My simple oipinion for what it's worth is the following, even though I hope so, I think it will be difficult to derive from your experience a mathematical model related to bi-wiring performed with two different cables, or even the same ones.
Listening to pieces of equipment built with the Science that is currently known is rather empirical matter and therefore the usefulness of your experience that I'm happy you have exposed in your thread will be limited to your experience itself from the scientific point of view, while it will be useful from the empirical point of view because it could inspire other audiophiles (the intelligent ones, of course, not those systematically derided on some audio forums) to carry out your same interesting experiments.
My experience with the braided KimberKable is that it is indeed "subjectively" rich in bass despite the copper mass not being very high, and instead with the monstrously thick Esoteric Audio Usa (if I remember correctly their brand from ages ago) they were not so present.
Difficult to derive a mathematical model in this case too.
My simple opinion is that the geometry of the cables somehow counts on some electrical parameter that turns into a certain perception in certain systems and rooms at vcertains ears of the low range in this case or of the high and mid range in the case of the thin and single-wire cable you experienced (your shared experience interested me a lot and I will also do some tests on it.).
From my simple point of view, I'm satisfied with the empirical experience until the named Science (which we could also call "the never-ending beta phase of Physics") reaches one day also that kind of knowledge.
Let me be clear: generally speaking I've immense respect for non-arrogant engineers and scientists.
Checked all these small details and triple checked any polarity issues .we are only human any one even the most expert can make a mistake .
AllenB raises a good issue. I never considered the corrosion issue, until I happened to move my speakers for cleaning and disconnected the cables to make it easier. When I reconnected them, there was a subtle improvement.
Several years later, I did the same thing and once again, there was a subtle improvement. I would describe it as a slight haze being removed, so that sounds appear slightly clearer. So I invested in Cramolin red and blue and cleaned all contacts on both speaker AND amp ends. What a large improvement. I did this every 6 months to a year u til I got tired of it. I found this product called Silclear, which is fine silver particles suspended in some kind of oil. After cleaning, I used a very tiny amount of Silclear to protect the contacts. A year later, I did the cleaning again, added Silclear, and guess what? No improvement, which I interpret as the Silclear working. I also, very carefully cleaned and treated my RCA interconnects if one uses too much it can cause a short and the material if difficult to completely remove).
While I am not suggesting that you buy Silclear, I am highly recommending a periodic cleaning of your contacts with your favorite contact cleaner and “preservative.”
All this being said, the cleaning does not seem to affect the biwiring issue, IMO, in terms of whether it works or if the same type of wires should be used on both sections of the speakers.
Several years later, I did the same thing and once again, there was a subtle improvement. I would describe it as a slight haze being removed, so that sounds appear slightly clearer. So I invested in Cramolin red and blue and cleaned all contacts on both speaker AND amp ends. What a large improvement. I did this every 6 months to a year u til I got tired of it. I found this product called Silclear, which is fine silver particles suspended in some kind of oil. After cleaning, I used a very tiny amount of Silclear to protect the contacts. A year later, I did the cleaning again, added Silclear, and guess what? No improvement, which I interpret as the Silclear working. I also, very carefully cleaned and treated my RCA interconnects if one uses too much it can cause a short and the material if difficult to completely remove).
While I am not suggesting that you buy Silclear, I am highly recommending a periodic cleaning of your contacts with your favorite contact cleaner and “preservative.”
All this being said, the cleaning does not seem to affect the biwiring issue, IMO, in terms of whether it works or if the same type of wires should be used on both sections of the speakers.
Its voicing of speakers and room placement, cables should not prevent and filter bass...
Same here. I use brake grease as it's much cheaper and does the same thing.
I believe in the benefits of biwiring but I've never tried using different cables, only because the ones I use (Hitachi LC-OFC) carry 4 conductors in each jacket. It makes sense to me that using a cable optimised for the frequency range it'll be used in is favourable to using the same type across the spectrum, even if there are theoretical advantages to using one type. Indeed, differentiating the cables to suit their spectrum is one of the benefits of biwiring that should be taken advantage of.
One possible reason why a skinny solid core on mids/highs and a fat cable on bass is the bass transient response is ruined by inductors, so a cable with good transient response won't do anything, but the bass needs cross sectional area, the mid/highs need a cable with good transient response, but not cross sectional area.
But this is only a guess of mine, not science or backed up by any proof.
But this is only a guess of mine, not science or backed up by any proof.
I use dielectric grease on all my light bulb contacts, in the house and in the automobile. It certainly makes it easier to remove the bulbs at time of replacement. I also use it on battery terminals. Helps to deter corrosion there. Then spray with the special battery terminal spray with dye.
I thought about using dielectric grease on the speaker contacts, but decided I wanted to address, even if theoretically with no proof, whether bridging the gaps between speaker screw terminal blocks (Vandersteen does not use 5 way binding posts) and the speaker cable spade lugs would make a difference. Of course, I never tested to see if it does or not, but for $35 for what appears to be a lifetime supply of Silclear, I decided it could not hurt. $35 is laughable inexpensive compared to the cost of even 1 “boutique” part; and dielectric grease bottle that I have (CRC, I think) cost me $8 as I recall. So the marginal increase in cost seems esp. minimal to me. My contribution to audiofoolery, I guess, thank goodness it is low cost.
I thought about using dielectric grease on the speaker contacts, but decided I wanted to address, even if theoretically with no proof, whether bridging the gaps between speaker screw terminal blocks (Vandersteen does not use 5 way binding posts) and the speaker cable spade lugs would make a difference. Of course, I never tested to see if it does or not, but for $35 for what appears to be a lifetime supply of Silclear, I decided it could not hurt. $35 is laughable inexpensive compared to the cost of even 1 “boutique” part; and dielectric grease bottle that I have (CRC, I think) cost me $8 as I recall. So the marginal increase in cost seems esp. minimal to me. My contribution to audiofoolery, I guess, thank goodness it is low cost.
According to information in the thread "Zip Cord for Speaker Test," please see Hans Polak posts for information about bass correction (and IIRC improved dynamics) based on VNA measurements and lumped compensators of characteristic impedance (which must be measured at lower audio frequencies since the geometric formulas for Z0 are not accurate down there). Seriously. It works.
Elimination of common impedance distortion is the reason for bi-wiring.
Star-quad - with no rubber jacket, is another option for speaker cable if lumped compensation seems like too much trouble. Why remove the rubber jacket? There is an AES paper on headphone cable sound. The problem was traced to magnetostriction. If that can affect headphone cable, then probably could affect speaker cable too. If magnetostrictive effects, the rubber jacket could be mechanically lossy. In any case, removing it helps.
Sometimes helpful for amplifiers: RF termination - 100R at speaker (non-inductive)
Elimination of common impedance distortion is the reason for bi-wiring.
Star-quad - with no rubber jacket, is another option for speaker cable if lumped compensation seems like too much trouble. Why remove the rubber jacket? There is an AES paper on headphone cable sound. The problem was traced to magnetostriction. If that can affect headphone cable, then probably could affect speaker cable too. If magnetostrictive effects, the rubber jacket could be mechanically lossy. In any case, removing it helps.
Sometimes helpful for amplifiers: RF termination - 100R at speaker (non-inductive)
What nonsense!
Cable doesn't have a Audio Frequency Characteristic Impedance. The impedance varies with frequency, it might be a few thousand Ohms below 20 Hz and one hundred Ohms above 20 kHz. And Characteristic Impedance only matters in cables over a quarter wavelength long.
And in a well behaved transmission line, the output stage, cable and input stage all need to have the same Characteristic Impedance at that frequency.
But yes. The formula for Audio Frequency Characteristic Impedance is different than the formula for Radio Frequency Characteristic Impedance.
Not so. Longer than 1/10 (or maybe 1/5) of 1/4 wavelength is more like the usual rule of thumb. 1/4 wavelength is perfectly resonant.
Maybe you are thinking of the full telegrapher's equation?
If so, that's not what I was talking about. Rather I was thinking of something which, IIRC, @jneutron talked about. It was something about skin effect arising from eddy currents, and the usual geometric equation, say, for twisted pair, is based on an assumption that the conductor diameter is thicker than a few skin depths. If not, then current distribution is given by a Bessel function which, again IIRC, results in a different characteristic impedance than for a thick conductor.
Maybe you are thinking about what is referred to in the RF literature as a uniform transmission line? And, impedance matching for maximum power transfer?
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To continue with the above, I think @Hans Polak was trying to adjust cable characteristic impedance to minimize settling time.
Here is a quote from jneutron:
I would only worry about settling time variations due to the line to load ratio vs frequency.
That is why I would only recommend dropping the speaker cable impedance to roughly 25 ohms.. Its a reasonable middle range of speaker impedance variations.
https://www.diyaudio.com/community/...udget-cat6-speaker-cables.354448/post-6208134
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Also, some comments on Hawkford's paper on speaker cable impedance:
The hawksford analysis was rather inaccurate. (I'm being gentle).
The only phase shift skin can cause is the lowering of the inductance of the wire. For a twisted pair, that is a maximum drop of 30 nH per foot.
A twisted pair can do the proximity thing to the tune of roughly half it's per foot inductance, so 70 nH per foot. But again, at what range of frequencies?
https://www.diyaudio.com/community/...udget-cat6-speaker-cables.354448/post-6208747
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And the thing I was referring to about the usual assumption for skin depth (and inductance):
The standard skin depth equations are based on penetration of a planar E/M wave traveling normal to a conductive surface. So all the stuff happening comes from outside the conductive surface, a wave in free air hitting the surface.
Skin depth of the current within a current carrying conductor is a reaction the the current within.
Hawksford made the same mistake in thinking, but he even had a problem with his test setup, using a steel wire in place of copper. Yes, wire with much higher than free space permeability.
https://www.diyaudio.com/community/...udget-cat6-speaker-cables.354448/post-6208835
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Anyway, the point is that what Hans Polak did in the "Zip Cord for Speaker Test" thread was quite reasonable, and successful.
Not nonsense at all.
EDIT: One more comment -- a reason a lot of expensive speaker cable is fat and the reason a lot of it doesn't sound all that good is because people are basing the design on Hawkford's paper.
Here is a quote from jneutron:
I would only worry about settling time variations due to the line to load ratio vs frequency.
That is why I would only recommend dropping the speaker cable impedance to roughly 25 ohms.. Its a reasonable middle range of speaker impedance variations.
https://www.diyaudio.com/community/...udget-cat6-speaker-cables.354448/post-6208134
-------------------------------
Also, some comments on Hawkford's paper on speaker cable impedance:
The hawksford analysis was rather inaccurate. (I'm being gentle).
The only phase shift skin can cause is the lowering of the inductance of the wire. For a twisted pair, that is a maximum drop of 30 nH per foot.
A twisted pair can do the proximity thing to the tune of roughly half it's per foot inductance, so 70 nH per foot. But again, at what range of frequencies?
https://www.diyaudio.com/community/...udget-cat6-speaker-cables.354448/post-6208747
-----------------------------
And the thing I was referring to about the usual assumption for skin depth (and inductance):
The standard skin depth equations are based on penetration of a planar E/M wave traveling normal to a conductive surface. So all the stuff happening comes from outside the conductive surface, a wave in free air hitting the surface.
Skin depth of the current within a current carrying conductor is a reaction the the current within.
Hawksford made the same mistake in thinking, but he even had a problem with his test setup, using a steel wire in place of copper. Yes, wire with much higher than free space permeability.
https://www.diyaudio.com/community/...udget-cat6-speaker-cables.354448/post-6208835
-------------------------------------
Anyway, the point is that what Hans Polak did in the "Zip Cord for Speaker Test" thread was quite reasonable, and successful.
Not nonsense at all.
EDIT: One more comment -- a reason a lot of expensive speaker cable is fat and the reason a lot of it doesn't sound all that good is because people are basing the design on Hawkford's paper.
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No, only about 8-feet. But they are well designed and sound good. Unfortunately, not available for sale.
Anyway, rules of thumb are approximations useful in some cases, such as for avoiding problematic resonance effects in RF systems. When it comes right down to the physics everything is a transmission line, uniform or not.
I would suggest to search for posts by Hans in the Zip Cord thread and take a look at what he was doing. A few people tried it with Hans' help.
Anyway, rules of thumb are approximations useful in some cases, such as for avoiding problematic resonance effects in RF systems. When it comes right down to the physics everything is a transmission line, uniform or not.
I would suggest to search for posts by Hans in the Zip Cord thread and take a look at what he was doing. A few people tried it with Hans' help.
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Theory is good, but has anyone performed actual objective tests of plain speaker wire to determine if skin effect or mismatch of cable impedance actually makes a difference to the signal integrity in terms of phase or amplitude at different frequencies?
WOrried about speaker cables.which is best,can i do this or that. Bad news is getting the audio from the end of your sellect speaker cable to the d
Through the crossover is were all the damage is done.see danny at gr on youtube.he looses hair each time he opens up those audiofool speakers to expose electro caps,steal wire resistors.you get the picture.
a lot of repairs ........... how many are due to trying connect 3 pairs of cables to the amplifiers terminal that are designed for 1 pair ?