Canare / Mogami / Anti Cables - for speakers

[panditji]

I have no idea about the brand name of my cables..I bought them 10 years ago when I bought my first pair of speakers and a Denon AVR to play music...It looked thick and was reasonably priced so I bought it...

 

[Rastapopulus]

Just for some (more) feedback on mogami, I was swinging back n forth on the thought to upgrade my interconnects to mogami or silver serpent and decided on mogami as studios use them. The cables came in today 2-3 hours back.
I can clearly make out the difference from what I had. The overall presentation is more controlled!!

If the interconnects work nicely, the speaker cables would be nice as well. Offcourse the difference will also depend on the existing SQ you have.

 

[sudhirbhosale]

The lower frequencies travel in the centre of the conductor and the higher towards the outside.

My silly doubt:
Sound signal is an electric current (flow of electrons). Electrons flow on the surface of conductor. So how the lower frequencies (in form of electric current) travel the center?

Also I seed ads of plated cable where tin is used for plating which is much higher resistance than copper.

Thanks

 

[prem]

I have no idea Sudhir. That's what I have been told by people in the know

 

[Fantastic]

Also I seed ads of plated cable where tin is used for plating which is much higher resistance than copper.

Thanks

Tin plating is to protect the copper from corrosion.
Normal current doesn't flow only on the surface of the conductor. It flow right through the conductor. As the frequency rises it sees an impedance to the current flow due to the magnetic field that an ac current generates. Due to this is uses less of the core material to pass current. At very high frequencies the current is mostly on the outer edge of the conductor, the skin of the cable. But this is generally at radio frequencies.

In most audio cables this doesn't matter at all. However as the conductor size rises ( single core!) even at 20 Khz some effect will be there but nothing like at radio frequencies which is why they developed Litz wire to make RF coils. With the type of wires we generally use, you needn't worry about it.There are various sites with calculators to determine the 'skin effect' on various cable sizes. You can calculate it if you want to. Audio frequency users wasn't their target audience !

 

[panditji]

Mogami or Canare it is whichever is cheaper and easily available...will post my thoughts once I get either..

 

[vijwilso]

I don't have much experience with Magami , Just a few hours of listening to that . I feel it is more balanced sound , may be a bit soft . Since you have stated the combination of Luxman + Harbeth tends towards warmish side , you may need a cable that brings-out the sparkle in music .
Canare - Never heard this

 

[Fantastic]

For those of you who are extremely troubled about if you should buy an exotic speaker wire 'because it supposedly" sounds 'incredible' please consider the following. Remember that the 'incredible' sound is supposed to mean that the wire does not add or remove anything from the 'electrical current' passing through it and therefore the sound that you hear from the speakers is 'pristine'.
Ideally it means no resistance, capacitance or inductance in the cable. Nothing else matters.
If there are spiritual effects also , we are not aware of it as yet !

How we can practically achieve this is to use mono block power amps and place them right next to the speaker. The connecting cable will be possibly 1/2 a meter. At that length any genuine copper wire will be enough. Possibly even just a single core wire of small size ! Just get the resistance down to about say below 1/10 th of the lowest speaker impedance.

Here is an interesting table which shows how much of the cable is effectively used at 20 Khz versus size ( here shown as AWG but it doesn't matter )

Amount of conductor used at 20 kHz, based on conductor size
Conductors Diameter % of conductor used
24 AWG 0.024 100% at 20 kHz
22 AWG 0.031 100% at 20 kHz
12 AWG 0.093 75% at 20 kHz
10 AWG 0.115 68% at 20 kHz
Note that this is a single conductor and not equivalent stranded wire. You can use longer cables with multi strand wires before they start affecting the signal.
There is a lot of information on the Net. Just Google it and you will find it.

However the simplest method is to use short wires with the power amp next to the speaker. Not a solution for the casual listener !

 

[Rastapopulus]

Hi Fantastic
Most of us do not have the luxury of being able to place the amp beside the speaker.
I do use monoblocks but have 30feet of wiring sadly (used to be 50 feet before). So I need to really be sure my speaker wires are as best as I can afford. [emoji24][emoji196]

While what you mentioned does make sense, that's only theory and is not absolute.

Let's look at an example.
Using a warm amp+speaker combination can be slightly offset by using bright wires or silver coated cables.

Technically if all the components in the chain are totally transparent then cables will matter much less [emoji51]

@Fantastic
Just for the record, am not trying to sound rude. Just mentioning that real world scenarios are not straight forward often [emoji60]

 

[Fantastic]

Practical engineering is a judicious set of compromises !

 

[captrajesh]

Since you have stated the combination of Luxman + Harbeth tends towards warmish side , you may need a cable that brings-out the sparkle in music .

Never heard Canare but if sparkle is what is required, Mogami would do it wonderfully well.

Here is an interesting table which shows how much of the cable is effectively used at 20 Khz versus size ( here shown as AWG but it doesn't matter )

Amount of conductor used at 20 kHz, based on conductor size
Conductors Diameter % of conductor used
24 AWG 0.024 100% at 20 kHz
22 AWG 0.031 100% at 20 kHz
12 AWG 0.093 75% at 20 kHz
10 AWG 0.115 68% at 20 kHz

Very educative post Fantastic. Wish you have also included more commonly used 14, 16 & 18 AWG conductors.

Using a warm amp+speaker combination can be slightly offset by using bright wires or silver coated cables.

My experience with Silver interconnect (from Murthy, Bangalore) is that rather than extending the HF range, they made it more piercinAg, to the point of being uncomfortable.

Practical engineering is a judicious set of compromises !

Very well said.

 

[Dr.Bass]

I was using the Mogami 3103 few years back. I remember it was a very balanced sounding cable. The sound was plain reliable.

 

[mowgli80]

I used Mogami 3104 in single wire combination i.e. 2*11awg = 8awg with Harbeth SHL5. Although brilliant for vocals and slow music, they lacked the oomph when playing high energy music. I must confess my DAC + Amp combo is on the warmer side. It was only after I attached all silver cables last month that I realised what PRAT is all about. Its still not perfect but is much more listenable.

 

[Fantastic]

I'm repeating again. Try to make all cables as short as possible !
I'm going to try an experiment based on what Allan Wright of Vacuum State - High End Hifi Equipment has to say.
Unfortunately he passed away not very long ago. Thanks to him , he has left behind the results of his research on cables. May not be gospel truth but there are a lot of practical pointers. ( for interconnects)
1. Silver plated copper wires as thin as possible.
2. Three wires. One signal, one ground return, one secondary ground connected at only one end.
3. Use only simple 'light' connectors. ( usually less expensive ....not necessarily poorly made !)

We can get all these here. I did use Cat5e cable once and it was good. But it wasn't a 3 cable connector. I'll use silver plated Teflon insulated copper wires this time. These are easily available here. Expensive compared to regular wires but much cheaper than exotic dedicated interconnect cables ! They come single core and multi stranded. Mostly only in smaller guage wire. Plenty to experiment with !

 

[jls001]

Plenty to experiment with !

Please let us know your findings.

 

[keith_correa]

I'm repeating again. Try to make all cables as short as possible !
I'm going to try an experiment based on what Allan Wright of Vacuum State - High End Hifi Equipment has to say.
Unfortunately he passed away not very long ago. Thanks to him , he has left behind the results of his research on cables. May not be gospel truth but there are a lot of practical pointers. ( for interconnects)
1. Silver plated copper wires as thin as possible.
2. Three wires. One signal, one ground return, one secondary ground connected at only one end.
3. Use only simple 'light' connectors. ( usually less expensive ....not necessarily poorly made !)

We can get all these here. I did use Cat5e cable once and it was good. But it wasn't a 3 cable connector. I'll use silver plated Teflon insulated copper wires this time. These are easily available here. Expensive compared to regular wires but much cheaper than exotic dedicated interconnect cables ! They come single core and multi stranded. Mostly only in smaller guage wire. Plenty to experiment with !

If you haven't seen this already...

And this...

 

[magma]

I'm repeating again. T
1. Silver plated copper wires as thin as possible.
2. Three wires. One signal, one ground return, one secondary ground connected at only one end.
3. Use only simple 'light' connectors. ( usually less expensive ....not necessarily poorly made !)

didnt joshua already conclude this ? in his IC thread
when he heard the Z1 with the Eichmann

i think it ticked all the 3 points above

 

[Kushanava]

Can any one share the contacts , links from where the Mogamy interconnects can be ordered ?

 

[Rastapopulus]

Check Amazon for interconnects.
Check RS online for speaker cables from Mogami.

 

[panditji]

Got the Mogami 3013 speaker cables and put them in my system..Minor improvement in the Bass and clarity but great value for the money...a tad on the brighter side but it seems to bring out more details so quite happy...Would recommend them as VFM cables...