speaker cable

[Chivvyp]

Hi,

Does anyone know if the soniqs speaker cable still available from anywhere?

If not, any suggestions for good cheap cable, it's for surround rears so I don't want anything to esoteric, especially as I'll need about 30 m.

Regards

Pete

[bikerhifinut]

Depends on how serious you are listening to the surround sound.
If it's not that critical, buy a reel of good old 79 strand "Fig of 8" from Maplins or could even try some 2 core mains cable like they use for garden tools (double insulated). Downside to that stuff is it's bright orange! I read a report once about a Hi Fi show where Quad were demoing their electrostatics using that orange stuff because they needed some wire quick and there was a garden centre opposite the venue. Dunno if its true though.

Myself I use Chord "Rumour" but that may be a fairly expensive option if you want 30m of wire. That seems rather a lot, I'd expect some losses so you should look at a fairly thick wire to reduce losses?

A.

[david]

Go for solid core bell wire. Sounds great, works well over that distance for my surround rears and costs next to nothing
David

[Chivvyp]

Thanks for the suggestions.

Bell wire? You'd have been banned from any hi-fi forum for that sort of heresy in the past

Having played round with different types of cables I'm tending to come round to agreeing with you now though. Maybe I was always wrong, maybe my ears are just getting worse, maybe both.

Pete

[david]

I don't think your ears are wrong: it does sound remarkably good! It's solid core which helps and induction will be less than my other favourite for making decent cables or medium distance which would be Cat5 data cable. That is 5 sets of twisted pairs which work well as an audio cable even used singly without any fancy geometry but inductance /capacitance will be higher than with the bell wire solution so it will depend how your amp copes
Have fun!
David

[pre65]

Originally Posted by david

I don't think your ears are wrong: it does sound remarkably good! It's solid core which helps and induction will be less than my other favourite for making decent cables or medium distance which would be Cat5 data cable. That is 5 sets of twisted pairs which work well as an audio cable even used singly without any fancy geometry but inductance /capacitance will be higher than with the bell wire solution so it will depend how your amp copes
Have fun!
David

Since when did cat5 cable have 5 twisted pairs ?

cat5 is good for speaker cables.

[Greg.]

Originally Posted by pre65

Since when did cat5 cable have 5 twisted pairs ?

cat5 is good for speaker cables.

Oh, you really are a bit of an old pedant, our Phil I like writing that because it's not me being a pedant for once

Yes, of course you are right. 4 twisted pairs in Cat5 is the case.
Regardless, David's basic observation on the use of this cable for audio is a very good one.

[Mike G]

This is all very interesting, as I previously used cat5 TNT Triple T (the twisted twins Bi-wire version) these were great for many years, and would be using them still if they were long enough. However I moved a couple of years ago, and my system had never sounded quite right since, but last weekend I had time to try some different speaker locations, and have concluded it's mainly down to the room acoustic's. This now means my 2.5metre cables are far to short, so I'm looking at alternatives. I'm not keen to make more Triple T's, as I'd have to buy the cable, and making them is a real pain, also they are fairly inflexible, and difficult to hide. The longest will now be about 5 metres. I had considered using twin & earth cable, but only have enough 1.5mm left over from a rewire, and thought this maybe too thin? Now with the mention of bell wire, I wondered if anyone out there has tried different sizes of twin & earth and noticed much difference? I'm now temped to try bi-wiring with the 1.5mm stuff. Interestingly, to get my system up and running again, i've made some temporary leads, by soldering two cat5 leads together, so and have a shorter length of Toshiba OFC cable on the other channel - two types of cable, two different lengths, one with soldered joints, and it still sound much better than it did - so I'm amazed how much the shape of the room and speaker placement can kill the sound! (I'm using a WAD KAD6550 and Pre2 cathode follower conversion with Tannoy R2's)

[Phil Y]

Hello Mike,
About 20 or so years ago I, for a while used 1.5mm twin and earth with the very modest system I had at the time. One day I got all enthusiastic and bought some 2.5 as I thought "it must be better". I was very disappointed to find it sounded worse than the 1.5 and I had wasted my money.
Only one experience I know but that was what I found back then.

Regards, Phil.

[Chivvyp]

I read somewhere that using a single run of cat5 could be an issue as it couldn't handle the power and could melt? There was a lot of physics attached which I didn't understand so it may or may not be true. I have no idea what power, current, voltage etc. flows in a speaker cable but I wouldn't have thought it great (or does a 100w amp mean a 100w flowing in the speaker cable). I think cat5 is rated at 0.5A per conductor and a max voltage of 125 s by my reckoning a single run (4 pr conductors) should handle around 250w?

For the bell wire suggestion, is there any specific spec I should be looking at, any suggestions on where to source it?

Regards

Pete