To make life much harder for the amp ?
When capacitance of the cable is increased inductance drops down.
A few meters of typical cable can have inductance something like several uH. Reactance of some 0.5 Ohm or so can be expected in some cases.
IMO such differences are not of a biggest concern in most of cases.
I have tested myself and cannot differentiate signal differences <1dB.
Well good low impedance cables are coaxes for induction heating or for HF AC distribution as well as transposed flat and flex cables, RUPALIT 05, for instance I doubt you'll be able to bear the price. Connecting two 50 Ohm cables one gets 25. You can make one by using copper stripes and Kapton or decent PET tape as conductor insulation and heat-shrink tubing as outer shell. You'll get quite flexible very low impedance flat cable so to say. Interleaving multiple thin tapes the impedance would be made quite low. Somewhat as long planar DC BUS. Again as with any improper terminated transmission line one could get some issues... not mentioning burden on amp.
EDIT: http://www.pes.ee.ethz.ch/uploads/tx_ethpublications/31_Strategies_to_Reduce_Copper_IECON2011.pdf
EDIT: http://www.pes.ee.ethz.ch/uploads/tx_ethpublications/31_Strategies_to_Reduce_Copper_IECON2011.pdf
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No, my cables are not the dual coax configuration shown in your illustration. I've seen this illustration before and I think it was some guy named John Hirsch (?) that came up with that idea.
I am not certain Sanders uses a single coax cable, but as I recall, the description if his white paper mentioned a return conductor spiral-wrapped around a center conductor, with a dielectric separating the two; which sounded to me like a single coax cable. Also, the review I read for the Sanders cable said only that it was Mogami 3082 cable (no mention of it being a dual coax cable), so I figured Sanders' cable would be a single Mogami 3082 coax cable, and that's what I built.
With these cables, the sound of my system has a somewhat different character; although I can't describe the change as an improvement in the sound over the 14-GA Rat Shack flat braid I was using before. Sanders put a lot of importance in having an ultra-low inductance cable to offset the step-up transformer's leakage inductance, which he says reacts with the panel & transformer winding capacitance to form a resonance that can put a peak in the audio band.
I'm certainly no expert so I can only speculate that perhaps the reason I'm not hearing a clear improvement using the lower-inductance coax cable in my system is that I'm also using toroidal type step-up transformers, which may have significantly less leakage inductance than the EI-core transformers used in most ESL's. In other words; I might hear a significant difference if my transformers were leaky EI-core types (in which case a low-inductance cable could shift an inductance/capacitance resonance to frequencies above the audio band.
In any case, I could not justify spending $600 bucks for a pair of coax speaker cables, based on what I'm hearing.
For some reason, I've had some trouble with those links... I'm adding both links again here:
Sanders Sound Systems ESL Speaker Cables - Joe Appierto - Cable Asylum
http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?bl...editor/target=post;postID=1795127477621922353
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I've not had the pleasure of hearing Roger Sanders' speakers, but when building mine, I borrowed heavily from his ideas about how to blend and woofer to an electrostat, and I'm very pleased with the results. My guess is that your Sanders 10C speakers sound pretty fantastic.
I really do like them. Don't really like teh narrow sweet spot ( the narrowest I have heard so far of any ESL), but when you are in it...quite nice.
I wanna be able to say I built an ESL system that bests the 10C...I have two pairs of ML CLS and eight 9" Acoustat panels, and four pairs of Acoustat interfaces, and a few Antek toroidal trannies...I think I can come close (its the challenge that gets me going...)
I wanna be able to say I built an ESL system that bests the 10C...I have two pairs of ML CLS and eight 9" Acoustat panels, and four pairs of Acoustat interfaces, and a few Antek toroidal trannies...I think I can come close (its the challenge that gets me going...)
John, what do those cables look like? A single cable, or two side by side?
A single Mogami 3082 would make ~14AWG cables, while two would be ~11AWG, which sounds a bit more substantial.
Sanders' white paper favors cables with medium resistance, over larger cables with lower resistance, for driving the stat panels. I know that many ESL's require a resistor at the input to the transformers to tame the resonance generated by the interaction between the panel/transformer capacitance and the transformer's leakage inductance. I don't claim to understand all this; just stating what I've read from many sources. For example; the spec sheet for Plitron's ESL transformers recommends placing a 1-Ohm resistor in front of the transformer, for starters, followed by measurements and tweaking the value up or down as needed to keep the resonance above the audio band. Some guys on this forum could whip up an equation, plugging in the panel and tranny capacitances and leakage inductance and tell you exactly the amount of added resistance needed in front of the transformer to tame the resonance. Unfortunately, I'm one of the 5/4's of the population who struggles with math!
I think Sander's point is that, since some resistance is needed in front of the transformers to tame the noted resonance, you may as well allow the cables to supply a portion of that resistance; especially if using less copper in the conductors would help further reduce the cable's inductance and/or capacitance. Perhaps someone who understands this better than I will jump in and comment here.
In my speakers, the woofers are powered separately through different amplifiers and different/larger cables, so it's not like those 14-GA Mogami's on the stats are driving the whole load anyhow.
I think Sander's point is that, since some resistance is needed in front of the transformers to tame the noted resonance, you may as well allow the cables to supply a portion of that resistance; especially if using less copper in the conductors would help further reduce the cable's inductance and/or capacitance. Perhaps someone who understands this better than I will jump in and comment here.
In my speakers, the woofers are powered separately through different amplifiers and different/larger cables, so it's not like those 14-GA Mogami's on the stats are driving the whole load anyhow.
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Yes, as someone here explained it to me in laymen's terms, the series resistance on the amp output / esl input (in this case, the cables) is there to give the amp something to work against (as opposed to a low low dc resistance of the transformer alone)...
It was an easy way to get all my amps to play nicely with my Acoustat Model 3 - put in a series resistor of 1 ohm - otherwise only the Krell clone would drive the M3s well...
It was an easy way to get all my amps to play nicely with my Acoustat Model 3 - put in a series resistor of 1 ohm - otherwise only the Krell clone would drive the M3s well...
I'm now using the Mogami single coax cables on the woofers and these DIY cross-connected dual Belden coax cables on the ESL panels.
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