jameshillj said:
Never tried copper/silver, I had good results for bass with silver solid core.
I think your best bet would be to biamp, the F3 is not really a bass amp.
Yup, that's the plan - The F3 is for about 200Hz up, and after getting one of those new fangled CT supplies (EC Design - Ultimate Nos Dac) plus one of Salas's Shunt Regs to really make it sing. This is definitely worth a try with the solid silver/cotton sleeve speaker wire, and there are a few hereabouts, so must organise a loan for a few weeks. Thanks for the reminder. A beefed up Hafler 220 ( a Fab upgrade) is nearly ready for driving the 12" bass for now, but still having trouble with the Electronic Xover - I was hoping Nelson's B4 would solve the problem, but alas, something appears to have gone wrong there. Later on, some distributed base (3 ch) into some new 12 sub-base drivers when I can control the phase of the sub-bass outputs without stuffing up the sound - not the easiest thing for state variable ccts, for me anyway. Volume is via Lightspeed as usual. So a better speaker wire is really an incidental issue at present, but it is really good to read about the work being done plus the reasons for different choices - saves a lot of time and effort. Thank you all.
I have a sincere questions:
Taking the point of view of someone who believes expensive wire matters,
is high priced speaker cable suppose to improve sound, or not degrade sound?
Taking the point of view of someone who believes expensive wire matters,
is high priced speaker cable suppose to improve sound, or not degrade sound?
dzzmiller said:
The very best speaker wire is that which allows the full signal to be delivered without degradation, regardless of cost. Expensive speaker cables often fail to equal quality, yet inexpensive cables.
BTW: I've listened to several systems with "very expensive" speaker cables, so it's not a lack of exposure.
Best Regards,
TerryO
So the best solution is powered speakers - eliminating the wire? Setting aside vinyl, digital sources could greatly reduce wiring without inconvenience.
I've never heard expensive wire advocates talking about wire length.
I've never heard expensive wire advocates talking about wire length.
Shielded Twisted Pair, solid core, manufactured for ethernet network cable, can make a great audio cable. Just solder all the white cables together, and then all the colored cables together, and you have a nice twisted pair cable, with foil shielding on the outside.
Its almost as good as a tin hat for beating unwanted EMI.
Cheers,
Mitch
Its almost as good as a tin hat for beating unwanted EMI.
Cheers,
Mitch
Regardless of cable price, longer cables should be a heavier gauge. The best speaker cable is no cable at all. IMHO heavy gauge short cables are best. Look up a wire table, my guess is that cable should equal less than 1/10 of 1%. That would be 0.008 Ohms for an 8 Ohm system (That's 10 feet of 8 gauge, overkill by most peoples standards.) 1% would be 10 feet of 18 gauge cable.dzzmiller said:
Wire can not improve sound, different cables merely degrade sound to different degrees.
dzzmiller said:
Except that inside a speaker is not the ideal place for an amplifier from a microphonics point-of-view.
dave
hermanv said:
You are making some generalizations here that are not always valid. For instance if you have a high efficiency loudspeaker that prefers an amplifier with high output impedance, and an amplifier with a low output impedance, then a skinny speaker wire with a higher impedance can be of benefit. Or if you have a current amp that just doesn't care about the wire R.
Speaker wire is system dependent. It really can't be discussed independent of what is hooked up at either end.
dave
Indeed. About as far as you can go in general terms is that if you don't want the wire to act as a tone control, don't do anything daft with the geometry which will cause inductance or capacitance to go through the roof, and keep voltage drop to a minimum by minimising the resistance.
After that though, as Dave says, you cannot really consider it independantly from the speaker & amplifier as they form a combined system (along with the room for that matter).
After that though, as Dave says, you cannot really consider it independantly from the speaker & amplifier as they form a combined system (along with the room for that matter).
Most conventional amplifiers are voltage sources, most conventional speakers are low impedance, this probably covers well over 90% of all products available.planet10 said:
For these common products, damping factor is important and 1% DC resistance equals a lower limit of damping factor of 100. The amplifier in this case can only make damping factor lower (worse).
Current mode amplifiers/speakers have effectively no damping at all, most will not produce clean, lower octave bass.
For my own enlightenment, can you please list one or more major brand current mode amplifier(s)?
To that you can add most of Nelson's Zen amp designs -DF is very low indeed on the vast majority, & what they did with FR units was what apparantly inspired him to make the last small step with the First Watt F1 & F2.
One of the most surprising things about the First Watt F3 Current Gain Amp is the extraordinary control that the amplifier exerts over the drivers, all the way down, and it often highlights deficiencies in designs that are not obviouszx with conventional amps.
With most other current gain amps (valves, etc), this is not the case.
The current gain amps seem to be uneffected by higher resistance in the speaker wires but the different wires DO indeed change the sound, but to a lesser degree.
Again -
".... speakers, wires, amps, room, are parts of a Whole system"
With most other current gain amps (valves, etc), this is not the case.
The current gain amps seem to be uneffected by higher resistance in the speaker wires but the different wires DO indeed change the sound, but to a lesser degree.
Again -
".... speakers, wires, amps, room, are parts of a Whole system"
Then there are those gosh darn properly constructed tests:
http://www.hometheaterfocus.com/receivers/amplifier-sound-quality.aspx
http://www.hometheaterfocus.com/receivers/amplifier-sound-quality.aspx
vol.18#9 $$phile, measured the output Ω of a cary 300sei nfb set amp at a high 4Ω@20Hz, 4.2Ω@1kHz and 4.8Ω@20kHz have me under the impression nfb set amps in general are of a high output Ω.planet10 said:
i had thought the high output Ω of nfb set amp's made for a low damping factor hence the need for a higher (stable), Ω speaker not dipping much below 8Ω.
wouldn't a ≥8Ω higher efficiency driver/nfb set amp poss. benefit from a larger gauge speaker wire despite that "a current amp that just doesn't care about the wire R."?
jameshillj said:
This is so true... I was expecting muddy bass like a tube SET, and instead it's solid like a rock.
My heavy gauge copper cables do well, but I also have to experiment with more and different ones.
mp9 said:
Note: you are using something that generates high ASCII for some of your characters, so your post is dotted with punctuation and greek (literally) characters where i'm sure you meant to put something that made sense -- so i apologize ahead of time if my guess of your point is off.
It isn't that the SE amps don't like lower impedance loads, it is that they want a fairly flat load, with low phase angle. For instance, if you are driving a 2-way with the common large impedance bump at the XO, this amp will add a FR deviation that follows the impedance curve,
Now if the speaker is a single FR driver with an impedance rise at the bottom & top, the low Z amp will give a bit of boost (relative to a voltage amp) at the bottom and top flayyening the FR.
dave
While many SET amps have a high output impedance, they are not designed as current source amps. They are mostly voltage sources with an unusually high output impedance. While the number of manufacturers of SET designs are growing I have seen no statistics that the percentage of systems using SET amps is growing, IMHO the opposite is true. An infatuation with an alternate technology, followed by reduced interest as the intrinsic limitations of the technique became clear.planet10 said:
In reading Nelson Pass' paper on his First Watt site most of his designs also seem to be high Z voltage sources. It is quite possible to make a voltage source amplifier using current source output stages. He seems to be using networks to make the speaker impedance less frequency dependent. If you could make a network to make the speaker appear purely resistive and constant there would be no difference between driving this result with a voltage source or a current source.
In a pure current source amplifier, current does not change with load impedance. By putting a series R in a voltage source amp one achieves a reduction in load impedance sensitivity, but you haven't built a current source amplifier.
I'm sure one could debate endlessly on what value of output Z produces a true current source, I'm guessing (arguing) that anything less than 10 to one (i.e 80 Ohm source for a 8 Ohm speaker) probably shouldn't be classified as a current source.
It is quite possible to design a current source amplifier with any arbitrary amount of NFB. I didn't see any discussion of that notion in Nelson's papers (I didn't read them all) I would be curious how that sounds and measures. I personally have little inclination to follow up on the design concept, currently all my audio energy has been devoted to a 9 year speaker design project.
I own an X250 Pass Labs amplifier, I like it a great deal and I am aware of Nelson's contributions to audio. I believe the X250 (definitely a voltage source amp) uses a current source output stage up to the first 25 watts or so.
My read of the original question was about speaker cables in a "conventional" system.
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