Do speaker cables degrade significantly over time?

The cable themselves will not go bad. Yes copper will oxidize and this can cause more resistance at the connection point. Clean the connection points off so you have nice clean fresh looking copper, or just strip back new exposed conductor and you will be just fine. Oxidation is only a surface concern, and this only concerns you at the connection points.

Just tin the ends or solder on some lugs. You should be good for a hundred years or so.
I have a better deal. Buy some 12 Ga zip cord or the best speaker cable ever made, RG-8 coax. AQ is perfectly fine though if it is price competitive.

On the RG-8, do you use only the center conductor or the shield as well per connector? I've never heard anyone use RG-8 for speaker before. Should be an interesting alternative to the CAT-6. I thought using RG-6 as standard stereo interconnects is already over the top but that's what I'm doing due to the low capacitance.

Just make sure it's not broadcast RG8 and is solid copper, not copper clad steel. I don't know why you'd think this is the best, if you just get stranded copper cable of equivalent gauge it's equivalent. And it certainly isn't the best if you just get larger gauge which will be better. RG8 is also a b**ch to work with. There's no reason to use it.

RG8 comes in solid or stranded. Stranded is still pretty stiff though. Pigtails make termination easier. It does not matter which lead is which. ( Speakers are pure push-pull AC)

I followed several actual electrical tests on wires over the years. Audio Amateur, Speaker Builder, etc. Found the excellent paper submitted to Audio Engineering Society in one of the anthologies. Pretty much says zip cord is darn good, just don't get really fat insulation as the inductance gos up with separation of the wires. RG8 or RG9 had significantly lower L and C, and as it is about 13 gauge, low R too. Kind of the best of all worlds.
Back when this mess started, a coworker ultra high end guy and I did some checking. He used to be an engineer at Gore; designed wire for a living. Our conclusion was 12 ga zip cord. As always, the shorter cable is the better cable. I ran out of coax and just use zip cord. I admit I used some Kimber for a while to protrect myself from a mobile 1000W CB radio that would get picked up in my cables. Blew a tweeter in my old Ditton's. The Kimber had some common mode resistantce. I solved the problem when I found the yahoo and pined his coax. So much for his illegal 1000W amp.
I fully accept that some cables make a difference. Yea, they do something wrong, and we are told by the salesman it is better. Same thing with high end amps. Method? Find all the ones that sound the same and buy the cheap one.

a 15 year old audioquest cable that was kept in a cryogenic chamber will sound exactly the same to any human being as a brand new blue jeans cable. id bet my life savings on it. However, if audioquest cable was used there is a chance that it was kinked or that it touched liquid or any other number of things that could slightly damage it. so to answer your question, a cable's performance may degrade if it is exposed to harsh conditions. But none of this matters, because everybody knows that expensive cables are completely worthless. There was a thread a while back where somebody with a 100,000 dollar system did an A/B test with monster cables vs opus (which are cryogenically treated. HA!) and none of the trained audiophiles could tell a difference. Then, they took generic power wire, the orange kind you get from the home depot to use your electric weedwacker in the yard, and they still couldn't tell a difference. cables are the absolute last thing you should be thinking of in building a "small bedroom system" just go to monoprice.com and get that decision over with without wasting your money my friend!

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

Get quality cable of the right guage for you application and you will be fine.

I was involved in that test. I do not believe the opus were cryo treated unless that's done by transparent which I was not under the impression that that was true, and the extension cord was not a large-gauge orange heavy-duty one, it was a simple 16-gauge brown in-home extension cord, like lamp cord. And the system is significantly more expensive than $100K .

chris wiggles, i sincerely apologize for misrepresenting the facts, but to the original poster, i think my first statement is just as applicable even with slightly wrong info

The AES paper only proved slight differences could be measured. Not heard. I just remembered where my spool of 12 ga zip cord went. I made an extension cord out of it. 100 feet of zip is a lot lighter and coils easier than the 3 conductor orange stuff and I get full power to my weed wacker. Funny, now almost all tools are double insulated and 2 prong plug, we finally have only 3 prong outlets and cords.

I'm using Belden 8214 RG-8 coax; see my current post #84 in the "DIY Audio *analog* cables" thread: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...&highlight=diy



re RG-8 as speaker wire, it was mentioned in Audio Critic issue 16, which can be downloaded at www.theaudiocritic.com

There's a lot of useful stuff there, which is part 2 of 3.

Interconnectors is in issue 17, with write-in comments in 16, 17, and 18.

Aczel is roughly 83/84 now (assuming he's still alive), so I suggest you d/l all of it now, as well as the 3 recent html webzine writeups



Correct except for the gauge. Belden 8214 is roughly about 10.4 gauge for both the center conductor as well as the braid.



You need to think of speaker wire as part of a system, where one end of the system is the speaker and the speaker wire. And the other end of the system is the power amp.

The speaker wire together with the speaker, present a reactive load to the power amp.

Cheers

What's the difference though? Is steel really that bad for an 8' run? Does it make any difference in dB?

Yea it does. Steel is not good.

Care to enlighten me?

Besides the higher resistance, that is probably not an issue with a passive crossover, steel is ferrous. Magnetic. Not happy with AC. Over 8' could you hear it? Probably not. But speaker cables do not have to support themselves for 80' reaching up the mast, so there is no reason to use the steel core. Even the cable companies spend the bucks for a coax with a molded in support cable instead.
Bottom line is , you can buy the best found for $2 a foot. Less if you find it surplus. Unfortunately it has so much copper in it, the ripped out thicknet cable went to the smelters, not the junk stores.
Don't fret about it. For the mains, I bet only 1 in 10,000 could hear the difference between it and 16 ga zip. Yea, I know all those "ones" are on this forum just waiting to pounce on me
If you really want to know for sure, set up a double blind test and see for yourself.

The resistance of steel is very significant. You're essentially using a steel wire.



So sure, you could achieve the same resistance as a copper wire for this task, but your gauge would need to be WAYYYYY larger with steel. So if you want to install a steel I-beam as your speaker cable be my guest...

I had some 12 gauge speaker wires that turned green the entire length of the wire. If they had not had clear insulation I would never have known.

Or cared!

Home Despot has 10 gauge extension cords. Works out to 50 cents a foot. They are bright orange or red and black.

Ahh but what if I'm using them for 2.5 feet interconnects? With interconnects resistance doesn't matter as much as capacitance right? The copper clad steel conductor RG6 happens to have a pretty low cap. Also if they are so bad, how come CATV uses them in very long runs?

If you want to use steel in your interconnects, then go ahead. No one here is stopping you. But stop trying to argue that it's a better choice over copper, because you're just simply wrong. The reason some CATV companies use steel is because it's cheaper. Period. BTW, on VERY long runs, most CATV uses a larger diameter(1/2'' to 1'), hard aluminum clad cable with a copper center conductor.

As far as whether not cables degrade over time. I would think that as long as the cables are quality to begin with, then no. At least not in any reasonable length of time.

Bro, we already know that steel is worse than copper, I'm just wondering whether it has any effect at all on the sound quality at such a short length and at the application of an interconnect. I thought you experts could give me an insight seeing that my experience has been with copper at the $1 - $2000 range. Nice cable raisers btw. How much do they improve the measurements?

Btw, I have a 10 gauge Vampire Wire speaker wires that have turned absolute green moss due to oxidation. Aren't they supposed to be good quality? Or do I need to spend considerably more?

If you are truely seeking information, then I apologize. Too many people here bait arguments, and sometimes it gets confusing on which is which.

I use the cable lifters for cable managment and as 'strain reliefs'. I personally don't believe they do anything for the sound. YMMV.

As far as the wires you have turning green, it's my understanding that this is generally due to a reaction between the copper wire and the material used for sheilding. I recently had some wire that I bought from Home Depot a couple of years ago that did this. I replaced it with this:

http://www.parts-express.com/pe/show...number=100-028

This is very good, high-quality, good looking, basic speaker wire. It's flexable, and easy to work with. I use it on my center and surrounds. In fact, you can see it loosly coiled on the floor besides the amps along the side wall in one of the pictures of my HT.

I also see that you're using Analysis Plus in some of your system. I would be surprised if you had an issue with those turning green. I used AP Oval 9's on my mains, before moving up to the MIT's.

BTW, what are those speakers that you're using for mains that look like mini line arrays? Very interesting looking.

I like these for cable lifts. You can also use them on the ice.

The green color is not oxidation but a reaction with chlorine that invariably comes from the insulation material - PVC - to form copper choloride salts. It's not consistent because the quality of PVC varies as do the enviromental conditions however it only goes down a few microns. If it bothers you choose wires that are insulated with polyethylene, teflon and its derivatives, etc. however you'll lose some degree of flexibility and lay characteristics.

For short lengths, Veda, I wouldn't worry. People have even used conformable cable from Belden and not reported anything untoward.

They aren't bad cables at all, they are excellent cables for the task they are designed for, which is, as you mention CATV. The reason they can do copper-clad steel is because at the high frequencies of broadcast CATV, the skin effect is very significant so the signal travels almost completely on the exterior of the conductor. Having copper in the center doesn't matter and the resistance there isn't an issue because the signal doesn't travel there. So they use steel which is cheaper, and makes for a stronger wire as well. Copper clad steel is a totally appropriate choice in that application, but it is the WRONG choice in other applications.

With baseband video or analog audio signals and the like, the skin effect is not significant or relevant at all because you have a signal that can go very low in frequency all the way down to DC practically, and you're using the entire conductor, thus you need solid copper and the copper-clad steel cables are the wrong cables to use for that application.

The point is that very excellent coaxial cables for interconnects are not expensive, and you should use the proper cable for the job.

Same for speaker wire. Speaker wire is cheap. Why go around and around trying to use the wrong wire?

For a couple feet, who knows it's probably not a big deal, hard to say without knowing the specs on the wire. Audible? Again, who knows. But given how cheap analog audio interconnects are which are totally sufficient, it seems silly to put so much effort into using an inappropriate cable.

My high-end interconnects? The cheap ones cut down with a new RCA on the cut end.
Just the right length, nothing hanging around.
RG-8 and RG-9 are solid copper as they are for low frequency, high power transmission. Think short wave, below skin effect frequencies. RG-6 is exactly as described by Chris.
I mention RG-8 because the actual engineering papers I have seen show its balance of parameters are about the best you can do if you feel you need the very best. I wish to dispel the snake oil used for wire that costs more then 50 cents a foot so people can buy better speakers. I have 12 and 10 ga zip on my speakers right now.
I did actually buy 2 pair of tara labs interconnects when I had a passive preamp. I think they helped a little, but the problem was the CD player did not have the output current it should have. I added an LH0O01 buffer to it and that made a much bigger difference than the cables. In hindsight, RG-79 would have been better.

Rutgar, I believe it is as Gai said because the only speaker cable that ever turned green is the Vampires with the PVC. The AP Oval gets dirty but never green. Regarding the RG6 interconnect yea I thought it wouldn't make any difference at such short length but I just needed to confirm.

The speakers with the thin ribbon array? It's a Newform Research R630 custom painted Suzuki White Metallic at my workshop.

That is unless where you're at there's no cable that has 12pF cap so you end up using a RG6. It's the damn audiophile in me.