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In Reply to: RE: RIbbons for ribbons posted by rosendds@frontiernet.net on February 05, 2016 at 14:01:54
It's not. Skin effect is irrelevant at audio frequencies.Many people are using solid-core cable successfully. If it sounds terrible it's because of some other reason than skin effect. Inductance would need to be really high and/or a cable really long for a low-pass filter into the audio band to be created.
A ten foot chunk of typical parallel cable (solid or stranded) has an inductance of probably 2-3uH total. With a four ohm load that's a low-pass filter with -3db frequency above 200kHz.
If speaker wire had that much inductance people wouldn't be noticing the benefits of the 10uH choke tweak that Al Sekela advocated years back.Cheers,
Dave.
Edits: 02/05/16 02/05/16Follow Ups:
Dave,
What are the draw backs of using stranded copper speaker cables?
Listen to Davey if you want but I promise you will not get the most from your system. Flat ribbon cables deliver better sound stage and cleaner highs than I have heard with any wire based cable, except perhaps a construction like Nordost uses, with clearly separated and isolated small diameter solid cores (mostly air dielectric too...clever design). Many think that multistrand is about the worst option. Now for interconnects, where the wire doesn't need to be large at all (according to the late Allen Wright the thinner the better) , a thin wire can compete with a ribbon. However, even then the ribbon usually wins as the sound is again cleaner in the highs and better organized.
I suggest trying to get a hold of Allen Wright's cable cook book. He explains it in detail. Davey will try to tell you its bunk but there is solid theory around it, including the dielectric!
I had both of Allen's designs, the ribbon and wire interconnects. Both were good but the ribbon was clearly better with spatial organization and lack of "interstitial" noises that you don't even notice until they are gone. I found the same with the ribbon speaker cables.
A friend of mine tried my Goertz and found the sound to be less lively in the highs but really it had just cleaned up the highs. Everything was there just fine and organize but less "fizzy" sounding. Most of my friends have now switched over after comparing to their old wire cables.
Of course you can make your own as well, it is a bit tedious but I know guys in Holland doing this to great success for their Apogees. I say ribbons for ribbons but really I think ribbons for all speakers are superior.
I prepared a 12 gauge and a 14 gauge set of ribbon speaker cables and never got to try them since I changed amps and moved them around so that the preparation project never caught on to the required length and freq range coverage. I did try them once hsortly but they were not broken in. Sounded promising but still not a step change up from what I was using before or after.
Project is still on the agenda but it is covering only 2.5-3 ft of length, think it will make much of a difference at that limited length?
You are using such short lengths that it should work fine. Of course the purity of the metal and the dielectric you are using will matter as well.
The sonic advantages are not ones that jump out and grab you and throw you around the room. It is main a calmness to the sound and ordering that makes things feel more solid. Also, less HF hashiness that you might not even notice until its gone. This leads to a more convincing soundstage I found. Of course there are also really good wire cables out there so it also depends a bit on what you are using now how significant the difference is.
I found rather large improvements with interconnects once I went to silver ribbon interconnects. I don't want to spend the big $$ on silver speaker cables though. I found the Silver ribbons were a rather large improvement on copper ones for interconnects.
"Davey will try to tell you it's bunk" regarding Allen Wright's cook book? I said NOTHING about Allen Wright or even ribbon cables.I only mentioned typical parallel cable and I cited a specific example.....which I have actually measured for parameters to confirm. So, it's not just theory.
Don't EVER put words in my mouth again Brad! I'm getting damn tired of it.
Dave.
Edits: 02/06/16
Davey, you said:
"Many people are using solid-core cable successfully. If it sounds terrible it's because of some other reason than skin effect. Inductance would need to be really high and/or a cable really long for a low-pass filter into the audio band to be created."
This is only true if the solid core is very thin. Thick stuff like used by Anti-cable for speaker cable is not thin. If you have read and/or accept the arguments in Allen's book then you would not make such a statement.
"A ten foot chunk of typical parallel cable (solid or stranded) has an inductance of probably 2-3uH total." Here, you make it clear that you don't think the typical solid core offers any benefit over stranded. Allen would disagree vehmently.
Allen's book makes it clear why stranded (without insulation of some kind) is bad. Again you contradict his book. That is fine if you don't agree with his theories or book I wasn't commenting on this.
I didn't put any words in your mouth, Davey. I took what you were claiming vs. what is in Allen's cable cookbook and by putting 2 and 2 together predicting what you would likely think about it. Your numbers don't take into account what is known about signal transmission theory...it is not just what's IN the wire it is also the field around the wire.
Allen advocated cables that were all either super thin solid core enameled wire or super thin ribbon and always silver. I have never heard a good copper cable that competes with good silver cables. I have had exact same constructions with the two different metals and it is always obviously silver that is superior for max information retrieval...despite the only about 6% greater electrical conductivity. His philosophy for speaker cables was the same, although you have to have a minimum size for current carrying purposes.
BTW, Allen's main speakers at home were Apogee Scintillas...ribbons for ribbons.
Thinking of the resulting 'L' and 'C' of a ribbon speaker cable, due to the close proximity of the 2 foils:
* L is obviously very low - which makes them good for speaker cable
* but C is high.
Now, one poster wrote about using 70mm wide inductor foil for DIY speaker cables. The width obviously affects the overall X-sectional guage of the cable (so the resistance) - but do you know whether it influences L or C?
In particular, for the same length, would a 70mm wide ribbon cable have more capacitance than a speaker cable made from 30mm wide foil?
Thanks,
Andy
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/electric/pplate.html
you can calculate the capacitance of the ribbon from the surface area W X L and compare it to that of commercial cables.
Note that the multi insulated conductor ribbon cables have similar capacitance to ribbons relative to single wire shotguns or coax or twinax. for a speaker cable we would be comparing 100s of pF on the ribbon to low 10s of pF on a single wire pair.
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/electric/pplate.html
can get the area from the length and width - so obviously increased width does cause the capacitance to increase. Which is what I wanted to know. :-))
But what is the 'permittivity' of the material insulating the two foils? I presume one would use what we call 'Gladwrap' or 'cling wrap' to do this? And the separation would be what ... say, 0.01mm?
Andy
It is the dielectric constant, the word just isn't in fashion in science at the moment.
The thickness of the dielectric you will need to get from the film manufacturer, there are tables of dielectric constants and you can use the one for polyethylene for glad wrap. Plenty of other low value materials from PET acrylic and polyimides to teflon. Generally you want the lowest constant for SQ purposes,
The operating voltage limits how thin the dielectric layer can be - the dielectric strength (Eds) of Polyprop is like 21 kv/mm while Kapton (wire wrap) is 400 and enamel (magwire) is 70 Teflon is up to 200 and polyimides 400-500- lower Eds means thicker dielectric needed for a given voltage rating (breakdown voltage) and more area for the same capacitance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor#Breakdown_voltage
http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/files.php?pid=190313&aid=11801
.
Quit parroting a silly cable cookbook. His (expensive) book wasn't taken seriously when he was alive and it isn't now. (I round-filed it a long time ago.)
Quit taking the word of some cable shyster and get yourself some test equipment and start doing your own cable measurements. You'll find it instructive and enlightening.
As usual, you've mischaracterized my statements. It's just tiresome at this point.
Eventually you'll HAVE to start thinking about audio equipment with much more objective brain cells. I hope that day comes soon.
Dave.
Allen was many things but a shyster he was not. His cables and other products were the real deal.
What would you like me to measure Dave? L? C? R? Whoo hooo! I own Goertz ribbon cables and they have the lowest L in the business. Wireworld also thinks a low L and low R is more important than C. What would work best in your opinion?
I do believe in measurements but not as they are often used by design engineers. I am a scientist who is looking for real information in the measurments (take amplifier distortion for example...there are lot of reasons you were not right in an earlier discussion regarding amps and they are all technical and objective).
At the end of the day though you cannot be 100% objective about audio because at the end of the day the final aribiter is the listener and they are decidely NOT objective measurements. How the objective correlates with the subjective seems to be the area where you come across as distinctly uncomfortable and fall back into the "the numbers say it can't be so!!"
"As usual, you've mischaracterized my statements."
Please give detailed examples where I have mischaracterized your statements. I have simply taken what you have said and contrasted this against what a well respected cable/preamp/amp designer I knew personally and had experience with his products has said about cable design. What he said held up in his products and what you have said goes against the experiences and some theories of others.
"Please give detailed examples where I have mischaracterized your statements. I have simply taken what you have said and contrasted this against what a well respected cable/preamp/amp designer I knew personally and had experience with his products has said about cable design. What he said held up in his products and what you have said goes against the experiences and some theories of others."
You just did it again! You characterized me as being 100% objective about audio. I believe in objective evaluation, but I have NEVER claimed there isn't a subjective aspect. The percentage ratio is the item in question. Are you really that dense that you don't even recognize these mischaracterizations when you apply them?? Good golly man.
A scientist with the amount of dichotomy that you exhibit is not the type of person I would want designing any products....or drugs....that I might consume. I'm glad audio is only a hobby for you.
Dave.
"You just did it again! You characterized me as being 100% objective about audio. I believe in objective evaluation, but I have NEVER claimed there isn't a subjective aspect. The percentage ratio is the item in question. Are you really that dense that you don't even recognize these mischaracterizations when you apply them?? Good golly man.
"
Did what again? I didn't say you were 100% objectivist...read the statement again. The "you" there is a general statement...I could have replaced this with "one" and it would mean the same thing. But, you are clearly more in the objectivist camp or is that also mischaracterizing you as well?? I don't hear anything from you about listening and how that correlates with measurements. If you go back and read a lot of my posts you will see that I bang that gong pretty hard.
"A scientist with the amount of dichotomy that you exhibit is not the type of person I would want designing any products....or drugs....that I might consume. "
dichotomy?? There is no dichotomy Mr. Davey. I am about as pure a scientist as you are likely to find. One of the first principles of science is observation and the use of such to form hypothesis and then attempt to disprove them. I do nothing more and nothing less. I take measurements and try to see how they apply to what is observed (aka. listening) that for me is the final frontier of audio. You seem to forget that audio is not like a lot of other sciences because it involves a direct human response that has to be considered rather than ignored in the pursuit of a theoretical "ideal" of measurements.
There's a reason why I don't bang my gong with subjective evaluations. If you were paying attention fifteen years ago on the Apogee forum, you'd know the reason why. :) I haven't changed my evaluation of (other people's) subjective evaluation in many decades.
Anyways, you can bang your gong all you want. :)
Dave.
" If you were paying attention fifteen years ago on the Apogee forum, you'd know the reason why. :) "
Like I remember what was said on the Apogee forum 15 years ago. Most of the guys there had no idea how to get really great sound from those amazing speakers anyway...
Yeah, but you did. Ha!
Classic.
Dave.
I've been tempted to try the Spletz cables a few times, watching for a used set.
Al
I see nothing wrong with those cables at all.....other than the obvious flexibility issue. Many folks have noted excellent performance with them.But regardless, those can be DIY'd easily at a much lower cost than purchasing from Paul.
Cheers,
Dave.
Edits: 02/09/16
If you look at cableorganizer.com,flat copper 14 or 12 ga flat speaker cable is not that expensive.
Cost is not the issue I was alluding to.
Brad's subjective evaluations and hearsay are not persuasive to me at all. I'm simply highlighting the basic LCR interaction...regardless of cost.
The audiophile evaluation method can assign all sorts of conclusions to various things.....usually based on speculation.
"Ribbons for ribbons" is just rhetorical nonsense and does nothing to remove the cloud of confusion surrounding cables and their objective performance.
Cheers,
Dave.
Flat wire ultra-flat audio cable comes in 14 and 12 AWG.It may be good for DIY speaker cables.
Compared to solid?
None. All other things being equal.
Dave.
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