speaker cable

[JohnD]

I reckon my speakers might melt bell wire

1970's Head Banger.

Amp turned up to 11.

Speakers the size of freezers.

 

[RF Lighting]

Wow...... I know ampliers can melt wire but the energy from a speaker melting wire. No way.....

( if you speak into a speaker it may act like a moving coil microphone and produce a few milliwatts of electricity on its connections. )

Yes, If we are being pedantic you are quite correct, but I'm sure you knew what I meant

 

[JohnD]

Just as I thought. Even has a 200kVA diesel genset underneath to run the sound.

 

[securespark]

 

[RF Lighting]

It's a 2.2kVA petrol gen set actually






No, really it is

 

[fumb]

In reality I would say if you're just wiring up a dvd player system then yes bellwire would be OK for the surround channels

It's unlikely that a DVD output for surround channels is going to be all that high quality and I doubt you'd really notice the difference

If you were running a decent quality Dubly processor at eleven then it would be a slightly different story

In a high quality system cables do make a very noticable difference. I have quite a nice stereo system and by experiment I have discovered my speakers like Linn K9 cable for bass and, bizzarly, 2.5 single core (old colour, cpc cut back lol) T&E for tweeters. I still only run "low quality" flat cable for the rear surrounds though as it disappears under carpet rather well

 

[kentishman]

Out of interest, how many Watts are the speakers rated at and how many Ohms? Answer in Watts RMS, please; not Watts "Peak Music Power" (which is meaningless). My speakers are rated at 10W RMS so bell wire is more than adequate. I calculated that the total resistance of 3m (doubled of course) is 0.25 Ohms. Not very significant for an 8 Ohm speaker.

In the end, the answer - if you've already got some bell wire - is to try it. As I mentioned previously, it won't do any harm. (It hasn't done my speakers or amp any harm. It hasn't melted the wire or insulation).

True, the power loss through the cable in your setup is relatively low, but the series impedence of the speaker cable also has an effect on the damping factor that the amplifier has on the speaker. The source impedence of most amplifiers is very low… in the order of a few hundredths of an ohm… and a loudspeaker likes to “see” as low an impedence as possible for it to accurately reproduce the audio waveform; especially at bass frequencies.

If a cable with even a few tenths of an ohm impedence is connected, this will increase the impedence the speaker “sees”, and will therefore lower the damping factor. This will have an effect on how the bass frequencies sound.

Bell wire will work ok, but a thicker wire will sound better. It doesn't have to be anything fancy, 5 Amp flex would be better than bell wire.

see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damping_factor

 

[kentishman]

If you can afford that sort of stuff, try here:
http://www.glodark.co.uk/audio/unique.htm[/QUOTE]



loved the 6.3 volt ac battery that will explode if used above freezing!!!!

 

[plugwash]

that one is a joke site but scarilly its not too far beyond the real snake oil merchants.