A while back I made braided CAT3 speaker cables from four 10 foot runs of CAT3 (each run is 4 twisted pairs of 24AWG) with solids as plus and stripes as minus conductors, terminated with spades. This arrangement would theoretically trade some additional capacitance for less inductance and make a 12AWG speaker cable (see attached), but nothing crazy high capacitance, like Litz type. They and another pair like it have been playing fine in my system.
A friend had MIT cables that needed re-terminating, so I offered to lend him my CAT3 cables. He has ML Aerius ESL hybrid speakers with dual binding posts for bi-wiring and metal jumpers for single wiring. These are driven by a Krell KSA series 'sustained plateau bias' amp (forgot exactly which model).
When we connected my CAT3 cables in the same way his original MIT cables had been connected and switched on the amp, the amp went through its checks, but the right channel failed to turn on. So we flipped the CAT3 cables left to right, but the problem stayed on the amp's right channel. Then we tried the MIT cables again, and the amp turned on normally. We also tried separately connecting my CAT3 cables to the individual ESL input terminals and individual woofer terminals (without the jumper), but the problem remained on the right channel.
So it seems the right channel on this Krell KSA is overly sensitive to these cables?
A friend had MIT cables that needed re-terminating, so I offered to lend him my CAT3 cables. He has ML Aerius ESL hybrid speakers with dual binding posts for bi-wiring and metal jumpers for single wiring. These are driven by a Krell KSA series 'sustained plateau bias' amp (forgot exactly which model).
When we connected my CAT3 cables in the same way his original MIT cables had been connected and switched on the amp, the amp went through its checks, but the right channel failed to turn on. So we flipped the CAT3 cables left to right, but the problem stayed on the amp's right channel. Then we tried the MIT cables again, and the amp turned on normally. We also tried separately connecting my CAT3 cables to the individual ESL input terminals and individual woofer terminals (without the jumper), but the problem remained on the right channel.
So it seems the right channel on this Krell KSA is overly sensitive to these cables?
Attachments
Update: Same Krell amp channel is also touchy about some other cables, so it's not a CAT3 issue....
You could try measuring the lumped capacitance of the cable and see if the amp does the same thing with just a capacitor of the same value,
in parallel with a 10 Ohm resistor.
Yes, I have been meaning to do this with all my cables, just out of general curiosity.
What does the 10R do?
Just to serve as a dummy load in parallel to the capacitor, since you don't want to do this open circuit.
- Status
- Not open for further replies.