Separating speaker cable conductors

If the speaker's cables are like lamp cords does it help to separate the two conductors?

[greatm]

With old ears & damaged hearing, I don't have to worry about all these claims of audible differences in speakers, amps, wires, DAC's, etc, etc. Saves me a lot of $$$

[richardsmith]

I remember calling Audioquest in the 90's, pre internet, to ask someone about their cables. I surprisingly got Bill Low on the phone and we talked for over an hour. He was telling me how he was working in a stereo store in California when Monster Cable came out. It inspired him to create his own company.

I ended up getting several owners on the phone when calling for questions, , which initially surprised me. I realized how much of a cottage industry it was. It wasn't like calling up Pioneer or even Harman Kardon. I'm sure people used to be able to get ahold of someone like Saul Marantz at one point.

[_David_E_]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the effect is less to do with decreasing inductance and more to do with decreasing capacitance. The inductance should be very low, unless you coil your cable, which you should avoid. The resistance is basically fixed, as the conductor gauge and length aren't changing. But spacing the "poles" of the cable further apart will reduce capacitance. It's that capacitance when combined with the relatively fixed inductance and resistance of the cable that creates the low pass filter. So spacing the poles will reduce high frequency roll off and that is audible in some situations.

[romanalison]

The inductance per unit length of an 'open wire' transmission line (e.g. a speaker cable pair) is given as ~ 0.9log(D/a) micro Henrys per metre, where 'D' is the centre to centre separation and 'a' the radius of the wire. So for a 2mm radius conductor separated from its twin by 4.5mm, the inductance for a ten metre cable is around 3.2 uH, or about 0.4 Ohms in magnitude at 20kHz.

N.B. If the distance between the wires is increased, the series inductance also increases.

The concomitant shunt capacitance at 20kHz is around 0.9nF (~9kOhm)

[Ref. Chapter 8, Principles of Radar, Radar School MIT McGraw-Hill 1946]

[jozno]

Monster Cable was the brand of my first cable upgrades, back in the early ‘90s. First speaker wire, then interconnects for my CD changer. I was amazed by the sonic differences and haven’t looked back at “courtesy” wires since. Your mentioning the brand brought back sweet memories. Thanks Paul

[bluesky]

Yeah, I used Monster Cable back in the 90's. The cable ran from my amp in my equipment rack on the right side of the room, along the carpet to the speakers that were on opposite sides of the sliding glass doors to our deck. The doors were covered with heavy curtains. The copper in the cable that ran to the left speaker along the outside of the track for the doors all turned green!

[barney]

Yes Paul, those IRS 5s, (named that because you get audited 5 times if you can afford them) are just a-WASTING away there and you need to ship them (at your expense of course) to me here 100 miles north of Cherahnuh. (Toronto for those of youz who don't speak Canadian)

[judmcc]

I'd like to see a legitimate scientific test proving that.

[Mark-lqsb]

Yes, lamp cord mentioned in the operator's manual of JBL's L100a model speakers I bought in 1978. JBL said, if you're going to use it, they recommended a certain gauge. I end-up buying a pair of Monster speaker cables. At that time, they were very popular. In the mid to late 1980s I bought a pair of JBL Ti 250's and boxed-up the L100a's along with the Monster cables. About 20 to 25 years later I unboxed the L100a's, reached in and grabbed the Monster and was greeted with a handful of very, very sticky cables. Something leaked through the clear plastic, or something happened to the plastic coating around the cables. The speakers were always stored at room temp in a closet. Well, those cables hit the trash can.

[cubinn]

Nice i still run my old monster cable speaker wires from 18 years ago sounds great is air tight shielding

[alanm.thornton]

I have a Bi-Wire set of "Anti-Cable" speaker wires, running from a Rega Elex-r to a pair of Legacy Studio Monitor speakers. The "Anti-Cables" are solid copper wire, not woven strands and flexible, but bendable like mag-wire/armature wire. The bi-wire set (4 wires) float in the air since they are so stiff, almost completely independently of each other and only meet up and touch each other when they insert into the Rega amp. Am I getting the benefits Paul mentions like 'separating lamp cord' into each strand; less inductance/interference from one wire to the other? I've used other speaker wire (Silver Sonic bi-wire, Western Electric tinned copper, Cardas), and of all that I have tried, the "Anti-Cables" sounded best. Wonder if the separated conductors is one of the aspects that helps with that?

[joelowens]

Yes I have all dragon cables for speakers, signal, power. Yes they are very expensive. Even if you know someone and can get them at a good discount to do all the cables in the many tens of thousands at a minimum depending on the run length. The Dragons are custom made to order and pre-burned in before shipping out. They still say they want to see 100hrs of play time before they mellow in and smooth out some. On first play they can be a little technical and bright but then round out and warm up later on while still keeping the clarity. You can get done but the FOOT when ordering which is what I did. Consider if you ever change rooms from small to medium to larger room you might want to pay extra for the longer speaker cable run because they cannot add onto it later to make longer.

[mikeeygauthier]

In the 80’s, Monster actually had a cable that was separated in one molded strand!!

[jmfloyd]

My home system is hooked up by Monster cable (interconnects and speaker cables).

[dougelick]

Given the extremely low source impedance of your average S.S. amp, load impedance of the average 8 ohm speaker and crossover network, average cable length and at audio frequencies, does the math indicate there will be any roll-off in the audible range? By how many dB at what frequency? I.E. what is the cable's inductance, how much does it change and does it have any impact at audible frequencies?

[richardpalmer]

So If I have a single line of cable for each positive and negative[GND] on the cable to the speaker, which I do today I am better of twisting them together (which i do for interconnects) They currently are just generally following the same path from amplifier to speaker.

[edmaster]

Very simple. There is no good reason for the cables being combined, so seperatly is the way to go. Expensive fixes like Paul tells about, are often only expensive, not more effective. I've got great sounding cables, thin, run seperatly, but they are a league better then all others i tried...And Paul, if you miss the IRS's, just hook then up again, I more think that they had to go out of service as they sound better then the PS audio speakers, understandably...

[bobnob]

I'm kinda shocked, I understand the look of a speaker has little to do with the sound it produces, but I thought the back side of your speakers would have a more finished look. Is there a screen that covers it?

[paulinboston]

Did I get this right: From your amp, 10K speaker wire connects to the speaker terminal and then Monster Cables connect the speaker to the terminal. Is that correct?

[ziqfriq]

It would be pointless to argue with Paul's statement that separated zip cord wires sound better than paired. As the voice from the back of the audience in that Firesign Theater album says, "That's metapheesically absurd, mun, how can I know what you hear?". But regarding the statement that separate wires have less inductance than paired wires, I can confidently say it's wrong. Yes, capacitance decreases as you separate the wires, but inductance increases.

The simplest way to visualize this is to note that for a given current I, the magnetic field B cancels more completely as the equal and opposite currents move closer together. The largest B can be in any case is at the surface of one of the wires. The total energy due to the field B is proportional to B^2 integrated over all space. It follows that as the spatial extent of B becomes more localized as the wires move together, the energy decreases. But the energy is also proportional to L*I^2, where L is the inductance. Therefore, L must decrease as the wires move together to more completely cancel the magnetic field. Most of the concepts needed to understand this can be found in any decent intermediate college level textbook on electricity and magnetism intended for physics or engineering majors.

When I read a "white paper" by some cable manufacturer describing how electrons or signals flow through his cables that has almost nothing in common with accepted science, I like to quote the physicist Wolfgang Pauli: "Not only is this not right, it's not even wrong". In the case of Paul's statement about inductance, though, it's merely wrong.