Speaker Cable Wiring Construction Topology

inspiredsports

I landed some David Manley/VTL cable a while back and am going to have it turned into speaker cable.

Here's what VTL has written tabout the wire:

"The VTL cable consists of a twisted array of five Teflon-insulated conductors: three legs of 18ga OFC solid-core and two of 20ga stranded silver-plated OFC, all encased in a braided shield.

For use as interconnect, VTL advises tying a solid-core and a twisted leg together for signal, tying another solid-core and stranded leg together for ground, and terminating the third solid-core leg plus overall shield to ground at the load end only.

For speaker wire, two configurations are given:
-- the first is to tie all five legs together along with the shield and use this for the positive side of the cable (another such leg is used for return, or negative)
-- the second is to tie two solid-cores and a stranded together for positive, and the remaining solid-core and stranded legs plus shield together for negative."

Concerning the speaker wire configurations, does anyone know of pros or cons of either method in regard to using them between my VTL amp and SDA's?

kcoc321

reported

olddog

Personaly, I have tried many special speaker wires. At less than a 12' run I could not tell the diff with any of them against plain monster!?! Now on the other hand on the IC's wire type and build made huge audible diffrences.

inspiredsports

olddog wrote: »

Personaly, I have tried many special speaker wires. At less than a 12' run I could not tell the diff with any of them against plain monster!?! Now on the other hand on the IC's wire type and build made huge audible diffrences.

No where in my original post did I ask for an opinion about the efficacy of speaker cable runs greater than, less than or equal to 12' compared to your particular reference cable.

I asked for opinions about 2 specific wiring schemes.

Do you have any experience with the specific configurations I posted?

F1nut

For speaker wire, two configurations are given:
-- the first is to tie all five legs together along with the shield and use this for the positive side of the cable (another such leg is used for return, or negative)
-- the second is to tie two solid-cores and a stranded together for positive, and the remaining solid-core and stranded legs plus shield together for negative."

The first will net an overall increase in gauge over the second option. I also like the idea of having equal gauge wire for the positive and negative.

Whether one or the other sounds better or not, I couldn't say.

I didn't know that the old VTL offered speaker wire, any chance of a pic?

SDA1C

Im not big on the idea of the majority of the cable going to the positive side. If/when I get stuck with 2 different gauges I put the larger on the ground side. I also know that connecting shield to the load end only will create a field barrier, if you will, that could very likely protect the signal from outside interference.

CoolJazz

SDA1C wrote: »

Im not big on the idea of the majority of the cable going to the positive side. If/when I get stuck with 2 different gauges I put the larger on the ground side. I also know that connecting shield to the load end only will create a field barrier, if you will, that could very likely protect the signal from outside interference.

Correctly called a drain...to seperate the use from grounding. It's good to use descriptive terms that avoid confusion.

CJ

inspiredsports

F1nut wrote: »

The first will net an overall increase in gauge over the second option. I also like the idea of having equal gauge wire for the positive and negative.

Whether one or the other sounds better or not, I couldn't say.

I didn't know that the old VTL offered speaker wire, any chance of a pic?

Absolutely . . .

Rather than tie up Polk resources, I've published to http://www.inspiredsports.com/audio/vtl-wire

I've written down what I know so far and have posted 5 thumbnails that you can click on for an expanded detail view.

Tour2ma

inspiredsports wrote: »

No where I]sic[/I in my original post did I ask for an opinion about the efficacy of speaker cable runs greater than, less than or equal to 12' compared to your particular reference cable.

Well, that ought to make sure it's a long time till olddog makes his 11th post...

At any rate...

Have to assume you have enough wire to do the four runs needed for Option 1, so why not do two runs that way, a third using the Option 2 method and hold the 4th in reserve until you complete a L-ch vs R-ch (and vice-versa) shoot-out? It's not like the loser(s) couldn't be reconfigured as needed...

Not sure if SDA's would make it easier or harder to pick a winner, but believe you have non-SDA speaks to play with as well.

EDIT: Suggest you add a ruler or some common object to give some scale to the wire in the Web-site pics...