+1 to the article especially the cable lie, bi-wiring lie and golden ear lie.
Recently I have spent money on buying the so called speaker cables which do something special to the audio signal flowing through them. Special dielectric which bounces back the signal, cryogenics which makes your speaker cable some kind of superconductor at room temperature and other technology that can shame modern day physicists. They sound the same as a home constructed 12AWG cable. Remember that the best that a cable can do is to be neutral. However you will find people saying that a particular cable improves the mid, makes the sound sweet, and attribute other musical adjectives. I agree that it is impossible for a cable to have zero capacitance and zero inductance. But these can be minimized by having the cable unzipped (have air as dielectric) and without any winding in its path from the amp to the speaker. At normal speaker cable length the capacitance will be in few pico farads and will have no perceptible effect.
Other than aesthetics, self satisfaction and psycho-acoustics, these cables serve no purpose. But I am still keeping my ears (and mind) open for the day when I hear a difference between a good thick copper wire and an exotic cable.
As far as interconnects are concerned, they can make a difference by having better noise shielding and better conductivity per meter of cable. The voltage levels from Turntable cartridge, most audio sources are quite less and it makes sense to have shorter, better shielded and thick copper/silver cables.
Biwiring in speaker can reduce the DC resistance by half. But in the path, the speaker, the crossover has the biggest impedance (> 4ohms or > 8 ohms). By reducing the resistance by few milli ohms, the portion of circuit from the amp to the speaker terminal, overall impedance of this series circuit will hardly change. Even in interconnects, where input impedance is in the order of kilo ohms or mega ohms, having the wires, rca plugs of silver will not make any difference.
EDIT: Need to also add about the connector lie. I am sure connectors like the WBT, Eichmann bullet plug will make no difference other than making your wallet lighter. I will make my comments when I receive my mogami cable with Eichman bullet plug. I have so far made connections with bare wire, spade, banana plugs, siltech connectors on my cadence setup with absolutely no perceivable difference between any of the methods. There is also a fancy explanation of eddy currents being the culprit which spoils your audio when you use a RCA plug with round collar
. If this is not enough, Cardas even goes to the extent of using the golden ratio for the rational behind cardas cables.
