Manufacturer's Feedback on Cable Measurements

Empirical Audio

Gene - great study, thanks. I will remeasure my inductance, but I think it is correct. I think that the discrepency is that my inductance measurements were made before adding my "anti-resonance" ferrite beads. This will definitely add inductance that is not part of the cable. The termination acts much as a zobel, but I believe it's better, since it source-terminates the cable, eliminating high-frequency transmission-line effects. As with your statements about the Zobel network and the Goertz cable, the EA cable should have been measured without the Ferrite terminations. This did not occur to me when I sent the cables, or I would have removed one of the spade-lugs to allow removal of the ferrites.

If you would consider a more interesting metric: the product of L*C or R*L*C for those cables with the lowest inductance, you will find that the EA Clarity 7 has the lowest product. This is interesting because low resistance, low inductance AND low capacitance are all important for speaker cables, with R and L being most important. It is easy to get low inductance, but not without getting high capacitance in the bargain. The Clarity7 accomplishes this:

Inductance (uH/ft) Product L*C (uH*pF/ft^2)

• Audience - .055 8.05
• Goertz - .021 6.86
• Cardas SE-9 - .05 14.5
• EA Clarity 7 .062 6.05
  

If you take my measurements:

• EA Clarity 7 .034 3.32
  

If you examine all three metrics together, L, R, C by looking at the L*C product or the R*L*C product, the Clarity7 comes out on top.

This is why I believe that the Clarity 7 is one of the best performing speaker cables on the market. It is no coincidence that the cables above are among the most popular cables with savvy audiophiles.

If you would introduce this metric, I think it would be instructive and beneficial to more easily analyze the results.

Best Regards,

Steve Nugent
Empirical Audio

Audioholics Response

Good point about the ferrite and I do agree that is a sound idea to have it included since you cable is a bit higher in capacitance than the norm. While I understand your comment about RC products, I don't see its relevancy since the product of the two is a meaningless metric. Yes you are correct many low L cables have higher C than yours, but from a performance standpoint I am not sure how your RC product would factor in per se.

 

I think the commentary on your website about skin effect should be updated since we clearly demonstrated that none of the cables in our review suffer ill effects for their intent and purposes. In fact, your cable is about on par with ordinary zip cord in that respect.

 

For additional commentary with Steve Nugent peruse our dedicated forum for Speaker Cable Face Off II .

Axiom Audio

Thanks for the inclusion in the article - looking forward to the conclusion! We did release banana plugs last month - have you seen them? We're very happy with the quality of them, and the locking features. Is that what you meant, or were you thinking of something different?

Best,

Amie Colquhoun

Audioholics Response

Thanks for the update. While your banana plugs do appear to be of good quality and value, we really dig the compression style ones currently used by River Cable, Tributaries and a few other manufacturers. These banana connectors slide into the receptacles and then you can screw the outer connector shield down which drives a pin into the center of the banana connection, splitting the tines open and locking the connection tight.

 

Note the spring-loaded cross-bar which drives the pin forward, opening the tines (spreading open the banana plug) as it is pushed down.

 

 

It is truly a remarkable connector and one of the best we've seen. Everyone should use these as far as we’re concerned. They lock the connector in tight and can be removed with ease once manually loosened.