speaker wires

I dunno about you guys, but I trust what sounds best to my own ears, not what brand or type, or thickness, or resistance, etc. of the cable I am using.

Of course, if it sounds good, stick with it...but then again, there *are* improvements, so keep an open mind.

That said, I just made some really basic CAT 5 speaker cables. They are minimal at best, but WOW! The improvement is night and day over some cheap (or not so...) Rat Shack 16 gauge stuff.

Bass is *much* tighter, and the treble extended way out..nice n crisp, and not harsh at all. And of course a liquid midrange.

And this is on just a Marantz 2230B with Advent AS2 towers. GO figure!!

Well anyway, you can all keep arguing. I'm going to listen to my music.... ;)

Addon: And BTW, I would say there is a drastic improvement here, at least to my ears. The soundstage has really opened up, so much to the point that the depth of it seems to extend *behind* me with a very convincing surround effect. Binaural recordings sound crazy sweet.
 
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Originally posted by JeffL

Well anyway, you can all keep arguing. I'm going to listen to my music.... ;)

Arguing!? :dunno: Just seemed like friendly conversation to me. :) I heard that the Cat 5 cable can add unwanted capacitance in various situations. What have you done to address this?
 
It would be "Drastic" and the improvement so great that you would be "DOOMED, Doomed, doomed" to go bankrupt in your mad rush to upgrade every piece of wire and terminator in your whole system!!!!! Ha, Ha, Ha......doomed.:rant:
 
Jeff,
Just be careful of that CAT and don't go braiding the individual wires because the rise in capacitance will melt your Marantz.
I make my cables out of old WE phone wire. Slightly different in how the wire was made and the dialectic properties of the insulation. Of course that doesn't mean anything. Just ask WW. He has been trained to know. We get one of these cable things going and there is a guaranteed and foretold Pavlovian responce forthcoming from the man in Tuscon.:smshot:
 
Thatch I hear you on the my systems issues and I believe that you are right, the way I have my system set up should not allow me to argue this issue, I have so many miles of IC's and Y's not to mention the switches that you are right, if there are any benifits to be had from cabling I would probably never hear it ;)

Unfortunately I have been unable to think of any other way to share my main speakers in both HT and stereo and still be able to use my lux pre amp for stereo not to mention the issue of using four amps on one pair of speakers with only one pre amp so it looks like I will have Y's forever and will have switches until I have a seperate HT room ;)
 
Just be careful of that CAT and don't go braiding the individual wires because the rise in capacitance will melt your Marantz.

Would that be a major issue (I plead ignorance)? I will watch things to make sure I don't smoke my baby...

Maybe it could be that speakers are simply benefiting from the capicitance and therefore the greater power is helping them out?


What I did was simply take the CAT5 and cut it to the length I wanted, and twist all the solid wires together and the striped wires together on both ends. The cables are otherwise untouched within the CAT5 outter insulation (still twisted pair).

I'd better do some research.
 
Originally posted by JeffL
What I did was simply take the CAT5 and cut it to the length I wanted, and twist all the solid wires together and the striped wires together on both ends. The cables are otherwise untouched within the CAT5 outter insulation (still twisted pair).

That's how I have a set of speakers wired up. The Cat5 is still in the original blue outer insulation.

So far.... no smoke....

But I'm starting to get worried because of this thread.... is this a bad thing?!? :dunno:
 
Problems from capacitive speaker wires

Capacitive speaker wires can cause some amps to oscillate and destroy themselves. Whether this will happen with your wires and amp depends on the magnitude of the capacitance that the output stage sees, the bandwidth of the signal being passed and the phase margin of the amplifier. All of these things can be measured and the safety of a particular set of conditions can be determined mathematically. Nobody does that. In practice the most anyone would do is shoot square waves through the whole combo and look for cycles of oscillation at the leading edge of the pulse. They'll be there, but they should be well damped. If there's 'ringing' the whole length of the pulse then the combination is unstable and prone to destructive oscillation.
Tube amps can be sensitive to capacitive loads because the OPT introduces a lot of phase shift in the gain stages. There's a point where phase shift causes the amp's negative feedback to become positive feedback and then your amp's an oscillator. Proper design of the feedback loop can minimize or eliminate this for all normal speaker loads.
Without instrumentation, there's no way to know whether this is a problem in your system. People who have run into instability from capacitive loads sometimes report that the sound in sibilant or hashy. This might be excess upper octave energy caused my the oscillations. Sometimes they report that the amp heated up and smoked and it is later found that the load was too capacitive.
Personally, I use braided twisted pair speaker wires as long as 16' without any problems. CAT 5 in sane lengths should not be a hazard, but if you're not sure, by all means don't tell your home insurance agent I said it was OK when he comes to investigate the fire your amp started.
Sorry I can't give a clear guideline on that, but it's a complex issue that eludes simple analysis.
Now back to our bickering...
 
the time bomb on my binding posts..

I fully intended to avoid posting in another round of this damn wire debate thing but have to ask you a question Thatch & Bauhausler – how much capacitance are you talking about as being potentially “dangerous” with this CAT-5 stuff and can it be measured in the wire under static conditions using a multimeter?

The reason I ask is that after reading your comments, I went and measured a few runs of CAT-5 I use, single twisted pairs in my 300B SET/Altec system, 3pair braids in my HT system and simple unstripped (blue) runs with the colored & striped wires twisted together in a Marantz SS system. I used a fairly decent multimeter that supposedly has .01nF resolution and I can’t read any capacitance. Am I doing something wrong or am I just oversimplifying a complex measurement?

I’m one of those heretics that actually thinks he hears differences in wire sometimes but for me it’s subtle and not something I worry about till I get to the fine tuning stage of setting up a system – there are a hell of a lot of other things in the chain that affect sound way more than wire. I intend to try some more simple formulas using thin gage, solid core copper with cloth insulation in my low power SET system (Thatch’s WE wires sound interesting) and agree that the way to actually “hear” wire is to hardwire where possible or use unplated copper binding posts and bare wire ends. In the meantime, I am very content and happy with the sound of CAT-5 but prefer as few twisted pairs as reasonable for the power involved but this is the first time I’ve heard about frying Marantz’s or amp fires burning down your house.
 
Billfort;
Sorry, no ideas here. Not even an order of magnitude guess. Did you have all of the ends of the wire disconnected when you tested for C? If so and no capacitance measurement, then perhaps the inductance of the wire is preventing the capacitance reading from happening.
Your SET amp is safe. I assume it has no NFB. It's the FB that causes the oscillation.
I really jus tcan't answer the question about capacitance except to say if you switch from conventional spaced pair (like zipcord) to the CAT 5 wire and don't hear the treble suddenly go all to hell then you're probably fine and should lose no sleep. I think it would take a long long run of CAT 5 connected to an exceptionally unstable amp with a lot of RF on the input to cause oscillation. You can also bandwidth limit the input signal (forgot to mention this before) to avoid exciting resonances. A small cap/resistor snubber at the input to shunt off signals above the audio band will help keep your amp from trying to broadcast the local AM station to your speakers.
Bu the capacitance deal. I just can't believe tha tCAT 5 has all that much C. Think of the hundreds or thousands of feet of tha tstuff that gets pulled through office buildings driven by ordinary network drivers. the BW of the signals is orders of magnitude above those in audio. If there was appreciable C in those twisted pairs the data signals would be horribly attenuated in a few hundred feet and would become useless. I think we should worry about something else.
 
Agreed! It just doesn't make sense, yet there is so much concern.

According to TNT Audio, 1872A Belden CAT6 (virtually the same as CAT5e) has 15pF/foot. However they continue on to say that other cables have lots more than this, upwards of 500pF/foot!!

This just doesn't jive right to me, and I strongly doubt that capacitance is an issue with CAT5 cable, or CAT6, regardless of how much or how you braid it. Of course, I have no way to verify this, so take that lightly.

What I can say is that my audio is clearer than it has ever been. If my tweeters go bust in the night though, I'll be sure to let you know...

Here is the link: http://www.tnt-audio.com/clinica/cat5questions_e.html
 
Originally posted by JeffL
Agreed! It just doesn't make sense, yet there is so much concern.

According to TNT Audio, 1872A Belden CAT6 (virtually the same as CAT5e) has 15pF/foot. However they continue on to say that other cables have lots more than this, upwards of 500pF/foot!!

This just doesn't jive right to me, and I strongly doubt that capacitance is an issue with CAT5 cable, or CAT6, regardless of how much or how you braid it. Of course, I have no way to verify this, so take that lightly.

What I can say is that my audio is clearer than it has ever been. If my tweeters go bust in the night though, I'll be sure to let you know...

Here is the link: http://www.tnt-audio.com/clinica/cat5questions_e.html

JeffL;
Thanks for looking that up. I expect that 15pf/foot is for a single twisted pair. You would quadruple that if you used the pairs in parallel as most do. Well, figure a 10' run. That would be 600pf, or .0006uf. That's miniscule. I have here the repair manual for a SAE MK 31 SS power amp. It states that it is unconditionally stable into any capacitive load. I wonder just how much C it would take to mess up a SS power amp. I may try a few experiments with something disposable and take pix of the results off the scope. Right now my bench is ful of a Mac 240 tube amp which would be a good test subject but it's not mine.
 
Bill,
The braiding of the individual wires like I did the WE (Litz Braid) is much loved by tube amps. By the way you never did tell me how long your cables are. If you can use 5' runs I will loan you some 16 strand WE Litz that I braided. I know you have been wanting to compare CAT to WE for a while.
Evidently SS starts up an occilation that sends the power transisters into meltdown while tubes like the extra damping. Notice how I said 5' runs. When I went to longer runs I cut back on the number of strands to keep the capacitance about the same.
I think the braiding of bundles is OK for SS and evidently the loose braid of Kimber is. Only a tight Litz seems to create enough of a field to damage a high current amp. I sure didn't mean to scare everyone. I know when I 1st started braiding cables it would have never crossed my mind that they could damage any of my gear, but I always put that old Monster Zip on the SS cause I didn't want to use it on my tube gear. Since some sites show how to make a Litz with CAT but I am not sure if they say anything about it not being the best thing for SS, I thought I would mention it.






16 strands of 24 AWG Western Electric telephone wire. The insulation looks like cloth but is actually a type of paper called Celonese.
 
Yes, this CAT-5=burning house thing does seem a little overblown, I will continue to enjoy various formulas of this wire until I find something better – I really feel it can be good sounding stuff for the money.

Thatch: my speaker wire runs are very short as my monoblocks sit right next to the external crossovers which are next to my speakers – I think I have about 2ft of CAT-5 between amp>crossover and 5ft between crossover>each driver. What I really want to try is a minimalist approach with a few pair (single, 3 or 4 pair braid?) of WE wire in all positions from amp binding posts to drivers. When I messed around with various configurations of CAT-5 braids, I liked it better the simpler it got with the 27pair stuff the worst and the single pair the best – at least in my SET system where I probably never use more than a few watts.
 
If you want to stay minimal I would suggest a 4 strand briad to the cross and continued to the woof. For the tweet a 2 strand with 3rd wire for configuration and possible use as a hanging ground. You are using short runs so few wires should not effect the resistance and you probably don't need the shielding the field effect makes.
Ignore that last PM and let me know if 2 9' lengths of 3 and 4 strand cables will do. I have some 26 AWG already cut and in large loops for braiding.
 
My Marantz & CAT5 issues.

I made & use the full blown 27 pair braided CV cat5 wires with my Marantz 1152dc, 7 ft runs.

Before I went through all that braiding (216lf), I heard about the meltdown issue & checked it out the only way I could, asking people!

Since Chris Venhaus mentions a similar issue with Kimber 8TC, I e-mailed them asking if it's a problem for vintage Marantz units. The response? No problem. Now I don't take this as gospel - he wants a sale - but if I went ahead & bought it and my unit blew I'd say Kimber would be on the hook.

Anyway I took a deep breath & did it. Now it's been quite a few months, no damage even though I run DQ-10s', sometimes at high levels over time, still no meltdown.

I personally am no longer worried, and am very happy with the improvement, particularly in the midrange.

Here's the DIY link:

http://www.venhaus1.com/diycatfivecables.html

Pete
 
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That is braiding twisted bundles, not individual wires. The 16 strands I took a pic of are only 1/4" wide and 1/8" thick. The dialectic properties are different that the plastic on CAT and the field generated is different.
I truly don't know if the cables I made would melt anything, but I think the main concern is with high wattage amps and drivers that will want the current to operate.
Evidently there wouldn't be concerns unless some gear had been damaged.

One thing I will say is that the field created by a Litz braid makes any kind of shielding a waste of money, and that includes ICs. The small amount of capacatance evidently makes for bad RF antennas and magnets don't seem to effect it. The braid was developed bu Litz back in the 30s for use in radios. Funny how old technologies related to audio keep rearing their heads. Those guys were explorers and discovered some great stuff. Materials quality has now caught up with the technologies now considered redundant by many but now the full potential can be realized.

I hope to be adding to my inventory of ICs made by myself to the standards of Dennis Boyle. He spent about 8 years using the wire and with an old technique, high quality materials and a few details of his own has made some cables as good as any I have heard. Most of the $5k/pair speaker cables I have heard have been at his place where we could A/B stuff. Don't ask me brands because I never even asked. He taught me to braid a Litz and gave me some used WE phone wire that had been given him by Jim the tuner guy. Funny how things trickle down in our world.

No, there were no double blinds using a mixed pannel. Most couldn't care less if they can get something that works for .10/ft because that is their goal. Music out of the speakers. My goal is great sound for .10/ft but wanting the 100K system for less than 5K is hard to do. So far it is working pretty well.
 
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