jhoak Posted December 4, 2011 Share Posted December 4, 2011 I’m toying with the idea of constructing a pair of DIY speaker wires using some of the 10 miles or so of CAT5 cable that I have stockpiled. I have a vague recollection of seeing a wire gauge calculator that basically let you input the gauge and the number of strands and output the equivalent wire gauge. In other words 12 strands of 24 gauge wire equals what? Considering the distance between my amp and speakers I’m not looking at more than 8’ runs to each. I’m certain that 14 gauge would be more than adequate. I just need to figure out how many strands of 24 gauge CAT5 it’s going to take to get there. THANX! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest " " Posted December 4, 2011 Share Posted December 4, 2011 don't have the converter you asked for...but this chart might be informative for you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jhoak Posted December 4, 2011 Author Share Posted December 4, 2011 HMMM... It stops at 21Ga. CAT5 is 4 twisted pairs of 24Ga solid copper wire. THANX! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Panacea Engineering Posted December 4, 2011 Share Posted December 4, 2011 You would need to add the circular mills of the conductors. 24 gauge = 404 ci/ml 14 gauge = 4,107 ci/ml Would take about ten strands of 24 gauge wire to equal the circular mils of 14 gauge copper. Twelve strands would be better as your cable is more than likely in pairs. Source: http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/awg-wire-gauge-circular-mils-d_819.html Hope this sheds some light Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jhoak Posted December 4, 2011 Author Share Posted December 4, 2011 THANX!!! That told me what I needed to know. 12 strands of 24 gauge wire is a little bigger than 14 gauge but not quite as big as 13 gauge. Three runs of braided CAT5 it is. Time to get to work. Thanks again! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Panacea Engineering Posted December 4, 2011 Share Posted December 4, 2011 Kinda, what I do/did, now that I have officially retired for the third damn time....![H] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
russ69 Posted December 4, 2011 Share Posted December 4, 2011 I don't want to be too technical but the current travels on the outside of the conductor. If you twist four conductors together (without an outside jacket), it's the surface area on the outside that would be the conductive area. If each strand is insulated, the calculation is as in the chart, same as a single strand. At anyrate, you need to look at the construction of the cable and calculate the surface area for the true and correct answer. I think that's why most guys just overkill it and use way too big cable...nothing wrong with that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest " " Posted December 4, 2011 Share Posted December 4, 2011 HMMM... It stops at 21Ga. CAT5 is 4 twisted pairs of 24Ga solid copper wire. THANX! No skin effect on 24 guage within the audio human hearing band. Idea is to use the largest wire you can get away with depending on what it connects to (woofer, tweeter, mid driver, everything). Problem is using lots of small wires is the capacitance that is caused by the insulation on all the little wires (thats why equivalent litz magnet wire would be better than ehternet cable). Here's a link to an ehternet cable speakerwire project and there are two example capacitance issues and suggested ways to mitigate them. http://www.venhaus1.com/diycatfivecables.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest " " Posted December 4, 2011 Share Posted December 4, 2011 If you twist four conductors together (without an outside jacket), it's the surface area on the outside that would be the conductive area. You have to add more wire mass to the wire calculation to account for non available wire mass due to skin depth. If you look at 24 gauge wire. and say you need 20 strands to get X dia guage wire so you can have Y current capacity. The formula is flawed because you need to subtract the mass of the wire that is not available for current transport becuase of the varying depth of the skin surface of the wire which represents the available wire mass for current conduction. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jhoak Posted December 4, 2011 Author Share Posted December 4, 2011 Thank you all very much for your input. As it turns out three 10 foot runs of CAT5 tightly braided and terminated with nice bananna plugs works quite well as speaker wires. As Hannibal Smith so often said... "I love it when plan comes together" Thanks again for the input! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Groomlakearea51 Posted December 7, 2011 Share Posted December 7, 2011 Thanks again for the input! Now that's clever!!! [Y] If you are making them, I can make it worth your while to bring down enough to make 6 x 16' runs..... We'll just sit around in the man cave twisting wire and listening to tunes...... LOL!!! [Y] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jhoak Posted December 7, 2011 Author Share Posted December 7, 2011 It wasn't intended to be... [:$] I won't be braiding any more of them any time soon. For someone with Carpal Tunnel Syndrome in both hands that kind of activity gets real painful real quick. I did finish them though and replaced my 12Ga Tributaries with them. Just to keep things equal I installed the same Nakamichi locking banana plugs on the CAT5 cables. Braided CAT5 speaker wires are known to be higher capacitance than most speaker wires. I contacted the designer of the amp to verify that this would not cause any problems prior to installing them. Frankly I can hear no difference whatsoever between a couple of bucks worth of CAT5 cable and some fairly spendy speaker wires. I honestly don't recall what I gave for the 3M Tributaries but I remember them not exacly being "cheap". I'd say that braided CAT5 is going to be my go-to speaker wire from now on. Next I want to try a couple of the interconnect recipes using individual strands of CAT5. I just need to find some nice RCAs that I can afford. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Groomlakearea51 Posted December 8, 2011 Share Posted December 8, 2011 Well, you still need to swing down when Jay pays a visit on 19-22 Dec. LOL!!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thaddeus Smith Posted December 8, 2011 Share Posted December 8, 2011 i literally JUST made 3 cables out of cat6 I had laying around. Roughly 16-20ft each ..I did one cable per speaker, 4 wires per post. It's more than enough to handle the power. Before these, I was running magnet wire in a bi-wire setup - 18ga for the LF posts and 22ga for the HF posts. Never an issue. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mustang guy Posted December 8, 2011 Share Posted December 8, 2011 I have a spool of CAT5E laying around somewhere. Clever idea! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Utard Posted December 8, 2011 Share Posted December 8, 2011 After I got screwed on some speaker wire I did a little research about wire gauges. If I was to buy wire again I would base it on the SWG = Standard Wire Gauge. There is a big difference in gauge types. And it is amazing how many standards there are. Here is the best list I could find on wire gauges....http://www.dave-cushman.net/elect/wiregauge.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
artto Posted December 11, 2011 Share Posted December 11, 2011 A rule of thumb (if I remember correctly from my model railroad electrical upgrade) is you can figure that doubling two same gauge wires = 3 gauge difference. IE: 2x24=21, 2x18=15 etc. Also a simple wire gauge "gauge" (template) available at most hardware stores comes in handy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
awsjr Posted December 12, 2011 Share Posted December 12, 2011 this is an excel file that calculates to # of wires of a size to the size you want wirecalculator-1.zip Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jhoak Posted December 12, 2011 Author Share Posted December 12, 2011 Thank you!!! Exactly what I was looking for. EXCELLENT...[] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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