My latest thought has been to put 3 lengths, of solid 22 awg OFHC CDA101 annealed temper copper wire , inside 3 seperate lenghts of cotton sleeving with a low dieletric constant of about 1.3. Braid 4 groups, each made up of 3 cotton encased wires, and insert each braided assembly into 4 very low dielectric ptfe tubes. Seal the ends of the ptfe tubes, with silicone sealant and, twist two pairs and secure twists with shrink wrap about every foot. The two assemblies would allow amp to speaker connection for two speakers in a stereo setup.The 3 braided wires, should equal about 17awg which I thought, would be sufficient for 11.5ft lengths.
Has anyone tried this or know of a potential problem with this approach?
Has anyone tried this or know of a potential problem with this approach?
Not looking for a fight, but I have to weigh in yet again.
The biggest potential problem is you are spending a lot of time and money on something that is totally irrelevant for sound when you could be building better speakers, better amps, or buying more music.
I find 16 gauge zip cord to do just fine. I have to admit, I like the expensive fine strand stuff from Madisound because of it's flexibility. For my mains, I found 300 Ohm twin-lead works quite well. (old copper, not copper over iron) I just tin my ends and use either simple binding posts or terminal strips.
I don't suppose you know that foundries ADD oxygen to copper to float out impurities to make it a better conductor?
All that work on 11 feet of wire and you are going to feed a crossover and voice coil from an amp with an output choke and iron wire emitter resistors through a cheap relay and maybe a fuse. Please take a step back and consider the entirety of the system. Being a cheap-skate as well as an engineer, I spend my money where I will get results. Can speaker wire make it sound different? Yea, it can make it worse than zip cord.
The biggest potential problem is you are spending a lot of time and money on something that is totally irrelevant for sound when you could be building better speakers, better amps, or buying more music.
I find 16 gauge zip cord to do just fine. I have to admit, I like the expensive fine strand stuff from Madisound because of it's flexibility. For my mains, I found 300 Ohm twin-lead works quite well. (old copper, not copper over iron) I just tin my ends and use either simple binding posts or terminal strips.
I don't suppose you know that foundries ADD oxygen to copper to float out impurities to make it a better conductor?
All that work on 11 feet of wire and you are going to feed a crossover and voice coil from an amp with an output choke and iron wire emitter resistors through a cheap relay and maybe a fuse. Please take a step back and consider the entirety of the system. Being a cheap-skate as well as an engineer, I spend my money where I will get results. Can speaker wire make it sound different? Yea, it can make it worse than zip cord.
Yes I have thoughts. I want to see the rest of your system to know if what you are considering has any validity. Not to put a damper on the project but you must have an incredible set-up to even be considering this. If you have exhausted all other avenues for system improvement then this might be the right path. The problem I am having is that you use the word 'cheap' in your title.
Pictures and descriptions speak volumes.
Pictures and descriptions speak volumes.
Hi,
The whole process is nowhere near complicated enough to sound any good,
rgds, sreten.
Great comment sreten
You want cheap? Go get 2 lengths of solid core CAT5 network cable (preferrablly plenum with teflon insulation, but that is ~10x as expensive, so not as cheap), and extract a twisted pair and use that. You'll have enuff left over for 3 more systems.
Thick guage wire is highly over-rated.
I do believe that wire makes an audible difference, is very system dependent, and often more about how it drives the amp crazy than anything else.
dave
You want cheap? Go get 2 lengths of solid core CAT5 network cable (preferrablly plenum with teflon insulation, but that is ~10x as expensive, so not as cheap), and extract a twisted pair and use that. You'll have enuff left over for 3 more systems.
Thick guage wire is highly over-rated.
I do believe that wire makes an audible difference, is very system dependent, and often more about how it drives the amp crazy than anything else.
dave
Henry, we are picking on you as we have all been down this route and are offering the advice to get you past it sooner. Eventually we all learned that is is just not important and we spend our time and money on the more critical parts of the system. Dave on improving the breakup behavior of the driver for example.
I have seen $500 cables hooked up to a speaker with an electrolytic cap on the tweeter. I have seen a big box salesman sell $200 cables on a $200 set of speakers. Wanted to smack him, as the customer would have been far better served buying his $400 speakers and provided him a bigger margin. Ironic, speaker cables look like snakes. Snake oil. Usually they do no harm, but as Dave says, some can upset the amp and make things worse. ( like trying to use all the strands in a cat-5 cable in parallel on an amp without an output choke)
I have seen $500 cables hooked up to a speaker with an electrolytic cap on the tweeter. I have seen a big box salesman sell $200 cables on a $200 set of speakers. Wanted to smack him, as the customer would have been far better served buying his $400 speakers and provided him a bigger margin. Ironic, speaker cables look like snakes. Snake oil. Usually they do no harm, but as Dave says, some can upset the amp and make things worse. ( like trying to use all the strands in a cat-5 cable in parallel on an amp without an output choke)
Thanks for a good laugh!
Thanks for all the replies. The system is: OPPO BDP-95 or Meridian 506.24 > Audible Illussions M3A > Aragon 8008BB > B&W Nautilus 803 speakers and a Velodyne HGS10BG sub woofer. Presntly connections are, XLO reference 2 Series interconnects and, XLO Ultra 6 speaker cables. I am hoping to hear an improvement, via speaker cable design I described due to, reduced number of 22AWG wires in each leg to get to about 17AWG and, the cotton sleeving, ptfe and braiding.
Henry Rancourt
Henry Rancourt
It is susceptible to fatigue and breaking but i don't find it too much. It breaks were it is stripped and bent to go into the connector on the pomonas. In 6 or so years of using the cable and switching speakers ALOT (which is when they are stressed) i've had to "shorten" the cable 4-5 times. In a install & leave situation failure would be much less common.
I did give up on the ribbon cables made with erse copper foil failed so often i put them aside.
dave
- Status
- This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.