Speaker wire question

[ThA tRiXtA]

I have been looking around at high end speaker wire at this home audio store in my city... they sell this Monster wire there and I'm rather curious why it was built the way it is.

This isn't a bash Monster thread, I understand a lot of us here don't like Monster and their products, myself included, I'm honestly just looking for clarification as to what these "features" actually do in real life terms.

Anyways, I have included a cross section drawing I made of this wire... I couldn't find an actual picture of it online. The large gray circle in the middle is something they call a "dielectric." By the way, I think this wire is around 10 or 12 AWG.

In between the dielectric and the black rubber casing of the wire are alternating small diameter copper wires, every second one is braided and every first is a solid piece.

What does this dielectric do, and secondly, would logic not dictate that having a full braid of copper wire taking up the whole diameter of the cable vs. having half the body filled up with this gray plastic stuff not conduct the signal better or impede the current less?

Why have a huge thick rope for speaker wire but not fill it completely with actual material that will conduct the electrons?

I'm very curious as to why this is, the wire comes with an extremely hefty price tag (no surprise there) and what is surprising is that it receives favorable reviews all around the web.

Educate me, give me insight, please.

 

[Brian_the_King]

Good question, I'd like to know more too.. my very simple understanding was always that it helped noise rejection and reduced the possibility of interference from other electrical stuff nearby.

 

[ThA tRiXtA]

I wouldn't think that any electrical interference would be coming out of your speaker jacks on the back of the receiver or the speakers themselves...

Monster says the dielectric "delivers a lower noise floor", but I take their claims of what all the marvelous technology they put into their wires really does with a grain of salt...

I just can't fathom how replacing actual wire with a piece of gray plastic does anything to improve these wires over a full solid conductor.

 

[TLS Guy]

I have been looking around at high end speaker wire at this home audio store in my city... they sell this Monster wire there and I'm rather curious why it was built the way it is.

This isn't a bash Monster thread, I understand a lot of us here don't like Monster and their products, myself included, I'm honestly just looking for clarification as to what these "features" actually do in real life terms.

Anyways, I have included a cross section drawing I made of this wire... I couldn't find an actual picture of it online. The large gray circle in the middle is something they call a "dielectric." By the way, I think this wire is around 10 or 12 AWG.

In between the dielectric and the black rubber casing of the wire are alternating small diameter copper wires, every second one is braided and every first is a solid piece.

What does this dielectric do, and secondly, would logic not dictate that having a full braid of copper wire taking up the whole diameter of the cable vs. having half the body filled up with this gray plastic stuff not conduct the signal better or impede the current less?

Why have a huge thick rope for speaker wire but not fill it completely with actual material that will conduct the electrons?

I'm very curious as to why this is, the wire comes with an extremely hefty price tag (no surprise there) and what is surprising is that it receives favorable reviews all around the web.

Educate me, give me insight, please.

Dielectric is a fancy name for insulator. In a capacitor there are plates of conducting material are separated by an insulator. The better the insulator the greater the electric field it will support, in other words won't arc through, or conduct and generate heat. This factor is known as the dielectric loss.

The other property of insulators is the ability to concentrate electric lines of flux. This is the dielectric constant. The higher the number the better it concentrates flux, and allows for a lot of charge to be stored in a small volume.

Dielectrics are used to make capacitors. The lower the dielectric loss, the greater the voltage of the charge it will support. The higher the dielectric constant the greater the amount of charge than can be stored in a given volume. Now the above are the principles involved in creating a capacitor. now capacitors pass AC and block DC. The higher the value of the cap, the lower the frequency it will pass.

Now the alternating solid and twisted cable, is pure gimmickery to catch the technically challenged.

Now they seem to have created a capacitor to some degree with this cable layout. So it may well be rolling off the highs, sweetening bright speakers. The longer the cable run, the greater this effect would be.

It would be interesting to measure the capacitance of that cable, and calculate the HF roll off per foot into loads from 2 to 8 ohm.

Basically that cable is a gimmick and has no valid rationale what ever.

In short it is a fraud perpetrated on the unwary. Unfortunately there is a lot of that, and especially from that source, who are among the grand masters of BS.

One other thing just occurred to me, which I should have thought of before. If that cable is 10 or 12 AWG, it has a lot less copper in than other cables of the same diameter. So the resistance per foot will be higher then for other cables of similar size. The resistance per foot is the only really significant specification for most loudspeaker cables. Bear in mind that quite a few high priced cables have higher capacitance and inductance per foot than standard zip cord, which is not in the favor of the expensive cables so afflicted. So these cables will have higher resistance per foot than other similarly sized cables, and may be some undesirable features added.

The real hooker though, is copper expensive. The dielectric, plastic, is cheap. So they are building the cables for less than other similarly sized cables and charging more! Great business plan! Consumer beware!

 

[ThA tRiXtA]

As always, I appreciate your feedback TLS.

So in short, taking your comments about the higher resistance in the monster cable due to the dielectric I was correct about assuming that because this cable has less copper in the cable itself that it would be less conductive than say a 10 or 12 AWG cable that was completely fabricated of copper?

I am looking at the 10 AWG speaker cable from Blue Jeans I am probably going to buy this stuff.

Does anyone happen to have that chart handy that shows the proper gauge of speaker wire to use depending on the length of the run? If you have it bookmarked, please link it for me.

Thanks guys.

 

[Midcow2]

Too make it look bigger.

Monster plastic center core Makes the wire gauge look bigger than it actually is. A 12 gauge from Monster looks much bigger and hugher than 12 gauge it looks MONSTER size.

Good Luck,

Midcow2

P.S.- With the center core the wire is so strong it can also be used as strapping tape, to brace new trees or to tie someone up

 

[TLS Guy]

As always, I appreciate your feedback TLS.

So in short, taking your comments about the higher resistance in the monster cable due to the dielectric I was correct about assuming that because this cable has less copper in the cable itself that it would be less conductive than say a 10 or 12 AWG cable that was completely fabricated of copper?

I am looking at the 10 AWG speaker cable from Blue Jeans I am probably going to buy this stuff.

Does anyone happen to have that chart handy that shows the proper gauge of speaker wire to use depending on the length of the run? If you have it bookmarked, please link it for me.

Thanks guys.

Here is a chart on wire gauge and resistance per foot.

Remember the speaker wire is in SERIES with the speaker, so resistance per foot is double the single wire value. Try and get the resistance of the cables no higher than 1% of the DC resistance of the speakers, and certainly not over 2%

 

[Rickster71]

Agree with TLS on this one.
Didn't they also claim, some years ago that their flux tube and the dielectric filled wire helped prevent "Skin Effect?"

I wouldn't trust any company that doesn't show the AWG of their wire.

 

[ThA tRiXtA]

Nice info page TLS, very detailed.

Thanks for the replies guys.

 

[Davemcc]

Makes the wire gauge look bigger than it actually is.

I suspect that with Monster's target customer in mind, this is as simple as the engineering and marketing plans get.

 

[ThA tRiXtA]

Monster plastic center core Makes the wire gauge look bigger than it actually is. A 12 gauge from Monster looks much bigger and hugher than 12 gauge it looks MONSTER size.

Good Luck,

Midcow2

P.S.- With the center core the wire is so strong it can also be used as strapping tape, to brace new trees or to tie someone up

Are you saying that the gauge of wire looks bigger but there is still the same amount of copper inside compared to an equivalent gauge of another wire, or are you saying that Monster wire puts the dielectric in and skimps on the copper?

 

[TLS Guy]

Are you saying that the gauge of wire looks bigger but there is still the same amount of copper inside compared to an equivalent gauge of another wire, or are you saying that Monster wire puts the dielectric in and skimps on the copper?

He's telling you it is a deliberate scam to defraud the unwary customer. We need have this thread go no further. On this forum Monster are again defrocked and the despicable jig is well and truly up!

 

[jamie2112]

x2 close it up........

 

[GRACE RUBY]

HELLO Ladies and Gentleman
this is one of those post where almost everyone is right to some degree, but not always.

I was one of the first folks in America to sell monster
when the world laughed at them, it aint laughing anymore.
Some folks can't hear the difference between wires and if you can't please bow out from this arena.

Monster has pulled some tricks over the years, but they have also made available to Joe Depot some thing he may have other wise missed out on.

For my ears cardas cable is the best in the world, no shrieking treble, (the curse of all CDS) forward mid range and a huge depth of field in the bass that is crazy beautiful, what monster did with this rare plastic core was time align the bass, exactly as CARDAS does, but for pennies on the dollar, bass tends to run up the middle of a cable and then drag, the center plastic core stops that and delivers a more time coherent phase sound, I know, I listen to it everyday, monster XP does this too, cheap, it is a low cost version of GOLDEN ratio, this also make the wire charge with EMS EMF thats why first turn on volume is low then goes up after some minutes. the weave is the recording industry standard for stopping hum, where you can not even sell a wire with out a weave which is way costly (see belken star quad mic wire) and machine after ear after machine has confirmed this, as have my dyna audios, wharfedales etc. I had to replace their (monster) green wire customer returns years ago when i was a seller,but no one had ever sold a wire with a huge air hole in the end before.
but their huge buying power has reduced OFC costs around the world, letting the little guy get a cardas deal for a depot price, but god was their tone arm wire a freaking disaster, but if you have only mid Fi, just get your cord off a old Vacuum cleaner by the trash on the side of the road, you'll never know the difference.

 

[mtrycrafts]

...
Some folks can't hear the difference between wires and if you can't please bow out from this arena.

....

Why? It is an open forum, after all, right?

The rest of the post is too nonsensical to comment.

 

[TLS Guy]

Why? It is an open forum, after all, right?

The rest of the post is too nonsensical to comment.

Yes, that post when talking about "time aligning bass" either shows a willful scientific ignorance or qualifies as a psychotic delusional state!

 

[lovinthehd]

I have a friend who actually worked for Monster and years later when I teased him about the nonsense they were marketing he gave me a really blank look....had no idea. A friend of mine is a cousin of Noel Lee's and he apparently isn't too well liked in the family either fwiw....

 

[GRACE RUBY]

I surely hope anyone who can not see something would not then turn and suppose to speak in scholarship about what they can not sense, I am a therapist, but that does not mean I would/could meaningfully speak about ear disease.
One can rant all they want, but if they confess they can not see something, they can not see it, and their observations are blind, that is the rule of good science, if one in anger of being left out of a group wants to change science, then be it, but scholarship will not listen.
Time alignment is a daily pursuit of manufacturers around the world, and as a therapist i can tell you, the people they hire to listen ( boy what a sweet job) and the way sensitive equipment to try to replace those people both are not in psychotic delusional state, however the good manners lost here in the above post(s) above may qualify for a rage issue and a attempt to keep this forum at a certain state of existence, where in it is more about "furniture" then acoustic science, but i at least did try to address it in a respectful manner, and as a therapist suggest others try same, if "phase shift" as a science has not reached these parts of the world, I am certainly not going to argue. On the other hand if both of the above posters, are trying to say, however bad mannerly, without proper credentials to do it, audiophiles need to have some restraints put on their outrageous proclamations that everyone must have a 59,000.00 dollar amp, most often the one they have, you will find no greater allies then me.
The best ears I know are my girlfriends and a buddy of mine, a another guy brought me a "line cleaner" that did nothing but make my amp lose bass, my girl walks in and says whats that buzzing?, I said i hear no buzzing, then my buddy came over and said whats that buzzing ?

I unplugged the line cleaner and they both said the buzzing was gone, they both did not hear to bass loss
go figure

But for those interested about life beyond the horizon, see this, this man is selling nothing but sanity
and is paid way big buck for his insights.
mean while, you guys try some kindness on new folks
and please don't throw around big nasty words you could not defend around psychiatric scholarship.

this guy is funny as heck as well

http://www.recordingmag.com/resources/resourceDetail/223.html

have a good one

GRACE RUBY

 

[lovinthehd]

Based on your writing skills, your audio knowledge, and who you sold crap for, you're likely not going to get much traction around here...just sayin'.

 

[GRACE RUBY]

Dear Lovin

one does not get to pick ones products to sell when one is 25, looking for any work he can get, I did not like what i saw as I so well made clear, so your preaching to the choir, did you love every product you ever sold as a naive youth, what was kind tho is that monster replaced all green wire with new OFC without receipt. I don't think all working parents should flee home depot cause they sell monster on some back shelf, do you think they should all quit there jobs

As for my writing skills it is a abusive person who condemns another with vagueness and a failure to help in detail afterwards, please seek to be kinder in the future by Pm ing me, a deep sensitivity is not only good for the soul but your listening pleasure would you not agree

As well, I am not seeking traction, I am seeking beauty, tho one does have to have one to arrive at the other.

I would tho be very interested in what you think of this fellas writing as it may very well be the case he helped design some of your gear, I am sure you have some opinion most worth while, and he is selling nothing.

http://www.recordingmag.com/resources/resourceDetail/223.html

All my best

GRACE RUBY