25 pair cat 5 cable for speaker cable?

[mpmarino]

I want to try using 25 pair cat 5 cable for speaker cable. Can you say...garden hose?

Questions:
1) is this a reasonable idea? It certainly would be tidy.

2) how shouild I wire it? Primary colors for pos. and secondary colors for neg. <<or>> half of the twisted pairs together for pos and the other half for neg?

Thanx in advance for any suggestions..

[Cal Weldon]

25 pair? Should be good for a 100 foot run or maybe bi-wiring your six-ways.

You are going to strip them before braiding aren't you?

[mpmarino]

should I strip and braid?? These things I don't know! I was thinking run it as is . What is the reason for braiding? I had thought the cable would be pretty optimal as is..but like I said, these things I do not know!..

I do have plans to biamp so there certainly would be room for the future. Am I better off just using 4 pair? Quantity of either is no problem.

[Cal Weldon]

My apologies, I was really just having some fun with you.

I think that may be an unecessary amount of cable. Mind you there are such varying opinions on this that perhaps I should have answered more seriously. I am a believer that if you are going to that kind of effort, make sure the rest of your equipment is deserving. IMHO there's no point in putting gold plated wheels on a Chevy.

For short runs I use 14ga. lamp cord. For long runs I use 10 ga.

I just can't make sense of boutique cables. I feel the monies can be better used on things like the drivers, XO and box. One mistake in the XO renders any advantage the boutique cable has useless. If you have done everything you can think of to improve your system, then it's time to invest you time and/or money into the cables. But, I've seen people go buy Monster or other cable before they even change the position of the speakers. I just shake my head.

I would suggest you try for yourself and use one strand each channel and compare it with 25 pairs in an A/B test. You might also want to try stripping a few and braiding them and use this in your test as well. If you notice a difference, come back and tell us. If not, consider yourself lucky, you just saved some wire.

[davidlzimmer]

Look here. http://www.venhaus1.com/diycatfivecables.html

[mpmarino]

Thanks all...

The cable is all free and at hand to me. I was trying to gain the 'benefit' of cat 5 without the effort and pain in the rear of braiding etc. The 25 pair stuff is surprisingly thin and neatly arrainged internally. I'll give it a try sometime and post back in comparison to my lamp cord

[phn]

I agree with Cal.

But just for fun. 25 cables x 8 leads of 0.2 qmm=40 qmm. That's 20 qmm, or 4 AWG, for plus and minus respective.

Regardless of how many you parallel (I can see no use for more than three), you should run them "Primary colors for pos. and secondary colors for neg." Cross-talk is the whole purpose of using the Cat 5 cable.

[mpmarino]

LOL...I'm gonna use it just because it's so rediculous 4 guage, he he..I never thought of it that way

[woodturner-fran]

Did you have a look at the tnt audio website - they have done alot of work on this.

I made their TNT triple t speaker cable. Suitable for biwire/biamp. Worth paying their site a visit, theres a lot of info there and good directions..

Fran

[davidsrsb]

25 pairs in parallel may be going too far into high capacitance territory.
If your ampplifier does not have an output inductor, watch out for oscillation.