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Interesting thoughts on speaker cabling by a speaker manufacturer

cwall99

cwall99

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I was just over on Audioholics, and was reading their review of the 25th anniversary version of the Legacy Audio Focus SE when I came across this little comment in the review:

Better than that, though, Legacy's user manual gives consumers a basic lessen in cable physics. It’s a good read, and I loved the frankness of it. (http://www.audioholics.com/tower-sp...focus-se-loudspeakers/build-quality-drivers-2)​

Knowing how cable discussions can ignite passions here, and, believe me, that's not my objective, I thought it might be interesting to share the perspective of a reputable speaker manufacturer. By the way, if you want to read their mini-treatise on speaker cabling, you can find it on pages 7 and 8 of this PDF: http://legacyaudio.com/images/uploads/manuals/FOCUS_SE_Manual.pdf
 
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Wow. Really impressive design! I love the Trim switches on the back to reduce bass or treble by 2 dB. Very very cool. I would travel to hear these.
 
Putting my various cable lengths & gauges into the on-line calculator ( Thank You @DaveVoorhis ) gives me resistances from approx .06 ohm for 16 gauge to .02 ohm for 12 gauge over the 12 to 25 foot runs that I have. Very little resistance in other words, could maybe be heard by the right listener using the right speaker & amp combo. So, no surprise if someone says that a cable sounds different/better/worse where the next person doesn't hear any change.

It's all still a black art, now where did I put my Wizard's Staff?

Mark Gosdin
 
TudorTurtle said:
Wow. Really impressive design! I love the Trim switches on the back to reduce bass or treble by 2 dB. Very very cool. I would travel to hear these.
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At the beginning of the review, he talks a bit about Jim Salk's speakers. Salk's manufacturing site is about a 15-minute drive from my place, and a former boss of mine is pretty good friends with Jim and his wife. I took advantage of the connection to get a personalized tour of his place.

Man, Jim Salk makes some great speakers!!! I saw his speakers first a few years ago at the last Audiokarma Fest. I can think back to what I heard in the Salk demo room, and the hair on my arms still stands up!!!
 
Just curious, what do you, personally, find interesting about their thoughts on this? In my opinion, any ol' Jo can slap a link from the web up in a thread. Adding your own personal views/understandings/interpretations makes a boring thread more personable and interesting.
 
My experience with JPS Labs and Nordost cabling indicates that both C and L can make audible differences. Their product is referred to as "effective dielectric constant" and is a time domain based metric. Naturally, my electrostatic speakers are more sensitive to C than others given their design. Both of them have much lower EDC than zip cord.

I don't agree with the adage advanced by the likes of Roger Russell, et.al. that the only relevant factor is R.
 
Notable point made about damping factor - amplifier controllability is probably a better term - with regard to speaker cables. It should be noted that in terms of C & L affecting the amplifier's ability to control the speaker driver, surely the C, L & R of passive crossover components will totally swamp any quantity added by the speaker cable (O.K. maybe bell wire might show an effect). The obvious (to me anyway) way to counter this is to go active and get rid of the passive crossovers altogether.
 
Powertech said:
It should be noted that in terms of C & L affecting the amplifier's ability to control the speaker driver...
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I don't believe that is the audible factor as I also find benefit with low EDC interconnects where source impedance is pretty much a non-issue.
 
E-Stat said:
. . . I don't agree with the adage advanced by the likes of Roger Russell, et.al. that the only relevant factor is R.
Click to expand...
And it would appear that Legacy Audio is in the Russell camp. After dismissing capacitance, inductance, and phase shift issues, they state, "What about resistance? Finally we are getting somewhere. Resistance is the controlling factor of the amplifier/loudspeaker interface. . . The lower the impedance of the loudspeaker, the greater the effects of series resistance." They noted that a 20-foot run of 18 gauge cable would be problematic; this agrees with the Russell wire chart, which limits 18 gauge wire to 16 feet for a speaker, like the Focus SE, that is rated at 4 Ohms impedance. However, Stereophile's measurements reveal that the 4 Ohm rating is not the whole story, ". . . its plot of impedance (fig.1) reveals that it needs to be used with an amplifier that can deliver high current into low impedances. Not only are there two minima in the bass of less than 2 ohms, and another of less than 3 ohms in the mid-treble, but there is an amplifier-crushing combination of 3.3 ohms magnitude and 60 degrees capacitive phase angle at 20Hz."
Read more at https://www.stereophile.com/content...-loudspeaker-measurements#tDCOttzyZsyFeSFM.99

Edit: Aack!! Wrong speaker! I must have written this too early in the morning. I did a search for the Focus SE and just clicked on the result labeled Stereophile, since they normally carry out their own measurements, without realizing it was the Focus 20/20 speaker. However, Legacy Audio's own specs also said that the 20/20 was a 4 Ohm speaker, so it might pay off to see a detailed review of any product you're interested in owning.

The Roger Russell article on speaker wire says to use the lowest impedance value on the curve when rating a speaker, so the 8 foot figure for a 2 Ohm load is probably as long as an 18 gauge wire should be for the F̶o̶c̶u̶s̶ ̶S̶E̶ Focus 20/20 (and possibly the Focus SE).

For my own use, I just stick to whatever the amplifier and/or speaker manufacturer recommend, so I've used Naim's own wire with their amplifier, Linn's own wire with their amplifier, and am currently using cheap, generic style 16 gauge speaker wire with my Audio by Van Alstine amplifier because that's what they recommended (and my speaker manual says 16 gauge is good up to 30 feet). In every case, I've been pleased with the result.
 
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