Speaker wire ......... Why

[rnrss]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Speaker wire ......... Why

Resistance is not the most important thing on speaker cables, we are talking usually small distances like 2~3m.

Then why not use a 3 meter length og number 24 wire? Its only a mere .5ohms... What you fail to understand here Carlos is that the greatest effect over a tiny 3 meter distance is not inductance and it is not capacitance... it is resistance! I know from your post that you have never tried to measure the inductance or capacitance on a a straight piece of wire... becasue if you have then you would know it is picofarads and nanohenries in value and if you know how to also calculate filter characteristics then you also know it has and immeasureable effect on speaker performance...

No speaker wire will have the same resistance for these kind of distances as a big series coil on a crossover.

Thats not correct Carlos... See the attached pic of my monster coil... It is roughly 0.00747 ohm if I remember correctly... which in combination with the 00 wire I used gave me around 400 damping factor... Now if I were to use 3 meters of awg12 wire that would be 4 times the resistance of my coil!!!... and if I were to use a number 24 wire it would be 69 times the resistance of my bass crossover coil...

24.00_____0.5134
20.00_____0.2030
18.00_____0.1277
16.00_____0.0803
14.00_____0.0505
12.00_____0.0318

So then whipping out my trusty belden cable catalog.... If you use a typical awg18 wire your 10 foot length of wire will have a capacitance of 900pf and .0044 Millihenrys and if you understand how to calculate filter circuits it should be as obvious as hitting you in the head with a 2x4 that these values are several hundred times the values you use in a crossover circuit and therefore are meaningless and insignificant...

So again I am trying to point out that when compared to resistance, capacitance and inductance in speaker cable is meaningless in a typical home app... resistance is what you should be concerned with...

You tend to think only in bass performance, while I look at the whole spectrum.

Well that may be your observation but that is certainly not the case... Damping factor is more obvious and noticable at lower frequencies but it also comes into play at mid and even a little at high frequencies...

My point was: if you have coils and/or caps to ground on your crossover (steep slopes) the amp will NOT perform as well, because it doesn't like complex loads, inductance and capacitance must be minimized.
Speaker wire inductance and capacitance is another thing to add to the picture and spoil it.

Well I gave you an example above about speaker wire inductance and capacitance. It is a good thing to bring into the conversation when there is nothing left to talk about so you can keep it going a little longer... lol but in a home app it is totally irrelavant... and as far as an amps performance into a capacitive or inductive load such as a speaker... I suppose if your amp is a real piece of *&%& then you would have to be concerned with that... but most better amps with a damping of >1000 that is not in the least a concern if its kept withing reason... and that is where my comment come from...

I ask this to you as I asked to many:
If you have a properly designed speaker that doesn't need a crossover on the woofer and just has a series cap on the tweeter, would you go to active crossovers?
What for?
No, thanks.
You change a single series cap on the passive crossover for active filters full of junk op-amps?
Another active stage on the signal path?
The signal is too sensitive to play with, too easy to mess up.
Trying to solve an issue you get drawn into other issues.
More interconnects, plugs, contacts, active stages...

Get things simple and well done and you don't need active crossovers.
Active crossovers are a big step up in quality when you are using them on speakers that had (and needed) complex passive crossovers.
I love my Epos ES11 speakers.

I never said anything about going to an active crossover to remove a series cap... Well the best app for an active crossover is to get rid of series inductors to reduce the resistance in the speaker circuit caused by them...

as far as interconnects are concerned, well if they are "good" you could have one every inch and it would not make enough of a difference for you to hear anything... Of course in the case of a line input shielding would need to be maintained and in the case of speaker wiring low resistance would need to be maintained in your splices... Not that you dont have a point, for the most part less is better but in the case of interconnects a few extra are meaningless if they are good...

If you have electronics test equipment a scope etc, (i do), and you are able to measure capacitance, inductance, harmonics, noise etc then what I am saying here would be very easy for you to prove to yourself... take some time and do some tests...

Like I keep saying the capacitance and inductance of speaker cables is a whole lot of hooopla over nothing and the main "real" issue is and always will be resistance.... as that will determine your damping

 

[rnrss]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Speaker wire ......... Why

You can see the coill in the lower right hand side just right of his foot

 

[rnrss]

Actually the information I would need are as follows.

1. Flux density in the gap. gap width, gap lengh, shorting.
2. VC wire density, coil length, VC diameter (internal to the former, VC total thinkness.
2. Cone and VC total mass properties,
3. Rim and spider spring constant and mass properties.

I will get that for you

 

[rnrss]

These speaker wire threads get real hot. Never fails.

I personally tried three different cable structures two of which consisted of the same basic able about 50 strands totalling a conductor diameter of 3mm. Each sounded different.

The first were just the cables twisted. The second using the same cable, but braiding it with a third clothes line so that it was possible to cross each other perpendicularly as mentioned in Speaker Builder (I think). The improvement was more depth in image and more life in the sound. I think the braided version had to use twice the length, but it's been a long time so I can only rememer it was longer. The third was a #14 guage Alpha Core foil cable. The improvment was better imaging and resolution.
These were all compared at least on a Hafler XL-280.

Inductors have the longest length of wire, so the difference is more significant even though DC resistance differ by about 0.2 Ohm only, the difference exceeds the effects adding a 1 ohm resistor in series.

Going from a braid to a non braid would not make a difference in sound unless the wire legths or sizes are different... as soon as you change the wire lengths the sound changes... and as long as you dont wind them in a coil you will not hear a difference with same size and same length wires as a result of how they lay on the floor or if they are braided...


Sure it gets hot... the reason why is because so many people try so many crazy things and have no idea what they are doing or the reason for it... then to really top it off you have some jerk trying to make money by selling you his hyperbolic radimeyer super isometric triple razamataz over under ultra wire and they will feed you any amount of bs it takes to make the sale LOL

Add to that a few peoples bad hearing, and other people who want us to think they have some super gift.... the so what if 2+2 = 4 its meainless gang, last those that have an ax to grind or a mistake they are to proud to admit, and then you bring everyone together in a group like this and it winds up being a shootout...

I am not and never have been one to fall for gimmics or fanciful hearing... and I hate watching people spin their wheels over nothing trying to find the holy grail... Since I have excellent hearing not only is it resaonbly flat I can still hear up to 16k, although not as good as when I was a kid and could not stand to be in the same room with a tv on...

In fact unless someone has a specific question for me on this I probably wont be hanging around this thread to much longer because I already said everything that needs to be said about wire in triplicate and everyone can pretty much take or leave it for whatever it is worth to them...

 

[carlosfm]

Then why not use a 3 meter length og number 24 wire? Its only a mere .5ohms...

What are you talking about, 24 AWG for speaker cable?!
The minimum wire diameter I would use (and for very short distances) is around 1.5mm.
Let's take a practical example: Supra 'classic' 1.6: 10.8 ohms per kilometer.
This, on Windows calculator , and for 3 meters, is 0.0324 ohms.
If this is wrong, it's Bill Gate's fault, not mine.
For a 3m distance I would use at least 4mm, anyway, so another practical example: Supra 'classic' 4.0: 4.3 ohms/Km.
That's 0.0129 ohms for a 3m cable.

...then you would know it is picofarads and nanohenries in value and if you know how to also calculate filter characteristics then you also know it has and immeasureable effect on speaker performance...
...
Like I keep saying the capacitance and inductance of speaker cables is a whole lot of hooopla over nothing and the main "real" issue is and always will be resistance.... as that will determine your damping

Well then, as I once experienced amp instability (not mine) and going into protection ONLY with two pairs of speaker cables, I suppose the problem was the resistance of that two-fingers-thick Wireworld cable or the Kimber 8TC (8mm) cable.
Of course the amp sounded bad with those cables, and it was not because of the resistance.
By coincidence (not for me) those two cables are highly capacitive (yes, some tens of pf per ft, but multiply that for a few meters and...).
http://www.lautsprechershop.de/hifi/index_en.htm?/hifi/kabel_l1_en.htm

Your problem is that you only think on the speaker and not on the amps.

Regarding interconnects, it shows you are in the dark and don't know anything about that.
How can they don't make difference, as long as they are decent?
Too vague.
You need very low output impedances on the source components so that the interconnects make little difference.
Otherwise they do, and the RCA plug was one of the worse inventions, should not be used for audio.
DIN plug should be the standard.

LOL.

 

[rcw]

re active crossovers

Someone once pointed out that some of the recordings that the anti crossover purist faction most prize were actually produced on mixing desks that had a signal path consisting of at least half a dozen 741 type op amps.
After its gone through half a dozen 741's, mangling a signal more and it be recognisable as music is hard to imagine, a couple of 5534's in an electronic crossover are not going to make much difference at all.

 

[rnrss]

Re: re active crossovers

Someone once pointed out that some of the recordings that the anti crossover purist faction most prize were actually produced on mixing desks that had a signal path consisting of at least half a dozen 741 type op amps.
After its gone through half a dozen 741's, mangling a signal more and it be recognisable as music is hard to imagine, a couple of 5534's in an electronic crossover are not going to make much difference at all.

Even worse, on my system I use a deq2496 purely digital equalizer where the music is processed into binary 1's and 0's and then back to analog, that and cd's are digital too...

Much of the very best commercial equipment is all digital and look at all the processing and filtering that goes through....

 

[carlosfm]

Re: re active crossovers

After its gone through half a dozen 741's, mangling a signal more and it be recognisable as music is hard to imagine, a couple of 5534's in an electronic crossover are not going to make much difference at all.

Yes, it does.
Compromise by compromise you go on compromising it all.
There's hi-fi and there's hi-end.
Hard to explain, you have to hear it.😀

Too busy now, anyway.

 

[steenoe]

This, on Windows calculator , and for 3 meters, is 0.0324 ohms. If this is wrong, it's Bill Gate's fault, not mine.

Yep, I blame a lot of things on that guy too😀 😀 😀

Steen😎

 

[Audiophilenoob]

Re: Re: re active crossovers

Yes, it does.
Compromise by compromise you go on compromising it all.
There's hi-fi and there's hi-end.
Hard to explain, you have to hear it.😀

Too busy now, anyway.

that guy has a very very valid point that you completely throw out

also what do you think those inductors and capacitors do to the high level signal

I shiver to think of it

 

[PauSim]

Re: Re: Re: re active crossovers

Someone once pointed out that some of the recordings that the anti crossover purist faction most prize were actually produced on mixing desks that had a signal path consisting of at least half a dozen 741 type op amps. (Snip)

that guy has a very very valid point (Snip)

What if the anti-crossover purist faction are aware of that and choose to go their way just to get closer to the recordings produced on mixing desks that had a signal path consisting of at least half a dozen 741 type op amps?

 

[carlosfm]

Re: Re: Re: re active crossovers

that guy has a very very valid point that you completely throw out

What point?
Sorry, but I can't believe the path is to go on compromising a system chain just because of the recording equipment some studios use.
Otherwise I would have a midi as my main system.

also what do you think those inductors and capacitors do to the high level signal

I've already said (and repeated) what I think about that, I can't repeat myself more, what is said is said.
I prefer as simple as possible crossovers (ideally avoiding an inductor on the woofer) and no need for active filters.
Btw high-order active filters also sound bad.

 

[PauSim]

Re: Re: Re: Re: re active crossovers

Originally posted by PauSim

What if the anti-crossover purist faction are aware of that and choose to go their way just to get closer to the recordings produced on mixing desks that had a signal path consisting of at least half a dozen 741 type op amps?

My point here is that no matter what kind of gear is used in the creating process, the data the gear provides will end being frozen in the recorded medium, which no anti or pro crossover faction can change. A CD, an LP, an open reel or whatever is really a border line separating both worlds (creation & transcription).

And, most prized recordings are just so because they were as a rule well recorded and well mixed by a top-team of musicians, engineers and producers.

Given the most neutral sounding desk and recording gear in the hands of not-so-qualified personal and the final product may sound terrible.

Cheers

 

[rnrss]

What are you talking about, 24 AWG for speaker cable?!

I was trying to point out how silly your statement was by telling you to use awg24 if you felt resistance was so "unimportant" to make a point but I guess you did not get it...

Supra 'classic' 1.6: 10.8 ohms per kilometer.
This, on Windows calculator , and for 3 meters, is 0.0324 ohms.
If this is wrong, it's Bill Gate's fault, not mine.
For a 3m distance I would use at least 4mm, anyway, so another practical example: Supra 'classic' 4.0: 4.3 ohms/Km.
That's 0.0129 ohms for a 3m cable.

Well on my windows calculator the supra 1.6 comes out to .0648 ohms for a 3 meter speaker wire length... and the classic comes out to .0258 for the same 3 meter speaker wire length... I am using windows 2000...

Well then, as I once experienced amp instability (not mine) and going into protection ONLY with two pairs of speaker cables, I suppose the problem was the resistance of that two-fingers-thick Wireworld cable or the Kimber 8TC (8mm) cable.
Of course the amp sounded bad with those cables, and it was not because of the resistance.
By coincidence (not for me) those two cables are highly capacitive (yes, some tens of pf per ft, but multiply that for a few meters and...).
http://www.lautsprechershop.de/hifi/index_en.htm?/hifi/kabel_l1_en.htm

tens of pf/ft??? So what?

How about we use a nominal 8ohm tweeter... and you give us the frequency that a 10,000,000 picofarad cap will roll off at ok... That means what is the passband frequency for a 10,000,000 picofarad series capacitor... Very simple 2 sec calculation... forget it I will do it, I like my calculator better then yours...

You are worried about a few lousy picofarads of capacitance and for what?
My windows calculator calculates that 10million pf will be a high pass filter for passing all frequencies above 2,000,000 hertz and blocking all frequencies below 2 mega hertz... or in parrallel it will begin reducing the sound output somewhere in the same neighborhood and will be -6db at 4mghz and -12db at 8mghz...

Now I dont know about you carlos but I can only hear up to 16000 hertz so if you can hear up to 2 million hertz then I think that is something you should really be careful with... but for the rest of humans we can not hear up that high... not even my dog can...

But sure, ok, I certainly wont stand here and tell you that something like that cannot happen to an amp ok... When I talk about these things as I said before and it apparently means nothing to you at all, I said with a "quality" amp this will not happen...

I would, without even knowing what you had take a 100 ft of that very same wire that caused those problems and hook it up to the very same speaker and connect it to my crown and it will work just fine...

You seem to feel just because it is possible to have something like that happen to you that we should all accept that as the norm and it is not... It is very much the exception to the rule and not the rule...

Your problem is that you only think on the speaker and not on the amps.

So you are saying that even though I own a $1795.00 crown k2 fet amp with a damping of 3000 that I am not thinking of the amp?

What kind of master piece of an amp do you have or are you thinking about that is better, or has better specs?

I posted all the amps I use in ealier conversations...

Regarding interconnects, it shows you are in the dark and don't know anything about that.
How can they don't make difference, as long as they are decent?
Too vague.
You need very low output impedances on the source components so that the interconnects make little difference.
Otherwise they do, and the RCA plug was one of the worse inventions, should not be used for audio.
DIN plug should be the standard.

Well maybe I am but then I have had one of my stereos and all its associated equipment hooked up for over 20 years using rca plugs and it is still the same as it was back then...

So whats the problem with them?

I realize I dont know much about cables but I personally prefer balanced XLR because of the low noise and they are a little better than rca...

Rca on the other hand is not the kind of plug you want to constantly plug in and out... You want to put them and leave them alone and they will work quite well if you have good plugs...

Vague? Then get the gold ones lol...

Regardless of what the impedance is a good connection is a good connection period and that is all that counts period...

Now if you really want to get serious do like what I did on one system... pull the plugs out and solder the interconnect wires into the equipment directly...

I am surprised that this is not obvious to you...

Kimber Monocle-XTM Loudspeaker Cable
1: 16 pure wires
2: refined Teflon insulation
3: TiO2 dielectric medium
4: PE dielectric medium
5: X38R core
6: protective skin
Symmetric cable for highest transparency and precision. Equipped with WBTTM connectors

Yep with all that razmataz they have to be good right? With a name like monocle how could I go wrong?

I was so impressed that wire I went in the back room and pulled out a 15 ft number 16 extention cord from the cabinet that I picked up from walmart for around 3 bucks...

I measured the inductance to be 1.5 Nanohenry or .0000015henry and I measured the capacitance at 262 picofarads or .000000000262 farads...

So that is .0000001 henries or 100 pico henries per foot and for the capacitance it is .00000000001747 farads or 17.47 pico farads...

Now you seen how high the rolloff frequency was with 10million pf, and this wire is only 262pf which has a much higher rolloff than the 10million pf...

So capacitance and inductance on tiny little lengths of wire used for home stereo wiring isnt worth even thinking about... and if that little bit of capacitance made that amp unstable dont change the wire just throw the amp in the garbage, that is the proper solution....

If this does not prove it to you then I find it hard to believe you have any electrical education... I am not going through this exercize because I want to fight with you over it, I just want the people who read this to get good information instead of chasing their tails after ghosts and goblins like so many do from all the bad information that is out here.... and if I save one person money I will be happy...

 

[carlosfm]

And, most prized recordings are just so because they were as a rule well recorded and well mixed by a top-team of musicians, engineers and producers.

Given the most neutral sounding desk and recording gear in the hands of not-so-qualified personal and the final product may sound terrible.

Cheers

Right on!
There are guys that can't have an equalizer to play with.
Given the same PA system and on the same stage, a band can sound good, another one can sound so bad you just wanna run away.
Blame the guy in the mixing desk.

 

[Audiophilenoob]

Re: Re: Re: Re: re active crossovers

What point?
Sorry, but I can't believe the path is to go on compromising a system chain just because of the recording equipment some studios use.
Otherwise I would have a midi as my main system.



I've already said (and repeated) what I think about that, I can't repeat myself more, what is said is said.
I prefer as simple as possible crossovers (ideally avoiding an inductor on the woofer) and no need for active filters.
Btw high-order active filters also sound bad.

that is simply untrue concerning active filters... they are simply put the cleanest way to manage a xover.... also, of course, the cleanest way to change, phase, level, and inductance

manipulating low level (RCA) signals is simply infinitely superior for SQ purposes than messing with high voltage speaker lines... especially those lines that go directly to the speakers playing the music

compromising the system chain is moot in the type of medium we're talking about...

to prove that any "compromises" effect audibilty, tests must be made, not just bantar

also how much can a few op-amps in any active crossover damage the medium if it has transfered through several hundred of them in recording...
for you to make any boasts of audibility you would need to think am I hearing this for real or am I imagining it cause that mixer board I heard this from had 1000 op-amps in it

also sort of out of curiousity... what kind of speakers do you have carlos? I'm assuming something amazing with your high standards on JUST the signal source 😱

 

[rnrss]

Re: Re: Re: Re: re active crossovers

ideally avoiding an inductor on the woofer) and no need for active filters.
Btw high-order active filters also sound bad.

ok I 100% agree with no series coils on any driver especially on the woofer you get my total agreement on that...

But for high order filters I totally disagree and you must be doing something wrong in your design...

In the example you gave us in an earlier post it was clearly a case of you not chosing the proper crossover point or possibly even having improperly chosen the speakers making it impossible to get a proper crossover... There is very little difference in the quaily of a high or low order filter... just more ghosts here too...

Active filters are awesome and work great, top shelf... your reasoning to be against active filters is severely flawed too...

When I was in school a zillion years ago the first thing the teacher told us was: "there are no mysteries in electronincs"

and he was right!!

 

[Audiophilenoob]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: re active crossovers

When I was in school a zillion years ago the first thing the teacher told us was: "there are no mysteries in electronincs"

and he was right!!

a lesson many audiophiles need to learn my friend


😀

 

[carlosfm]

The deam damping factor

So you are saying that even though I own a $1795.00 crown k2 fet amp with a damping of 3000 that I am not thinking of the amp?

You insist on the damping factor, as if that was the only recipe for a good amp.
You insist on cable resistance as if it was the only thing that makes a good cable.
Your vision of all this seems very limited.

Power is not automatically equal to quality.
What do you have at home, PA amp and speakers?
If you are happy, be happy.

PS: if you want real quality with extreme control, listen to a Halcro amp. Leave PA gear to where it belongs.
One of the very few amps that can REALLY drive a pair of B&W Nautilus 801D or 802D. Yes, they are THAT tough.
For some very hard to drive speakers you don't need just power, you need power and current with quality, which is not easy to achieve.
Of course, you don't need all this artillery to enjoy music with quality.
And you don't need B&W speakers.

The end.

 

[Audiophilenoob]

Right on!
There are guys that can't have an equalizer to play with.
Given the same PA system and on the same stage, a band can sound good, another one can sound so bad you just wanna run away.
Blame the guy in the mixing desk.

what qualifies as good recording medium???


surely I don't consider tube mixing boards good to my ears... though others might...

I think it's terribly wrong for you or anyone to say that digital isn't as clean or cleaner than any "simpliest" medium given it's inherent digital nature

given that standard no popular music from 1995-now is "good" enough for your "precious" ears.... which is a leap I'm not willing to make

I know many audiophiles that prefer vinyl... which nearly ALL of those albums are one of the poorest recorded tracks in history

I'm willing to make the leap that vinyl music evokes a certain "remembrance" among the older crowd... brings back youth etc... that vinyl on fantastic speakers can evoke memories and euphoria

but to make any leap as to those precious speaker wires ACTUALLY having ANY AUDIBLE difference towards SQ... is well... absurd

there is too much alum, solder, copper, resistors, foil caps that that music has passed through before it even gets into your stereo for you to EVER improve on SQ through using different wires...

I'm sry friend