Speaker Wire Elevators

[jollyrgr]

I want to know what the PSEUDO SCIENCE is behind speaker wire elevators. I know they do not do anything but what is the "theory" behind elevating speaker wire using these elevators? Some people use wine glasses, others use commercially available cable elevators. http://www.amusicdirect.com/products/de ... ?sku=AELEV<p>I know what the ad says (eliminates static build up and reduces capacitace) but just exactly what is supposed to change in the sound quality? Do note that this same company is selling 2 meters of speake wire for $1000. (See for yourself if you don't believe me.) <p>I guess I'm in the wrong business. At least I can sleep at night.<p>[ April 13, 2004: Message edited by: Jolly Roger ]</p>

[perfectbite]

Under digital cables they have a 1 meter (2 wire?) cable for $600. Talk about having a 'golden ear'. Maybe it is recording studio stuff or maybe that is the Pentagon's pricing slipped in by mistake?

[Externet]

Hello Jolly. You may want to ask them some questions...<p>"By elevating the cables off of your floor, you eliminate static build- up"...
-->¿Where does the static build-up ? IF this was somewhere near real, the speaker wires are about 1 Ohm DC resistance from each other and if the static is referenced to the floor; increasing the distance would make things worse.

..."and lower cable capacitance."...
-->Between what and what and by how much? 1pF ? Was it measured ? With which instrument ?<p>..."The net effect is a lower noise floor"...
-->Or lower floor noise? By how many deciBels?<p>..." and increased dynamics"...
-->How many deciBels headroom increase ?

..."as well as removing haze from the midrange"...
-->Define haze !<p> ..."opening up the top octaves"...
-->Define opening and exactly which octaves <p> ..."for better extension"...
-->More babbling<p> ..."and expanding the overall depth"...
-->More golden ears pharaphernalia<p> ..."and width of the soundstage."
-->¿What?<p>..."The porcelain Cable Elevator Plus is coated with a non-conductive glaze"...
-->As if porcelain needed it to be non conductive ! <p> ..."to further reduce susceptability to EMI/RFI interference.".
-->Oh, so now we see hi-tech wording ; how can an insulator reduce EMI/EFI ?<p>..."The Elevators make an audible improvement and we have hundreds of customer testimonials to prove it!"...
-->The audible improvement testimonials can be heard by wallets that have ears. Yes, cowshit in its purest diarrhea form. With hundreds of idiot's testimonies.<p>By the way; using the opportunity, I am selling specially aged Malasian peanut butter sandwiches that when attached with duct tape to the south side of a speaker cabinet; cancel the interference between the earth magnetic field and the speaker magnetic field, yielding superb high end sound from mediocre speakers, for only $99.99 , does not include the reusable 4" wide tape, sold as an option for $49.99 Net prices plus handling, owner's manual, insurance and shipping.<p>Miguel

[Dean Huster]

I checked with our resident expert on this subject, Ron H. and he assures me that this is NOT pseudoscience. True leaded-glass (i.e., "crystal") wine glasses have superior sonic qualities over other methods of insulating wires. Normally, using wine glasses like this would not be a necessary thing to do if you had 100% pure cotton carpet on the floor with a 100% cotton pad underneath. But most synthetic carpets exhibit such a high dielectric constant that the capacitance from speaker wire to floor is so high that the highs beyond a frequqency of around 15 MHz become almost impossible to hear -- a very noticeable effect, of course.<p>By using the wine glasses, you put space between the wire and the floor. Normally, glass has a high dielectric constant, higher even than the carpet material, but the lead in effect swamps the dielectric to the point that you get the full insulating value of the glass and an extremely low dielectric constant such that the wire capacitance is less than 10pF per foot of run.<p>Understand that you cannot use these wine glasses unless they are empty and CLEAN. If you have any contamination on the glass or if they contain any amount of wine, the glasses will resonate, no two at the same frequency, and the sound quality from your system will suffer dramatically, with several notches in the spectrum, one for each contaminated glass.<p>For even better performance, you can make brackets for the wine glasses so that you can hang them (and the speaker cable) from the ceiling, far away from the carpeting. Since plaster and sheet rock is normally non-conductive, this method of running the cable is superior to a run along the floor. If you have plaster walls that contain (in addition to the normal lathe) a chicken wire backing, the ceiling mounting is even better since you have a ground plane to work against and your speaker cable can then be tuned, using a spectrum analyzer and/or a time-domain reflectometer, much like a standard transmission line.<p>Pseudoscience! Bah! You folks have no faith!<p>Dean

[Ron H]

By golly, Dean, you've quoted me almost verbatim! I'm glad to see that there is at least one techno-weenie (besides me) who has seen the light.
I have a good stock of slightly used but guaranteed clean wine glasses (leaded, of course) that I can let go for a pittance. You can email me at [email protected] for prices.<p>Onward and upward in our quest for the ultimate orgasmic listening experience!<p>Ron

[Edd]

Good grief Charlie Brown… the audio”fool”s have struck again!
Sounds like some neophyte was browsing the National Library of Congress and happened to have picked up a Power Transmission Lines Are Us Monthly and visualized incorporating some of their extreme high voltage techniques forward into the extreme opposite spectrum;e.g. low Z hi current audio speaker lines.
Picofarad capacitance effects on speaker lines….bah humbug.
Looks there is more info at :
http://www.audionut.com/pk4/store.pl?section=6<p><<That is an electrical signal passing through a conductor (cabling) produces a desirable mechanical resonance that is dampened when placed on the floor.>>…..
I’m sure you guys occasionally sit there and watch your cabling vibrate in unison to the signals passing thru it

[jollyrgr]

Since I was a little kid I've heard about the carburetor that gets 100+ miles to the gallon of gasoline. You know the one that the oil companies and "Detroit" have been hiding since the gas shortages of the 1970's? You do not have to make any other modifications to your car's engine, just bolt this fancy carburetor to the intake manifold, hook up the linkage and fuel line, and so on and now you get all these extra miles to the gallon. <p>The amazing thing is I STILL hear this same story from people that actually work on car engines and know quite a lot. To dispell this myth I have them explain how an internal combustion engine works and how the carb functions. It is even better when they can explain fuel-air ratio. (FYI A fuel-air ratio of 12:1 is very rich while 15:1 is extremely lean.) I then ask about how the throttle works. Soon they have explained themselves into a corner and shown themselves that this piece of magic does not exist. For the those that do not understand engines it is quite a bit harder to explain the carburetor away.<p>The speaker elevators really get to me. Could you imagine if the engineer that recommends this junk had designed the bridge you cross on the way to work or designed the control system of the jet you took last week? I can imagine this person now: "Okay, instead of concrete and steel rebar, we'll use some paster of Paris and chicken wire." or "There is noise in the control system of the ailerons causing flutter? Go shield it with this flattened out Coke can."

[Externet]

Hi Jolly.
There is an error...
"...The engineer that recommends this junk..." Should say... the clown that recommends this junk.
Miguel

[Ed B.]

Hi Guys -
What about elevator speakers ? (MUZAK< ETC)
Do they have long drooping loops of 600/46 Litz wire from the building roof to the elevator car ? That would almost certainly keep down the "Skin Effect" losses at audio frequencies and therefore increase the efficiency of the system.
So many possibilities of making money !
Ed B.

[rshayes]

If you assume an 8 ohm speaker driven by an 8 ohm source, the impedance level of the wiring to the speaker is 4 ohms. If a 25 foot cable has a capacitance of 30 pF per foot, the shunt capacitance would be 750 pF total. This would cause a 3 dB drop at about 53 MHz. At 30 KHz, the effect would be about .00001%. The effect of changing the capacitance by a few pF per foot would be even smaller than this. Since the assumed values are probably high, the actual effect would be even smaller than the estimate.<p>Now look at the series inductance. If the cable impedance was 50 ohms, the inductance would be about 50 nH per foot. The 25 foot cable would have a total inductance of 1.25 uH. This would combine with the series resistance of 16 ohms to cause a 3 dB drop at about 2 MHz. The effect at 30 KHz would be about .01%. This is a thousand times more significant, and it won't be changed at all by non-magnetic material.<p>If this was really a problem, the real solution would be to connect the speakers to the amplifier with 8 ohm coax cable. This would eliminate the effect of surrounding dielectric materials. This would be a matched system if the speaker impedance was actually 8 ohms. At most frequencies in the audio range, this isn't true, due to mechanical resonances in the speaker and the voice coil inductance. The frequency response errors due to mismatch would be in the several percent range at best. Speaker damping might be poor also. The connectors would probably have to be assembled with pipe wrenches.<p>Incidently, 8 ohm traces on a printed circuit board would probably be an impressive sight.<p>[ April 13, 2004: Message edited by: stephen ]</p>

[Chris Smith]

Most can not appreciate Motzart, let alone their own ears? <p>And the perfect combustion of gas and air is 14 to one. 14 pounds of air, to one of gas.<p>The BTUs of gas are 17k to 19k,... per pound of gas, and 100 miles per gallon can not be achieved unless the weight of the vehicle and air flow over it permit,... in any vehicle. <p>All of the above is from a enginers degree or education.

[rshayes]

Hello Ed,<p>If you are going to extremes, you might as well go all the way. General Cable (which bought Carol Wire & Cable) lists 1924/24 wire. They suggest wiring diesel locomotives with it. I suspect that you would need a sledge hammer to install it.<p>[ April 13, 2004: Message edited by: stephen ]</p>

[perfectbite]

To put this in a little perspective, if the wine glass insulators were an 'AS SEEN ON TV' set for 3 easy payments of $19.99 we'd all be laughing instead of being astounded and incredulous. I think the price tag is what is stunning coupled with the buy this or die right now attitude. BUT, here in the East SF Bay Area there are car wheel cover devices called spinners that cost $2,500 per wheel. When the car stops it looks like the wheels are still turning as these chromed inner discs rotate at a stop light. It is a young man's accessory. $10,000 per car and not a bit of performance.
Polish the wine glasses babe, the leaded crystal ones, I got Kenny G's latest CD.

[dyarker]

Even calling it pseudoscience is more credit than it deserves. I agree with Stephen.<p>A number of years ago in Radio Electronics (maybe Electronics Now shortly after name change), there were some articles investigating speaker cables and tube vs transistor. O'scopes, distortion analyzers, spectrum analyzers, calibrated mics; and blind tests with "golden ears". 12Ga 2 conductor "romex" AC cable was just as good as the "gold plated strands in oxygen free jacket" stuff.<p>Capacitance to the floor? :p Capacitance is any two conductors separated by an insulator. Unless you live on a steel hulled ship there is 0.000000 capacitance between the speaker wires and the floor. Even on a steel deck, the capacitance to the wires is much less than that between the wires.<p>Static is a bigger joke! Static takes movement to generate. Do you constantly slide the wires across the carpet, or walk on them? Elevating could increase static due to air currents.<p>The folks selling $1000 cable are most likely related to PT Barnam. At one sale per week per employee, they would make a good living. But, "A sucker is born every minute." If you buy cable elevators let me know; there's this mountain top in Florida I want to subdivide.

[haklesup]

This is a prime example of how those few with money to burn can distinguish themselves with technology that although there is some (very some) scientific explanation to support the need (by the way, Bravo! Stephen for your analysis) the actual benifit to real live humans is negligable (an overstatement). I doubt my dog could hear the difference and my speakers certainly can't keep up anyway above 20Khz.<p>Notice that the installation of these would be very visable (and look great in a room with low voltage cable lighting) in most circumstances, supporting the "show off" effect luxurey items create. The sound may not actually be better to my ears but I would feel better about the sound because of my investment (See Cognitive Dissonance)<p>I have to give them credit though, these guys are briliant marketers. Most of us wouldn't waste our money on this stuff but as any airline knows, most of the money is made on first class tickets, not coach. Sales of premium goods demand the largest markup and often modest advertizing to targeted customers (no commercials on NBC).<p>They may have (and I certainly don't know this for a fact) bought a truckload or insulators at an auction, thought up an application later and then sugar coated it with a thin varnish of science.<p>8 ohm speaker cables, another Briliant idea. What would they look like?<p>Static charge does not always need something to move (Tribocharging). You can generate quite an induced charge just being in the proximity of a television screen for example. And while people are usually careful not to walk on the cables, walking nearby or moving curtains etc is quite common. I think that the presence (or not) of static charge on the outside of a speaker cable would present a similarly negligable effect on the sound unless it built up to the point where it would arc and cause a popping sound directly. <p>Does anybody have a THD analyzer. A simple experiment could show if elevators have a preceptable or measurable effect. Here is a link for a program that works with sound cards to do an assortment of Audio analysis and they have a free demo
Audio Analysis S/W