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RE: Here's a clue............

This is a measurement error. Here's why.

Consider hooking up an ideal dummy 8 Ohm load directly to an amplifier without any intervening cable (using spade lugs or whatever). What is the percent distortion in the current through that resistor? The answer is that it's the same as the distortion of the amplifier, because of the simple Ohm's law relationship between voltage and current.

Now connect from the amplifier to the load a cable which is ideal in the sense that it has no distortion, but non-ideal in the sense that the series impedance of each wire of the cable (measured end-to-end) is not zero. We now have a current whose distortion is the same as that of the amplifier, going through the series impedance of the cable. If we measure the voltage drop across the one wire of the cable, it is not zero, because its impedance is not zero. What is the measured distortion if we measure across the cable? It's the same as that of the amplifier if the impedance is resistive, and will be more if it's inductive.

Therefore the claim that this measures the distortion of the cable itself is false. The distortion measured depends strongly on that of the amplifier.


Edits: 03/20/08 03/20/08
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