Curious I saw a pic of the CableTak 5.1 or 1.5 can't remember...and its looks very similar to a 300 ohm antenna cable. Very intresting..

So can a 300 ohm cable (20 AWG I believe) be used as a speaker cable ? If so why ? If not why not ? :)

Well just curious...thanks.

-Mohammed
http://www.futuresouth.com/~mrahim

 Re: 300 ohm antenna cable as speaker cable ? - Thorsten 03:13:24 7/22/99 (0)
 Re: 300 ohm antenna cable as speaker cable ? - Jon Risch 20:50:51 7/21/99 (2)
 Re: 300 ohm antenna cable as speaker cable ? - Mohammed 21:30:04 7/21/99 (1)

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 Re: 300 ohm antenna cable as speaker cable ? - Thorsten 03:13:24 7/22/99 (0)
 Re: 300 ohm antenna cable as speaker cable ? - Jon Risch 20:50:51 7/21/99 (2)
 Re: 300 ohm antenna cable as speaker cable ? - Mohammed 21:30:04 7/21/99 (1)
 Re: 300 ohm antenna cable as speaker cable ? - mrh (Mark Hardy) 06:43:42 7/23/99 (0)

HOWEVER, for speaker cable use, two problems: the DCR is just too high, variations in amplitude response at the speaker will easily exceed 0.3 dB ( for a typical 8 ohms nominal) for a 10 foot pair of cables due to the 0.22 ohm round trip resistance. A four ohm speaker or 20 foot cables would typically have a 0.6 dB variation in FR due to the cable resistance.

A separate issue related to the DCR, is the low damping factor that this would cause, which would not allow the power amp to fully control the woofer properly.

Secondly, the inductance would be higher than for a closer pairing of the wires, say zip cord, and could lead to HF losses for low Z speakers or difficult loads.

Due to the oblong shape, it would be difficult to use multiple pairs of this type of wire, unles they could be bundled (stacked) and heatshrunk into position, and the polarities of each layer in the stack alternated from side to side to reduce inductance.

Jon Risch

What is DCR ?

>>HOWEVER, for speaker cable use, two problems: the DCR is just too high, variations in amplitude response at the speaker will easily exceed 0.3 dB ( for a typical 8 ohms nominal) for a 10 foot pair of cables due to the 0.22 ohm round trip resistance. A four ohm speaker or 20 foot cables would typically have a 0.6 dB variation in FR due to the cable resistance.

A separate issue related to the DCR, is the low damping factor that this would cause, which would not allow the power amp to fully control the woofer properly.

Secondly, the inductance would be higher than for a closer pairing of the wires, say zip cord, and could lead to HF losses for low Z speakers or difficult loads.<<

Could you please explain the above in layman terms ?

Thanks

-Mohammed

I believe the Cable you saw was DNM Speaker-Cable. This is not Aerial Cable, but uses Solid Cores.

It has all the drawbacks Jon Risch mentioned, however, I have done some work with the Cable and found a few interesting issues. If the Cable is used with a Speaker with a relatively flat Impedance but no compensation for the Tweeters Voice-Coil Inductance, the Cable simply becomes a almost flaty lossy (around 1-2db depending on length) connection.

While Jon also has some point with respect to frequency response aberations and damping factor, I would like to note two things:

a) The influence of the average room on the Frequency Response yends to be as much as +/-6db in the 50Hz - 10kHz range, so about +/-0.5db from the Cable usually does not matter much in the whole scheme of things.

b) If a Speaker is designed to require substantial external damping it is IMHO (In My Humble Opinion) incompetently designed. A well designed Speaker should be able to operate from an Amplifier having a Damping Factor of less than one....

I do agree that few currently sold Speakers will be compatible with such a cable, but why not try it? It's cheap.... But I do think you will find the stranded wire to be a problem.... I'd also recommend to keep the Cable as short as possible (as usual but even more so for high Resistive/Inductive Cables)....

Later Thorsten

mrh