Speaker Wire

[Paul]

I'll post this here, a very cool read on Speaker wire, related to the Monster vs. coat hanger tests:

http://www.roger-russell.com/wire/wire.htm

It's long, but worth the time.

[Wild Bill]

I'll post this here, a very cool read on Speaker wire, related to the Monster vs. coat hanger tests:

http://www.roger-russell.com/wire/wire.htm

It's long, but worth the time.

Thanks Paul! Good read!

Mr. Russell wrote a very honest article. I'll bet the audiophile world is very upset with him! It seemed to boil down to some basic truths:

Thick wire is better than thin 'cuz it's the resistance of the wire that wastes power. Pretty well any kind of copper wire is as good as anything else.

Lower speaker loads need thicker wire 'cuz the wire resistance becomes a greater portion of the total load, making for even more power wastage.

Tone claims come from manufacturers with a vested interest in taking your money. Customer reports supporting these claims are a product of psychology and are never the result of true scientific testing.

I'd enjoy sharing some beer with Mr. Russell!:smile:

Incidently, if you look at his tables about wire gauges and speaker loads versus length, you don't see anything for 16 ohm. That's a pity. I had read that the reason Celestions and other speaker manufacturers started making 16 ohm speakers all those years ago was precisely because of lost power due to cable resistance. It was the beginning of sound reinforcement and people were wiring up long runs to feed cabinets, particularly with live sound in clubs and concerts. With a 16 ohm load the resistance of the wire became a much smaller and more trivial part of the total speaker system load, losing much less power even with thinner gauge cables.

I think I'll go print out Mr. Russell's article. I've bookmarked it but still, some audiophile ripoff supplier of special upsydasium-free speaker wire might put a contract out on him...:eek:

:food-smiley-004:

[iaresee]

Freaking awesome article. Thanks for the link.

[Hamm Guitars]

Hi Bill,

It has been a while since I've seen a new 16 Ohm driver made for live sound (other than HF drivers). Last I've come accross them would have been back in the late eighties. Back then power was expensive so we had larger more efficient cabinets and we would put as many of them on one side of an amp as we could.

The industry went back to being front loaded when the power that you could get out of an amp started to go up (you could get 1200 watts for the price we used to pay for 400 watts a side). When this happened the cabinets got smaller, and the drivers were made to handle more power as most amps would put out 600 watts or so into eight ohms.

Higher watages and larger diameter voice coils make higher impedances impractical for large high powered drivers. Most 18 inch speakers are rated at 4 ohms, and that is at 1KHz - because impedance raises with frequency at 40Hz it can sometimes be as low as 2.5 Ohms. PA amps use transistors, and the mojority of them do not like loads less than 2 Ohms.

Its a shame really, as now we have more power and the cabinets are much smaller so it would be easier and more efficient to load each side of the amp with more cabinets. Doubling the amount of drivers is allways better than doubling the power with half as much driver surface.

[Wild Bill]

Hi Bill,

It has been a while since I've seen a new 16 Ohm driver made for live sound (other than HF drivers). Last I've come accross them would have been back in the late eighties. Back then power was expensive so we had larger more efficient cabinets and we would put as many of them on one side of an amp as we could.

The industry went back to being front loaded when the power that you could get out of an amp started to go up (you could get 1200 watts for the price we used to pay for 400 watts a side). When this happened the cabinets got smaller, and the drivers were made to handle more power as most amps would put out 600 watts or so into eight ohms.

Higher watages and larger diameter voice coils make higher impedances impractical for large high powered drivers. Most 18 inch speakers are rated at 4 ohms, and that is at 1KHz - because impedance raises with frequency at 40Hz it can sometimes be as low as 2.5 Ohms. PA amps use transistors, and the mojority of them do not like loads less than 2 Ohms.

Its a shame really, as now we have more power and the cabinets are much smaller so it would be easier and more efficient to load each side of the amp with more cabinets. Doubling the amount of drivers is allways better than doubling the power with half as much driver surface.

Ah Andy, nostalgia's not what it used to be!:smile:

I remember when we had to buy a YPM1 100 watt Traynor slave amp 'cuz the YVM6 mixer's built-in power amp just wasn't cutting it when we played high schools!

'Course, we ran an A7 bass, A7 mid and some horns on EACH side of the stage, with passive crossovers!

An A7 could make most of the PA cabs today sound like chick peepings, for the same amount of power.

I agree with you totally on doubling the drivers. It's always been far more about speaker cone total surface area than mere power. I read that the original A7 Altec Voice of the Theater cabs ran only 50 watt drivers and had no problem filling entire movie theatres!

:food-smiley-004: