You've Done It Again...
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| Posted on July 31, 2020 at 12:19:44 | ||
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Posts: 170
Joined: March 12, 2001 |
My long relationship with speaker wire began in my college years. Funds for audio were short. That laid a foundation for my lifetime interest in high quality audio reproduction without investing vast sums of money. In those early years speaker terminals were not much more that a small bolts since wire quality was not important. Meet the electrical specifications for distance and lamp cord (zip wire) was just fine.  By the early 1970s the audio community realized that wire did make a difference in sound quality and we began to use Belden 14 and 12 gauge. Of course, that didn't go well with the amplifier speaker terminals so we employed crimp or solder spade lugs.  The spade lugs were structurally weak and of questionable metal composition, but they did fit the terminals without shorting. Belden served as my standard speaker wire for almost 20 years. During the 1990s Cat5 network cable scraps became commonly available. The Cat5 speaker wire craze caught my attention. By gosh, I built up and tested all kinds of speaker cables from 18 to 8 gauge, even going so far to build in cotton fibers for damping.  Over time I learned ALL cabling is equipment dependent and simply adding more wire did not produce dividends in sound quality. My Magnepan MG12 speakers with a subwoofer seemed to perform best with 14 gauge. Finally giving up on Cat5, I ordered up .999 dead soft silver 24ga that I threaded through teflon tubes for air insulated 14 gauge. These were good sounding speaker cables that held their position in the audio system for roughly 10 years.  A few years ago a small spool of ribbon wire at a university disposition center drew my attention. There was only about 20' on the core and it was labeled 1972. Two dollars seemed like a deal. Returning home I stripped one of the conductors to discover minute silver strands.  It was a revelation in sound. The cable presented music with the speed of silver wire with great detail and a broad, deep sound stage. It had all the characteristics of a silver speaker cable; very precise and on the dry side of sound quality. Also, the 15ga was a bit weak on the lower midrange and bass. This required a slight rise in subwoofer volume. Not completely satisfied I have been hunting for something different. And... Duster, you've done it again. I can't imagine the time and resources to come up with all of these low priced, high quality solutions. Fuzez speaker cable is excellent. An unknown name to me, I discovered the Furez cabling is inexpensive. So, I ordered up portions of 12/2 (12ga), 14/4 (wired star quad - 11ga.) and 12/4 (wired star quad - 9ga). I will refer to them as 12ga, 11ga and 9ga. It is an unusual cable built on a core of 27ga wire strands with dozens superfine 36ga strands. Bundles of this wire combination are very tightly packed into foamed polyethylene insulation. So how was this substantial wire able to best the 14ga maxim of my speakers? My humble guess is that the many strands of 36 gauge support the delicate higher frequencies. Two recordings attest to its detail. "Low Mist Variation 1" from Seven Days Walking - Day 1 by Ludovico Einaudi (Qubuz) contains some soft and quiet resonances at the start of this selection. My wife, the musician, believes it is tremolo of piano strings. For me it sounds like delicate bowing of a cello. Either way it is an entrancing musical presentation on the Furez speaker wire. Then there is "The Astounding Eyes of Rita" from the album of the same name by Anoutar Brahem (Qubuz) with its unusual interplay of instruments and room resonances. Wonderful detail and complexity. The 12, 11, and 9 gauge all reproduce music in the same character, but there are two qualities that changed moving up in gauge. Dynamic range and fullness of sound added more dimension to the music with the 9 gauge superior. Sound stage did not decrease in size but moved forward from an area behind the speakers to pushing musicians directly into room. The 9 gauge has both power and delicacy. I would place it just over to the sweet side of neutral in tone. If you decide to give this cable a try, be aware it is not possible to effectively strip the wire. The conductor is sliced open and spread apart. (There are videos and notes online to visually describe the procedure.)  Also, with the size of the wire break in time is longer. My notes read: 10 hours - accentuated high end calms 50 hours - bass arrives 75 hours - Steinway grand piano finds it character 100 hours - Soundstage fills out in detail. So there is a bit of information. Some history of experimentation to discover excellent cables delivering superior sound. Duster, you've done it again :-)
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| RE: You've Done It Again..., posted on August 5, 2020 at 11:31:52 | |
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Posts: 140
Location: Hawaii Joined: February 20, 2007 |
Duster, Thanks for the reply and the links to the connector.
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| RE: You've Done It Again..., posted on August 5, 2020 at 21:29:51 | |
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Posts: 140
Location: Hawaii Joined: February 20, 2007 |
DUster, Thanks for all your assistance. Patrick
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