Wouldn’t the wire at least get warm if you played it at a continual hundred watts? Report thisTwo part response here: 1) These are 25-watt monoblocks going into horn-loaded loudspeakers. So they will never see 100 watts. Not even at peaks. 2) Heat generation is directly proportional to resistance and current. More resistance + more current = more heat. The amount of current flowing through a speaker wire is laughably small, even with big SS amps. And further, if a small-gauge speaker wire was at risk of catching fire at 100 watts, you'd have to think that the much tinier wires on the other end of the speaker's crossover would instantly burst into flames, because they're typically 24AWG or smaller. |
Yes Even when the amp has isolation feet on it and the speakers are sitting on a concrete floor, which is the ultimate vibration sink? Asking in earnest, not to be argumentative. |
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running a short piece like that is going to act more like a light bulb than a speaker wire.
I don't get how you arrive at this conclusion. Again, 12 inches of 18 gauge wire adds a net of 0.006 ohms of additional resistance to the signal. Also, light bulb filament is a mere 46 micrometers - it doesn't even rate on the AWG scale, the smallest gauge being 38AWG (100 micrometers). Care to explain the science behind your declaration? |
An amp on top of speakers is not a good place, especially a tube amp, they are better off on the floor (vibration control). The skin affect at audio frequency's is not worth worrying about especially with just a two foot run but a quality solid conductor cable will certainly do the job.
The floor is not an option (space issues), and they are sitting on heavy dampening mats. |
Literally, @williewonka , there's a calculator for skin effect depth out there. https://chemandy.com/calculators/skin-effect-calculator.htmSkin effect at 20Khz on standard copper wire is 461 micrometers. Which means a standard copper wire with a diameter of 922 micrometers, just short of 1 millimeter, will show zero skin effect. Nada. Zilch. No dielectric needed. And then I showed the math on the net resistance of 18-gauge copper on a 12-inch run, which is 0.006 ohms. But frankly, I don't see how skin effect on a 1 or 2-foot run of wire is going to make any difference at all in the output signal. We are talking about a signal velocity approaching the speed of light. There isn't time in two feet of wire for the difference between HF and LF information to become out of phase at that velocity, even if the wire was 2-gauge battery cable, because comb filtering from phase cancellation doesn't even start happening until you get above the 20ms range. But I did the math on skin effect for precisely that reason - so that anyone who believed in skin effect could see that, indeed, there would be zero skin effect with minimal additional resistance on the length of wire involved in this deployment if I took the path of small-gauge wire. At some point here in the near future, I plan to have a conversation about interconnects, which will be much more in earnest, since the distance increases to 2 meters, and the current, as a line level signal, is FAR lower, which I believe makes it more susceptible to the various and sundry electrical effects we're discussing here. I'm open to being convinced of otherwise, however. But I'm a lot more open to a wider variety of solutions to that particular conundrum, and more willing to spend on solutions that make sense. Operative being "make sense", as in show me the math, show me the science, show me where we are on the perpetually diminishing returns scale, so I can make an intelligent decision about whether it's worth it. Pro tip: You'll be hard-pressed to convince me that it's worth it in the 4-figure range. |
Skin effect is rarely an issue. Inductance can be.
Only reason I bothered with the math on skin effect is because so many of these esoteric high-end cables do random weird stuff like adding dielectrics to "phase-correct" the signal. Of course, over 1-2 feet of wire, I doubt seriously that the signal could possibly get "out of phase" enough to be audible anyway.
Microphonics in tubes is a very real thing. The mats will not eliminate that. I would be inclined to build shelves slightly above the speakers.
So you're saying that the speaker vibrating the amp will cause microphonics in the tubes? Or is there a concern about proximity to the magnets? Certainly I could build shelves, that's an easy thing. I'm just trying to make sure I understand the problem I'm trying to solve here in order to solve it correctly. If you don't mind, I'd love for you to go over the science with me here. |
A more likely explanation for cables sounding different, based on what I've heard, is that the amp and speakers are more sensitive to the miniscule LC and R values than the math would have us believe That's an explanation I can probably buy into a lot easier than idiotic jibberish like "time-correct windings". So now I'm thinking some basic 12-gauge Belden with some nicely welded spade ends from Blue Jean Cable is the correct answer here. One point was made in an article I read the other day that I had never contemplated, but certainly could appreciate, is that copper wire certainly does corrode over time, and some appreciable difference can be achieved just by replacing it with new periodically. No matter what the new cable is, it'll sound better than the old one, because it's new, clean copper. Fast forward a couple years and it's no longer new and no longer clean, and it'll need replacing again for optimal results. Which makes whatever miniscule gains that one could make spending $5K on a pair of one-meter runs kind of absurd, considering those gains will disappear over time from plain old, natural copper degradation. I can show you a photo of some Monster wire (that was given to me by the gentleman who sold me my Belle Klipsch) that is 10 years old and thoroughly green *inside the insulation*. |
Yes and if you can manage, cold press the ends, no solder BJC will assemble your cables for you, doing an ultrasonic cold-weld instead of soldering the ends. Considering I *have* to use either fork or ring terminals on the speaker side, seems more convenient to just let them throw the ends on there for me and call it a day. @williewonka That sounds like a really cool DIY cable. It also sounds like way more time, effort, and expense than I want to endure at the present moment (mostly because I have SO many other things both in my listening space and in the rest of the house where I need to invest time, effort, and expense right now). Maybe I'll get a quote from you to make me a pair of them so I can audition them against the BJC/Belden joints. |
Its transmission line effects, which don't matter in audio. It is skin effects, which are easily accounted for. It is triboelectric effect which is virtually never an issue in audio. It is E
Its transmission line effects, which don't matter in audio. It is skin effects, which are easily accounted for. It is triboelectric effect which is virtually never an issue in audio. It is EMI, not an issue with 12" speaker cables.
MI, not an issue with 12" speaker cables.
I had this sneaking suspicion he was trying to mitigate skin effect when he started talking about dielectric. But I was also trying to be jovial and open-minded when he described all the effort he went through to build these cables. @williewonka Literally, at the outset of the discussion, I showed the math regarding 18 and 20-gauge normal speaker cable and the skin effect at 20Khz. Yet somehow you blew past that. I don't get why. |
So how come whatever wire you use can make a big difference to SQ.
Because, as I've said elsewhere, there's no such thing as "perfect" wire. Just trade-offs. More inductance in exchange for lower resistance and capacitance. Less inductance in exchange for more capacitance. Even the insanely expensive stuff still trades one problem for another. How big the problem is and how much it affects your system is what will make one cable sound better than the other. But it also means, depending on the application, that a $25K cable will be outperformed by a $20 one. |
Use mogami balanced.
While I'd love to go XLR for that application, it's simply not an option, because the pre only has unbalanced out, and the amp only has unbalanced in. So it is what it is. Unless Mogami has some fancy way to get the cancellation out of the XLR and still convert to RCA on both sides, then we gotta find a different solution. |
We end up where we started R, L, C. And now comes the money question. Presuming that I shelve the amps a few inches above the speakers (already bought shelf kits to do this), now I still have my 12-inch speaker cable run, BUT, I still have 2.5 meters between the amps and the pre. So now I have a milliwatt signal being broadcast on a longer run than the high-watt signal between the amp and the speaker. It seems to me that C should be my biggest concern when I contemplate my interconnect choices due to the longer run, though RCA cables tend to be far less transparent regarding their specs than basic speaker cable. Your advice would be useful here. |
Oxygen free copper is nice to reduce corrosion, but never mind OFC or OCCC failing in blind tests, or silver
Silver is a mind-blower for me. Because silver creates its own set of problems in terms of signal conductivity. Sometimes I wonder if there's just an opulence aspect going on there. Like, if a manufacturer thought they could make it cost-effective (for them, not for you), they'd put out a 14k gold wire, just to see if it'd sell. In fact, I seem to recall back in the 80's reading a Stereo Review article about gold speaker wire. But I couldn't say for sure who did it or what purity level it was. |
I still like mogami for RCA though they are on the expensive side I think they're constructed very well and sweetwater is great to do business with.
We're on the same page regarding Sweetwater. Just bought a 7-string multiscale axe from them a few weeks ago, been doing business with them for years. |
