Mystian Posted February 14, 2002 Share Posted February 14, 2002 I received a small amount of Monster XP cable for a gift. Now the question: How do I know what cable is posotive and what cable is negative? Both cables look completely copper colored, but only one wires clear insulation has white writing on it? Anyone have any ideas? Also I am thinking of getting bannana plugs for the wires? Is there any advantages there either. Thank you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dougdrake2 Posted February 14, 2002 Share Posted February 14, 2002 Convention would have you connect the one with the writing on it to the positive terminals. But as long as you are consistent, it doesn't matter. Doug ------------------ My System Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ray Garrison Posted February 14, 2002 Share Posted February 14, 2002 Generally, the best connection is by screwing the binding post down directly on the bare wire. If it fits. If you can't get the wire wrapped around the post and tighened securely, then banana plugs are an OK alternative. Plus, if you frequently disconnect you wires and move things around, bananas are a godsend. As to which leg is which, as Doug said, just make sure that you connect the same leg to postive on amp and positive on speaker. ------------------ Music is art Audio is engineering Ray's Music System Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mighty Favog Posted February 14, 2002 Share Posted February 14, 2002 Mystian- Using the writing as a guide to keep things in phase has been my method for a long time. I've only screwed it up once on an internal rewire job I did on my KLF-20's. Fortunatley wire companies don't switch putting the printing on both conductors thoughout the run. As for which is pos and which is neg.? Nope, don't matter. Just keep it consistant. I like to use the printed conductor as pos. ------------------ Tom's Money Pit Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mystian Posted February 14, 2002 Author Share Posted February 14, 2002 Thanks for educating me. It works just fine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Audio Flynn Posted February 15, 2002 Share Posted February 15, 2002 Mystian, Just keep hanging around allot of real nice people with an awsome amount of knowledge to keep you from making mistakes. Good Luck Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kfalls Posted March 6, 2002 Share Posted March 6, 2002 I bought a pair of AudioQuest GR-8 cables from HCM Audio (www.hcmaudio.com) at a great price. Very nice high-end cable with quality (WBT I think) banana or lug connectors for $107 12'pair. These look and sound much better than the 12ga zipcord-style cables, such as the Monster Classic. I'm not really into "exotic" cables and had purchased these because they were much a better quality (materials and workmanship) for a small premium in price. I was pleasantly surprised at the increase in detail and smoothness. They seem to mellow the sound, smoothing the edges a bit, without sacrificing clarity. I opted for the bananas, but discovered my Kg4s wouldn't accept them. It required replacing the terminals with some spares I had leftover from updating my Legacy Focus terminals. I love my Kg4s and will never part with them. My Klipsch system includes: Kg4 Mains KLF-C7 Center RS-3 front and rear surrounds SW-8 mid-subwoofer ACI Saturn low subwoofer Yamaha RX-V2095 Receiver Sony NS700P Progressive Scan DVD Pioneer DVL700 Laserdisc/DVD player Sony KV36XBR450 HD-Ready TV Nakamichi BX-300 Cassette recorder/player EchoStar (Dishnetwork) PVR-501 DSS receiver/recorder Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LNEtubaPLYR Posted March 8, 2002 Share Posted March 8, 2002 what happens if you lets say attach the neg of the amp to the pos of the speaker and vica versa? ------------------ My 2 cents... I'll put it on your tab. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ray Garrison Posted March 8, 2002 Share Posted March 8, 2002 LNEtubaPLYR, I'm recording someone hitting a drum. When the drum is struck, a series of pressure waves are created. The microphone reacts to these waves and produces and electrical signal. This signal is recorded, and played back on my stereo. Pressure waves consist of peaks and valleys, which in the air are actually correspond to periods of compression and rarefaction. Question for you - when we hit that drum, is the very first wavefront that we launch a compression or rarefaction wavefront? Does it matter? Well, I don't know whether it's a plus or minus wavefront, and it doesn't matter, 'cause it is what it is, and we recognise the sound of the drum getting whacked. If I have the microphone, mixing board, recording device, production widgets, source component, preamp, amplifier and speakers all wired, uh, "properly" ( )then the wavefront that comes out of my speakers will match the wavefront that came off the drum - if the drum launched a positive, or compressive, wave, so will my speakers. If the drum launched a negative, or rarefaction wave, so will my speakers. (Of course, once the very first transient passes, we are in a period of plus and minus, or peak and valley, or compressive and rarefaction, waves.) Now, if I take the speaker wires on one of my speakers and switch them around, so that the one that used to go to the positive post now goes to the negative, the speakers will be doing the opposite of what they were doing before. If they had been launching a positive wave then the drumhead was struck, they will now be launching a negative wave. Can you hear the difference? Some folks are adament that this makes a BIG difference, and that if you have your system wired in such a way the the soundwaves are the "inverse" of what an instument produced, the sound will be muffled, unnatural and just sound wrong. Clark Johnsen, who runs the Listening Studio in Boston and writes for Positive Feedback, is probably the biggest proponent of this point of view. He wrote a whole book about it, called "The Wood Effect". He insists that having this "polarity" wrong has extremely deliterious effects. On the other hand, J. Gordon Holt, Stereophile founder and general high-end Most Revered Person, has stated frequently that he, at least, cannot hear any difference at all whether the polarity is "correct" or, uh, "backwards". Also note that there is no way to know whether the electronics that were used to record and master a recording were set this way or that way, so there's no way to tell whether any given album or song is recorded in "correct" or "inverted" polarity. This relationship between the wavefronts produced by instruments and the wavefronts produced by the speaker is referred to as "absolute polarity". Hoever, what is EXTREMELY important is that, whichever way round you have the system set up, all the speakers need to be set up the SAME way. This is called "relative polarity". If you have the right front speaker set up so that the red speaker post is connected to the red amplifier post, and the left front speaker's red post is connected to the amplifiers black post, you will hear a very, very weird, phasey sounding, uh, sound. No imaging, no real soundstage, everything will just sound wrong. So, to sum up: First, make sure you are consistant. Whichever leg of the cable you connect to the speakers plus and minus posts, make sure you do it the same way for all speakers. Then, if you want to experiment and see if you can hear a difference, switch plus to minus on ALL THE SPEAKERS (so the relative phase remains the same) and see if you hear a difference. Ray, always available with long convoluted answers to simple questions. ------------------ Music is art Audio is engineering Ray's Music System Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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