Double wiring. Would it be worth the work?

Blue Shadow

Blue Shadow

Waiting for Vintage Gear from this century
I've got two pair of Kimber Kable 4PR from the past (Black and Gray) and was thinking about double wiring.

I could use one speaker cable both the gray and black to feed the + of one speaker.
Benefit is I go from 13Ga to 10Ga
I could use the other cable both gray and black to feed the - of the same speaker.
Possible benefit, I could separate the + and -

With the second set of speaker wires I could repeat this for the other speaker.

Both sets of 4PR are the same length.

The separation of the + and - sides is similar to the speaker cables that have a wide section of insulation between the conductors.

I need to figure out my speaker cables. I have a few different ones other than 16-14 Ga clear zip cord and one of them should sound better than the rest. Right now I have different cables hooked up to different amps and although good cable they are connections of convenience, not experienced improved performance. Hope that can happen.
 
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62caddy said:
Increasing the number of cables between the amp & speakers
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Then what is the design objectives of the Kimber Kable speaker wires, multiple wires making up each conductor to the + and - connections. In the case of the PR speaker wire they have 4x, 8x and 12x per conductor in that line of cable. These 4-8-12 stands are woven with the other conductor's strands to 1) make it pretty and therefore desired by the customer and 2) obtain the sonic goals Kimber was seeking. Otherwise, why not just use a single run of whatever gauge they wanted...just like lots of folks have already done.
 
Blue Shadow said:
Then what is the design objectives of the Kimber Kable speaker wires, multiple wires making up each conductor to the + and - connections. In the case of the PR speaker wire they have 4x, 8x and 12x per conductor in that line of cable. These 4-8-12 stands are woven with the other conductor's strands to 1) make it pretty and therefore desired by the customer and 2) obtain the sonic goals Kimber was seeking. Otherwise, why not just use a single run of whatever gauge they wanted...just like lots of folks have already done.
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The objective is to sell expensive cables.. ;)
 
Blue Shadow said:
Then what is the design objectives of the Kimber Kable speaker wires, multiple wires making up each conductor to the + and - connections. In the case of the PR speaker wire they have 4x, 8x and 12x per conductor in that line of cable. These 4-8-12 stands are woven with the other conductor's strands to 1) make it pretty and therefore desired by the customer and 2) obtain the sonic goals Kimber was seeking. Otherwise, why not just use a single run of whatever gauge they wanted...just like lots of folks have already done.
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Excerpted from the 'Speaker Wire" article from Roger Russell's McIntosh History website.

The construction of the cables you describe sound very similar to "Cobra Cable" which he had commented on below.

"Cobra Cable was sold by Polk Audio many years ago but has long since been discontinued. The idea was to reduce the cable inductance but in doing so, increased cable capacitance. Cobra wire had many separate strands that were individually insulated with a thin material. These all ran in parallel and comprised one conductor. The insulation was colored black for one group. The other conductor was a similar group of strands but the insulation was colored red. The strands of each color were interwoven with each other and formed a braided but cross-coupled two-conductor cable. Of course, the strands being very close to each other and with thin insulation, resulted in an unusually high cable capacitance. The high capacitance of Cobra Cable was the same as connecting an unusually high value capacitor directly across the amplifier terminals. Reports indicated that a resistor-inductor termination could be added to prevent oscillation when this wire was used with unstable amplifier designs that cause transient overshoot and even amplifier oscillation."

If you haven't already done so, I would suggest reading the entire article.

 
62caddy said:
The construction of the cables you describe sound very similar to "Cobra Cable"
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Cobra cable, that gold/green stuff was just individual conductors varnished and woven. Killed some amps, sounded fabulous with others.

The poop sheet on the 4PR shows each of the single conductors are made up of 7 strands of copper in different diameters. Another opportunity to show a pretty picture to extra $$ from the buyer's pockets.

Parallel Capacitance of the 'system' is 127pF/foot. I'd be changing that. The 8PR using twice as many conductors of similar 7 strand construction has a Cp of 291pF/foot

Kimber Kable - 4PR

For over three decades, Kimber Kable has led the audio/video cable industry in technology and precision manufacturing. Today, we are more committed than ever to producing products of preeminent technical merit and performance. Kimber Kable - Products
kimber.com kimber.com
 
AudioAvarice said:
The dialectric used is the biggest factor when I choose cables, gotta be PTFE ime.
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That is the only difference in the two starter cables from KK. The ones I have are polyethylene and the next step up is PTFE.

Got these third hand so not out anything, but scrapping all that insulation off and recoating them in Teflon is gonna be a job. Especially with all the smaller conductors in each PE strand.
 
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Blue Shadow said:
That is the only difference in the two starter cables from KK. The ones I have are polyethylene and the next step up is PTFE.

Got these third hand so not out anything, but scrapping all that insulation off and recoating them in Teflon is gonna be a job. Especially with all the smaller conductors in each PE strand.
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Resistance is what you want to minimize in a speaker cable & heavier cable generally less resistance than lighter cable. Whether that matters depends on the length & if that was mentioned in this thread, I missed it.
There is a chart on resistance by gage by length somewhere. Maybe in the Russell article mentioned above.

Other than that, everyone has their own BS about whats important as I'm sure will be made more evident shortly.
 
By using two sets of cables on the power/signal side you increase the likelyhood of radiated electro magnetic interference. How much? depends on several variables. Take your right hand, hold your hand out, stick your thumb up. Your thumb is the copper wire and the direction your thumb is pointing is the flow of electrons. Your remaing four fingers curled toward your palm are the direction of polarity traveling around the wire and along the wire up your thumb to the end point. With two wires, electron flow is the same direction, there is a point of no magnetic field interference until the EMI meets where they join side-by-side parallel to their axis. Maybe the radiated EMI cancel, maybe not.

For speakers, I don't know how relevant that all is. Never tried.

For low voltage, when using pairs twisting the respective pairs together at different amounts of twist per inch (each pair twisted more or less than the others) along with shielding such as in CAT 6 or CAT7 and also a separation barrier keeps EMI at bay enough to be usable. Experiment and see what you come up with.
 
Firstly, what you have is VR, second how long a run are we talking about? Very long runs like the one I have which is exactly 30 feet I would want to take advantage of the largest gauge speaker cable I can get my hands on, average runs, say 8 to fifteen feet, probably not as crucial but why the heck not if you can!

I use Kimber Kable 12TC and the capacitance for each run is approximately 4400 pf. Properly designed amplifiers are generally immune to oscillation at values like this and will have no negligible effect on sound quality and will ensure that your amplifiers signal will arrive at the speakers with as little loss as possible.

You'll often find on this forum and others that the biggest nay sayers to us experimenting with such things as interconnects, speaker cables, power cords and the like is simply because they lack the access and "audio jewelry" is beyond their means. Go ahead and have fun if you can afford it!

Oh and the improved continuity and reliability of well manufactured cables can make them quite set and forget and believe it or not can be quite a good investment. I experienced this when I traded a 30-foot pair of Kimber Kable 8PR that I purchased in 2009 at a local hi fi shop and had terminated by Kimber and was offered more by Kimber than I originally paid for them in trade for the 30-foot pair of 12TC I mentioned earlier. So, they can scream "snake oil" all they want but I'll do what I want and have fun at the same time!:beatnik:

The photo Kimber requested when we made the trade.
Coiled speaker cable.jpg

12TC just after it arrived.
Speaker Cables 2.jpg

The Invoice.
Kimber invoice.jpg
 
@Blue Shadow

You're negating the twisted pair EMI field cancellation that is one of the biggest benefits of Kimber's twisted quad design ..
The twists of the positive and negative legs of the signal cancel the EMI inductance in the opposing signal leg ..

See if you can hear a difference between keeping the color code intact .. i.e. brown to positive, cream to negative with both sets of cables ... or
Hooking it up as you proposed with one length of all four conductors to + and another length with all four conductors to negative ..

You have decent gear and a good ear ..
I'm guessing that you will hear a difference ..

The Kimber already has an excellent coating with a very low dielectric constant ..
 
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Akustic said:
The Kimber already has an excellent coating with a very low dielectric constant
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But, but in your interconnect thread you say the PTFE is a needed improvement in the Canare RCA plugs and my old gray/black PR (15’ lengths) don’t have that polymer and it is mentioned above, too. I’m getting close to diving in and playing with my gear and should try the two methods you mentioned.

Originally thinking of separating pos and neg to each speaker with larger gauge of using the two pair of PRs I have but will also try the duplicate speaker cable run keeping Black as negative for all 4 connections on each end. Might be a good way to evaluate the DQ-10s that have the Randall Research upgrades on them that I’m mirror imaging soon.
 
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