Skinny cable with more conductor... mine kept breaking at the termination. If i wasn't changing speakers so often i'd still be using it.
dave
Thanks for the replies guys and my apologies for opening a can of worms.
Given that I cannot take a measure of fidelity, I'll use my ears to judge what sounds best to me.
At least I don't have to worry too much about detrimental effects to my SSE.
Dave: to reiterate the cat 5, are you suggesting that I take a single twisted pair for positive and a second twisted pair for the ground/black? Of course using the same colored pair for both speakers.
Charlie
Given that I cannot take a measure of fidelity, I'll use my ears to judge what sounds best to me.
At least I don't have to worry too much about detrimental effects to my SSE.
Dave: to reiterate the cat 5, are you suggesting that I take a single twisted pair for positive and a second twisted pair for the ground/black? Of course using the same colored pair for both speakers.
Charlie
Charlie, no. I am suggesting that you take one pair out of the bundle and use half of it for positive & the other half for return.
If that shows promise, then you can untwist the pair and:
a/ lay out the 2 in a (sort of) spaced parallel configuration (see my wire).I sandwiched the wire between packing tape.
b/ wrap the 2 wires around a cylindrical substrate such that they cross each other approximately perpendicular (Chris used aquarium tubing, with a woven wire cover over the lot)
Chris' are prettier than mine.
Use solid core, teflon insulation (if you can -- plenum grade).
dave
You rely too much on impression. It makes your argument look really weak. Try something more definite. Do you have any measurements or objective listening comparison results to share?
Suggesting thin speaker cable for high resistance to a point of audible restrain with already low powered SET amp is real dumb thing to do.
High-fidelity is about the level of faithfulness the reproduced sound has to the original sound. One way to figure out whether speaker cable does that well or not is to do a DBT if you are really curious. If not, many others have done that already. Just look up speaker cable DBT. As other posters already said, speaker cable only needs to have adequate conductor thickness and that info comes from the industry experts.
Ask planet10 what reference source he compared to when he said, "For my system 24g is adequate copper and produces higher fidelity than the 12g."
You may end up having to turn up the volume which can increase the chance of higher distortion and even clipping.
If you are that curious about fiddling with speaker cable, why not try cable lifters?
There are those who say it seems to improve the sound.
Charlie, no. I am suggesting that you take one pair out of the bundle and use half of it for positive & the other half for return.
If that shows promise, then you can untwist the pair and:
a/ lay out the 2 in a (sort of) spaced parallel configuration (see my wire).I sandwiched the wire between packing tape.
b/ wrap the 2 wires around a cylindrical substrate such that they cross each other approximately perpendicular (Chris used aquarium tubing, with a woven wire cover over the lot)
Chris' are prettier than mine.
Use solid core, teflon insulation (if you can -- plenum grade).
dave
If you're interested in that spaced parallel configuration thing, have you considered trying some open wire transmission line? It will be stranded wire, though.
I just use the 12 gauge stuff that is clear with a red stripe on one side, and comes in a big roll for twenty bucks or so. And cheap banana plugs from RS.
But I use Klipsch speakers so my expectations are pretty low, anyways
Win W5JAG
SY has a valid reason for not using wire with clear insulation IIRC.
$20/roll is not as cheap as free CAT5/6
dave
High-fidelity is about the level of faithfulness the reproduced sound has to the original sound. One way to figure out whether speaker cable does that well or not is to do a DBT if you are really curious. If not, many others have done that already. Just look up speaker cable DBT. As other posters already said, speaker cable only needs to have adequate conductor thickness and that info comes from the industry experts.
Ask planet10 what reference source he compared to when he said, "For my system 24g is adequate copper and produces higher fidelity than the 12g."
You may end up having to turn up the volume which can increase the chance of higher distortion and even clipping.
If you are that curious about fiddling with speaker cable, why not try cable lifters?
There are those who say it seems to improve the sound.
SY has mentioned a couple engineering articles in the past in regards to speaker cables - you should find them and read them. You may get an adequate result most of the time assuming "speaker cable only needs to have adequate conductor thickness", but in actuality it's nowhere near that simple.
DBT are always worth while, but in this case all it's going to determine is if a difference can be heard, and if so, help form a subjective preference in absence of bias. I don't see how such a DBT will establish 'highest-fidelity', as no reference to the original sound is being used; one can't assume what you hear is faithful to the original just because you used a 12g cable.
Seems the OPs original question was answered and they've some ideas to try if they so choose. What they choose to prefer in the end is theirs, as is how they get there.
On a personal note, some of the behavior in this thread is an outright embarrassment to this community. Surely we can share opinions, experience, and knowledge without the attitude and personal attacks?
Some of the plastic formulations apparently caused wire corrosion (green).
The good/bad news is that the clear coating makes visual inspection easy.
OK. First of all, the quality or source of the speaker wire will not harm your SSE.
Running the SSE with no load at all at a high enough volume level to cause clipping could possibly damage the OPT.
Running the SSE with the load totally shorted out will slightly increase the dissipation in the output tube, and should be avoided, but shouldn't fry anything.
Between these two extremes, it should be nearly impossible to blow anything up.
Being an electrical engineer, I tend to believe that speaker wire with a low resistance, low capacitance, and low distributed inductance, SHOULD pretty much sound the same.
There will be cases where wire that does not conform to this criteria will sound different (high resistance CAT5). Different could be better on some systems.
That said, my speaker wire came from Walmart! At least in south Florida the large thumpa thumpa car crowd brings 12 and 14 gauge speaker wire and 1 Farad stiffening caps to your local Walmart store. I use the 14 gauge stuff for short runs, and the 12 gauge stuff for speaker cables on guitar cabinets.
It is clear, but I never noticed any green growth even in Florida humidity.
I bought a very used 68 Camaro convertible (35 years ago) because it was dead, and cheap. Someone had replaced most of the underhood wiring with clear speaker wire. After fixing the carburetor I drove that car, speaker wire and all for several years before deciding to replace the power train. At that point, I made a new wiring harness. The speaker wire had become very brittle, and would break in half if bent. No green growth however.
Running the SSE with no load at all at a high enough volume level to cause clipping could possibly damage the OPT.
Running the SSE with the load totally shorted out will slightly increase the dissipation in the output tube, and should be avoided, but shouldn't fry anything.
Between these two extremes, it should be nearly impossible to blow anything up.
Being an electrical engineer, I tend to believe that speaker wire with a low resistance, low capacitance, and low distributed inductance, SHOULD pretty much sound the same.
There will be cases where wire that does not conform to this criteria will sound different (high resistance CAT5). Different could be better on some systems.
That said, my speaker wire came from Walmart! At least in south Florida the large thumpa thumpa car crowd brings 12 and 14 gauge speaker wire and 1 Farad stiffening caps to your local Walmart store. I use the 14 gauge stuff for short runs, and the 12 gauge stuff for speaker cables on guitar cabinets.
It is clear, but I never noticed any green growth even in Florida humidity.
I bought a very used 68 Camaro convertible (35 years ago) because it was dead, and cheap. Someone had replaced most of the underhood wiring with clear speaker wire. After fixing the carburetor I drove that car, speaker wire and all for several years before deciding to replace the power train. At that point, I made a new wiring harness. The speaker wire had become very brittle, and would break in half if bent. No green growth however.
I used to use this guys stuff with my valve amps - DNM Cables
He also argues in favor of using thin solid core copper, it seemed to work very well in my system until i changed over to a solid state Naim amp. It reduced the bass impact of that amp but the runs were about 9 meters at the time so resistance was quite high.
He also argues in favor of using thin solid core copper, it seemed to work very well in my system until i changed over to a solid state Naim amp. It reduced the bass impact of that amp but the runs were about 9 meters at the time so resistance was quite high.
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