Try out some fancy speaker wires??

[Guest " "]

it's hard to say...you did a driver and wire change....I would put in both cables sets...go thru some familuar music and then try to decide if its the cables or those awesome TADs.

[Coytee]

Unscientific: I had one speaker wired with the new wires and the right speaker left alone with the originals.

Figured I'd simply listen over time and different circumstances rather than to simply try to work up a sweat trying to focus on differences.

This morning I replaced the right side wires so now the entire system is using the new wires.

Here's the gist of my question.

Realzing that I've made a big change in going from the K69 to the 4002 AND the wires at essentially the same time....

I can't say I was noticing any significiant difference between right and left speaker.

So, when the tuned wires are installed.... I'm asking this out of honest ignorance.... should there be a discernable difference 'right away'?

Not to suggest the difference might be this large, but in other words, if you have a Khorn on the left and a Heresy on the right you should be able to consistently note which speaker was which because of the huge difference in their sound.

Should this difference be subtle or a quantum change?

Next question.... If you run tuned wire for a distance, splice it with "normal" wire for ten feet then I could understand the argument that the last 10 feet of wire might ruin the benefit of the tuned wire.

So, in my case, (on the bass bin only) the tuned wire goes to a terminal block. On the other side of the terminal block is the factory Klipsch wire that connects to each specific driver.

Would this 4-5 feet of wire at the end of the signal chain negate any of the changes caused by the tuned wire?

I know I added the TAD's but that is one reason I kept one speaker with the old wires. I wanted to have one difference and even with the TAD change, I had the same driver on each side and the only difference was the wire.

I'm WANTING to hear a difference and I'm either tone deaf (my wife would say I'm selectively wife deaf [*-)] ) , the differences are so small as to not be noticed by someone as inattentive as me, the changes are negated by the last 5' of wire to the drivers or....?

So I'm looking for some guidance. Am I doing anything obviously wrong that I need to change?

[Guest " "]

tuned wire is a good way of viewing this.....this puts aside the pure copper is pure copper and no matter how it's wrappedit will sound the same or not different.

The TAD changes would make it almost impossible to notice a differnce from old wires to new. If only the wires were changed, any noticable differences would be caught on select tracks that you are familuar with....all things being equal...the mid driver change resulted in your loss of the base line.

the plastic core and plastic jackets / insulation do interact with the wire much in the same way that these coatings interact with foil within capacitors...so some use time is needed to charge these up....so that the intended manipulations designed by the manufacture can take effect.

the center wires are of a higher density copper (anealed) and behaves much like magnet wire.

the question of the effect spliced in wire will have or internal speaker componet wires will have can be better understood if you think about the wires as filters and whta ever they will do...will happen within their lenth. Some of these botique wires have manipulations in capcitance , inductance, and impedence (monster terminator blocks used on m-2 and sigma retro) and these manipulations can be measured with capacitance, inductance, and impedeance meters.

the differences would not be like the differences between a Heresy and a Khorn. More like the differences folks report when replaceing capacitors in crossovers, tubes in tube amps, of different brands. Person replaces a new 2.2uf solen cap with a new 2.2uf audiocap and even though both caps are 2.2uf, some folks hear a difference. Person replaces a new JAN 12AX7 tube with an new 12AX7 Tun-Sol and some folks can hear a difference...both tubes are 12AX7's.

[Coytee]

Another question...

I have this other pair of wire that I mentioned earlier in the thread. HEAVY wire (Fritz, maybe twice as large as the one you sent, maybe more than twice)

Anyways.... it's a pair of wires that have a metal sheathing woven around them and outside of the metal sheathing is the plastic cover.

These wires are currently not being used. I understand the woven sheathing is for grounding something, somehow.

If you have a banana plug on the amp end of the wire and the other end is connected to either the speaker terminal (screws) or perhaps another banana plug (inputs to the TAD's accept banana plugs or traditional binding post).... what would I attach/ground this sheath to?

Is it supposed to be grounded to something at all?

[Dennie]

Hey Richard, I think changing more than one thing at a time negates the whole "Try some fancy speaker wires" thing. Go back to the wires you were using for a few days and listen with the new driver, with recording you are very familiar with, to give you a baseline.

Once you are familiar with the new drivers sound and your recordings, swap out the the old wires for the "fancy" ones.

When I replaced my original crossovers with new "Type AA" from Bob Crites, it took a few days (at least) to hear the differences. But, it did become very obvious that the difference was huge. I used recordings I was very familiar with and was "actively" listening. The "air" around cymbals became very noticeable, the shimmer, the decay, the timber, the realism became very apparent. I could not clearly hear the pluck of the upright bass strings, along with the decay, etc. Where before with the old crossovers, it was more of a boom, without much decay or clarity.

The wires inside the speakers won't make a difference, as they are part of the speaker and will remain the same as they have been. Adding the "fancy" wires will or will not make a difference, regardless of the internal wires.

I hope this makes since.

Dennie

[Guest " "]

Another question...

I have this other pair of wire that I mentioned earlier in the thread. HEAVY wire (Fritz, maybe twice as large as the one you sent, maybe more than twice)

Anyways.... it's a pair of wires that have a metal sheathing woven around them and outside of the metal sheathing is the plastic cover.

These wires are currently not being used. I understand the woven sheathing is for grounding something, somehow.

If you have a banana plug on the amp end of the wire and the other end is connected to either the speaker terminal (screws) or perhaps another banana plug (inputs to the TAD's accept banana plugs or traditional binding post).... what would I attach/ground this sheath to?

Is it supposed to be grounded to something at all?

there might be some numbers on the wire that will tell you what kind of wire it is....it might be good speaker wire...it might not. speaker wires do not need to be grounded in most cases...there are exceptions and in the excepttion senerio, only one end needs to be grounded. so if you have a wire with 2 conductors, and an additional braided shield, I would disreguard using the sheilding for small speaker wire runs and just use the two inner conductors.

[Coytee]

Here's some pictures of the first tuned wire I have.

White plastic outer cover, inside is the woven sheath and the two large wires. Fritz.... the construction of these strike me as similar to the wire you sent other than.... yours has that stiff center wire and the center wire here is another bundle that these outer bundles are wrapped around.

[Coytee]

Better picture of the bundles.

So for the sake of conversation.... what differences might arise out of a single bundle of stranded wire (like my orginal 12g low voltage wire) verses bundles of stranded wire wrapped around each other.... verses yet another bundle of wire (yours Mike) wrapped around a stiff center wire?

[Coytee]

How does size of these come into play? These wires are larger. One of these individual/single bundles making up the white (or black) wire is about the size of the entire white (or black) wire in the wire you sent.

Between a standard single bundle (my original Carroll Cable low voltage 12g wire) verses the multiple bundles with stiff center wire (Fritzie's wire) verses this monstrosity that I've never found connectors for..... how might they influence the sound?

Would the smaller bundles have an "X" influence on something and because the wire above is larger, it would have a larger effect?

[Guest " "]

That wire would probally be great for you HF section. Solid core magnet wire at about 10 Ga would be great for the LF section.

The wire I sent you is a compromise of both extreems in which the wire has fine conductors which reduce HF skin effect, and thicker aneled wire wrapped around a plastic core which provided spacing that reduced inductance and targets reducing skin effect af LF frequencies.

So fine wire in large bundles in itself does not make a great wire. That wire looks aluminum. Better wire is 99.999 cooper. The sheilding has little value in short runs for speaker cable (a couple hundred foot lenths under certain conditions where audio wire is parallel run with power cables) and your wire is probally intened for 15V high temp automobile runs.

[Rich_Guy]

That wire would probally be great for you HF section. Solid core magnet wire at about 10 Ga would be great for the LF section.

I agree this is typically the case, finer wire for high frequency (HF) larger strand wire for low frequency (LF).

Although many speaker wire makers use fine strand wire for several reasons one is simply increased flexibility making the cables much easier to to route. Larger strands also fatigue or break easier if moved a lot. Also larger strand wire has more electrical resistance as opposed to the same gauge finer strand wire. Fine stranded wire tends to be a little more expensive as well.

Coytee, like TechFlex, the metal covering on your wire is probably more cosmetic than anything for speaker wire, it would not be used for ground and shielding really is not considered necessary on speaker wire.

As for sound qualities the best thing to do is experiment and listen for yourself. The best wire I have found myself is Mogami, I like it for both interconnects and speaker wire.

Edit: I just noticed the metal covering is not the outer covering, in this case it would be a shielding. But shielding is generally considered unecessary for speaker wire.