Speaker wire

[HTfreak2004]

I was wondering if brand matter as long as it's 12awg copper speaker wire. No copper clad aluminum

Just make sure that they use the copper on the spaceship discovery! If it’s good enough for NASA it should be good enough for a a maximum 25’ run if it’s longer then 25’ you will need to special order or wait for the new heaven and new earth since we can’t produce a copper for such an outlandish run!

 

[Verdinut]

He crossed his over at 80hz but some speakers will dip even lower then 4 ohms above 100hz.

Sound and Vision did a review on my paradigm studio 100s v.3 they can drop to 2.5 @ 104 Hz.

I agree with the main point about is the sound degradation detectable warranting a lower gauge copper!

Most of us just go heavier gauge to eliminate cost later or multiple parallel runs. Peace of mind is just that a mind without worry

Most of the power is needed at low frequencies up to about 400 Hz. It's when a loudspeaker's impedance dips down below 3 ohms at those frequencies, that some amplifiers (and that includes some AVRs) don't have the required power supply to handle the current demand.

 

[lovinthehd]

I was wondering if brand matter as long as it's 12awg copper speaker wire. No copper clad aluminum

Not really, as you said just avoid CCA. Very little difference between OFC and ETP copper, too.

 

[HTfreak2004]

Most of the power is needed at low frequencies up to about 400 Hz. It's when a loudspeaker's impedance dips down below 3 ohms at those frequencies, that some amplifiers (and that includes some AVRs) don't have the required power supply to handle the current demand.

Yeah I totally forgot the amp juice multiplied by ohms. Oh well forgiveness please

 

[Sasquatch1000]

Whatever wire you choose, make sure that the conductors are twisted, NOT staight parallel conductors ala lamp cord.

 

[lovinthehd]

Whatever wire you choose, make sure that the conductors are twisted, NOT staight parallel conductors ala lamp cord.

Why is that?

 

[HTfreak2004]

Why is that?

Did you ever notice how more exciting a woman is with braided hair? It’s all in the twisting of the fibers!

When the hair is in a parallel arrangement say a pony tail it’s like you are asking for her to whoop your ass!

Twisting wire like braiding is a a fed-dish we cannot go without

 

[Leemix]

Why is that?

It cancels out some of the interference


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[lovinthehd]

It cancels out some of the interference


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

If there is any to cancel....never been a problem for most that I can tell.

 

[Sasquatch1000]

Why is that?

Wire has inductance along with resistance. This can result in an audible attenuation of high frequencies in longer cable runs with low impendence loads.
Twisting the conductors cancels out inductance much like the twisted pairs in data cable.
If you don't want to spend (waste) your money on the esoteric 4-conductor twist, the ghetto method is to use 16-4 jacketed speaker cable as a two-conductor by connecting conductors together in pairs. This yields the same resistance as 12-2 along with the inductance cancelling twist.
For subs, twist does not matter so anything goes... fat parallel lamp cord, romex, THHN etc.

 

[lovinthehd]

Wire has inductance along with resistance. This can result in an audible attenuation of high frequencies in longer cable runs with low impendence loads.
Twisting the conductors cancels out inductance much like the twisted pairs in data cable.
If you don't want to spend (waste) your money on the esoteric 4-conductor twist, the ghetto method is to use 16-4 jacketed speaker cable as a two-conductor by connecting conductors together in pairs. This yields the same resistance as 12-2 along with the inductance cancelling twist.
For subs, twist does not matter so anything goes... fat parallel lamp cord, romex, THHN etc.

So how long a run before it becomes audible and with what impedance? 16g doubled up would be more along the lines of 13g....

 

[Verdinut]

So how long a run before it becomes audible and with what impedance? 16g doubled up would be more along the lines of 13g....

Yes, by twisting two wires of same gauge together, the resulting resistance is exactly the same as that of a wire with the AWG value reduced by 3 ( 2 X 16 = 1 x 13 and so on).

 

[lovinthehd]

Yes, by twisting two wires of same gauge together, the resulting resistance is exactly the same as that of a wire with the AWG value reduced by 3 ( 2 X 16 = 1 x 13 and so on).

Yep, how about his propostion for twisted pairs due to drop off of very high frequencies at some point with inductance/length/impedance? A real worry?

 

[Verdinut]

Yep, how about his propostion for twisted pairs due to drop off of very high frequencies at some point with inductance/length/impedance? A real worry?

Speaker cable lengths in a house will never be long enough to cause interfering inductance. However, increasing length causes increase in series resistance with a loudspeaker and that is why the resistance has to be kept low enough not to appreciably reduce the power fed to the speaker and annul the amplifier's damping factor.

Of course, an increase in the cable resistance is added to the speaker impedance seen by the driving amplifier. IMO, there should not be any more noticeable drop off of high frequencies compared to low frequencies due to increased cable length.

 

[lovinthehd]

Speaker cable lengths in a house will never be long enough to cause interfering inductance. However, increasing length causes increase in series resistance with a loudspeaker and that is why the resistance has to be kept low enough not to appreciably reduce the power fed to the speaker and annul the amplifier's damping factor.

Of course, an increase in the cable resistance is added to the speaker impedance seen by the driving amplifier. IMO, there should not be any more noticeable drop off of high frequencies compared to low frequencies due to increased cable length.

If one even has speakers affected by amp damping factor....

 

[Verdinut]

If one even has speakers affected by amp damping factor....

A subwoofer having a high Q needs all the power and damping action available from an amplifier. That is why for instance that several subwoofers which are designed for a sealed enclosure cannot operate successfully in a ported box unless you have a beefy amplifier with a very low output resistance.

 

[lovinthehd]

A subwoofer having a high Q needs all the power and damping action available from an amplifier. That is why for instance that several subwoofers which are designed for a sealed enclosure cannot operate successfully in a ported box unless you have a beefy amplifier with a very low output resistance.

That's a pretty specific instance....was thinking more of a typical speaker with a crossover network to contend with.

 

[Verdinut]

That's a pretty specific instance....was thinking more of a typical speaker with a crossover network to contend with.

For a well designed passive crossover, the DC resistance of the inductor in series with the woofer has to be limited to a small percentage of the woofer's nominal impedance as it adds to the resistance of the cable between the amp and the speaker. Usually, the inductor's resistance does not exceed 5% of the woofer's nominal impedance, but some designers go as far as limiting it to a maximum of 1¼% of the driver's nominal impedance.
However, most commercially sold speakers contain low resistance iron core inductors rather than the large gauge expensive and heavy air core type, saving on manufacturing and shipping costs but with the risk of degrading overall low frequency performance at high SPLs caused by saturation of the core, a situation which won't happen with the air core inductor.

 

[Sasquatch1000]

So how long a run before it becomes audible and with what impedance?....

A few years back at a high end audio dealer with staff and customers present, we did a blind shoot out among an assortment of cables that span the gamut from #18 lamp cord all the way to a litz wire mega strand rope the size of a garden hose.

To keep the playing field level, all cables were 20 feet in length. Power amplifier: 300 watt rms, DC coupled mono blocks with damping factor >200.
Interestingly enough the most obvious subtile but audible difference that everyone agreed on was the difference between parallel lamp cords (#18, #16, #12 Monster cable) and a #16 fine strand twisted four conductor cable with two conductors for + and two for - that sold for $0.79/foot. Cymbals and other HF content was notably brighter when compared to the parallel cables.

I was surprised that it was even noticable at audio frequencies.
I believe a contributing factor is that unlike a traditianal dome tweeter with a voice coil and it's rising impedance curve, the test speaker utilized an 8Ω ribbon tweeter that exhibits virtually no inductance or resonance in the passband with a near ruler flat impedance curve to well beyond 20kHz.

I could not detect any audible difference between the twisted 4-conductor cable and any of the way more expensive esoteric offerings.
I can't help but wonder if the golden ear audiophiles would be better served using the #12 lamp cord for their subs and zero skew CAT 6 with the solids and stripes twisted together for their tweeters.

 

[Verdinut]

I could not detect any audible difference between the twisted 4-conductor cable and any of the way more expensive esoteric offerings.
I can't help but wonder if the golden ear audiophiles would be better served using the #12 lamp cord for their subs and zero skew CAT 6 with the solids and stripes twisted together for their tweeters.

A simple copper wire is as good as anything on the market as long as it conducts electricity. If its resistance does not impair the power fed from the amplifier to the speaker, the transducer will perform as it should. There is no scientific proof of the superiority of any esoteric expensive cable. That question has been debated so many times on this and other serious audio websites.

The question of inductance and capacitance with a simple speaker wire for use in a house does not exist. Period!