Magnet Wire as Speaker Cable and Interconnects

[jnorv]

From an interview with Bruce Edgar in Positive Feedback

(http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue4/edgarinterview.htm), down towards the end of the article.

"We've done power measurements with the horn system, and for the most part, the system will loaf along at a couple of hundred milliwatts of power. In fact, it's very hard to get a watt into it. A good loud sound level is only about 50 milliwatts in acoustical power. People have a hard time comprehending this, but actually air is a pretty poor conductor of sound. In fact, a jet airplane engine is essentially 1 acoustical watt. A loud sound in a living room is about 50 milliwatts. Well, if you have a horn speaker system that's maybe 25% efficient, the amp only has to deliver 200 milliwatts to the speakers, which corresponds pretty much to what I've measured. It's amazing how little power goes into a horn system, and I think that somewhat explains why wiring makes a difference. If you just have copper wire, the amplifier sees a very low resistant path to the speakers. When you start putting other metals like silver and copper together, you may see contact potentials between different types of metals at these very low power levels. When we tried silver, it seemed to have a colored sound"

[Deang]

Yes, silver is somewhat colored sounding. A very nice color indeed.

[Thaddeus Smith]

resurrecting an old thread...

I'm about to possess a pair of RF-5's and currently have a Marantz SR8001 which has the ability to bi-amp (oooohh, ahhhh). Based on what I've ready, using the bi-amp functionality won't garner huge improvement. nor will bi-wiring. nor will replacing the stock jumpers. I have several spools of 18 and 22 AWG magnet wire on its way and am in the mood to tinker.

should I upgrade the jumpers and do a single pair between the speakers and the amp? Or should I bi-wire (effectively the same thing, just using more wire). I also have shrink tubing and some techflex on the way (i love ebay, $60 for hundreds of feet of everything I've mentioned so far) for the sake of dressing up the bi-wires ..my intent was a twisted pair of 22 AWG for the highs and a twisted pair of 18 AWG for the lows, with each pair heat shrinked and then encased in the techflex. i have a bunch of banana plugs already, but am considering the bare end approach.

has anything changed in 7 years? I've read everything i can find on Audiogon, Forums.Klipsch, DIYaudioprojects, AudioKarma, and EMotiva Forums for things related to my questions and while the bits and pieces of answers are there ..none of it really seems current or specific enough.

it's definitely a passionate and subjective topic, which doesn't really interest me. i'm concerned more about the mechanics of my approach and then plan on tinkering from there.

cheers - michael

[Thaddeus Smith]

anybody?

[Invidiosulus]

I think you should try whatever you want and see if it sounds good. I just made some speaker wires out of cat5. one line of cat5 to each heresy and it sounds great!

[The Dude]

I am going to be using some quad rg6 that only has a 18awg instead of 24awg, I hope it sounds fine but the thing is, is it depends how it sounds to you.

[Invidiosulus]

My last reply was typed out on my phone as I was heading off to bed.

Ok,

I noticed this thread had popped back up and I looked over and realized that I had just found my crimping tool, a bunch of spade connectors and I had a box of some Berktek cat5 sitting there.

I used a single line of cat5 for each speaker, I just split the pairs up so I had orange and blue for positive and green and brown for negative.

I stripped about .5" off each end and twisted the wires tightly together, for the speaker end I crimped on some spade connectors, for the amp end I left them bare.

I noticed an immidiate improvement in sound quality over the 12g monster cable I had been using.

Listening to BFatFT's UFO TOFU there was more detail in the high end and the decay of the reverb was more noticeable giving the instruments a better feeling of existing in space and not sounding so flat.

I then listened to a couple of tracks off of Iron Maiden's Brave New World.

Not the best recorded CD but one I am fairly familiar with, it was easier to hear Nicko's cymbals and and the work he was doing with syncopation and polyrhythms.

The guitar's were easier to distinguish and their distortion had a well defined edge to it.

And in case anyone thinks that the difference is just because I swapped cables and the connections are better...

I had just rehooked up the system after moving things around to paint the living room so whatever.

I'm pretty happy with them for now.

I might have to try making some interconnects next.

Peace,

Josh

[Thaddeus Smith]

thanks for the addditional info.

I guess I was more curious about the efficiency of going bi-wire over replacing the factory jumpers with diy. or maybe there isn't any efficiency benefit from one method or the other. most of what i've found re: magnet wire cables is many years old and I was wondering if there were any new developments or insights.

I dont like to be spoon-fed information, but I do try to avoid re-discovering info/tips/shortcuts when I can.

cheers - michael

[Thaddeus Smith]

i built the bi-wires yesterday and they look snazzy. 18 AWG for the low end and 22 AWG for the highs.

a) they work

trying to mentally separate the placebo effect ..need to do some a/b listening

b.1) I bi-wired my rc-3 and it seems to be a little smoother and detailed over the stock jumpers + monoprice 12 AWG wire.

b.2) I don't get my rf-5's until this weekend, so I hooked up my KG 3.5's and seems to have toned down the harshness of the highs.

I'll post some pics later ..nothing special, just some twisted pairs with heat shrink and techflex, tinned ends for the reciever and bare wire wrapping on the speakers. for now, i at least know they work as good as the 12 AWG wire with a much smaller footprint.

[Thaddeus Smith]

been using my 18/22 AWG bi-wire cables and they sound great. Hooked them up to my newly acquired rf-5's and they are phenomenal. so I decided to make a pair of all 12awg wires ..same twist pattern and material surrounding the wires. they sound horrible. very bright and unbalanced ..there may be some break in required, but I couldn't manage to listen to them long enough to find out.

if anyone wants to give them a listen, i'll pack them up (5ft-ish, unterminated) and send them your way for the cost of shipping. I'd love to get a second opinion.

maybe a design tweak is required at this gauge? It was an immediate night and day difference between the two sets.

[Don Richard]

No doubt -- that's why I emphasized in one of the other posts that results are completely system dependant. I do think the more resolving the system is, the more sensitive to the small electrical variations in the cables it will be.

Good cables should be based on solid engineering principles and science however -- and not the tripe most cable manufacturers throw at us.

The biggest system-dependent variable that affects interconnect choices is the circuit's impedance. HiZ circuits are more sensitive to reactance and prone to HF roloff than loZ.

[Don Richard]

I wonder what the boys at NASA use in their systems? They seem to be on the leading edge of just about everything

Probably that NASA surplus silver wire that was for sale a few years ago. I know of several folks, that got the #10 silver for speaker wires.

[Pete H]

I've read through much of this thread and was wondering (for those of us that are not as educated in electronics and don't understand everything that is being said) is there a simple list of good, better and best as far as choices for cables? I understand the system dependant comments, but for those of us that are not going to be able to test as many different applications.

[Thaddeus Smith]

12awg wire from monoprice is good stuff and works well. easy to deal with, and certainly cheap.

12awg magnet wire bi-wires sounds the same or worse as the monoprice stuff, in my system. confirmed by my wife who has no vested interest in the materials

magnet wire bi-wires made from a combo of 18awg for the lows and 22awg for the highs, seems to have yielded the best combo for my system.

a different room or component very well could change these results, but for now I've found something I like. I recently swapped out my cheap walmart interconnects with vampire wire silver interconnects and it seems to have brightened up the mids and highs. not quite beyond what I like, but hopefully they mellow out a bit.

buy a bunch of bulk material off ebay and have fun with it. "b-trading", "furryletters", and "tech-fixx" have been easy and fast suppliers of magnet wire, shrink tube, and tech flexx materials.

[Pete H]

Thanks for the summary!