Comment Re:Electrons no different (Score 5, Informative) 415
I noticed another electrical engineer responded to this as well, and already explained that the skin effect kicking in at 100KHz is dead wrong. I did my masters in RF engineering, and I had access to very expensive cable testing equipment (It was actually a system designed to test just about anything including amplifiers, but you could use it to test cable). Another grad student was wiring his house, and was pondering the same question, so we put the cables on the machine.
The Monstster cables did much better, but above 100MHz, way above anything you could ever hear. We tested 16 gauge lamp cord (YES LAMP CORD). It's spectrum was perfectly flat to within 0.1dB out to in excess of 10MHz. This FAR exceeds the 0.02MHz the human ear can hear. For audio purposes, it will work just FINE. As for shelding, the frequencies that you will pick up from that stretch of cable won't be audible. And if you're paranoid, stick an RF choke coil on your cord (you can get them at Radio Shack. You just wrap the cord through it). Those don't kick in until about 50+KHz anyway.
Video is a different ball of wax though since it deals with much higher frequencies. But after testing several cables, the mid-range stuff was not much different than the high end stuff in the area that counts (below 100MHz). The cheap stuff did start to have some attenuation issues above 10Mhz, but even then it wasn't that severe (1dB or less upto 50+Mhz). However in the higher frequencies, you have to worry about sheilding a little more as the frequencies that it will pick up via radiation could be visible. But any properly grounded coaxial cable will eliminate that.
As for ecording engineers, they are obsessive, but they aren't stupid enough to use straight cable. They use the same priciple as ethernet and twisted pair communications. They transmit the signal and the inverse of the signal and run them side by side. If one side picks up interference, the other side will too. But when you take the difference between the cables, it will remain exactly the same.
The Monstster cables did much better, but above 100MHz, way above anything you could ever hear. We tested 16 gauge lamp cord (YES LAMP CORD). It's spectrum was perfectly flat to within 0.1dB out to in excess of 10MHz. This FAR exceeds the 0.02MHz the human ear can hear. For audio purposes, it will work just FINE. As for shelding, the frequencies that you will pick up from that stretch of cable won't be audible. And if you're paranoid, stick an RF choke coil on your cord (you can get them at Radio Shack. You just wrap the cord through it). Those don't kick in until about 50+KHz anyway.
Video is a different ball of wax though since it deals with much higher frequencies. But after testing several cables, the mid-range stuff was not much different than the high end stuff in the area that counts (below 100MHz). The cheap stuff did start to have some attenuation issues above 10Mhz, but even then it wasn't that severe (1dB or less upto 50+Mhz). However in the higher frequencies, you have to worry about sheilding a little more as the frequencies that it will pick up via radiation could be visible. But any properly grounded coaxial cable will eliminate that.
As for ecording engineers, they are obsessive, but they aren't stupid enough to use straight cable. They use the same priciple as ethernet and twisted pair communications. They transmit the signal and the inverse of the signal and run them side by side. If one side picks up interference, the other side will too. But when you take the difference between the cables, it will remain exactly the same.
