Which is more important in speaker cables - thickness or lenght?
Paul P wrote:
Mike Rivers wrote:
You can find a copper wire table on the Web that will give you the
resistance in ohms per (usually) thousand feet for a given wire gauge.
You can use Ohm's Law to calculate the power lost inn the cable and
see if it's signinficant.
I think the number of strands is important as well since the
current is supposed to flow only on the surface of a wire and
more (smaller) strands makes for more surface area. This is
why good speaker cable has a whole pile of strands.
No, skin effect is not significant at audio frequencies (unless you work
at 96KHz, with measurement mics and do bat research).
With CD sources 22KHz is the upper limit.
Cables are stranded; to make them flexible and because audio
'enthusiasts' demand it.
Solid core - either CAT5 or mains twin + earth make perfectly good
speaker cables. Solid copper rods would be excellent - but impractical!
Low resistance is important (less power loss, better damping factor).
Low inductance and low capacitance is best (this is found in most common
speaker cable - not so for some 'exotic' audiophool stuff).
Guy
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