bi wiring and speaker cable

matt78

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hi,

i have recently moved house and need longer runs of speaker cable. im having my speakers in the corners of the room and my tv in the middle. my wall is about 4.2 mtr's wide. my sterio will be on the wall to the side. im currently using qed bi wire silver anniversary, but i cant afford 14 mtr's of bi wire cable. im thinking of buying chord company silver carnival and making my own jumpers from the same cable. now will this cable sound better than my qed? also i may change my amp/cd player next year or both to roksan. does silver carnival work well with roksan equipment as i dont want to be buying more cable again next year. my sterio comprises of Technics sua 808 amp Technics slps7 cd player B&W 602 s2 speakers, atlas equater interconnect
 
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Anonymous

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Hello, seeing as no one else has answered I'll give my view.

It won't make a blind bit of difference - use whatever cable you want and use it to replace the jumpers too.

Positioning your speakers away from the corners is what I'd be concerned about...
 

andyjm

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stevebrock said:
QED silver is a bright cable, I prefer the the carnival silver screen

This is of course a subjective view.

The objective view is that speaker cables of the same resistance can't possibly sound any different - particularly 'bright' or 'warm'. This is an internet old wives tale.
 

Inter_Voice

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andyjm said:
stevebrock said:
QED silver is a bright cable, I prefer the the carnival silver screen

This is of course a subjective view.

The objective view is that speaker cables of the same resistance can't possibly sound any different - particularly 'bright' or 'warm'. This is an internet old wives tale.

Silver plated cable usually has smaller capacitance thus have less impedence than copper wire. It therefore allows higher frequencies to pass through more easily resulting in more detailed HF reproduction. Pure copper wire is the other way round. Therefore not all speaker cables are the same which also applied to interconnects which is more noticeable due to small current passing through the wires.
 
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Inter_Voice said:
andyjm said:
stevebrock said:
QED silver is a bright cable, I prefer the the carnival silver screen

This is of course a subjective view.

The objective view is that speaker cables of the same resistance can't possibly sound any different - particularly 'bright' or 'warm'. This is an internet old wives tale.

Silver plated cable usually has smaller capacitance thus have less impedence than copper wire. It therefore allows higher frequencies to pass through more easily resulting in more detailed HF reproduction. Pure copper wire is the other way round. Therefore not all speaker cables are the same which also applied to interconnects which is more noticeable due to small current passing through the wires.

I'm not getting into this again but this but I would encourage the OP to do their own reasearch to discover why this isn't true for signals in the audible range. Stuff like this is spouted by people as it sounds semi-scientific but it simply isn't true for our hobby.

Yes it IS possible to design cables that will make a difference but you'd have to be stupid to do so as designing cables that don't make a difference is simple.
 

andyjm

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Inter_Voice said:
Silver plated cable usually has smaller capacitance thus have less impedence than copper wire. It therefore allows higher frequencies to pass through more easily resulting in more detailed HF reproduction. Pure copper wire is the other way round. Therefore not all speaker cables are the same which also applied to interconnects which is more noticeable due to small current passing through the wires.

While capacative effects do impact signal transfer along a cable, they are negligable at audio frequencies in speaker cable applications and have nothing to do with whether the cable is silver or copper.

I can only assume this silver vs copper thing comes from silver appearing 'bright and shiny' and copper appearing 'mellow and warm'. I certainly don't know of any electrical property that would imply any difference between the the two metals.
 

Overdose

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Silver plating is used to protect the conductors in a cable, against oxidisation, it is also used on connectors for the same reason and provides a slightly lower contact resistance (at the termination points).
 

Inter_Voice

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Well, different people has different views on the choice of cables and on their effectiveness. Some people say they can hear the difference while others not. It is really up to individual to make a judgement.

In my personal experience the sonic difference from very high end speaker cables vs cheaper ones are not that big. But my ears told me that there are distinct differences in SQ between silver and very pure OFC interconnects.

My advise to the OP is that try to hear if you can spot any differences before buying. All the views expressed here are all personal and just for your reference. You need to make your own judgement by actual audition.

Back to the question of bi-wiring, in my experience I could not hear a difference using bi-wire setup and my advise is just forget about it and use the same money to buy a better quality single wired cable or just a cheap cable in case you cannot hear any difference. Change the solid metal jumper bridge at the back of the speaker with cables might help to improve SQ but TBH the differenec is very very small in my personal experience.
 
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meh.. Using expensive speaker cable is splitting hairs imho
 

Covenanter

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We are back to avoiding mumbo jumbo again! I bought a fairly expensive interconnect cable when I got my system because I thought I could hear a difference in the showroom and because the price wasn't material to me. What might cause the difference? No idea, can't imagine it's anything to do with capacitance though because at audio frequencies capacitive effects would be tiny. It might be a purely subjective thing as I didn't do a blind test and "cognitive dissonance" is a well known phenomenum. However if you can hear a difference or even just think you can hear a difference go for it, perception is reality!

Chris
 

Inter_Voice

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Covenanter said:
We are back to avoiding mumbo jumbo again! I bought a fairly expensive interconnect cable when I got my system because I thought I could hear a difference in the showroom and because the price wasn't material to me. What might cause the difference? No idea, can't imagine it's anything to do with capacitance though because at audio frequencies capacitive effects would be tiny. It might be a purely subjective thing as I didn't do a blind test and "cognitive dissonance" is a well known phenomenum. However if you can hear a difference or even just think you can hear a difference go for it, perception is reality!

Chris

Agreed. If one can actually hear a difference or perceived to have heard a difference then go for it, else just buy a cheap cable for your table lamp as your speaker cable :) .
 

matt78

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thank you for replying, what concerns you about me having my speakers in the corners? they would be toed in to suit my sitting position on my sofa. as i said my room is 4.2 mtr wide so ithought it would sound and look better if the speakers were in the corners rather than sat randomly say 1m in away from the corner. this is stereo and not a av set up, also my B&W's have the base port on the front so that is not an issue. following on from my original question does anyone know if Roksan are a good match for B&W 602S2's.
 
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Anonymous

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Putting speakers in the corner is nearly always a recipe for boomy bass and muddled sound stage due to reflections off the wall. It won't be so bad as your speakers are front ported but I would try and give them as much room as possible but really do try and avoid having them the same distance from the side wall as they are from the rear wall.
 

RobinKidderminster

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I tried biamping to no effect so I recon biwiring is a waste of time for me. However this must depend on the crossover and therefore could be good in some systems. I certainly think (having bought a number of 'good' cables and interconnects) that there are more important things to change before cables. Maybe in certain high quality systems they can make a diffeence.

Get decent cable but dont go overboard. My opinion only.
 

matt78

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right ok, cheers guys! so in a nut shell get a decent single wire speaker cable and use jumers. dont put my speakers right in the corners. so what ya thinking as a starting point? about say 150mm from back wall and 300m inwards away from corners?
 

Covenanter

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The biwiring debate has been going on for almost as long as I've been alive and longer than many of the posters to this forum have been alive! There has never been any scientific justification for biwiring and doubt that there ever will be.

Mind you it's a good way of selling cable!

Chris
 
Hi matt78

I know your systems components.

I'll recommend single wiring your 602 S2 speakers (using the links supplied to connect the terminals) with standard 79 strand OFC or at a push 500 strand OFC speaker cables as i feel these will be more than good enough for your components.

As to a change of electronics -

How would you describe the performance of your Technics/B&W system?

What genre of msuic do you generally listen to?

Is your preference for an integrated amplifier, pre/power or either?

Is there anything in particular you would like the new amplifier to have (such as remote, tone controls, mp3 input, headphone socket, phono input etc.)?

Your general listening level?

Your overall budget?

With a change of electronics what improvements will you be looking for?

All the best

Rick @ Musicraft
 
andyjm said:
The objective view is that speaker cables of the same resistance can't possibly sound any different - particularly 'bright' or 'warm'. This is an internet old wives tale.

It has nothing to do with the internet, that's for sure. I was listening to different cables before computers were even made for the home, let alone the creation of the internet.

Resistance is probably the least relevant factor too, though if you are fortunate to hear no differences then you just saved yourself lots of money! :)
 
Covenanter said:
The biwiring debate has been going on for almost as long as I've been alive and longer than many of the posters to this forum have been alive! There has never been any scientific justification for biwiring and doubt that there ever will be.

Chris, it might not be 'scientific' to you, but there is surely a certain logic to using one cable for the tweeter's signal and another for the woofer (in a 2-way). It has certainly waned in popularity, but to me it is a similar logic to the bi-amping approach.

I do suspect the benefits are system dependent, in that some will clearly be better and others won't. As ever, why not just listen and decide rather than hold phoilosophical positions?
 

floyd droid

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matt78 said:
so what ya thinking as a starting point? about say 150mm from back wall and 300m inwards away from corners?

Nah i would go 150.452mm and 300.8mm. Ffs just lob em down,have a listen, stick a bit of masking tape on the carpet to mark their position,shift em again,have a listen ad nauseam. Tis your room buddy and it aint rocket science :wall:.
 

Covenanter

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nopiano said:
Covenanter said:
The biwiring debate has been going on for almost as long as I've been alive and longer than many of the posters to this forum have been alive! There has never been any scientific justification for biwiring and doubt that there ever will be.

Chris, it might not be 'scientific' to you, but there is surely a certain logic to using one cable for the tweeter's signal and another for the woofer (in a 2-way). It has certainly waned in popularity, but to me it is a similar logic to the bi-amping approach.

I do suspect the benefits are system dependent, in that some will clearly be better and others won't. As ever, why not just listen and decide rather than hold phoilosophical positions?

Hi

If you read my other posts you will see I'm all in favour of listening and deciding. What I'm not in favour of is attaching some unproven justification for it, especially when companies use it as an argument for you buying their products.

I also agree that there is some logic for biwiring. It is completely possible that some cables could convey higher frequency signals "better" than low frequency signals and ditto the other way round. It's certainly true at very high frequencies but at audio frequencies I very much doubt there is any such effect (or if there is that it is detectable by the human ear) but I'd look at evidence if it were presented to me. I remember trying biwiring in the 1970s and I could not detect any difference then when my hearing was brilliant but if you can then I'm all in favour of you doing it!

Chris
 

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