Wire

[zega55]

Hi guys I need a hand .
wich wire should I use in my speaker.
I mean litz or solid.
Can you show me were to read about that .
Thanks

[Iain McNeill]

My personal preference is to use a good gauge stranded wire. Something like a 16 gauge for small low power speakers up to 12 gauge for more powerful speakers.

You'll need a good soldering iron for the thicker (12) gauge and crimps may be better for the driver connections assuming you have access to a good crimp tool. I've had the solder tags melt off some drivers when soldering on heavy duty wire

Litz wire is for radio frequency work where the skin effect starts to become significant and current flows on the surface of conductors. No worries for audio here.

Solid wire can be used. it just gets a bit stiff and hard to work with.

Twist the pairs of wires to each speaker together to make it look neat and minimize any radiation/crosstalk.

[zega55]

So if I would use solid wire for tweeter and woofer it would work ok.Well would a hier gauge wire for tweeter and thicker wire for woofer make a better sounding speaker.Can I make a tweeter lese harsh with some kinde of a wire and do you have an idea?By the way thanks for the post it helped a lot.

[Brett]

One thing to recall with Litz type arrangements for speakers is that it drives up capacitance, especially for long and/or thick runs. I've heard of some of those large Cat5 braids that were common a while back driving some receivers and low Q SS amps into oscillation.

AS I usually have efficient designs and don't use a lot of power and usually short runs, I use Cat5 as I have boxes of it. Sometimes single, sometimes multiple pairs and I account for it in the implementation of the system.

Wire is waaaaaaaaaaay overrated.

[Cal Weldon]

Originally posted by zega55
Can I make a tweeter lese harsh with some kinde of a wire

No you will need resistors wired in a pattern of series and parallel called an L-pad. That is if by harsh you mean "too much"

[Iain McNeill]

Are you talking about wiring your speakers to your amplifier or wiring your drivers inside the speaker cabinet?


Either way, I don't really like solid wire because it's too stiff and never goes where I want it. It's bad for inside speakers because it can put a strain on the driver terminals, causing them to break off.

The speaker wire isn't going to make much effect on the speaker sound unless you have an amplifier with a high output impedance such as an open loop tube amp.

[Brett]

Originally posted by Iain McNeill
Either way, I don't really like solid wire because it's too stiff and never goes where I want it. It's bad for inside speakers because it can put a strain on the driver terminals, causing them to break off.

Cat5 or 24g is hardly heavy, even when using all 8 conductors paired. If that caused your terminal to be likely to break off I'd assume that there are quality limitations in that driver.

[Iain McNeill]

True, I was thinking "Romex"

That'll snap the legs of tweeters in a heartbeat

[Brett]

Originally posted by Iain McNeill
True, I was thinking "Romex"

That'll snap the legs of tweeters in a heartbeat

Only toy audiophile units.
Get thee a real HF driver.



Bwahahaha

[Iain McNeill]