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Posts: 3082
Location: South FL
Joined: May 18, 2008
Contributor
Since: July 26, 2010
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Coincidentally, just this morning I was thinking about Magwire. It is a sad(ish) consequence of Radio Shack's closing that magnet wire will take longer to obtain. There was a time when I emptied their stock at 7 different stores in my area. Many a friend's, and my own, speaker wires are built with this magwire. There are many useful combinations of it. When properly laid, the 26 & 30ga alone or in combo (non-twisted) have always delivered crystal clear top end. This, on my MMGs and on some very expensive box speakers we tried this on. Here are a few items that come to mind regarding your project. Suspect every contact point in wiring and hookups. When in doubt, clean. Make sure that the wires are not being affected by nearby electromagnetic fields. These will easily affect the top end extension. In addition, these fields will easily collapse 3D imaging and soundstage, which can be uniquely rich with some Magwire combinations, if the system can deliver the goods. Al Sekela made excellent points about EMF & RF, which apply to all aspects of the system, and it helped my system grandly. For example, those little walwart transformers usually stay in "stealth mode", doing all kinds of mischief on SQ. Look at ALL signal cable paths carefully...3"+ separation from them walwarts may suffice. The same goes for unshielded power cords, I actually eliminated them all. Undue vibrations may also kill the goodies. Years ago, at the behest of Dawnrazor, I learned to respect this on Magwire. One test was particularly dramatic. When I sheathed two 10ft lengths of Magwire in a rubber tube, it all sounded very well for such thin wire. However, when I filled the tube with oil (experimentally) the damping and isolation that the oil added seems to have made for the major jump in SQ observed. The lesson was applied later, in my current implementation. For a few years now, my own implementation is called MultiMag 842R, in 10ft lengths. The 842 refers to the wires contained in the Radio Shack magwire pack:
- 8 parallel runs of 22ga next to
- 4 parallel runs of 26ga next to
- 2 parallel runs of 30ga The combination adds to about 12ga. These are all laid parallel, sandwiched between two layers of a 2" wide ribbon of a thick "tape". For this tape, I used Carmacell's AP/Armaflex #TAP18230 from Home Depot. This is a 30ft length of 2" wide, 1/8" thick insulation tape, which provides for vibration damping and separation of each wire. The 2" width provides enough width separation to reduce undue interactions. Since I bi-amp at line level, 8 of these MultiMag ribbons are used, 2 per tweeter and 2 per mid/bass driver. This specific formula may not be needed in many cases. In my PLLXO bi-amped MMG system, I needed the two Maggies to do most of the job alone, without a subwoofer, which they do very well. After many years, it is only now that I've begun to look into extending the lowest bass a little, with woofers. Quite often, the woofers are off and I don't know it. Along with other blessings, Multimag began to allow this to flow through...it did not "cause it". As a reminder, what the proper cabling approach can do is to allow for "maximum everything" without adding. Cabling should not "cause", it should only "allow" what the rest of the upstream system can bring through it. Remember this as you look around for improvement opportunities. Lunch time is over. Hope this helps!
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