Upgrading internal speaker wire?

hearingimpared

Mazeroth wrote: »

You can replace all the wires, caps, resistors and inductors you want, as they will barely make an audible difference.

I humbly but vehemently disagree with you here. When I upgraded my 1.2TL crossovers with Sonic Caps & Mills resistors there was a completely night and day difference in the improvement. I also Dynamatted my MW & PR baskets and it made an audible difference.

Mazeroth wrote: »

If you don't have room treatments and only put in treatments at the first reflection point it will make a 100x bigger impact than anything you try to mod your speakers with.

I agree with you with the room treatments but not the bolded part.

F1nut

Mazeroth wrote: »

You can replace all the wires, caps, resistors and inductors you want, as they will barely make an audible difference. If you don't have room treatments and only put in treatments at the first reflection point it will make a 100x bigger impact than anything you try to mod your speakers with.

You couldn't be more wrong.

Tony M

Spiking my speakers made a BIG improvement in sound quality.;)

Bubinga99

skrol wrote: »

...He did caution me about changing the inductors and the internal wiring as it would likely change the ESR. The XO component values were chosen with that specific gauge wire and wire length.

Just to add to this since an earlier post compared the short lead length of the capacitors compared to the internal wiring, the same relationship holds for the 30-50 FEET of 20-26 gauge solid copper wire used in the inductors in the tweeter crossovers, compared to the couple foot long internal wiring.

You can figure the length of the inductor wire, knowing the dimensions of the coil form, the inductor value, and the wire gauge.

skrol

DarqueKnight
I wonder if you spoke to the same guy. My friend was with Polk in that era. He designed the RTA15TL, worked the TL upgrades to the SDA, the RTA TL and several of the Monitor Series 2.
Stan

DarqueKnight

The guy I spoke to was named Chris.

skrol

Different guy. At least they are consistent.

Face

skrol wrote: »

When I started contemplating the upgrades to my RTA11TL's I consulted with my former Polk Audio engineer friend. He mentioned the electrolytic caps, the resistors, damping the PR basket... the usual stuff. He did caution me about changing the inductors and the internal wiring as it would likely change the ESR. The XO component values were chosen with that specific gauge wire and wire length. Changing the ESR would alter the XO characteristics. In many cases, the gauge and length of the internal wires are specifically called out in the schematics.

Are you sure he wasn't referring to DCR? Upgrading from electrolytic caps to film caps in the LF circuit would have a larger effect on ESR.

As far as DCR goes, that will have a larger effect on crossover characteristics. For example, changing to inductors from 18ga(or whatever they are) to a 12 or 14ga air core or 14ga solid core would lower DCR and change driver roll off, possibly creating a peak/lump in resonse or allowing driver break up to be audible, etc...

dorokusai

I'm not sure when it became rocket science to match values of a component. I have yet to rebuild a xover without replacing inductors. Why you would go thru all that effort and not wrap it up is just beyond me.

awe-d-o-file

I had some extra Kimber 4TC and redid the internals of my SDA 1's. Talk about wire that's a pain to work with times 6 drivers per box. It helped a little, not worth the effort. Crossover upgrades like the Sonicap/Mills I did to my 1.2 TL's and binding post upgrades return more benefit and take less time. I also have done cabinet upgrading with spray foam and Deflex with good results too.



ET

gp4jesus

Ahh the debate about wire/IC continues... ...I'm convinced it will never end. I find as many opinions as listeners. The law of diminshing returns differs from the tax return.

My $.02 about rewiring speakers. Gage is king. Everything else are members of his court.

1. I did it one speaker at a time. Took adjusting my balance to about the 10:30 position to "rebalance" the output. when I did the other speaker the "balance problem" went away.

2. long story short w/twin hard-wired* subs. The rewiring netted twice the wire thickness, half the length. This required a signifcant output change because EVERYTHING sounded fat.
*2 12s; 10 gage MC

'nuff said?!

heiney9

Gauge is NOT King. But whatever you want to think. Try more types of cable and you'll see.

H9

ben62670

Where I build speakers I use good wire inside. The last two sets I used AQ type4. To me it makes no sense running $300 speaker wires then tie them to several feet of cheap wires. Also I put the binding post up high to keep the internal runs short.
Ben

polkymond

ben62670 wrote: »

Where I build speakers I use good wire inside. The last two sets I used AQ type4. To me it makes no sense running $300 speaker wires then tie them to several feet of cheap wires. Also I put the binding post up high to keep the internal runs short.
Ben

Agreed AQ is great for internal wiring. just a little stiff to solder and not very flexible

ALL212

ben62670 wrote: »

Where I build speakers I use good wire inside. The last two sets I used AQ type4. To me it makes no sense running $300 speaker wires then tie them to several feet of cheap wires. Also I put the binding post up high to keep the internal runs short.
Ben

I'm with Ben on this - a lot of us run some nice speaker wire from amp to speaker. Why run cheap zip cord or worse from the input cup to the crossover and then to the speakers. Cardas 15.5g can be had for under $2 a foot - it's not a big expense. (Unless you're building speakers that could be lived in - eh, Ben! )

Diminishing returns is also a concern - if your budget is tight put the cash into cap upgrades for sure and resistor's if you can. Someone mentioned that the length, gauge and material coming from the factory is calculated in as part of the crossover build - it's not an impossibility that by upgrading existing wire you will change the sound and not like what you have in the end.

As in any rebuild you are hoping to improve upon something that you had no hand in planning - there could be a very good reason JBL used aluminum wire in some of the L series speakers. I'd still prefer copper but if the wire is sound why change it? Those RTi's I just redid have 18g zip wire in them. I toyed with the idea of chaging that also but decided to leave them as those RTi 6's don't have stellar quality drivers - didn't make sense to put the effort into it.

I'm rebuilding a pair of Dahlquist DQ-10's at the moment (my third rebuild of this speaker) and the internal wiring is solid core 20g copper - nasty stuff. I'm replacing that with Canare and Cardas. For this speaker it is worth the extra cost and effort and the resulting sound is much better.

hearingimpared

ALL212 wrote: »

Someone mentioned that the length, gauge and material coming from the factory is calculated in as part of the crossover build - it's not an impossibility that by upgrading existing wire you will change the sound and not like what you have in the end.

Precisely why I didn't upgrade the wire in my 1.2 TLs when I redid the crossovers. If I would have changed out the wire to let's say Cardas wire, which I believe in, and didn't like the way it sounded it would have been a real pain in the butt to put the original wire back in place.

I checked out the internal wiring and it was in perfect condition and it looked to be something like 10 guage wire. I just DeOxit the terminals and put it back together.

I can, however see trying some better internal wire on a new build or a factory speaker that doesn't have many drivers.

Face

Could you imagine the nightmare of rewiring a pair of the big boys with solid core wire?

Comparing Cardas, Neotech, and generic stranded as internal wire, I found that Cardas was the warmest, smoothest of them all, with Neotech(solid core) being the most detailed. The various generic wire in the middle or just behind the Neotech. YMMV.

jaxwired

Mazeroth wrote: »

You can replace all the wires, caps, resistors and inductors you want, as they will barely make an audible difference. If you don't have room treatments and only put in treatments at the first reflection point it will make a 100x bigger impact than anything you try to mod your speakers with.

2005 Dayton Ohio DiY speaker meet. Many very good speaker designers there and upwards of 50 guys that build speakers as a hobby. A/B blind test in two different rooms. The first room had electrolytic caps versus poly caps. The second room had $500 (for 3 meters, if I recall) speaker cable versus 18 gauge lamp cord from Home Depot. The results? The cap room was a dead draw as to which sounded better and the lamp cord beat out the $500 wire by a few votes. I can't make this stuff up. I was there to witness it. Each listener sat down with a control box and could A/B on their own. Then they would say which sounded better, their vote was taken, and they were shown which they picked. Then the next guy entered the room.

Speaker placement, room treatments, EQ and the likes are SO much more effective at making speakers sound better and more neutral. That's where you need to start if you want better sound. The little tweaks...complete waste of time.

If you want to really get great sound, sound that will make you nearly **** yourself, look into digital room correction. Audiolense is an example:

http://www.juicehifi.com/index.html

The audio community will go round and round on this one for ever. For me, it's a no brainer, speaker cable and interconnects make a significant difference. You don't have to spend a lot, but you do have to try several different kinds to find what sounds best with your system. Blind A/B tests don't work. They are flawed. Read the book "blink" by Gladwell. The brain is far more complicated than we humans understand. There are massive micro decisions that are occuring in a fraction of a second, but this brain activity cannot be called upon on demand. I don't pretend to understand why A/B tests don't show cable differences, but I'm still confident that cables sound different and it's definately NOT just differences in length and resistance.

hearingimpared

^^^ Great Post!

iskandam

Anybody have any experience with this mil-spec PTFE silver-plated copper wire? I just ordered the 16 ga. for my upcoming DIY speaker project.

ben62670

iskandam wrote: »

Anybody have any experience with this mil-spec PTFE silver-plated copper wire? I just ordered the 16 ga. for my upcoming DIY speaker project.

Some of his stuff is decent. I wouldn't use it personally for internal wiring especially for the lows.
Ben

iskandam

Why?

ben62670

The AQ 14/2 wire is better in that app. I replaced the same 16ga wire from ApexJr with AQ wire and the sound was better. The AQ 14/2 wire is about $1 a foot. Also look at cardis wire if you want to spend more.
Ben

TNTsTunes

If you have seen the wiring in a SDA-2 compared to a SDA-2B you will see Polk used a larger gauge wire.

SDA-2's use about 20 gauge wire and the SDA-2B's use about 14 gauge wire.

I'm sure Polk had a reason for upgrading the wire size.

I'm curious if they were asked why they did this if wire "supposedly" doesn't make a difference....

I believe good wire should be used in speakers and I prefer silver soldering connections to using the cheap connectors that came stock.

My early M10's had the wires soldered on to the drivers. I believe the reason they changed is to speed up production.

iskandam

ben62670 wrote: »

The AQ 14/2 wire is better in that app. I replaced the same 16ga wire from ApexJr with AQ wire and the sound was better. The AQ 14/2 wire is about $1 a foot. Also look at cardis wire if you want to spend more.
Ben

How would you describe the difference in sound, Ben? I'm trying to keep the budget as reasonable as possible but I don't want compromised sound quality either.