Where to position my external crossovers ?

[VantheMan]

Tried it with my own system yesterday. Bit of a lash up with joined cables for the last few feet.
Much the same again. At first not surprising but after say an hour you realise that the noise floor has disappeared. Silences are silent, black silent. So everything sounds cleaner and more dynamic hence the element of surprise and apparent extra volume for the same setting. Glyn John´s production of Joan Armatrading´s eponymous album has many more guitar and keyboard hooks than I had ever heard since buying it , How long ago ? 30 years ????! Hi-hats and cymbals splashes seem to go on for ever. It´s how I imagine a really top-grade Zyger tip on a mineral cantilever would improve on my Expert paratrace jobbed Troika. Somehow those longer bi-wired cables from Xovers to boxes have lost a significant degree of hash or maybe the short 35cms cables between amp and crossovers. Who knows ? Who cares ? Deffo one to try if you already have external crossovers.

[Greg.]

OK, it all sounds very promising. I want to give this a trial. I'll probably need to buy in some cable and I'm not sure at present what to use.......thinking about it but very open to suggestions. Any thoughts?

[bob orbell]

Hi Greg and all, to me, there is only one choice for speaker cable, I have used so many over the years, but always return to the very first mass produced good speaker cable, QED 79 strand, and its cheap. BOB

[VantheMan]

FWIW while I am waiting to order some Van Damme 4 (or 6) x 2.5mm black cable from somewhere I just went out and bought some cheapo Spanish-made copper mains cable. 1m x 2,5 for amp to crossover and 10 metres 1.5mm crossovers to boxes. It looks really well made and although I don´t know if it´s OFC or just copper ( neither do I know the importance of this) I might just not bother with the Van Damme for now.

[colin.hepburn]

I use mains 2.5 solid core house wiring cable on my speakers and QED 79 for the tweeters I have not bothered to try and another to date the one problem with the solid core is the stiffness of it
The OFC oxygen free cable just basically means it won’t tarnish as quickly

[bikerhifinut]

Ah the thorny subject of wire.
I needed to get some longer speaker wires due to moving the stereo. it was meant to be a temporary arrangement so i just nipped down to the local "Cheap Emporium" and bought 10m of 7amp 2 core double insulated lighting flex. The multi strand stuff used for wiring your standard lamp from a mains socket, not the solid core stuff for your fixed lighting installation. £5 in the pocket lighter and not expecting much i swopped it for the Chord rumour I had been using.
well....................... I honestly think it sounds as good as anything I have used.
I might try the nice orange 2 core garden appliance wires as they are a bit bigger at 1mm sq.
So I'm with Bob and Colin on this one. For me its one of the big snake oil cons.
The caveat I suppose is if you have one of those 1980s Naim amps that didnt like a wire with too much capacitance so you had to buy their own special solid core stuff with the spacer down the middle. Looked suspiciously like 300 ohm aerial feeder to me................ probably wasnt.

Andy.