'Clean' dielectric I believe is one key.
Drivers, crossover coils and series capacitors have parasitic resistances that swamp cable resistance....why should 0.4 ohms loop resistance be 'too high' resistance ?.
The caveat is that 75 ohms terminating resistance is required.
Dan.
What is your criteria for determining whether terminating resistance is required?
Any cable that doesn't have serious resistance or skin effect issues will resonate without terminating resistance.
Any cable that doesn't have serious resistance or skin effect issues will resonate without terminating resistance.
There are several speakers on the market that go < 3 Ohms in the bass and electrostatics can go < 1 Ohm at 20 kHz. 0.4 Ohms is not always swamped.
So what, do you have such speakers ?, I don't and most listeners do not.
Of course there are outliers, but most real world speakers run reasonably close to rated impedance, excepting bass resonance impedance hump.
Dan.
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Advice (confirming theory), and sighted subjective listening experience.
Might be a good idea on 'standard' cables then also ?.
Dan.
Perhaps, but a cable that resonates doesn't guarantee bad results at audio, especially if the resonance is not actively being stimulated by something.
YMMV assuming that you were to try this essentially zero cost mod.
Try it, you know you can....0.6W MF is fine for 'normal' household listening levels.
Dan.
No. For a short analogue interconnect driven from a low impedance the dielectric is almost entirely irrelevant. You would need a spectacularly bad source and a spectacularly bad dielectric to hear the difference - I guess such things could occur in some DIY or 'high end' equipment.Max Headroom said:
In most cases the speaker designer will have assumed a zero impedance source, and taken into account any other resistances within his speaker. 0.4ohm is not huge, but it does limit DF to 20 which is on the borderline of being audible.
Only if you have a problem with lots of RF leaking into a resonant cable, or a marginally stable power amp. In most cases people get away quite happily with no RF termination on speaker cables. A coaxial speaker cable is less likely to need a termination than a more conventional twin wire, because the coax has weaker coupling to RF fields - although it might be more likely to upset a fussy power amp with a poor or missing output Zobel network.
There was an earlier post about red pigmented dielectric being audible...I concur from previous experiences and I am mostly talking about speaker cable application.
The DC resistance of typical bass driver series inductor has already destroyed DF.
We all have done this happily since forever.
I tried the coax because I have plenty and got it for free, and after a days listening added 75 ohms shunt at the speaker terminals, and a day later also at the amp terminals.
Each step was improvement in subjective SQ.
Loudspeaker internal wiring typically has large loop areas.
Also, you mean series output inductor, not Zobel network.
I put this up as encouragement for experimenters to try something different, and far easier and cheaper and faster than braiding and other DIY designs.
Dan.
To repeat myself, the designer would have already taken this into account. You are then adding extra resistance which he did not take into account.Max Headroom said:
There is no need to terminate both ends.
I cannot comment on what you think you hear.
No, I meant Zobel network. It is this which swamps any capacitive load imposed by an unterminated cable. An output inductor is another method for achieving a similar goal.
Yes, and possibly more successful than braiding - although perhaps not quite as pretty.
Most 'consumer' speakers are supplied with fig8 flex with less copper than the coax.
In practice I find it is indeed beneficial.
I know what I hear, even if you do not.
Uh huh, so how does a shunt RC Zobel 'swamp cable capacitance' ?.
Who who cares about 'pretty'.....coax routes perfectly well and is inconspicuous, not so for so many so called 'audiophile' cables.
Dan.
You can assume that such speakers make no attempt at faithful sound reproduction so are outside the scope of this discussion.Max Headroom said:
By imposing a low resistance in parallel with the cable capacitance. This ensures that the phase of the load cannot stray too far from 'in phase' (i.e. resistive) at least in the frequency range of interest (typically 100kHz to a few MHz).
With best electrolytic capacitors as discussed in a neighbor thread, serially hooked to coax speaker cables at both ends, no doubt you will reach nirvana.
So eh, as this is still "budget audiophile".. I have to say I really am enjoying reading these discussions, but I still think my 42 year old ears won't be able to spot the difference between cables with and without certain pigment added ;-)
A funny side story - I was on holiday with my kids, my brother and his kids, and my parents in France 2 years ago, and at one point my brother commented on the really loud noise the crickets were making. (It really was deafening)
To which my parents replied "what noise?"...
To them it was perfectly quiet there 🙂
Age really is a very important factor - do find out the age of the people you're discussing audio with 🙂
A funny side story - I was on holiday with my kids, my brother and his kids, and my parents in France 2 years ago, and at one point my brother commented on the really loud noise the crickets were making. (It really was deafening)
To which my parents replied "what noise?"...
To them it was perfectly quiet there 🙂
Age really is a very important factor - do find out the age of the people you're discussing audio with 🙂
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Thank you for that Nigel, I think I will have a crack at using mains cable on my next build.
On my last build, I used automobile stranded loom wire, because like me, it was cheap. Made a pair of 4 strand braids - 2 pos - 2 neg, and together with fit for purpose banana plugs, ended up with two 10ft lengths for £20 total. That's £1 per ft. I have nothing to compare it to, but it seemed to work very well as speaker cable.
tapestryofsound
check out my idea in post #1110 under
https://www.diyaudio.com/community/...ake-any-difference.73632/page-56#post-7004937
https://www.diyaudio.com/community/...ake-any-difference.73632/page-56#post-7004937