OT: Crossover dampening options

[Elitopus1]

I've personally been a little nutty with cables in the past. I finally started purchasing less expensive cables and testing them against my cables( audioquest, transparent, acoustic Zen)and realized they(like anything else) are a preference more than one being better than the other. I settled on a nice little company out of Colorado called Avanti audio. His allegro cables are really good and are a fraction of the other cables I've mentioned.
I've never tried the so called "lamp cord" so I don't know the difference. I just always figured high current amp, high current wires. And I'm believer in good power cords as well.
My good friend who also has model 15's added vintage WE cloth covered wire I believe it was 16awg. And sold his very expensive Audience cables, saying he wasn't missing anything from the switch.
My question is does it matter what's running from your amp to binding posts if your speakers and xovers are wired with regular wire?
Figure this is a good thread to ask this since I've wondered what I should be wiring my next xovers with

I think its cool that you found some cables you like that are also a good price. Its also great to support smaller companies.

I run the same type of wire from the amp to speakers, on the xovers, and inside the speakers. That way its all the same and there is no bottleneck anywhere

[LowOhms]

16 AWG speaker cables ( amp to crossover ) are certainly not adequate AWG-wise, to run an ALTEC properly. Too much loss. 16 AWG is a joke, a bad one.

Minimum AWG speaker-to-crossover cable, for shorter runs, should be double 12 AWG M22759/11 12 ( equals 9 AWG ). For runs 23.8 feet or longer, triple 12 AWG is needed ( about 7.5 AWG ). The shorter runs sound slightly better.

Best bang for the dollar is M22759/11 12, copper stranded, silver coated, teflon jacketed, made beautifully for the military, and cut it to 57 1/8th inch multiples. Apex Jr ( Steve) or eBay with thought , are easy sources.

The woofers, from the crossover, need doubled-up 12 AWG M22759/11 Mil Spec wire to each polarity ( equals 9 AWG ), 57 1/8th inch long , The ALTEC tweeter, 802, etc, from the crossover to the driver, is best using 14 AWG 57 1/8th inch runs, M22759/11 14.

Again, remember to eliminate all the stock ALTEC press-to-fit terminals, on the 15 inch and 802, etc, and solder crossover wires directly to the driver, carefully, professionally. Wonder Solder and a Weller 650 ( or 550 ) Soldering Gun is your friend when doing this work. Attach a strain relief, a P CLIP, intelligently to each speaker lead, at the driver's frame, or body, so no damage will occur if the wire ( no , when the wire ) gets inadvertently tugged in the future.

Now you have the wiring taken care of!!

All of this information was given to me ( and I follow it ) by a person who spent his life in the Movie Theater business, as an owner and designer, and who has personally owned $18.000 a pair speaker cables, for his GPA 604 MLTLs. He has spent $10,000 to rewire internally his JBLs with Ensemble wire He truly knows what end is up.


Have fun.

Low Ohms Jeff

[Phil-G]

If I spend 18,000 on something, it will be something speakers go in

[BillWojo]

LowOhms, what is with the number 57 1/8" for cable length? I've seen you mention that several times, please explain.
18K for speaker cables?
Thanks

BillWojo

[Elitopus1]

And what happens if you have to cut off 1/4" and re terminate an end for some reason? Is the wire no good if its 56 7/8?

[LowOhms]

LowOhms, what is with the number 57 1/8" for cable length? I've seen you mention that several times, please explain.
18K for speaker cables?
Thanks

BillWojo

Yeah sure $18K. My present audio mentor, Dennis Fraker of Serious Stereo, Montana used them between his world-class SET amps and his world-class GPA 604 MLTL. . These $18K a pair speaker cables were made by Joe Cohen, and as I recall were the Pranah Cosmos cables. Look at today's prices on Siltech, or, George Cardas' all-silver litz wire, but do so when seated.

M22759/11 12 is the audio bargain of the century IMHO. Wonderfully made.

57.125 inches was Bob Fulton's derived length in the 1970s. You old enough to recall Fulton Musical Industries, the FMI 80 bookshelf speaker, the J-Modular speaker system, and the later Fulton Premiere speakers? I've owned and used them all. Mr Fulton was my good friend and my very first audio mentor. All his cables were multiples ( or divisors in crossovers ) of that length.

Click Here for Bob Fulton's biography:

Fulton Musical Industries - Biography


and click here for the newly started home page, by Mr. Brain Beck.


Fulton Musical Industries - Home



Have fun, I am.

Low Ohms Jeff Medwin

[BillWojo]

But why was it that length or multiplies of that length. I need a scientific explanation, in all my years I have never heard of such a thing. He must have worked out a reason to have internal driver wires almost 5 feet long. It goes against conventional logic to keep wires only long enough to get the job done and allow for servicing.
Do you coil the excess wire up like an inductor of some sort?
Thanks

BillWojo

[Petro]

Wow!!! Some good info in this thread. I been looking around for something to use to wire my xover and the inside of my speakers, better than the 16awg copper in my cart at mcm. I will check out all mentioned above. I don't want to stomp on this thread with all my ideas on moving forward. So I will find my speaker thread and put it all in there.
Thanks and great thread!!!

[LowOhms]

But why was it that length or multiplies of that length. I need a scientific explanation, in all my years I have never heard of such a thing. He must have worked out a reason to have internal driver wires almost 5 feet long. It goes against conventional logic to keep wires only long enough to get the job done and allow for servicing.
Do you coil the excess wire up like an inductor of some sort?
Thanks

BillWojo

Bill,

Please re read my earlier post. See this sentence " All his cables were multiples ( or divisors in crossovers ) of that length. ".

DIVISORS, is the key word, in inches, 28.56, 14.28, 7.14 , and 3.07 inches.

If you read Robert's Biography, and Home page, you can see he was a VERY talented and uniquely-qualified person.

Here is what he told us. The Psych Lab at one of the local Minneapolis Universities were doing tests on Baboons, giving them aural signals, and documenting how they responded. They had a long backlog of data, all of it correlated well. When they went from, say 20K to, as I recall, 60K to give signals, all the well-documented test animals got sick, and there was no rhime or reason to their responses.

Fulton, being very talented, and local, was called in, to see what was happening.

He measured the 60K audio signal at the input and output of the amplifiers, and it was perfectly acceptable. When he measured it at the speaker terminals, it was phase-shifted, and bore little resembleence to the amplifier's output signal.

So, it was Mr. Fulton's job to FIX this, as the testing was stymied.

Robert went into his Lab, and did all sorts of original thinking and exploration into cables. He discovered many things, one of them being the 57 1/8th inch length as being a GREAT "compromise" multiple !!!

In the late 1970s, with his successful introduction of the FMI 80 bookshelf speaker, he eventually marketed "for-audio" speaker wires, and interconnects, using ALL he knew about propagation down a wire, There existed back then, smaller " Fulton Brown " and huge " Fulton Gold " speaker cables - late 70s, early 80s. Surely, there are older readers who recall, and perhaps owned these in-the-day.

The baboons eventually were perfectly responding to the 60K signals, and not getting sick, confused, when Robert finished his work for the University Psych Lab.

That's the best answer I can offer you.

Personally speaking, thirty seven years later, it was Robert W. Fulton's original influences upon me - as a lovely person, and how well he conducted himself in front of me in differing situations, that eventually led me, to accept Jesus Christ. His positive ( Christian-based ) influences took awhile, as I was raised in a Jewish family. Now, as of September 2015, I am, at last, " completed ".

I hope this length-of-wire explanation is helpful to you, or others.



Low Ohms ............ Jeff Medwin