quick question from the back of the room
- cressy
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#1 quick question from the back of the room
when using cat 5 or cat 6 as a speaker cable does one just use a couple of cores together for the live and a couple of cores for the neutral?
cheers ant
cheers ant
- pre65
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#2
Hi Ant.
That's what I would do.
I used to do 4 colours on one and 4 plains on the other, but Mike H reckons 2 pairs on each is better. I shall be doing 2 pairs on my next set.
That's what I would do.
I used to do 4 colours on one and 4 plains on the other, but Mike H reckons 2 pairs on each is better. I shall be doing 2 pairs on my next set.
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G-Popz THE easy listening connoisseur. (Philip)
Edmund Burke
G-Popz THE easy listening connoisseur. (Philip)
- Mike H
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#4
That's what I ended up doing.
Tried it using each pair as both live & return (x 4 in parallel) and it just sounded weird.
So ended up 2 twisted pairs as live, other 2 twisted pairs as return.
Also, each pair has a different pitch of the twist, in other words the length of each 'turn' of the twist, if you see what I mean, so I figured would be best to use the two shortest for one direction (e.g 'live' side) and the two longest for the other (e.g. 'return' side).
Hope that makes sense.
NB: cat6 has the white 'X' section plastic divider down the middle to separate the pairs.
Tried it using each pair as both live & return (x 4 in parallel) and it just sounded weird.
So ended up 2 twisted pairs as live, other 2 twisted pairs as return.
Also, each pair has a different pitch of the twist, in other words the length of each 'turn' of the twist, if you see what I mean, so I figured would be best to use the two shortest for one direction (e.g 'live' side) and the two longest for the other (e.g. 'return' side).
Hope that makes sense.
NB: cat6 has the white 'X' section plastic divider down the middle to separate the pairs.
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#5
If all the whites are ground, and all the colors are hot, that maximizes the capacitance of the cable. Transistor amps won't like that ... some will even blow up if they see a load of thousands of pF. Valve amps (the kind with feedback) won't be too thrilled either.
Using two twisted-pairs as ground, and the other two as hot, drops the load capacitance many times, to a value comparable to generic wire pairs. Amps are happier.
Using two twisted-pairs as ground, and the other two as hot, drops the load capacitance many times, to a value comparable to generic wire pairs. Amps are happier.
#6
But conversely, the high capacitance layout works well in the "twisted twin" loudspeaker cable (just not as Linn says with Naim amps).
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- Scottmoose
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#7
From a design perspective I'm with Lynn here -highly capacitive speaker wire seems to me to be looking for trouble. With that said, I also acknowledge that I haven't heard the twisted twin configured wires cause any problems in the systems that have been using it, so as usual, appears to vary with circumstance etc.
Alternatively, don't use Cat5 at all. Ring mains cable, either run parallel or with a very light twist (say, 1 turn per foot) does a pretty decent job for budget wire, assuming the gauge is sufficient to hold voltage drop to reasonable levels for your app.
Of course, being the tone-deaf monster around here, I'm generally quite happy with perfectly ordinary OFC copper zip wire or extension leads with the ends lopped off. Although oddly enough, I'm actually quite interested in the subject of speaker wire & occasionally wile away a spare moment thinking up 'new' types... my current (sorry) one uses four runs of zip wire laid out in parallel, the left hand four conductors acting as the hot lead, the right hand four the return. Nice low capacitance. If inductance is a bit high for the system, you can alternate the conductors for each leg. I'm not recommending either though. Just me mooching around.
Alternatively, don't use Cat5 at all. Ring mains cable, either run parallel or with a very light twist (say, 1 turn per foot) does a pretty decent job for budget wire, assuming the gauge is sufficient to hold voltage drop to reasonable levels for your app.
Of course, being the tone-deaf monster around here, I'm generally quite happy with perfectly ordinary OFC copper zip wire or extension leads with the ends lopped off. Although oddly enough, I'm actually quite interested in the subject of speaker wire & occasionally wile away a spare moment thinking up 'new' types... my current (sorry) one uses four runs of zip wire laid out in parallel, the left hand four conductors acting as the hot lead, the right hand four the return. Nice low capacitance. If inductance is a bit high for the system, you can alternate the conductors for each leg. I'm not recommending either though. Just me mooching around.
Last edited by Scottmoose on Thu Jan 30, 2014 9:04 am, edited 2 times in total.
- andrew Ivimey
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#8
how we do love speaker cable!
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#9
Scott can you put up an image of zip wire please? I don't know what it is and Google showed me someone traversing along a wire.
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- Scottmoose
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#10
Sorry about that Paul, it's just another term for ordinary shotgun / figure 8 two-conductor speaker wire e.g. this stuff. I suspect it's more commonly called that Stateside, & just refers to the fact that you can 'unzip' the two conductors by splitting the thin connecting web.
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- Paul Barker
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#11
Got you. I did pick up somewhere lamp chord, which also sometimes uses this 2 core arrangement, though often twisted.
"Two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I am not yet completely sure about the universe." – Albert Einstein