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Doubling speaker wire

cyto

cyto

Super Member
If you were to take standard speaker wire, say 16ga, and instead if using one strand for each connection twist the ends together and use both strands for the same connection, would this give the effect of thicker wire?

I have some 16ga speaker wire laying around and it got me thinking :scratch2:
 
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Won't hurt anything. You might want to try it on one side and give it a listen first. The only time I ever heard a difference in speaker wire was when I went from 18 to 12 gauge zip cord. That was distinct. I've never noticed the difference in anything else, but some say they can, and if they say they can, I believe them. But your ears are the final arbiter. Try and see.
 
Yeah, and if you look for a test done somewhere using "CAT5" (I'll have to look up the link)... that is supposedly the cat's (or is it cats) meow.

The individual wires are high grade solid core wire used for high grade data transmission and make really nice high grade speaker wires. I made up some with four runs of CAT5 (two for each terminal) so that I had sixteen strands per connection.

And I can soooooo tell the difference (well, ok, maybe not, but I feel better)!
 
I was just thinking about doing this with 12ga.
Does it help to braid the lines?

I also have 1/0 welding cable I could try..

..
 
Turbo Archie said:
I was just thinking about doing this with 12ga.
Does it help to braid the lines?
Click to expand...

That's what is nice about the CAT5... it is already twisted (and insulated) pairs and the impedence is pretty low. I'll post that link and some pictures of my "assembly" tonight.
 
You can think of speaker wire kind of like a garden hose. If a standard garden hose (16 gauge wire) can flow equal or greater amounts of gallons per minute as the faucet can supply, using a hose twice the size will gain you nothing, except you'll have to lug around a bigger heavier hose.
 
Turbo Archie said:
What if your hooked up to a fire hydrant?


..
Click to expand...

Then you use the correct hose for that, but it still doesn't need to be any bigger than what would already flow at a high enough rate.

Of course, in home audio terms, a "fire hydrant" would be a 10,000 watt amp and speakers that could handle it, and most of us have nothing close to that.
 
89grand said:
Of course, in home audio terms, a "fire hydrant" would be a 10,000 watt amp and speakers that could handle it, and most of us have nothing close to that.
Click to expand...

Let's see 850W total output from a Yamaha M-85 into my surrounds... 330Wpc into 4ohms 20-20K if you want to divey it up...

The Belles 400 is I believe an 800W total output piece of iron for the mains... 200wpc with a peak output of 300.

I'd say I've got something bigger than a faucet! :thmbsp:
 
SimplySound said:
Let's see 850W total output from a Yamaha M-85 into my surrounds... 330Wpc into 4ohms 20-20K if you want to divey it up...

The Belles 400 is I believe an 800W total output piece of iron for the mains... 200wpc with a peak output of 300.

I'd say I've got something bigger than a faucet! :thmbsp:
Click to expand...

The math seems off a bit, if the Yamaha can do 260 wpc @ 8 ohms, and 330 wpc @ 4 ohms, for a maximum of 660 watts, then the Belles 400 is 400 total, that's about 1000 watts of potential total output.

Of course, you'd have to be listening to test tones at maximum volume to get that power, which I assume you don't, but that's just a guess.:D

Regardless, that's a lot of amplifier power potential.:yes:
 
OK... here's the link to the cable test on Audioholics!

And another link here.

I ended up doing CAT5 V1 because it was the simplest and it actually ranked the best.... My center channel is 4 pieces divided between the two channels but then singulated for each speaker.

My surrounds are 4 pieces dedicated with 2 pieces for each terminal. Pictures below...

So, does it sound better than anything else? I'd say better than the standard 16ga zip cord I was using before! :thmbsp:
 

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SimplySound said:
Yeah, and if you look for a test done somewhere using "CAT5" (I'll have to look up the link)... that is supposedly the cat's (or is it cats) meow.

The individual wires are high grade solid core wire used for high grade data transmission and make really nice high grade speaker wires. I made up some with four runs of CAT5 (two for each terminal) so that I had sixteen strands per connection.

And I can soooooo tell the difference (well, ok, maybe not, but I feel better)!
Click to expand...

I thought it sounded terrible. Tried it with siamesed CAT5, but not for long. I spent more time building it than having it in my system. However, CAT5 for interconnect has worked very well for me.

Don't have an explanation of why it didn't work for me as speaker cable, but I thought it was nasty.
 
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