NOS1 on spikes

[Scroobius]

My recent experience (and big surprise) was that cheap bare copper speaker wire (& enamelled twisted) performed much much better than expensive ptfe coated copper speaker wire that was of excellent construction (properly Litzendraht wound) and high quality copper. So the only real difference between the two was the PTFE coating on the copper strands in the expensive speaker cable. But PTFE dielectric constant is about as good as you can get in plastic. Maybe there is some other mechanism at work?.

Certainly these guys  http://www.ocellia.com/Anglais/a-welcome.html  (check out the section under "Cables" "MDI" http://www.ocellia.com/Anglais/a-mdi.html ) seem to think so and they use only natural materials rather than plastic of any type.

Paul

[Tore]

Steen Duelund about plastic: As I hear it, it must have a kind of memory - much like the effect
known from capacitors, and thereby works as an active element in the
dimension of time, where it should be silent. This effect explains why
it sounds of more than is measured.

http://www.steenduelund.dk/download/kabler%20intro.pdf

[Scroobius]

Hi Tore - Good article and very interesting the author seems to have the same rigour to his testing as does someone else around here that I can think of  some really interesting points though.

I have not tried them myself but some say that quantum purifiers substantially remove/reduce the difference between different types and materials of speaker cables so maybe they address a fundamental problem in the transmission of the signal along the cable. It would be great to have the time to make a thorough investigation with a "golden eared" listening panel. It seems that for all the fancy prices of speaker cable on the market that the suppliers have not really investigated the fundamentals.

I am not sure about "MDI" its only a theory and the technical paper is not technical at all. It is interesting that my original teflon coated speaker cables took some burning in but the bare copper cables and the lacquer coated cables needed no burning in. Also as far as I could tell bare copper and lacquer coated sounded the same. If the MDI theory worked then maybe we could expect the lacquer coated cables to sound as bad as teflon coated. So maybe there is another reason but for sure plastic appears to be a bad thing.
Paul

[CoenP]

Shure there must be a mechanical difference between pfte (or other plastic) and a laquer coating causing a different mechanical resonance. Think of a violin coated with pfte, though copper is much less resonant than wood of course.

Regards, Coen

[GerardA]

FWIW I think the plastic is responsible for the memoryeffect and colouration like a bad capacitor. (Even teflon does not give the best capacitors). The resonance gets less if the cable is stiff and when you twist some bare cables together they get more stiff.
It's good to hear the enamel does not alter the sound.
I did not try really bare wire since this is going to be oxidized to quickely!

[Bigear]

For who is interested and to come back to the topic, I compared the plexiglass Quadraspire QX feets with the the Ebony wood spikes recommended by Hein (thanks  ). The Quadraspires sounded more spacious, however the Ebony spikes more natural.

[Bigear]

Latest upgrade on the spike front... African Blackwood cubes (I bought them at Musical Affairs), put below the NOS1 gives a significant improvement in sound. A huge soundstage and improved instrument/voice seperation. Voices and instruments get more 'body', an effect I have not heard before when using spikes.
A great bang for the buck....IMHO.