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I will probably use 4 lengths of 20awg Vampire magnet wire in teflon tubing (~ 17awg equivalent) for an 8 foot run (amp to tweeter solder lugs) in the Orions I am building.The obvious geometries are:
- loose 4-braid (e.g., Chimera)
- loose twisted pairs, the pairs loosely twisted
- star quad (if I can figure out how to preserve the geometry).The star quad minimizes inductance (at the expense of capacitance, but I think my amps will be OK for a run this short) and this is the first thing I'll probably try. Of course, I can build a bunch of these geometries and listen, but I wonder if anyone has already tried something similar? Any advice, thoughts, or suggestions?
Follow Ups:
I plan to use a 20- and a 26g. conductor per pole, ala Audioquest's Spread-Spectrum technology, and I'm not separately insulating it--that's what the enamel is for.I plan to wind the 2 pairs of different-sized conductors around a 4g. Teflon tube (Michael Percy has it). Each 2 conductors, plus a 24g. insulated conductor stripped from CAT-5 cable and used for a Dielectric-Bias system, will be wound separately around the Teflon-tube core with a twist rate of about 2 - 3". I'll wind the 1st set of conductors and anchor them to the tube with Teflon plumber's tape, and then wind the other conductor trio around the core in the opposite direction, so that the 2nd conductor trio overlaps the first at maybe a 45-degree angle each 2 - 3" cycle. I'll use a 3/8" braided-plastic cover for this.
I'll be building a main-system cable using all of the above plus an 18g. Teflon-insulated, OCC-copper conductor. It'll feed the bass/MR drivers of the system...
...in a double-biwire cable joined only at the poweramp using AQ's direct-silver-over-copper spades.I'll wind a bare-copper 18g. conductor around each cable for the DB system's negative. I expect I'll use 4 - 6 9V. batteries in series for the DB system and that I'll park the battery next to the amp.
I've used silver-conductor speakercable before, but the system sounds SO good with the inexpensive AQ cable pieces I'm now using, that I decided to save some money and use the best copper I could find.
Sonic Craft has the OCC-copper wire in several sizes*; they also have the Vampire 20- and 26g. enameled conductors. I got the 4g. Teflon core and the braided cover from Percy.
* If I had a system that was less sensitive than my 97dB line-array, probably I'd add a 16g. conductor to the main cable.
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Tin-eared audiofool and obsessed landscape fotografer.
http://community.webshots.com/user/jeffreybehr
Jeffrey,
I'd be very interested in hearing about your listening impressions when you get it built.I have also considered dielectric bias designs, but other audio priorities have kept that particular idea in the hangar for now. I've also started to wonder about the theory... I believe that the great majority of common materials have a highly linear dielectric response at low voltage (i.e., less than a few hundred volts), so you would expect to get the same net dielectric response (field-induced redistribution of charge and/or movement of polar molecules) due to the audio signal whether or not a 9-volt bias is also applied to the dielectric (electromagnetic fields add and subtract with great linearity in nearly all common materials). Of course, one decides by listening, but we also select audio projects to work on today based on what we think is most likely to provide the most bang per buck and per hour of soldering.
If it's easy for you to listen with/without the battery connected, please let us know what you find out.
BTW, I wanted to add teflon insulation to the magnet wire to avoid shorting out my amp should the magnet wire insulation wear thin as I move my speakers around. Am I worrying too much?
...for me to hear subtle differences in the short-term, but I can hear aggregate improvements (and 'unprovements', too!) to the system in the medium term. As a result, the sounds of my system continue to improve.On dielectric biasing, I'm convinced it works, and I use AQ's DBd IC now (Cheetah) and have used their DBd speaker cables in KE-4 and KE-8.
On listening with and without the DB system, it takes many days for the effects of the system to build up or down, so I suppose I could use the system for a couple weeks, then disconnect the batteries and listen for a couple weeks, then reconnect the batteries and listen again...ad nauseum. We'll see.
On the Teflon insulation, I suppose insulating each conductor from the other 3 couldn't hurt, but if you use the counter-rotating method I'll use, you could merely put a layer or 2 of Teflon tape between the positive and neutral layers.
Also, I would NOT use any winding method that leaves the conductors loose and somewhat free to vibrate. I (and others) believe conductors should not vibrate among themselves, but what do I know? :-)
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Tin-eared audiofool and obsessed landscape fotografer.
http://community.webshots.com/user/jeffreybehr
My ears aren't that golden either... but after listening to good for a few weeks I can generally spot "less good" fairly quickly.I agree on vibration... there is no scenario in which relative motion is good.
Thanks for your suggestions and ideas.
Hi Peter,I notice you ain't had any luck with replies ... so I thought I'd give you my A$.02 worth!! :-)) (Not that I'm an Orion expert ... but I do know AKSAs! :-)) )
By all means use magnet wire (or Vampire's cc/ccc equivalent) but for tweeters - because of the high frequencies - I would use 24g, max. But, yes, use multiple strands to bring the combined guage up to 17g. But I don't see the point in putting each strand of magnet wire inside a teflon tube ... the Vampire wire is already insulated with some stuff ... polyurethane or something!
BTW, when you said 4 strands ... I'm assuming you meant 2 strands for 'hot' and 2 for 'return'??
IMO, it's very important to ensure individual strands do not move relative to each other ... so a loose 4-wire braid would be the best of your alternatives. If you take up my suggestion of 24g for each wire then obviously you need more overall strands so I would twist 2 wires together and then loosely braid four twisted pairs to give you your overall cable.
Another alternative - very easy to make up! - would be to buy Belden 1585lc which (if I've remembered the part no. correctly) is plenum-rated Cat5 cable with solid-core, 24g strands, teflon insulation around each strand and an overall teflon jacket. For lowest L (but highest C - which for that short length shouldn't be a problem for an AKSA) you would use the 4 solid-colour wires for 'hot' and the 4 striped wires for 'return' ... and they're already twisted inside the jacket!! :-))
Regards,
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