Imagine all the extraneous noises you could hear if you replaced those skinny wires connecting the speaker coils to the frames, and perhaps beefing up the crossover traces with thick wire?
Traffic Jam on the road to the beach = People frustrated, even if its having to drive 65 instead of 75, its frustrating.
Traffic jam on the beach = people having fun.
I get the whole 8 ohm voice coil vs 1 ohm or less speaker wire. But ... its still 12.5%. Besides I have measured a lot higher for my run of speaker wire, just that @ the moment I don't remember what it was.
Also we don't measure the wire under live conditions. We measure it cold and just call it as so many ohms, maybe after 10 mins of playing, it is now warm enough to offer more DCR and tends to eat the higher freq. Or just eat the sharp edges of those spikey outputs.
Cool.
Srinath.
The problem that both of us have with the expensive cords, is that appropriate cords are not expensive. Therefore, expensive cords are fix-at-wrong-spot error and to be avoided because they guarantee a shortfall in performance.
I'd also like to mention that we're in need of something significantly better than phone wire. Therefore; I suggest drawing the line at 14ga romex for speaker hookup cable, because if that isn't enough then the fault is clearly elsewhere in the circuit.
I apologize that this post was edited to cut flak, including politeness, in the hopes that a far shorter post makes more sense.
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I think you got your ohms mixed up with milli-ohms.
24AWG has ~25.67 milli-ohms per foot giving a 3foot length a resistance of 0.077ohms. NOT a DCR of 6.5 to 7ohms.
9Turns of 24AWG is a length of ~2.95feet and would be a VC height of 0.19" (7mm)
Xmax in a 5mm pole height would be ~1mm, or used in a treble with a pole height of 8mm giving Xmax = 0.5mm.
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The cord has to be thick enough so that the difference it makes to both the quietest signal and the loudest signal, is not a significant difference between the two signal levels.
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I was talking about 14 gauge vs 18 gauge wire,
In fact I never had anything thicker than 14, but anyway I found this article -
The whole article link -
The Best Speaker Cable | The Wirecutter
This part was what I was refering to.
One of the people he talked to was Allan Devantier, manager of acoustic research at Harman International (makers of JBL, Infinity, and Revel). Allan pointed Brent towards some previous studies that showed potential frequency response differences with cables. Brent measured some very disparate cables (in price and gauge) and wrote a fascinating article called Do Speaker Cables Make a Difference? Science Weighs In. His additional testing backed up our findings: “Turns out Devantier was right — I could measure this. As you can see in the chart, the results with the two 12-ga cables were only subtly different. The biggest change was a boost of maximum +0.4 dB between 4.3 and 6.8 kHz. Is this audible? Maybe. Would you care? Probably not. To put it in perspective, that’s about 20 to 30 percent of the change I typically measure when I test a speaker with and without its grille.” But when he switched to a thinner gauge cable, the difference was pronounced, “But switching to the 24-ga cable had a huge effect. For starters, it reduced the level, requiring me to normalize the measured response curve by boosting it +2.04 dB so I could compare it with the curve from the [expensive] Linn cable. The 24-ga cable’s resistance also had obvious effects on frequency response. For example, it cut bass between 50 and 230 Hz by a maximum -1.5 dB (at 95 Hz), cut midrange between 2.2 and 4.7 kHz by a maximum -1.7 dB (at 3.1 kHz), and reduced treble between 6 and 20 kHz by a maximum of -1.4 dB (at 13.3 kHz). Is this audible? Yeah. Would you care? Yeah.
Cool.
Srinath.
In fact I never had anything thicker than 14, but anyway I found this article -
The whole article link -
The Best Speaker Cable | The Wirecutter
This part was what I was refering to.
One of the people he talked to was Allan Devantier, manager of acoustic research at Harman International (makers of JBL, Infinity, and Revel). Allan pointed Brent towards some previous studies that showed potential frequency response differences with cables. Brent measured some very disparate cables (in price and gauge) and wrote a fascinating article called Do Speaker Cables Make a Difference? Science Weighs In. His additional testing backed up our findings: “Turns out Devantier was right — I could measure this. As you can see in the chart, the results with the two 12-ga cables were only subtly different. The biggest change was a boost of maximum +0.4 dB between 4.3 and 6.8 kHz. Is this audible? Maybe. Would you care? Probably not. To put it in perspective, that’s about 20 to 30 percent of the change I typically measure when I test a speaker with and without its grille.” But when he switched to a thinner gauge cable, the difference was pronounced, “But switching to the 24-ga cable had a huge effect. For starters, it reduced the level, requiring me to normalize the measured response curve by boosting it +2.04 dB so I could compare it with the curve from the [expensive] Linn cable. The 24-ga cable’s resistance also had obvious effects on frequency response. For example, it cut bass between 50 and 230 Hz by a maximum -1.5 dB (at 95 Hz), cut midrange between 2.2 and 4.7 kHz by a maximum -1.7 dB (at 3.1 kHz), and reduced treble between 6 and 20 kHz by a maximum of -1.4 dB (at 13.3 kHz). Is this audible? Yeah. Would you care? Yeah.
Cool.
Srinath.
I can remember when wow and flutter, rumble, cartridges, playing weight, arm geometry, tape speed and hiss, made for interesting discussions back in the analog days.
At least with mechanical stuff there was a chance that small adjustments could make a difference, and I cannot remember cable thickness being done to death back then.
I guess digital has reduced all of the variables except for those that believe they have un-provable sonic powers.
In this digital age, the only real outlay is a good pair of speakers, and of course some expensive cables, if you have been sucked in by the hype.
At least with mechanical stuff there was a chance that small adjustments could make a difference, and I cannot remember cable thickness being done to death back then.
I guess digital has reduced all of the variables except for those that believe they have un-provable sonic powers.
In this digital age, the only real outlay is a good pair of speakers, and of course some expensive cables, if you have been sucked in by the hype.
Not just speakers and cable. Plenty more.
Its all about the noise floor when going to digital from vinyl. The noise floor from a FLAC to a DAC to a new amp is something you could have told a sound engineer in the 70's and they's have called you crazy. Now every one of us has one of these lying around, so much so, we dont even use them 1/2 the time.
So, Back then they didn't even have speakers that can exploit that.
Anyway the comparison was from 18 gauge to 14 gauge. With a Flac server to a perfect wave dac to a (I forget what else) to a Nak PA7 to a B&W 801 S3 - you can hear the difference when you swap a 18 ga for a 14 ga and in fact my friend swapped in some other cable that looked almost the size of jumper cables, with a block of some kind ~1' from the end. 14 ga to that too I hear a difference but only in the best recordings.
18-14 ga in a reference quality system is cleanly obvious. But you need more than just a speaker set and cables. A good Flac->dac->low noise pre if DAC isn't also a pre, and an amp that also can deliver that plus the amp and pre and speakers etc etc all have to have a synergy. Which the PA7 didn't with his 801's cos the PA7 was a bit bass shy (his opinion).
Cool.
Srinath.
Its all about the noise floor when going to digital from vinyl. The noise floor from a FLAC to a DAC to a new amp is something you could have told a sound engineer in the 70's and they's have called you crazy. Now every one of us has one of these lying around, so much so, we dont even use them 1/2 the time.
So, Back then they didn't even have speakers that can exploit that.
Anyway the comparison was from 18 gauge to 14 gauge. With a Flac server to a perfect wave dac to a (I forget what else) to a Nak PA7 to a B&W 801 S3 - you can hear the difference when you swap a 18 ga for a 14 ga and in fact my friend swapped in some other cable that looked almost the size of jumper cables, with a block of some kind ~1' from the end. 14 ga to that too I hear a difference but only in the best recordings.
18-14 ga in a reference quality system is cleanly obvious. But you need more than just a speaker set and cables. A good Flac->dac->low noise pre if DAC isn't also a pre, and an amp that also can deliver that plus the amp and pre and speakers etc etc all have to have a synergy. Which the PA7 didn't with his 801's cos the PA7 was a bit bass shy (his opinion).
Cool.
Srinath.
Sorry to butt in guys... but how about some chip suggestions?
I think what the OP had in mind was trying to identify some chip topologies that are simple to implement.
Personally I think that the TDA20X0/LM1875 "power opamps" and the LM3886 seem to be the bench mark, for so called "Hi-Fi" chip amps.
It is trivial to just buy an amp board and "solder by numbers" it together, but there is very little to be learnt by such an approach.
Simple, without talking about the power supply is meaningless. The suggested IC in the OP (TDA 7560) has BTL output which to my mind isn't optimal for this application.
A quad/dual SE IC like TDA7375 when operated at under 8W per channel gives the required 1% distortion.
I envisage a modest 2.1 system, bridging 2 channels for the woofer with 2 stereo channels, as described in the data sheet.
Passively summing the channels for the bridged woofer like this. Passive summing of L&R for subwoofer signal using resistors.
Is this a worthwhile idea?
I think what the OP had in mind was trying to identify some chip topologies that are simple to implement.
Personally I think that the TDA20X0/LM1875 "power opamps" and the LM3886 seem to be the bench mark, for so called "Hi-Fi" chip amps.
It is trivial to just buy an amp board and "solder by numbers" it together, but there is very little to be learnt by such an approach.
Simple, without talking about the power supply is meaningless. The suggested IC in the OP (TDA 7560) has BTL output which to my mind isn't optimal for this application.
A quad/dual SE IC like TDA7375 when operated at under 8W per channel gives the required 1% distortion.
I envisage a modest 2.1 system, bridging 2 channels for the woofer with 2 stereo channels, as described in the data sheet.
Passively summing the channels for the bridged woofer like this. Passive summing of L&R for subwoofer signal using resistors.
Is this a worthwhile idea?
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