Yeah. I'm sorry I lost it there. I'm "sympathetic arrogant" -- the more arrogant someone else gets, the more arrogant I get. I can't help it.

Again, apologies to all involved, including Utah, (and it really wasn't as bad as it looks now that it's censored).

Now, on with the inane attack on Goldtrom for posting this thread!!

 

Sunchild: Your a little bit late in the flame war. I believe everyone has cooled off and is now discussing things... But, hey, thanks for the support .

Pinky: Ah yes, the monster cable marketing is very strong. But strand count is not *really* the most important thing its net mass of the copper and eveness of the distribution of mass. Remember its all about moving electrons, the more mass the more electrons. The eveness of the mass is analygous to plumbing, the smaller the diameter the less water will flow through at the same velocity. To get equal amounts of water through a fat and a skinny pipe, it must flow faster through the skinny pipe (I took a few thermal classes and used to do these mass flow calculations in my sleep.). But, with electrons the speed is pretty much limited. I don't remember the exact speed but electrons are at like 0.8*speed of light. Pretty damnd fast. So, when the wire gets smaller the energy is given off as heat (has to go somewhere).

I am nit picking here, but all strands are not made equal .

Anyways, The real point is that the cable *I* used was much bigger then the stock wire, I'd say a factor of 4. Did it make a difference? Who knows I have 0 test equipment. All I have is my ears. And I still think my new setup sounds better then my uni-amp/stock wire one.

AS far as the shielding goes, I will agree that the benifit on the RF spectrum is minimal. It does however provide more shielding then no rubber at all. Weak interference will still be blocked by the rubber. RF cannot penetrate mass indefinatly, eventualy all the energy is absorbed.

On another note, Pinky, have you any experince with nakamichi amps? I'm trying to get a PA-502 from a authorized dealer, but no one around here has them in stock and claim they can't be orderd. I don't believe it because I found it for $230 a www.buyloud.com. But they are not authorized, I won't get the nak warranty .

So, do you think I will need that warranty? Are they reliable? Are they clean sounding? (My Friends 1980 somthing 4 channel was the best amp I had ever heard... tiz why I've decided to go this route).

Thanks!

-- Robert

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Goldtrom
[B]Sunchild: Your a little bit late in the flame war. I believe everyone has cooled off and is now discussing things... But, hey, thanks for the support .

Pinky: Ah yes, the monster cable marketing is very strong. But strand count is not *really* the most important thing its net mass of the copper and eveness of the distribution of mass. Remember its all about moving electrons, the more mass the more electrons. The eveness of the mass is analygous to plumbing, the smaller the diameter the less water will flow through at the same velocity. To get equal amounts of water through a fat and a skinny pipe, it must flow faster through the skinny pipe (I took a few thermal classes and used to do these mass flow calculations in my sleep.). But, with electrons the speed is pretty much limited. I don't remember the exact speed but electrons are at like 0.8*speed of light. Pretty damnd fast. So, when the wire gets smaller the energy is given off as heat (has to go somewhere).

I am nit picking here, but all strands are not made equal .

Anyways, The real point is that the cable *I* used was much bigger then the stock wire, I'd say a factor of 4. Did it make a difference? Who knows I have 0 test equipment. All I have is my ears. And I still think my new setup sounds better then my uni-amp/stock wire one.

 

Ahhh Pinky, you are getting into some advanced physics now .

What you are talking about is called the "skin effect". SO, yes more strands does count due to this effect. But a *MAJOR* variable in the skin effect is frequency. At DC this effect does not exist (I know speakers are not at DC . The effect comes about because the high frequency waves dont have time to go into the core of the wire.

I'm not sure on this, but I don't believe this effect actually matters until about 100Khz or more. I really don't know too many speakers which go this high j/k. I have the formula in a book in front of me.. but I don't feel like doing the math. Lets just leave it at, "I am pretty sure this effect does not matter below 100Khz". Now of course for those of you looking for that 0.00001% decrease in resitance, you may wish to add more strands .


So, Nak is no good? Damn it. How would an 80's Nak amp compare to one of todays? Would it make sense to go find a really old but workign Nak amp?

Thanks for the info Pinky!
-- Robert

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Pinky
[B]Though from what I have been taught(no EE degree here) is that one big thick piece of wire(if you could use it) going front to back would carry less juice then the same amount of wire in strands!

 

Dan, Robert, Pinky AND ALL,

Tomorrow I'm doing the wiring from speaker to head. The head puts out 27 watts rms maximum. The new wire will power the woofer half of the Kenwood xr600 with the Honda harness wire (vaporwire you called it Dan) powering the tweeter half.

Does everyone agree that almost certainly the 18 gauge wire Kenwood included for free in the xr600 box is more than adequate to carry whatever a head can throw at it over the four or five feet from door to head?

I'll gladly spend extra for a better component that is really going to make a difference. However, throwing money away on marketing hype I don't like.

Barry

 

I don't have the knowledge that you guys have, but is one benefit of more non-shielding shielding just the separation it provides from neighboring wires in a harness that might also be carrying current? Just thinking that RF (or is it EM?) strength decreases with the square of the distance. I don't know if, at these levels, induced current would be significant in the least! Of course it makes it harder to pull through small spaces (see comment below.)

As far as strandedness is concerned I think MacGyver points out the benefits of strands vs. solid----flexibility!

 

LATEOTT: Yes, RF is an EM field (or radiation), where E stands for Electro (E-field) and M stands for magnetic (M-field). Varying E-fields create M fields and vice versa. So varying current (frequency) in a wire will create EM fields.

Not sure about the formula you mention. I don't have any of those memorized anymore. So, sure sounds reasonable .

Barry: Even with whatever knowledge I have about electronics, I still "buy" into the marketing of these companies. Should an 18 guage wire be enough to transmit 27 watts? I think so, but it depends on more then I know about the wire. I surely hope kenwood would supply wire that can supply the RMS range to its speaker.

If I were you, I would buy the more expensive wire for piece of mind, but you shouldn't be fooled, on an academic standpoint, into believing the hype. Oh, yeah, I did buy the more expensive wire.
Dunno, I guess I just like to spend my hard earned cash.


-- Robert

 

Barry: You shouldn't have a problem with 18 guage, but let me suffix that with "I'd go bigger". You probably aren't going to go with much more power handling capability on the speaker side of things, but you may want to go with an amp sometime down the road. You don't want to rewire twice, if you can help it, so put in something just a bit more beefy, just in case...say 16, or maybe even 14 guage. It should only cost you $5 (just buy some speaker wire from K-mart...this isn't a 2000W competition system, after all), and the piece of mind for future upgrades will be well worth it.




LATEOTT: Just a few points...Field strength decreases with the square of the distance, as you pointed out. However (you knew I was going to say that, didn't you? ), to greatly simplify the matter, a pulse in one direction in a wire creates an opposing pulse in wires around it....soooo, if the two wires stuck together are opposites (positive and negative speaker wires), you're actually helping yourself (No, technically this isn't completely correct, but I won't quibble unless someone needs to know WHY this isn't quite correct).

As the current increases (especially for those amp owners out there), the induced currents can be significant, but I wouldn't worry too much about it...you're pumping so much juice through those wires, that kind of noise will be drown out. The thickness and type of plastic on those wires is practically nonexistant as far as RF signals are concerned, so if you want separation, you'll want to move to full wrap-around metal shielding (if anyone actually attempts this I REALLY want pics ).

 

My second opinion, having completed the Goldtrom experiment IS: not sure!

It took me about four hours after I had gathered all the tools: new, first class crimping tool; 16 gauge Fosgate speaker wire, 3M crimpon connectors, printout of Macgyver's outstanding instructions, 21" heavy duty cable ties (26 cents each), cheap vinyl covered coat hanger, screw driver, ice pick, swiss army knife, ice coffee.

I did the passenger side first, using the zip tie to thread through the rubber tunnel, got everything reassembled and did some Left-Right comparisons. The difference was marginal and I considered not doing the left, and just leaving the wire in on the right and restoring the connections to what I had before.

"Well," I said, "it is now or never, and I've got the afternoon free," so I did the left also. It was much harder to thread and I could not get the cable tie to thread. I thought about getting a stylet from the hospital like we use to shape the inside of endo-tracheal tubes, but, in the end, a cheapo, vinyl clad coat hanger shaped in a semi-circle, wetted with soapy water did the trick.

I followed Dan's advice (Macgyver's advice) and used 16 gauge because I figured if I used less and I didn't like the results, I'd wonder if the wire was at fault.

Right now I've got the front speaker output from the Alpine CDA-7876 sending signal through the Honda wiring harness to the tweeter component of the xr600. I've got the rear speaker output from the Alpine CDA-7876 sending signal through 16 gauge wire to the woofer component. Actually, I would say, the woofer is really a "mid-range."

One nice thing about this setup is that you can "test" each component separately for apparent distortion. You can "turn off" the tweeter and adjust the head so the mid-range/woofer sounds best and visa versa.

With full output to the tweeter, there is hardly any sound. This was also true with the old wiring when I physically disconnected the woofer side. Literally, not enough to listen at highway speeds.

With full output to the woofer there is plenty of sound. I still get distortion at maximum volume and even at 25/35 maximum volume. I still find loud music best with some high pass filter dialed in (say 80 to 120 hz) because it cuts out a lot of bass but mostly cuts out mud.

I measured the impedance when I had the speakers out. The woofer is 4 ohms. The tweeter measured across the contacts was very high "open". Remember there is capacitor in series in the positive tweeter lead and a coil bridged across the tweeter positive and negative leads. I measured from the two lugs so there was a capacitor between the positive lead and the speaker's positive lead and there was a coil bridged across the positive and negative leads (but toward the speaker in respect to the capacitor.)

I also measured the tweeter's impedance at it's wires rather than at it's connection lugs. There it measured 1.5 ohms. I also measured the impedance with the Kenwood stock connection wires connected in bridged mode. I measured at the head end of the uncut Kenwood wire and got about 6 ohms.

Am I glad I did it? Absolutely YES because it was so friggin frustrating and yet I got it done. Do I think I have any perceptible sound benefit? I'm not sure. I think the bass is a bit cleaner, but I'm not sure. At least I satisfied my curiousity. It was much less dramatic an improvement than I had hoped for. The fact that most of the sound comes from one of the two elements explains that too. I'm not really using much of the front half's wattage.

No body mentioned it before, as far as I remember, but there's some sharp metal corners interfering with access to the rubber tunnels inside the doors. I scraped both hands a bit and left some blood on the metal. It makes for good DNA car indentification, in case it is ever stolen.

Will I go further and get an amp and / or component speakers? Not yet. For now, I'm pleased. I can listen to pleasant music at 80 mph, top town and that's good enough for now.

Besides, no music can compete with the F20C. If I want to listen to music, I don't go cruising, top down, at 80 mph.

Final analysis: I had a really fun afternoon and did possibly a little good, certainly no harm, for not too many dollars.