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Cable Asylum Interconnects, speaker wire, power cords. Ask the Cable Guys. |
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Cable Asylum Interconnects, speaker wire, power cords. Ask the Cable Guys. |
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In Reply to: RE: CAT5 Speaker Cables posted by Zene on April 17, 2012 at 22:06:17:
All of the cables I mention in the original note at:
http://www.audioasylum.com/audio/cables/messages/7637.html
are 14 ga center wire or better.
With the copper braid usually having even more copper than that, the effective round trip resistance equates to better than 14 ga. zip cord performance.
14 ga. wire for a 25 foot woofer only run is more than adequate.
Many typical coaxial cables that have an 18 Ga. center wire (and the specs I mentioned) will also have a lower resistance copper braid, so the total round trip resistance will be closer to that of a 16 ga. zip cord resistance.
Again, except for the most power hungry low impedance woofers, a 25 foot run of 16 ga. equivalent speaker cable will be fine, especially for a woofer only bi/tri/quad wire.
RE doubling up on a coax for the woofer, there is not a good way to do this with most coaxial cables, as the jacket material is usually not that great, usually some sort of PVC or rubber-like synthetic. This makes cross-connecting the coaxes (as I do in my Cross-Connected 89259 speakjer cable, see:
http://www.audiyo.com/pdf/CC89259_John_Risch_Speaker_Cables.pdf
for construction details)
a problem, as now the jacket material is in play as a significant portion of the speaker cable insulation.
So if you want to double up on a coaxial speaker cable run, my suggestion is to run two cables in parallel, that is, connect the two center conductors together (these are for the positive terminals), and not to anything else, and the two outer braids together for the negative terminals. Then rather than spiraling them around each other, separate by at least 6 inches or more. This will then minimize the self inductance due to the two braids carrying the same signal, and effectively just double the capacitance (already fairly low), halve the resistance, and halve the inductance. One half the resistance equates to going up three gauge numbers, i.e., if you have an 18 ga. wire, and double it up, then it is the same resistance as an 15 ga. wire.
The materials do matter, and the Gotham coaxial speaker that Blackdog mentions uses PVC as the main insulation. This is the same insulation used in zip cords, only it is going to have a stronger effect, the cable being a coaxial construction, thus the insulation will have even more of an effect than usual.
Jon Risch
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Follow Ups
- RE: CAT5 Speaker Cables - Jon Risch 18:28:07 04/18/12 (0)
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