Solid core Versus Stranded Speaker cables

The effect of speaker wire upon the signal it carries has been a much-debated topic in the audiophile and high fidelity worlds. The accuracy of many advertising claims on these points has been disputed by expert engineers who emphasize that simple electrical resistance is by far the most important characteristic of speaker wire.

I have not done any experiments/testing with speaker cable, but I will say that solid core has won every test I have done for both interconnects and power cords. I hand-build all of my power cords and interconnects. Test with both stranded and solid core. Shielded/non shielded. Braided. What I have found with stranded is that the sound becomes a little messier/muddier. What I believe is happening is that the outer strands of a bundle are first to be charged by an incoming signal/waveform. It take a little time for the charge on the outside strands to reach the innermost strand (which are charged by contact). By this point, the outer strands have already discharged, so the innermost strands have somewhat of a delay on the charge/discharge. This creates a sort of delay or echo on the original waveform. This can make the high frequencies brighter or harsher.

When handling solid core, the gauge of the wire is critical. There is a fine line on a balance. I have found that 20awg is the best overall to use in any situation (either power cord or interconnect). As you increase the size of the wire awg, the bass waveforms becomes punchier and push harder. At the same time, the high frequencies start to roll off and you get a very lo-fi type of sound. If you go smaller than 20awg (such as 22awg), you start to lose bass/midbass body and the higher frequencies become too overstated. I have experienced this both on power cords and interconnects.

Power cords with 18awg or 16 awg will not have enough high frequency detail. I tried a power cord using 22awg solid core and I got extreme amounts of high frequency detail, but there was not enough bass/body. It made the audio sound very thin. In interconnects, 18awg rolls off too much highs. I have tried combining a 20awg with a 22awg for interconnect and it did give more high detail, but it ended up pushing too much high frequencies and it just did not have enough punch/bass.

Finally, braiding seems to be the best way to arrange the wires. I have tried twisting and it doesn’t do anything. There’s a somewhat unexplainable characteristics that happens with braiding. It calms down the upper mid/high frequencies so that they are not so bright. It also seems to reveal a bit more midbass body. Shielding (like braided copper shielding) will achieve somewhat the same thing, but it tends to want to roll off the high frequencies instead of just calming them down.

On my interconnects (which are all XLR), I use 2 braids of 20awg to give a total 17awg interconnect. For power cords, I use 6 braids of 20awg to get a final 12awg cord. All using Neotech 20awg OCC copper Teflon coated solid-core hookup wire. (Yes, OCC is better than OFC).

The Kimber stuff is probably the best equivalent that is on the market. It is stranded, but each varistrand bundle is only 7 strands, so there really is only one inner strand. The braiding also helps.

Right now, I’m using 12awg stranded OFC copper (basic monster cable) for speaker wire, but I have been curious about trying the Neotech NES-3002 speaker wire. It uses all OCC solid core wire that is individually insulated. Based on the number of wires in the pictures, it seems to use 21awg solid core. Shown at the bottom of this page:

http://www.vhaudio.com/wire.html

You can click on the picture to see wire detail.