tweeter speaker wire - Page 4

RG6 is not intended to be used as "speaker wire". Trying to "rig" amp to speaker connections will probably produce negative results. Trying to "retrofit" RG6 coax for speaker wire is like trying to make a bagel taste the same as a doughnut.

If you have no issues.... there's nothing to gain (in any way, shape or form) by using RG6 as speaker wire. IMO, it's like trying to use empty beer cans as aluminum foil. Yeah, it can work, but it's not practical nor worth the effort.

Why not just use the cables you have and enjoy the sweet spot?

I have figured that by this time, instead of everyone trying to beat it into the OP, just let them do what they want to do. No need to keep beating that poor dead horse to death.

sory to quote myself but somewhere during the silent bad bad thing concert, I got

"Hey! Where all the vampire women at?"

It's a movie-centric site after all

I do not know where you are going with this. If you want to use coax, use coax, but do not expect it will sound any different, and quit asking people to provide their opinions or other supporting evidence. Rather than a litany of what might happen due to various wire parameters that are not defined without citing specific cables, IMO there will be no difference in sound between 18 AWG zip cord and 18 AWG equivalent coax for a typical home speaker run using typical amplifiers.

Yeah, that's it, I'm afraid somebody with more knowledge will show me up. JN probably knows more about transmission lines and waveguides in his little pinky than I will ever know, but I know enough to get by, about as much as my little pea brain can handle.

You can ask as much as you like, but you seem to be fixated on using coax and do not seem to follow or care what many others have said about why it does not matter in this application. If your mind is made up, as the evidence of this thread seems to indicate since you keep coming back to coax, then why bother asking? If you want to learn about coax, look up transmission lines on Wikipedia and go from there.

Since I cannot seem to give you a straight answer, just "weak and guarded" ones, I shall cease and hope another can better answer your questions. - Don

p.s. Stripping and wiring coax to speaker terminals is a major PITA and very prone to shorts if you are not very careful.

I answered this for you two pages ago.
You're not reading the answers or you can't comprehend them.

No, you haven't. It's 4 pages of the same answers to the same questions over and over again.

Okay.... coax is it. It will be cool (for whatever reason).

Now, here are some things for your consideration.

1) you will need to use two RG6 runs for each speaker.
2) use only the center conductors. One for "+" and the other for "-"
3) the outer braid will be used as the drain wire. The braid should not be connected to anything on the speaker ends.
4) the outer braids from each coax should be tied together at the amplifier end.
5) the spliced outer braids must then be connected to an "earth ground".

Using the outer braid as a signal path will not provide sheilding if only using one coax for each speaker. Also.... most RG6 has steel braid, not copper. You can get copper braided RG6, but most retailers only sell in bulk.

Have fun and let us know about the sonic improvements.

Look up EM waves on Wikipedia or take a basic electronics class. There are electrical and magnetic fields for every current flow regardless of the wire configuration. Coupling depends upon configuration but there is always some.

I do not recall anyone saying using coax is "stupid", just unnecessary, as well as harder and higher in cost to implement.

You 'thought' from the thread? Are you serious, you've been told in this very thread many times that you don't intend to use coax in a manner it's meant to be used, so you won't realise any benefits from it.
So, you didn't think at all, or your reading comprehension is worse than I thought.

...which could have been accomplished using 14 guage zip cord.

Just use the coax, don't post about it anymore, you're not reading any of the answers.

That's the problem. You are not talking (or listening) to the right people.
Grounding to the amp is chassis ground, not an earth ground.

Hopefully you are getting a grasp on this subject. Your intentions may be good, but realistically a waste of time, effort, expense and unecessary.

It's just speaker connections.

Never connect any parts of a home stereo system to the earth ground. All three prong electrical equipment in the home should be safety bonded to the earth at the electrical panel where the breakers are. Normally, there will be a large guage copper wire to the water feed of the house there, and at the meter pan as well.

Adding an "earth" ground anywhere else in the home can be dangerous to you or your system. Coax is designed to use the core and shield in concert. Use the core as the plus (typically red terminal), the shield as the minus (black terminal).

To use a coax properly, you have the signal running on both the center conductor, and the shield. As long as you connect it that way, it will act as a coax is supposed to. What you speak of is called cross connected coax. As I recall, a moderator on another forum pushes that. All it does is lower the inductance of the cables a tad, raises the capactiance. Nothing special. You can achieve the exact same results using two runs of 14 guage zip cord in parallel but twisted independently. It is not magic, and it probably will do nothing that you can hear. If it's more power, just go to 12 guage.

For a tweeter, simply using the coax you wish is sufficient. You won't use more than 5 or ten watts, so losses are unimportant.

jn

Yet another problem with grounds is DC versus AC currents. Yes the speaker terminals probably connect to the chassis ground at some point. If you were to measure the resistance between the negative speaker terminal and the metal chassis, you will probably see a dead short or very low resistance. - That's the DC side of it.

However the audio signal is AC and a class B amplifier has a feedback loop from the speaker plus terminal back to the input amplifier inverting the signal in some fashion. That is what corrects distortion, lowers output impedance, as well as other things. The desingers of that amp are probably returning the speaker current to the PC board ground taking into account the small resistances to the chassis ground. If you ground the speaker to the chassis rather than the negative speaker terminal, you may upset the current flow and in turn upset the sensitive feedback loop. That could do many bad things including ultrasonic oscillation which will burn up your tweeters in seconds yet you will not hear it.

As you can see it's complicated. That's why electrical engineering is a university level subject. If you want to learn it, great! But fooling around like you want to do can cause a lot of damage to your components.

Why not just follow the nearly identical advice given by several in this thread. We can't all be wrong can we?

Darn it. I knew I was missing something...
jn

I said a lot of things...the one thing I didn't say is what you quoted.
Obviously you're intellectually dishonest...a sign of nothing but a troll.

Never intended to suggest "adding" an additional earth ground. Just recommending to properly use the "drain wire" for sheilding, it should be connected to the earth ground that should already exist.

The drain wire is not electrictrically connected to anything, right? There is not any danger (In this application). Just suggesting the proper way to use a sheilded speaker wire.

I do not believe you were the origionator of the separate earth idea. I think the OP saw it elsewhere so was mentioning it, just like he was mentioning the cross connected coax.

He's asking because there are guru's out there who promote such stuff without regard to reality nor safety. His questions are not being taken well here, everybody seems to be in a tizz..

jn

Correct. All I was suggesting was that the sheild (drain wire) be connected to an eartth in order to work properly.

No one is in a "tizz". His desires (based on what others have told him) are not practical and unnecessary.

If you have better recommendations for the OP as to how to implement RG6 coax for speaker connections or reasons as to why it's not necessary.... feel free to provide a simplistic recommendation(s).

For accountability, I said to ground the shields to the amp. For a number of reasons, safety and ground loops being two, I would not suggest using a separate "earth" ground.

Before it happens, I would also caution the OP to NOT short the amplifier (-) output to ground (chassis, earth, or moon). Bridged amps would destroy themselves, and as has been mentioned it could also lead to oscillation, noise, etc.

The term coax means coaxial, so it is based on a cylindrical symmetry, a center wire surrounded by a cyndrical conductor, both which share a common center. The design works because the center of the current within the core wire (the current centroid, or center of "mass" of the current as it were" ) and the center of the shield current (which is the same place in space) are along the exact same line.

As a consequence of the cylindrical symmetry, any magnetic field generated by the core wire will be exactly cancelled by any current through the shield outside of the shield. The shield conductor cannot produce a magnetic field inside the shield as a result of physics.. We end up with a situation where the magnetic field caused by current in the coax is only the field caused by the core wire, and that field abruptly ends at the outer shield.

This cable is a type known as "constrained". Meaning, all the e field and m field is constrained within the confines of the shield. The energy of the signal is therefore also constrained to space inside the shield. Very close to the same thing. It is possible to mimic the capacitance per foot and inductance per foot using ribbons, I've done this quite a bit. With ribbons, there will be some e field at the edges which wil bulge out into air, and there will also be some small amount of magnetic field doing the same. But because the currents are is relatively close, the inductance will be lower by proximity cancellation, as well as due to the length of air the magnetic field must travel to get around the conductors. Theories run the gamut, and what is considered "best" will also run the gamut. White papers will explain to you why physics says "this" is best, others will explain why "this" is worst". (substitute anything you want for "this". While the pseudoscience explanations may be well written prose using physics terms, most are meaningless...sales pitches.

It is possible to make any geometry cable to create any capacitance and inductance per foot (within a simple mathematical constraint), but whether or not it makes an audible difference for you is purely speculative.

Not impossible, mind you . But speculative.

For your coax...give it a try. Won't hurt anybody.

jn

Let me throw this out just for kicks....

What are the considerations to be taken into account when using RG6 and comparing a steel braid as opposed to a copper braid (used as "speaker wire")?

You seem fixated on this steel braid thingy...

RG-6 is a generic, it can have copper core, copper plated steel core, copper braid, aluminum braid, steel messenger wire outside, aluminum foil with copper braid shield...many different flavors.

A steel core wire with copper plating will have added inductance in the audio realm due to permeability. 15 nH per foot is the mu=1 point, multiply that by the permeability for whatever mu the core actually has, then drop it for skin effect.

A steel braid, if there, has no effective inductive increase per foot as a consequence of the cancellation of fields and the distribution of current density caused by the aspect ratio of the shield thickness to circumference.

The bottom line is, let him try what he wants, doesn't hurt anybody.

jn
Edited by jneutron - 12/20/12 at 8:22am

You need to take an introduction to electronics course, you're wildly misunderstanding everything.

The wires are used to carry current from one place to the other. There must be a complete loop for the current to flow. That is why there are two terminals on the speaker, and two on the amp.

Coax is just a slightly different arrangement of the wires. It's design origionally was used to keep rf signals from going out and affecting other things. It also keeps things from getting in, which is why it is used for small signals.

I am sure if you google basic electricity concepts, you can find a tutorial which will help you see how electricity flows within wires.

It is not magic, but once you learn a few basic concepts, you will get a better feel for what the wires are being used for.

jn