Audio Systems: Just saying Hi, unstated implication, wheat from the chaff

Question
I have been in the audio field for many years.  Designed loudspeakers for Technics and Panasonic and others along the way.

Apprecite your comments on speaker wires. I have conducted blind listening test using panel members with golden ears and have never been able to determine the superiority of the so-called big fat wires.  In fact, I can measure differences in a length of wire using pulse techniques but no listening panel was ever able to differentiate between them.

By the way, I was a close friend of Bert Whyte and helped him in the voicing out of the B & W 801 series and others.  I was a principle in the development of the Technics Linear Time Aligned SB 7000 which to this day is still the most accurate reproducer of a true acoustic square wave - for whatever it is worth. It goes back to 1975.

Rgds,
Cleggsan


Answer
Hi,

Thanks for dropping the line. Yes, you've been around for some time. I remember your posts from the rec-audio news group days. Always respect someone who's both an IEEE life member and AES fellow.

Separating the wheat from the chaff, especially with respect to wire--both interconnects and speaker cable--seems to be a life long enterprise. Yes, I know one can *measure* certain wire characteristics, but IMHO whether or not they translate into significant, audible phenomena (i.e., does different wire alter the integrity of the signal chain) is an open question.

BTW, I get a kick out of the current spate of "high end" iPod cables--the unstated implication being that using expensive wire will somehow miraculously upconvert a lossy compressed audio file to uncompressed hi-fi, or at least make it sound "better".

Now I need to listen to some Green Day. They melt wire.

Regards,

Kevin