Internal speaker wires:
Person 1: Is there a general consensus on wire thicknesses for a 3-way speaker.
I will make a few assumptions.
The tweeters will benefit from a smaller gauge, i.e. 26 gauge?
The mids a slightly higher gauge, i.e. 20-22 gauge?
The woofers the biggest gauge, 16?.
Person 2: I would suggest something like:
14awg for bass
16awg for mid
18awg for the tweeter.
I've heard some plated wire that sounded harsh to me, so I would suggest that you test them first if you want to go that route.
Person 3: There is no reason to make them different gauge. I use 16 or 18.
At AudioGon I have read 'smearing ' occurs with thicker wire, especially going to the tweeter's. Thus the thinner the better.
So my next question is; for a 140 watt amplifier, going into a 3-way, with a x-over at 2800hZ, 'What is the amount of power going to the tweeters? (is this a volt or amp question?). I have read at the Goertz website that they recommend different gauges of speaker wire depending on the power of the amps. The lower the power, the smaller the cabl
Reply: As to larger wire causing 'smear' in the tweeters, I'd like to see some scientific evidence to back that up. Not subjective impression, but science. Current either flows or it doesn't, or so it would seem. e.
JadeM at Audiogon did an exhaustive study on cable thicknesses, composition (copper, silver, gold), and separation (this included braided, lightly twisted, and separated with 3/4" air gap). He found the thicker the wire, the less detail, too thin, loss of body).
As to wire gauge, yes you can certainly use thinner wire on the tweeter, because less power, therefore less current, is going to be consumed in that area of the frequency spectrum. Personally though, I don't think I would go any less than 18ga (AWG) wire for the midrange and tweeters. Certainly you could go less, but why? A foot or so of good speaker wire is relatively cheap. Why skimp?
I used to use # 14 wire But due to the thickness come the difficulty in wiring them and they also seem to stress the terminals more compared to thinner wires, So from now I decided I'd just use #18 wire to wire the inside of the speakers.
Depends on who you talk to.
Stranded is more flexible and easier to work with.
Some contend that "skin effect" should be taken into consideration, and that stranded is what should be used, especially HF is involved.
Why are speaker leads the size they are?
It's a combination/compromise between resistance, self heating, cost, performance.
For something as short as internal wire, I really don't think wire types would make any difference as long as they are not ridiculously thin.
I use Duelund 0.5 - its by no means the cheapest at $10 per foot, its a pain to work with because its so 'springy' but the build quality and sound is about the best you can get (in my onion of course!)
The wire inside, the binding post, the speaker cable and connectors are all important and are interdependent. You can bypass the connectors and go straight from the amp binding posts to the speaker, without another interface in between. Not practical, but better and cheaper
I read with some interest the JadeM experiments and then played around not just with the wire inside the speaker but all the way from the amp. I certainly saw a difference replacing the stranded wire in the box with solid core soldered on to the speaker terminals. Also saw quite a bit of difference in varying configurations of speaker wire and followed the JadM idea of keeping the conductors separated from each other by a consistent gap of about 1".
I ended up bi wiring using 12 gauge copper magnet wire from the amp to the main driver. I used a separate run of 18 gauge copper plus a couple of strands of 28 gauge silver to the tweeters + & - are an inch apart sandwiched in packing tape. everything is kept off the floor (yes you can hear the difference) all connections are well soldered. Very happy with the results.
I think you are both looking at the problem wrong, and asking a somewhat impossible question. The power consumed by any speaker is related to the voltage that is applied to the driver squared divided by the impedance -
P = E²/R (where 'E' equal voltage)
But the voltage depends on the signal. If the music has lots of midrange, then we will have lots of voltage on the midrange speaker. If the music has lots of treble, then we will have lots of voltage on the Tweeter. And if it doesn't have those, then we don't.
I think the question you may be trying to determine is the Power Distribution across the Frequency Spectrum. It is actually far different than most people think.
For full orchestral music, the bulk of the power is consumed in the 250hz to 500hz region. ("How to Build Speaker Enclosures" Badmaieff & Davis; Pg 118; Fig. 7-1)
As a point of illustration, lets assume we are consuming 10 watts in the 250hz to 500hz region. That means in the 500hz to 1,000hz range we consume about 2 watts; 1,000hz to 2,000hz = 1.5 watts, 2,000hz to 4,000hz = 1 watt, and 4,000hz and higher = 0.5 watts.
Going down in frequency; in the 125hz to 250hz range we consume 4 watts, 63hz to 125hz = 2 watts, below 63hz about 1.5 watts.
So, though not the way most people assume, the woofer does take the bulk of the power. That 'bulk of power' is not in the ultra low frequencies, but as indicated in the 250hz to 500hz range.
This is for Full Orchestral Music. There might be a little more power in the low end, but still not as much as you might think. But I don't see much different in the mids and highs with modern styles of music, and that is the area we are concerned with here.
So, if we extend this, if we have a 100 watt woofer, we could have a 20 watt midrange, and a 10 watt tweeter, and still consider it a 100 watt speaker system. Though, I don't think I would personally cut it that thin, but 100w low, 60w mid, and 30w high wouldn't be out of the question.
If you building your own speakers, some say the wire inside the cabinet should be more of the wire found outside the cabinet. If it is good enough to run 6 feet from you amp to your speaker, it should be good enough to run that last foot or so from the speaker terminals to the drivers.
For my own builds, 14AWG if soldering direct. I don't believe in using exotics, but tweeter wires with low inductance and woofer wires of sufficient current-carrying capacity help. The Ushers use about 10 feet of wire for each driver, or 20 feet total of wire inside *each speaker*, so it's not a particularly small run for the L18 project I'm building, I've elected to use ordinary copper mains hook-up, 2.5mm for the woofers and 1mm for the tweeters.
Soldering and desoldering:
Desoldering:
Desoldering Braid.
Person 1: in 99% of cases I use Desoldering Braid.
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http://www.mgchemicals.com/products/braid.html
and here to download instructions and info
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http://www.mgchemicals.com/downloads...pguide0805.pdf
This method is very gentle on the PCB and you will hardly ever damage anything.
Easy to clean working area with alcohol and Q-Tips before re-soldering.
More expensive than a desoldering pump but a lot less expensive than the desoldering irons.
Person 2: I had never used desoldering braid before this year, and when I tried it to remove a relay and some capacitors, I just could not believe how easy and effective it was. This stuff is a Godsend.
Person 3: Another vote for braid. It does come in different widths for various uses.
I think the benefit is that you don't have to keep the joint heated for as long as you do with the bulb and once you get the hang of it your work is so much quicker, easier and neater.
Person 4. Pass the braid over a wee bit of flux and it just pulls the solder off the board like magic! I vote for the braid. I've used it on the pass throughs with great success.
