my new speaker cable

[Sean de Silva]

Firstly A HUGE THANK YOUhyeah: to FM jaudere for his super brilliant recomendation of a single core earthing cable to be used as speaker cable.
Finally got down to lohar chawl and got hold of INDOPLAST earthing cable 1.5sq mm solid copper, being single wires i had to hold two strips in parallel for the +/- polarity using cable ties.

i couldn't wait to experience the 'new wire effect' and initial impressions reinforced my expectations... cleaner vocals, warm treble, tighter bass, clean, smooth overall soundstage! a definite improvement over the earlier generic spk cables.

pics below

Once again, THANK YOU jaudere!

 

[denom]

My God, looks like the 'Crown of Thorns' - Jesus!

You sure went ballistic & cable ties happy....

:lol:

 

[Sean de Silva]

My God, looks like the 'Crown of Thorns' - Jesus!

You sure went ballistic & cable ties happy....

:lol:

hahaha 666 i was waiting for your full on frontal attack! come on over you lazy boy for a demo!

 

[corElement]

My God, looks like the 'Crown of Thorns' - Jesus!

You sure went ballistic & cable ties happy....

:lol:

Jesus is rolling in his grave!! hahahha

 

[Sean de Silva]

Jesus is rolling in his grave!! hahahha

dont you think this is stretching it a bit too far mate? why get blasphemous?

 

[corElement]

dont you think this is stretching it a bit too far mate? why get blasphemous?

Not trying to be, it's all good man

BTW what was the total length you bought and how much did it cost?

Also did you have any issues binding them? didnt the end get flattened when you screwed it down to binding post?

 

[mbhangui]

This is thick copper and will serve you well, but cause heart burns with few who would have spent a fortune to get the same quality from snake oil vendors. Skin effect causes current to flow only on the surface (hence the term skin effect) at very high frequencies. Since this is a single strand, there could be negligible skin effect. For copper the difference is around 20 Ohms / Kilometer when frequency reaches 100 KHz. THe below table is for a standard telephone cable. For your earthing cable, it will be much much less.

(Hz) R (?/km)
1 172.24
1k 172.28
10k 172.70
100k 191.63
1M 463.59
2M 643.14
5M 999.41

To make it easy to connect the thick cable to the amp and the speaker, you can solder short 12 AWG copper wires at each end and cover the exposed solder portion with heat shrink tubing and the desired termination (banana or spade) at the non-soldered end. Also I believe that the capacitance of this cable would be quite low because of the thickness of the insulation and also because each pair of wire is separated by air (which has even lower dielectric constant than all organic insulation materials).

As an academic interest you could borrow an LCR meter to measure the capacitance (if any of our forum members have it). While routing the cable from the amp to the speaker, try to avoid any kind of loops of small diameters, in order to have as small inductance as possible.

 

[ranjeetrain]

Well done!

I can suggest two changes that will improve performance. Both are aimed at rejecting interference.

1. Weave them alternating at every couple centimeters.
2. Wrap them in aluminum foil (the regular stuff from kitchen, but good quality ones)

It will increase the life of the whole assembly if you can buy some kind of jacket and put them inside.

 

[Sean de Silva]

Not trying to be, it's all good man

BTW what was the total length you bought and how much did it cost?

Also did you have any issues binding them? didnt the end get flattened when you screwed it down to binding post?

36 metres @ Rs. 12 / metre ! no issues at all and no flattening!

got it from Mahavir Cables @ lohar chawl - Harshal Jain 9702779757 / 22061811

 

[Sean de Silva]

This is thick copper and will serve you well, but cause heart burns with few who would have spent a fortune to get the same quality from snake oil vendors. Skin effect causes current to flow only on the surface (hence the term skin effect) at very high frequencies. Since this is a single strand, there could be negligible skin effect. For copper the difference is around 20 Ohms / Kilometer when frequency reaches 100 KHz. THe below table is for a standard telephone cable. For your earthing cable, it will be much much less.

(Hz) R (?/km)
1 172.24
1k 172.28
10k 172.70
100k 191.63
1M 463.59
2M 643.14
5M 999.41

To make it easy to connect the thick cable to the amp and the speaker, you can solder short 12 AWG copper wires at each end and cover the exposed solder portion with heat shrink tubing and the desired termination (banana or spade) at the non-soldered end. Also I believe that the capacitance of this cable would be quite low because of the thickness of the insulation and also because each pair of wire is separated by air (which has even lower dielectric constant than all organic insulation materials).

As an academic interest you could borrow an LCR meter to measure the capacitance (if any of our forum members have it). While routing the cable from the amp to the speaker, try to avoid any kind of loops of small diameters, in order to have as small inductance as possible.

Thanks for the academic treatise! no loops at all...i was worried about a 'hum' with no signal and volume up but that too didnt happen. so far so good!

 

[Sean de Silva]

Well done!

I can suggest two changes that will improve performance. Both are aimed at rejecting interference.

1. Weave them alternating at every couple centimeters.
2. Wrap them in aluminum foil (the regular stuff from kitchen, but good quality ones)

It will increase the life of the whole assembly if you can buy some kind of jacket and put them inside.

the shop from where i purchased the cable ties suggested passing the bound wires through what are known as 'wire spirals' - thick translucent plastic spirals for holding them together but i stuck to cable ties for the initial binding as it does a fantastic job but theres always the option of using these spirals as the outer jacket.

heres a pic of a 'wire spiral'

all said and done ,its the very noticeable sonic difference between this simple earthing cable and the usual generic spk cable thats got me jumping up and down and left me wondering whether i should have used this cable from day one instead of the usual generic stuff.

 

[santhosh]

Well Done Sean!!

If you want to improve the cosmetics, add some protective wire sheath and some heatshrink tube at the ends if you plan to add bananas or spades.

While browsing on the phone, I mistook the cable ties for cable elevators .

 

[spirovious]

36 metres @ Rs. 12 / metre ! no issues at all and no flattening!

got it from Mahavir Cables @ lohar chawl - Harshal Jain 9702779757 / 22061811

Is it the same wire which is used for Electrical connections in house?
Which cable you use for +ve connection?OR both way the same thick cable?
Regarding the sound,I can say that many dealers use a thin speaker cables to demo setups.I found that Viola,The shop are using multi stranded,but thin cables(similar to electrical cables)for their HT demo.

 

[jaudere]

Is it the same wire which is used for Electrical connections in house?
Which cable you use for +ve connection?OR both way the same thick cabl

I used same cable for both terminals. I just put red insulation tape at both ends to m ark + terminal cable. I experiemeted with Cat 5 also. Used all combinations from 2 Cat 5 cables for each terminal to single strand of Cat5 (each has 8 thin strands). One can try all. Everyone should try these. Cost of experiment was less than 500. Worth it. Really gives an idea how cable may affect sound. The cable which Sean is using right now is used for earthing. House wiring uses regular multistrand cables.

 

[rraghuram]

While we are on the speaker cable trail, anyone here have any exp. with Finolex cables doing speaker cable duty in their setups? I mean, they all are copper wires so they ought to be useful as spk. wires! I ask because I now need to setup up my 2 ch. gear and am looking for quality & economical speaker wire. I plan to use about 10ft of generic 14awg (16?) wire which came off a Sonodyne installation at a friend's place but welcome your opinions about good speaker wire. Also, what awg should I look for - 12 or 14? At a later date I plan to get BJC from the US. I guess they ought to be real good. Thanks for your inputs. Cheers.

 

[vishug]

infact i also have sonodyne speaker cables which i am using which came with the sonodyne speakers...are those wire good enough or should i buy new wires for better sound transport? - which wire should i buy ?

 

[Sean de Silva]

Well Done Sean!!

If you want to improve the cosmetics, add some protective wire sheath and some heatshrink tube at the ends if you plan to add bananas or spades.

While browsing on the phone, I mistook the cable ties for cable elevators .

Thanks! don't intend to have either bananas/spades! am happy with the current setup

 

[Sean de Silva]

Is it the same wire which is used for Electrical connections in house?
Which cable you use for +ve connection?OR both way the same thick cable?
Regarding the sound,I can say that many dealers use a thin speaker cables to demo setups.I found that Viola,The shop are using multi stranded,but thin cables(similar to electrical cables)for their HT demo.

absolutely ! the same/simple/common/ordinary electrical earthing wire but of a different thickness. both ways same cable.

 

[Sean de Silva]

I used same cable for both terminals. I just put red insulation tape at both ends to m ark + terminal cable. I experiemeted with Cat 5 also. Used all combinations from 2 Cat 5 cables for each terminal to single strand of Cat5 (each has 8 thin strands). One can try all. Everyone should try these. Cost of experiment was less than 500. Worth it. Really gives an idea how cable may affect sound. The cable which Sean is using right now is used for earthing. House wiring uses regular multistrand cables.

i did the same jaudere. just marked the +ve wire with electrical tape.

 

[Sean de Silva]

While we are on the speaker cable trail, anyone here have any exp. with Finolex cables doing speaker cable duty in their setups? I mean, they all are copper wires so they ought to be useful as spk. wires! I ask because I now need to setup up my 2 ch. gear and am looking for quality & economical speaker wire. I plan to use about 10ft of generic 14awg (16?) wire which came off a Sonodyne installation at a friend's place but welcome your opinions about good speaker wire. Also, what awg should I look for - 12 or 14? At a later date I plan to get BJC from the US. I guess they ought to be real good. Thanks for your inputs. Cheers.

finolex/havells are big brands with unjustifiable prices. thankfully i didn't err in that direction and settled for the simple earthing wire.