22 AWG silver plated solid copper wire for speaker wire?

[Scottmoose]

= largely an oxymoron as you can generally only lower one at the price of raising the other, so as always, it's all about balance.

Looking at the maker's claims, inductance is reasonably low (although nothing I'd be rushing to write home about), although in fairness, the configuration does permit a lower capacitance than, say, a piece of normal zip cord or mains wire. Given that their capacitance is low enough to be a non-issue anyway, again, I wouldn't get over-excited. That said, if you want a brand-name wire, at least it's solid-core & not over-expensive compared to some of the insanity.

[G]

Originally posted by Scottmoose
= largely an oxymoron as you can generally only lower one at the price of raising the other, so as always, it's all about balance.

Looking at the maker's claims, inductance is reasonably low (although nothing I'd be rushing to write home about), although in fairness, the configuration does permit a lower capacitance than, say, a piece of normal zip cord or mains wire. Given that their capacitance is low enough to be a non-issue anyway, again, I wouldn't get over-excited. That said, if you want a brand-name wire, at least it's solid-core & not over-expensive compared to some of the insanity.

So inductance is the real bogeyman when it comes to speaker cables? As far as insanity I understand exactly what you mean. I stopped even looking at most offerings a long time ago. Although Nordost does make some interconnects called "Spellbinder" that aren't too expensive if you want to pay for the convenience of not having to build them.

[Scottmoose]

There isn't really a bogeyman WRT speaker wire -in the great scheme of things its influence should be relatively minor. 2 exceptions to that:

1/ Some of the more lunatic fringes of the the high-price wire market, where basic electrical engineering seems to be considered as beside the point. The results tend to share some of the dark inevitability of Greek Tragedy.

2/ If you actively desire the wire to act as a form of eq. This is related to the above, but is not quite the same. In the former case, it's tried almost at random, in the latter, it's a concious decision based on a technical basis.

Assuming for a moment you do not wish the wire to affect the behaviour of the components it's connecting, generally resistance is the critical aspect -it should be sufficiently low to keep voltage-drop to a minimum. Capacitance & inductance are usually best left in a reasonable balance (IMO). You can push one or the other to vanishingly low levels, but the price is that you will push its opposite number sky high. Theoretically, a zero-inductance wire for speaker duties in & of itself would be no bad thing, but in practice, it usually causes more problems than it solves due to the high capacitance. That can be dealt with via various methods (zobel networks etc) but by this stage, you're at the point of asking 'is it really worth it?' Different people will give you different answers to that one, but mine reads, 'no chance: life is too short.'

Of course, you can play with these LCR properties to your hearts content if you want your wire to act as a form of Eq.

[a.wayne]

Originally posted by Scottmoose
Very thin wire can be a useful means of adding some series resistance should it be required. In some cases it may also appear to improve the midband / HF clarity, probably because it can't handle the current requirements for major transient swings in the LF, so they get compressed relative to the rest of the audible BW.

Hmm. I might be loosing the plot here, but a high-capacitance cable is unlikely to cause HF losses. Excessive inductance, certainly. As audioholics note, the major issues of capacative wire tend to be seen in two related effects, due to loss of the power amp gain and phase margin.
1/ In the frequency domain, very significant gain peaking can occur. And
2/ In the time domain, the step response may have a much higher overshoot, and exhibit excessive ringing (at about the unity gain frequency) due to loss of power amp phase margin.

Such wire need a zobel over them at least. Better yet, don't muck about with them -it's generally more trouble than it's worth trying to reduce L or C properties to vanishingly low levels.

Agree ,

THE high inductance will give it a weaker low end and an emphasized top end ..

[Scottmoose]

'Other way round actually. Think of low pass filters. Excessive inductance causes HF roll-off. Ordinary 16ga zip cord for e.g. exhibits a ~0.25db drop at 20KHz due to wire inductance. Not exactly something to loose any sleep over...

[a.wayne]

Well in the end , your interconnects and speaker wire are nothing more than an RLC circuit , you can tune for taste by changing them , funny as many view the difference as good, better, best ....

[MJL21193]

Originally posted by a.wayne
Well in the end , your interconnects and speaker wire are nothing more than an RLC circuit , you can tune for taste by changing them , funny as many view the difference as good, better, best ....

Something like tuning a piano using telekinesis to turn the pins...very limited adjustment. Also like playing billiards with a rope.
Let the wire be the delivery system - cheap zip cord works wonders. "Tune" the crossover where there are components with significant resistance, inductance and capacitance.

[Scottmoose]

...assuming, of course, there is one.

[G]

What are you using in your system(s) Scott?

[Scottmoose]

Depends on the speakers & amplifiers I'm running, which in the recent past was constantly changing as I prototyped different boxes. At present, I'm not using anything at all, for the excellent reason that I don't have any kind of audio-system worth mentioning -unpleasent / painful story I won't bore you with. With any luck, I'll have something half-decent again in a couple of months or so.