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Pros and Cons

From a technical standpoint, completely separating the conductors for the + and the - terminals does several things:

Pros
1. It decreases the dielectric involvement of the insulation material, which lowers the total capacitance
2. It halves the resistance (if two of the same cables were used, with the + and - conductors paralleled)
3. It greatly reduces the motor/generator issues, as long as the two cable assemblies/conductors used are separated by more than a few inches.

Cons
4. Inductance is increased. This may be a signficant increase, over 3X that of a single cable assembly connected normally.
5. The space surrounding the cable becomes a lot more important, and can now adversely affect the cables even more. This would include what the cables were laying on to reach the speakers (carpet, wooden floor, concrete floor, etc.), what they were routed near to (racks, audio component chassis/cases, other wiring, including power cords, IC's, etc.)
6. Doubles the cost (if two of the same cables were used, with the + and - conductors paralleled.

RE #4 This can be of consequence if you have low Z speakers, or ones that are highly reactive or demand large amounts of current (electrostatics, etc.). It will probably be of little consequence if you have 16 ohm speakers, or highly efficient speakers like horn speakers.

RE #5 This can be minimized by using cable lifters or risers, and these can be as simple as a foam coffie cup or a paper tube, chopstick or bamboo skewers in a tripod arrangement, etc.

RE #1 To take full advantage of this (lowered dielectric involvement), and to avoid as much of #6 and #4, instead of using one normal cable assembly with it's + and - conductors paralleled as one large conductor for just one polarity of the speaker cable run from amp to speaker, use a single conductor or single conductor assembly for each polarity.

To minimize #4, use a braided set of smaller single conductor insulated wires.

Obviously, this is one of those classic trade-offs, trading capacitance for inductance, halving resistance for a 'doubling' of cost, etc.

It is different, not necessarily better, or the best, or the worst.
Very much system dependant as well.

Personally for me and most of the systems I have dealt with, twisting the two conductors together (or using a low inductance geometry), rather than separating them far apart, works better overall.


Jon Risch


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  • Pros and Cons - Jon Risch 20:10:53 02/25/07 (0)


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