep more people happy!   

uglymusic

Paul has asked that this conversation be continued in private. It's getting quite technical and I agree that's the beset place for it.