Internal cabling on the 25t

[hal55]

I'm building a small set of bedroom speakers using Seas er15 paper and reed midbass plus Fountek Neo X3 ribbon drivers. Since I like my 25ts very much I want to use the same internal wiring. Anyone know what it was or is it just a good quality of the shelf cable, and please don't tell me it's just lamp cord. Hoping at least it's a bit fancier than that.

[VantheMan]

Assuming it’s the cable that came with the kit it’s the WD OFC cable which came in 2 categories regarding the number of strands, the electric blue sheathed one was for the woofers and the gold coloured one with fewer strands for tweeters. As far as I can see on the wad page it’s no longer on offer. I used it internally but I use van damme black externally I don’t think it’s all that important. I did upgrade the crossover resistors to Mills 12w jobs and I found that much more important. Far smoother sound than with the green vitreous jobs.

[Black Stuart]

Or you could try thinking 'out of the box'.
Re. conductor material and dialectric. Conductor material; whatever you use make sure it's high purity, copper or silver. S/plated copper - just enough microns to ensure the OFC copper doesn't oxidise, or your going to be listening to a silver conductor. Such a s/plated copper will produce a neutral sound. High purity silver will add a touch of warmth - you know the sound of your system, choose accordingly.

Dialectric; if you use a conductor that comes with the usual tightly wrapped dialectric ie. the norm, you will be restricting the flow of electrons. Why not try an air dialectric, ie. a dialectric that has an inside diameter that is greater than the conductor. This means that very little surface area of the conductor is touching the dialectric. This should also have a beneficial effect of isolating the conductor from resonances inside the speaker cabinet - it's what I intend to do with the cables inside my Heybrook Sextets. You could also think about using some soft audio Techflex as sheathing. I have some that I use for h/phone cable where microphonics can be a real problem - just a thought.

As a dialectric TEFLON/PTFE is better than any other type of material except FEP, which beats it hands down, even though it's another fluoroplastic. TEFLON has a milky colour and FEP a clear, faintly blue colour, this reflects their performance as dialectric, strange and weird but true.

[pre65]

Originally Posted by Black Stuart

Dialectric; if you use a conductor that comes with the usual tightly wrapped dialectric ie. the norm, you will be restricting the flow of electrons.

That is an interesting theory.

As I understand things the dialectric itself has to restrict electron flow in order to be an insulator.

[Phil Y]

This is not something I really understand but the Chord Company who's cables I like, use different insulation on their cables depending on whether they are plain copper or silver plated copper. They claim using the wrong combination of conductor/insulation adversely affects the sound.

Hal55,
I would just use any speaker cable you like that suits your price range. I have some of the blue WD cable somewhere but don't use it. I thought it was OK but really nothing special. Easily bettered by spending a little more money.

Phil.

[hal55]

Thanks for the input, much appreciated and points me in the right direction.

[Black Stuart]

If you restrict the electron flow - your restrict the signal, it's that simple. Having made i/connects using the 'accepted' methods and air cored ones, it's no contest - all theory should come from practice. In audio unlike computers dogma rules aka audio still uses outdated passive cooling, the computer world uses active cooling, again - no contest.

Many have argued that the best type of construction is point-to-point, makes sense when you consider Heavyside's findings.

I've always found it incredible that signal conduction is treated almost as an afterthought. It would be good to see an electronics dept. in a technical college or university actually set up a research project to test signal strength from point A to point B using different conductors and dialectrics including no dialectric aka air. This would give a sound science basis for signal conduction technology. Part of this research would have to include particle physics as an integral part of tre project.

[bob orbell]

I think we are getting into the realms of fantasy here, over the years I have tried too many different cables to mention, pure silver made my sound way too bright, as did silver plated, for the last 10 years I have been using good old fashioned QED 79 strand, it works, and is cheap. BOB

[Phil Y]

Hello BOB,

You may, or may not be interested in this, from the Chord Company website:

Silver has an undeserved reputation for making systems it is used in sound too bright and ultimately tiring to listen to. We think though that silver is an excellent and tonally a very neutral conductor, as long as it is used with the correct insulation material. Copper is often thought of as sounding warmer than silver but again, the right choice of insulation material will play a big part in its tonal characteristics.

There is a page all about their thoughts if anyone is interested.
https://www.chord.co.uk/speaker-cable-guide/

I realize that that this is just one companies view and can be dismissed as hype if you like but I have had some serious improvements in sound quality from spending a bit of money on speaker cable recently.

Phil.

[bob orbell]

Hi Phil and all, before I moved to valve amplification, I used Chord Chameleon silver cable, it was my preferred interconnect, however, with the introduction to valve gear, this cable was far too, in yu face, so to speak, I then moved to Van Den Hul carbon interconnect, at a crazy price , it too was a bit tiring, I then purchased half a roll of Peter C's blue cable, very cheap, this cable is what I am using now, I can only describe it as very neutral. There is a lot of talk and opinions about cable, each manufacturer claiming their's is the best, of course, they have to convince the buying public with lots of tech talk, in the end it is down to individual preference, and cost. BOB