Tech Square Technical and speculative discussion of amps, cables and other topics.

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RE: Interesting cable problem, need ideas

Posted by andyr (M) on October 8, 2008 at 20:45:10

In Reply to: Interesting cable problem, need ideas posted by morrowaudio on May 8, 2008 at 04:19:21:

Yes, you are getting too much C by soldering together the '+' legs of the 8 pairs, and the '-' legs of the pairs. SS amps generally don't like C ... I believe tube amps are generally immune.

I was interested in doing something similar, a few years ago so I conducted an experiment. I was building a house and wanted to run some 40-50' speaker cables in the wall (to the study). Teflon coated Cat5 makes a superb - and relatively inexpensive - speaker cable for long runs.

Belden 1585a Cat5 consists of 8 strands of 24g solid-core, teflon-coated wire ... arranged in 4 twisted pairs inside a jacket.

Using 2 'jackets', there were 3 ways I could make up a run of speaker cable:

1. 1 complete jacket (8 wires) for '+' and 1 jacket (8 wires) for '-'.

2. Like you, one wire in each twisted pair as '+' and the other as '-' (ie. 8 wires in all, each).

3. 2 pairs in each jacket for '+' and 2 for '-' (again, 8 wires in all, each).

#2 had a capacitance of about 5x the capacitance of #1. #3 was in between.

Due to the long lengths I needed to run - and hence the high overall C for the cable - I went for #1; your scenario is my #2.

Regards,

Andy

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