Speaker wire update-- Don't use extension cords!
- Thread starter zenith2134
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Sure there is.
What most ignore is the effect of the other cable metrics (L and C) on an amplifier driving a speaker's crossover. They behave differently under different loads. Such has been demonstrated with distortion spectra. Click the following post for metrics and link to original source.
https://audiokarma.org/forums/index...e-on-speaker-wire.906002/page-3#post-13586871
As to whether or not you are able to hear the measured differences is highly dependent upon a number of factors.
Well, the moderators are watching it. Been at least one warning about how cable discussions do get out of hand.
I think adults can disagree without being ugly. I have my opinion on the subject, but respect others’ views. Calling someone names because you disagree just shows that you have no legitimate point to make.
OldPolishGuy
Active Member
I haven't read through all the posts, but I do know from my years in the wire biz is that some mfgr's make their "zip cord"/lamp cord conductors with copper covered steel and/or use steel strands mixed in with the copper strands for additional strength. It's difficult to see with the "naked eye" considering some factories tin plate the conductors. Works "OK" for 110/120VAC 60hz circuits but can play havoc with audio frequency signals. How much it affects the sound subjectively is hard to say and would required some test equipment and an agreed upon test fixture to discern abnormalities. OPG.
zenith2134
Lunatic Member
Hi. Wow, it has been quite a while since I made this thread. To be perfectly honest, I was still learning at that point, and also had hardly any money to put toward the hobby.
So yes, it was a lot of tinkering and trial and error.
These days, I am largely indifferent when it comes to cabling; it simply has to get the job done from an objective stance. But that's merely my opinion. I firmly believe that DIY is still the best bang for your buck option if you know how to make your own cables. However, I've quit using bargain-basement materials such as extension cord, since they are often CCA (copper clad aluminum).
I wasn't aware of that when I first made this thread. Also, yes I am aware that CCA's resistance level could be fine if you "up" the guage size but again--I prefer to throw a little money at a higher quality solution, since I have carefully assembled my systems and have a bit more cash than I did in the old days.
That being said, I'm personally not one of those guys who will spend thousands on cabling. I truly believe that there is a point of diminishing returns, and it is lower than most people are led to think. Just my opinion.
So yes, it was a lot of tinkering and trial and error.
These days, I am largely indifferent when it comes to cabling; it simply has to get the job done from an objective stance. But that's merely my opinion. I firmly believe that DIY is still the best bang for your buck option if you know how to make your own cables. However, I've quit using bargain-basement materials such as extension cord, since they are often CCA (copper clad aluminum).
I wasn't aware of that when I first made this thread. Also, yes I am aware that CCA's resistance level could be fine if you "up" the guage size but again--I prefer to throw a little money at a higher quality solution, since I have carefully assembled my systems and have a bit more cash than I did in the old days.
That being said, I'm personally not one of those guys who will spend thousands on cabling. I truly believe that there is a point of diminishing returns, and it is lower than most people are led to think. Just my opinion.
Quadman2
Lunatic Member
Sure there is.
Such has been demonstrated with distortion spectra. Click the following post for metrics and link to original source.
https://audiokarma.org/forums/index...e-on-speaker-wire.906002/page-3#post-13586871
As to whether or not you are able to hear the measured differences is highly dependent upon a number of factors.
Yes there are a fair number of previous tests, but as pointed out by the rest of my post, they are for the most part subjective and often company driven . Therein lies the bias. Plus, never rely on one source as an accepted mandate in any sort of testing. Being in research, testing this is the expected procedure to follow in determining validity.
Q
They are observational and in this case *driven* by a company that makes loudspeakers, not speaker cables. They have no dog in the race.
If you read the entire article, you'll find that Gene Czerwinski was quite surprised at the measured results.
Words of gold, El Rubio. "Discussing" politics also trips that trap, too often.
Labeling another's choices falls into that category. (tubes/SS, TT's vs. DAC's, etc) Legitimate arguments should stand on their own merits.
Audiofreak71
Boerboelicious
Goodness gracious! Paragraph breaks please? I want to read it all but it’s so painful without the breaks.
Audiofreak71
jazzmans
Super Member
CCA is work of the devil.
None of the zip cord I've used is made from the stuff, but most of my zip cord is +twenty years old.
I only buy cable that's 100% copper, clearly labeled. screw CCA.
It's actually copper covered aluminum. And I doubt that they actually make any zip cord stock intended for 120VAC use from the stuff, but it is rampant in hardware store speaker wire. I prefer to use pure copper myself primarily because vintage spring terminals get real finicky about accepting 14AWG and won't accept 12AWG or larger at all.
SaSi
Seriously Illogical
I haven't followed the thread back in 2008. The OP made some points about cable resistance and lead corrosion. These are valid points for any type of raw cable.
I've been using lamp cord for a few years, and still do sometimes. Like for an amplifier that sits under the TV and drives two loudspeakers 3 ft away. It's not critical listening and being able the thread the cable through an opening is more of a priority.
Wire resistance is important, when the differences are important. I've played with the output impedance control of a power amplifier I have that employs one (Technies SE-9200) and it really makes a huge difference in sound when the output impedance is increased, especially at the maximum. That difference is more or less identical with the effect of changing the input impedance of an MC step up transformer (Ortofon T-30).
In both instances, at one extreme the sound becomes bass heavy and boomy. On the other extreme it becomes more detailed and bright. Nothing to do with interconnects here, just impedance matching.
In every connection between two components, be it pre-power amp, source - preamp, power amp-speakers or even cartridge - phono amp, proper impedance matching is critical. The rule of thumb says that the input impedance of the "consumer" device needs to be at least 10x the output impedance of the source.
Well, that's pretty easy to achieve with pre amps and power amp inputs where you can put proper electronic circuits to generate the desired input impedance, but with loudspeakers, it gets pretty tricky when you start with 8Ohms (or 4) and a guarantee that you will have wild deviations across the frequencies and often some pretty nasty dips down to half the nominal impedance or even less.
In order to satisfy the above mentioned rule of thumb (and I repeat, it states "at least") with a 4 Ohm loudspeaker that dips down to 2Ohms at some frequencies, the output impedance of the power amplifier needs to be 0,2Ohms or less. And output impedance is everything between the output transistors and the loudspeakers.
If we take the resistivity value for copper wire from tables, a 14AWG wire would have a resistance of ~ 2,5Ohms / 1000ft. For a typical situation where the wires are 15ft, that would give an overall resistance of 0,0375Ohms, pretty insignificant. Consider the added resistance of oxidized strands at both ends and you don't really care about the length of the wire but the oxidized inch at both ends. Or if the ends are tinned, like I usually do, you have the Pb/Sn resistivity working there, adding a lot more resistance than actual copper but, hopefully much less than copper oxide. Let's just say that the worst case would be 0,07 - 0,08Ohms.
And then we have the output of the amplifier to consider. In many power amplifiers, especially higher power amplifiers with multiple output transistors, there's a ballast emitter resistor to equalize currents flowing through them. Typical values for these resistors are 0,1 - 0,3Ohms. If we have, say, 2 output pairs, these two resistors in parallel would form an output resistance of 0,05-0,15Ohms. (Plus some more because of the inherent re of he output transistor emitters). And that does not take into account the crossover, where there's lots of impedance, but thankfully no resistance is expected to be added in series with the woofer where it makes most of the difference.
Now, after all that introduction, here comes the substance. Especially with higher power amplifiers and 4Ohm, even slight changes in cable resistance due to gauge, quality and corrosion can make an audible difference. That is enough to make people believe cable matters (and it does, up to a point).
Let me give you a simple analogy. Suppose your water supply comes to your house through a 2" pipe. Obviously, using 0,5" pipes to take that water in your house would reduce flow (current) and probably have some reduction effect in pressure (voltage). Using 2" pipes throughout your house would increase flow dramatically. That only makes one believe that further increasing the pipe gauge to 3" would make things even better, but it doesn't as the maximum flow is already determined by the distribution pipe (output impedance) of the water network. Not a 100% valid analogy but close enough to visualize what makes a difference and what isn't.
I've been using lamp cord for a few years, and still do sometimes. Like for an amplifier that sits under the TV and drives two loudspeakers 3 ft away. It's not critical listening and being able the thread the cable through an opening is more of a priority.
Wire resistance is important, when the differences are important. I've played with the output impedance control of a power amplifier I have that employs one (Technies SE-9200) and it really makes a huge difference in sound when the output impedance is increased, especially at the maximum. That difference is more or less identical with the effect of changing the input impedance of an MC step up transformer (Ortofon T-30).
In both instances, at one extreme the sound becomes bass heavy and boomy. On the other extreme it becomes more detailed and bright. Nothing to do with interconnects here, just impedance matching.
In every connection between two components, be it pre-power amp, source - preamp, power amp-speakers or even cartridge - phono amp, proper impedance matching is critical. The rule of thumb says that the input impedance of the "consumer" device needs to be at least 10x the output impedance of the source.
Well, that's pretty easy to achieve with pre amps and power amp inputs where you can put proper electronic circuits to generate the desired input impedance, but with loudspeakers, it gets pretty tricky when you start with 8Ohms (or 4) and a guarantee that you will have wild deviations across the frequencies and often some pretty nasty dips down to half the nominal impedance or even less.
In order to satisfy the above mentioned rule of thumb (and I repeat, it states "at least") with a 4 Ohm loudspeaker that dips down to 2Ohms at some frequencies, the output impedance of the power amplifier needs to be 0,2Ohms or less. And output impedance is everything between the output transistors and the loudspeakers.
If we take the resistivity value for copper wire from tables, a 14AWG wire would have a resistance of ~ 2,5Ohms / 1000ft. For a typical situation where the wires are 15ft, that would give an overall resistance of 0,0375Ohms, pretty insignificant. Consider the added resistance of oxidized strands at both ends and you don't really care about the length of the wire but the oxidized inch at both ends. Or if the ends are tinned, like I usually do, you have the Pb/Sn resistivity working there, adding a lot more resistance than actual copper but, hopefully much less than copper oxide. Let's just say that the worst case would be 0,07 - 0,08Ohms.
And then we have the output of the amplifier to consider. In many power amplifiers, especially higher power amplifiers with multiple output transistors, there's a ballast emitter resistor to equalize currents flowing through them. Typical values for these resistors are 0,1 - 0,3Ohms. If we have, say, 2 output pairs, these two resistors in parallel would form an output resistance of 0,05-0,15Ohms. (Plus some more because of the inherent re of he output transistor emitters). And that does not take into account the crossover, where there's lots of impedance, but thankfully no resistance is expected to be added in series with the woofer where it makes most of the difference.
Now, after all that introduction, here comes the substance. Especially with higher power amplifiers and 4Ohm, even slight changes in cable resistance due to gauge, quality and corrosion can make an audible difference. That is enough to make people believe cable matters (and it does, up to a point).
Let me give you a simple analogy. Suppose your water supply comes to your house through a 2" pipe. Obviously, using 0,5" pipes to take that water in your house would reduce flow (current) and probably have some reduction effect in pressure (voltage). Using 2" pipes throughout your house would increase flow dramatically. That only makes one believe that further increasing the pipe gauge to 3" would make things even better, but it doesn't as the maximum flow is already determined by the distribution pipe (output impedance) of the water network. Not a 100% valid analogy but close enough to visualize what makes a difference and what isn't.
Probably just a pedantic nit-pick in the overall context, but I can't help myself: Typically, the output impedance of an amplifier is not determined only by the impedance of the components in its output stage. Typically, it is also strongly affected (reduced) by the action of the amp's global feedback loop.
Sorry. Nothing to see here. On with the cable chat. Cheers,
chazix
zinda
Member
I could swear I had a few paragraphs in there somewhere, I'm using an old tablet which quite a challenge in its self.
Ever since I got the latest Offer-Up update, it's been difficult to do anything with my tablet, it's really been an awful update which has created numerous problems and wasted so much of my time. The keyboard constantly closes and text moves off screen, when I wrote that was right after that first abomination of an update was installed and since they have make a few small corrections but still has been a real problem.
Not using it is not an option for me, since after 3+ years of buying and selling there, it has proven to be a very good platform to do what I like to do and I have been able to do quite well. Especially now that speakers are a buyers market that have been fully taking advantage of! My place is full right now with closets and attic doors looking like a cartoon when the doors opened there a solid wall of speakers floor to ceiling. That's also the case along 1 wall I my living room (2 rows deep) and most of my garage.
Funny thing is the speakers I use as my mains out of hundreds of sets from so many good models and most were bought by reading up here as I saw them pop up locally, are a seti pieced together and they are still in the experimental stages and no others even come close to their sound. What's more is they don't even use a crossover, efficiency is higher than Klipsch Heresy but mine have an amazingly realistic sound at any level and is not affected when you're off axis if moving through my place.
Working on bi-amping those speakers is what lead me to the wire issue. I removed that mini noise distorter and im back to 1x CS400 running from an old AZDEN GX50 equalizer (after days of struggling with minidsp, it took me 15 minutes to get a flat response from 50Hz to 15KHz using the 40 year AZDEN with it's built in sine wave generator and pink noise), leaving me with 2 extra power amps.
Of course, I'm using 30 year old 14ga 2 conductor black lamp cord with a bit of colored shrink tube on 1 lead to denote + made when using copper was not considered to be worth mentioning since that was what wire was made from?
Audiofreak71
Boerboelicious
No worries , it happens. Thanks for taking the time to space it though much appreciated
Audiofreak71
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