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Thread: Internal speaker Wire

  1. #1
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    Internal speaker Wire

    What are folks using for internal wiring on their DIY speaker projects?

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    Senior Member ChopsMX5's Avatar
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    I usually use 14awg OFC cheapie speaker cable for internal wiring. Heck, what am I talking about... I even use that wire for running to the amps as well.

    I think that wire is waaayyy too over-rated. I've tried Kimber 8TC, Analysis Bi-Oval 12, Cardas Quadlink, Transparent Audio, Moster M series, etc, etc, etc. All of them sounded the same when you get right down to it. The wire business is just a gimic and they're just out to get your money.

    I say, as long as you have the proper gauge wire for the length you need, you're perfectly fine with any decent quality OFC wire.

    Just my 2 cents.
    Charles
    http://charlest.zenfolio.com/img/v2/p1014411387.jpg

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    Senior Member tweeter's Avatar
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    Iīve just replaced the cabling and binding posts of my 4301Bīs for Supra classic 2.5 and WBT0764.

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    How are you connecting to the driver? Pins?
    The older JBL push type and the newer plastic driver terminals don't allow much room for today's gauge wire. Do you think this is a weak link in the chain?
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    Quote Originally Posted by JBLOG View Post
    How are you connecting to the driver? Pins?
    The older JBL push type and the newer plastic driver terminals don't allow much room for today's gauge wire. Do you think this is a weak link in the chain?
    I use 12 gauge low voltage cable or OFC cable (if I have it around).

    What I do when the terminal holes are too small is to gather and twist the end strands as tight as I can. I then apply silver-bearing solder to the strands. Finally, I use an x-acto knife, a file, or sandpaper to reduce the diameter of the soldered end to where it fits the hole.

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    RIP 2011 Zilch's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by JBLOG View Post
    Do you think this is a weak link in the chain?
    Not hardly. Woofers are lucky to get 16 Ga. here, and mid/high runs on 18 Ga. or Cat5e cables, premium....

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    Quote Originally Posted by Zilch View Post
    Not hardly. Woofers are lucky to get 16 Ga. here, and mid/high runs on 18 Ga. or Cat5e cables, premium....
    Hmm I usually strip down a few feet of 3 conductor Romex solid copper electrical cable and use that - solid copper has to be better than stranded, right? Its not a moving part, so there should be no real need for stranded ...
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    RIP 2013 Rolf's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by JBLOG View Post
    What are folks using for internal wiring on their DIY speaker projects?
    Whether you are building new or upgrading your speakers I recommend using a high quality audio cable. The woofer needs at least AWG 12. The upper frq don't need this thickness. The shielding of the wire is also important.

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    Quote Originally Posted by hjames View Post
    - solid copper has to be better than stranded, right? Its not a moving part, so there should be no real need for stranded ...

    You're kidding..., right?

    It is supposedly documented that the the electrons associated with sound travel along the surface of the wire. More strands increase the surface area.

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    Quote Originally Posted by toddalin View Post
    You're kidding..., right?

    It is supposedly documented that the the electrons associated with sound travel along the surface of the wire. More strands increase the surface area.
    I don't know about that.
    I'll preface this by saying that I had an FCC 1st Class Radiotelephone License in the 80s - so I do have some RF and Microwave engineering background, familiar with, say, VHF through 4 gig or so. At the really high frequencies that surface conduction is called Skin Effect - but that shouldn't be true at low frequencies like the Audio range. Its electrical properties, not acoustical properties like JBL horns. In large RF networks, hollow tubing can be used in place of solid rods with little or no loss of efficiency.
    I tuned and swept 64 transmitters at one location, all connected via hollow waveguide - at a frequency of nearly 2gHz. Far beyond anyone's audio range.


    I don't know this site personally, but here's what I found with a quick Google:. http://www.google.com/search?q=Skin+Effect+and+Audio

    http://www.audioholics.com/education...speaker-cables

    http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~jcgl/Scots_Guide/audio/skineffect/page1.html

    There's more - but feel free to google your own info.
    (You COULD buy 12 gauge solid silver wire instead of solid copper if you like - but that would get pricey pretty quickly).
    But if you can hear a difference, I recommend you pay no attention to me and just buy the wire you hear the difference in. Its not worth an argument - my money is already spent!

    No doubt you'd notice a change in upgrading your crossover caps or getting an improved amplifier before a simple change like speaker inner-cables.
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    where the rubber meets the road

    It is curious...the industry, marketing or otherwise, focuses our attention on anaconda like power cables, special hospital grade duplex outlets, mystical metallurgical interconnects, 2nd mortgage speaker cables and van-de-who terminations.

    But whats inside the box .. Should we pay more attention to this? Again.. Is this the weak link in the chain?

    I like simple secure speaker connections, give me banana plugs or lugs with lots of surface area for decent interface contact.

    When you really stop and think...How much surface area is at play when we connect to the driver terminals?

    Is surface area the metric we need to pay attention to at an interface?

    Excuse me while I get another Sierra Nevada to wet my interFace

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    RIP 2011 Zilch's Avatar
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    It's gastight what counts....

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    Zilch,

    Your talking about the new Sierra Nevada Cap...Right?

    No more Twist-Off Caps for the Chico Pale Ale!

    Gastight...and....hoppy

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    Moderator hjames's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by JBLOG View Post
    Zilch,

    Your talking about the new Sierra Nevada Cap...Right?

    No more Twist-Off Caps for the Chico Pale Ale!

    Gastight...and....hoppy
    Yummm IPA ahhhhhh!
    2ch: WiiM Pro; Topping E30 II DAC; Oppo, Acurus RL-11, Acurus A200, JBL Dynamics Project - Offline: L212-TwinStack, VonSchweikert VR-4
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    Conductor issues

    Quote Originally Posted by JBLOG View Post
    Is surface area the metric we need to pay attention to at an interface?
    From past studies in Mat'l Sci, I'll try to answer yur question, although I haven't taken this to the lab recently, and I suspect there may be some others in this forum who are also better qualified to answer.

    Let's begin with Paris & Hurd, Basic Electromagnetic Theory, p.50, discusses the experimental evidence faced by Maxwell when he wrote his treatise in 1873. The fifth experiment he performed established what is known as Ohm's Law. Ohm kept a constant current flowing through a section of many different conductors, and measured the voltage difference between the ends of these sections, thus establishing the relationship between voltage and current as I = (1/R) V, where the resistance R, was determined to be a constant dependent upon the geometry and composition of the material as follows: 1/R = (sigma) x cross-sectional area normal to current flow / length of material, where (sigma) is the conductivity of the material.

    At this point, a vector field called the current density, J, is introduced, which is related to current flow in a conductor by the Surface integral of current density dot product of the surface normal unit vector dA = I (the current).

    In differential form, we note dV = E dot dL
    so J dot ndA = (the conductivity)(da/dn)E dot dL

    since n and dL as vectors have the same direction as E(the Electric Field vector) and J(the current density vector), we mathematically state this as
    J = sigma E

    The current density is probably more closely identified with the physical observable in the lab or in practice. Since we usually have decent connectivity in our measurements and measure over time, we frequently think in terms of voltage and current, although the current density is probably the more direct observable at issue.

    Now lets identify the conductors we are considering.

    We might range from the ideal of a single crystal, all the way to a homogeneous, multi-crystalline, grained, cylindrical wire, to a multistrand twisted wire.

    A different perspective on conduction, from field theory, beginning with conservation of energy, might argue that the electric conduction of uniform electric plane waves in unbounded, linear, homogeneous, isotropic, charge-free regions whose conductivity is finite, but not zero, results in high attenuation of the plane wave with depth from the surface in a good conductor, and is frequency dependent.

    In a nutshell, for copper, the skin depth or depth of penetration of the plane wave, delta, is typically 0.85cm for 60Hz and 0.007cm at 1,000,000 Hz as given by the simple formula of : delta(skin depth) = 1/alpha = SqRt [2/(freq)(conductivity)(magnetic permeability)]

    So technically, if we want to conduct frequencies from 20Hz to 20,000Hz, the depth of the lower frequencies will conduct a wave to a depth of about a Cm, and for high frequencies to less than one tenth the depth of a 40 gage wire.

    These numbers are also assuming homogeneity (when they melted the copper or alloy, they alloy is well mixed, material is uniformly mixed when physically processed), isotropic (conduction occuring along one direction of the crystalline structure in a multicrystalline solid, unbounded (other currents, magnetic fields, or stresses aren't inhibiting conduction inside the material or along its surface), linear (2 interpretations, one is that the geometry is linear, the other is that the medium conductivity is not based upon nonlinear mathematical expressions, such as semiconductors-not really but as a crude example.., or unique conducting media materials), and charge free (implying the media isn't a salt or providing other forms of conduction other than electric conduction,..so the math is different for a corroded wire).

    Now common sensically, we know we can conduct electric audio signals using many times even the finest filaments of steel wire. (Remember that high school 8-track tape player connected to the custom van loudspeakers using the cheap 28 gage multistrand wire with only one to three strands of twelve only touching the speaker terminals by being loosely wrapped, and the damned thing still worked?.) So there is more to the issue than simply the wire material, diameter, and conductivity.

    Issues which probably have more effect include: Corrosion, connections, strain on conductors, twisted vs untwisted conductors, crossing conductors and magnetic fields, magnetic susceptibility, parallel vs perpendicular connections. wire ductility, etc.

    To a large effect, the mechanical features of electrical connections over time outweigh the electrical conduction parameters by many ordrs of magnitude. Many of those mechanical features are what allow short circuits or open circuits or enormous changes in conductor cross-sectional area along the circuit path, resulting in large impedances involving inductance, capacitance as well as resistance. Additionally these comments really only address single signal, single frequency studies, whereas high fidelity music will also involve many multiple harmonics and group waves not clearly discussed here.

    (To be cont'd in next post...)

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