Less is More.speaker wire!

[cindychops]

Quick rundown of my equipment.
Denon pma 720ae used as pre-amp
2 nad 214's bridged
audiolab 8000t tuner
Marantz KI sig cd player
monitor audio br5 bronze speakers.

Have had many years listening with the above kit but had some TDL RTL30 speakers so have just replaced them with an immaculate pair of br5's as more easy on the eye and not the elephant in the room as did'nt match with the furniture.

Had a mad idea (snake oil) to bi-wire the speakers to see if it would make any noticeable difference so used my trusty old Maplin thin/stiff unbranded cable for the high and bought some £5.00 a metre super thick oxygen free cable with lots more strands as i thought this would be better doing the lower frequencies.
Listened to Pink Floyd's Money and it was ALL top end and ultra high with no warmth or bass (did kick in when the track demanded it )and not very nice at all.
Decided to use the new thicker cable in un bi-wired mode with the plates back in and there was still no Bass.
In the end used the original stiff as a coat hanger yonks old not very thick wire and the underlying bass is back and sounds very authoritive with nice "punchy" bass.

SO at the end of the day why does the cheaper wire with less strands sound 100% better than the "premium" wire.sorry for the long post but would be nice to know the answer if anyone knows.

[mgv8]

Yep, cable in complicated, both impedance and resistance play a factor as well as incinerator. This is why its always wroth getting a few cables to try from the hifi shop before committing.

[cindychops]

mgv8 said:

Yep, cable in complicated, both impedance and resistance play a factor as well as incinerator. This is why its always wroth getting a few cables to try from the hifi shop before committing.

Thanks for the reply,i have got some flat copper cable that is 16 segments wide but my thinking was more copper strands more data/signal.

[Neddy Sea Goon]

As odd as this sounds, a few years back a colleague and I ran some tests, for this same question. Had some very good results from 1.5mm twin and earth cable (solid, not flex) and fp 200 gold 1.5mm

Seems counter intuitive but there you go

[cindychops]

The surprising thing is when i replaced some caps in the TDL's the internal wire to the spade connectors looked like bog standard thin wire even the LF speakers.

[darreni]

Many years ago i tried 6mm solid twin & earth cable (the stuff you wire in a cooker with) and to my ears, the sound was cleaner in every way than the expensive speaker cable i had been using.
It was a bugger to try & hide the runs though.

[cindychops]

darreni said:

Many years ago i tried 6mm solid twin & earth cable (the stuff you wire in a cooker with) and to my ears, the sound was cleaner in every way than the expensive speaker cable i had been using.
It was a bugger to try & hide the runs though.

As long as you did'nt wire up the cooker with speaker wire.

[Murph7355]

cindychops said:

As long as you did'nt wire up the cooker with speaker wire.

Previous owners of my place did (since rectified).

[P700DEE]

So no comments yet from those who say cables make no difference lol. None from the super expensive solutions ready for snake oil claims.
I ran twin mains solid core and BT phone cable biwired for years on my speakers before getting two 10m lengths of Russ Andrews Kimber 8VS "cheap" which were certainly an improvement. Anti-Cables are OK , the favourite of the moment is Van Damme cable. The why is explained via impedence and capacitance differences, followed by interactions between cable strands, crystalisation in the copper and interaction with the insulation of the cables etc.

[cindychops]

The distance between both amps to the speakers is only 1mtr and the banana plugs are the cheapest crap things but still sound nicer than the "proper" stuff.My wife says "you'll never be happy" sounds alright to me so the other night i told her i'd bi-wired and used better cable and come have a listen,she said it sounded no different and that was because i had'nt changed anything sooooooooo still no wiser.

[darreni]

The right cable is the one that sounds right to you, be that twin & earth or the 1K per meter stuff.

[ATG]

For those claiming the resistance and capacitance of a run of speaker cable makes an appreciable difference, perhaps you'd like to compare the capacitance and resistance of your cables to the impedance of your speakers and the capacitance of any decoupling or passive crossover networking in the output stage of your amp or in your speaker.

Clearly you need speaker cable to have low resistance because you're passing reasonably large currents through them at moderate voltages; several amps at a few tens of volts. A decent bit of mains flex is a good fit.

[Utterpiffle]

Some sciency stuff about speaker cables:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nx4CAwSLXkY&ab...

I found it quite interesting, although I doubt my ears are clever enough to hear any subtleties between different cables.
Actually, I confess I bought some Tuefel cable last week because I thought it looked nice. With the new cable, music still comes out of the speakers, so thats good...

[TonyRPH]

Are you sure that the phasing was correct with both sets of cables?

[cindychops]

TonyRPH said:

Are you sure that the phasing was correct with both sets of cables?

Yes,on the rear of the NADS i have red on +(on the right) and black on + (on the left)bi-amped so the 2 outer - are not used.

[TonyRPH]

cindychops said:

Yes,on the rear of the NADS i have red on +(on the right) and black on + (on the left)bi-amped so the 2 outer - are not used.

It seems to me that something is not right somewhere, for it to have such a profound effect.

[cindychops]

TonyRPH said:

It seems to me that something is not right somewhere, for it to have such a profound effect.

I 100% agree with you so later today i will fully strip everything down then reconnect it just to see if it makes a difference.

[Boom78]

Funnily enough I’ve just reinstalled my technics separates running to JBL speakers with a cheap spool of cable from screwfix and the sound is amazing.

I’ve never understood the whole expensive speaker wire claims, if you open up an expensive speaker the components are wired with cheap bell cable, I’m sure they’d use expensive snake oil stuff if it made a difference.

[cindychops]

Boom78 said:

Funnily enough I’ve just reinstalled my technics separates running to JBL speakers with a cheap spool of cable from screwfix and the sound is amazing.

I’ve never understood the whole expensive speaker wire claims, if you open up an expensive speaker the components are wired with cheap bell cable, I’m sure they’d use expensive snake oil stuff if it made a difference.

I found that out too as the wire from the crossover to the speakers in the monitor audio br5 was generic thin stranded wire?

[Boom78]

cindychops said:

I found that out too as the wire from the crossover to the speakers in the monitor audio br5 was generic thin stranded wire?

Indeed, the people who buy expensive speaker wire are the same as the people who buy expensive HDMI cables, total nonsense