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
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!!!
Bill,Originally Posted by BillWojo
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
Last edited by LowOhms; December 31st, 2016 at 08:53 PM.
Hi Jeff-
I had the same curiosity as Bill concerning the speaker cable length. That's a very interesting explanation and at least gives us the "logic" behind the numbers.
I also enjoyed your Christian testimony.
GeeDeeEmm
Hmm, without doing the back reading, this 'sounds' like phase shift in a conductor due to skin depth, so for anyone with higher math skills than me that can work it out........ in which case it sure would be nice to make some sort of chart or very simplified math routine for us math challenged types to make a more informed wire size/type choice: Electromagnetic Wave Propagation in Conductors
That said, cinemas, stadiums, etc., wiring charts for audio speakers, amps, etc., can run into the miles with no obvious degradation of signal except for HF loss due to inductance if long enough, so not sure any of this can be perceived by humans.
GM
Last edited by GM; January 2nd, 2017 at 12:45 PM.
Loud is Beautiful if it's Clean! As always though, the usual disclaimers apply to this post's contents.
I am interested in the science behind the wire length thing. Is it that multiples of 57.125 are good for a certain frequency? How does that apply to the whole audio spectrum?
I know the military has researched high and low frequencies as a sort of "audio warfare". Frequencies so high they make you sick or so low they cause other things (think brown note).
I'm curious how this all affects me playing Rush on my Altecs.
i heard GM researched low frequencies one time, made his house sick.
Sonic Barbarian
Big time and still suffering from its effects.One thing's for sure; as long as I live here I won't be able to utilize all of some movie's LFE or do pipe organ symphonies with 16 Hz pipes at ~ live output and maybe even 32 Hz now that the sub systems themselves have shrunk enough to ~comfortably fit in the room.
GM
Loud is Beautiful if it's Clean! As always though, the usual disclaimers apply to this post's contents.
The compromise length was for the whole spectrum. All his speaker wires and interconnects were multiples or divisors of the basic 57 1/8 th inches. In early 2016, my friend Dennis Fraker ( Serious Stereo) confirmed this, through listening tests done on his state of the art GPA 604 home system, so I did get his independent confirmation, decades later, that "I" would trust.I am interested in the science behind the wire length thing. Is it that multiples of 57.125 are good for a certain frequency? How does that apply to the whole audio spectrum?
I know the military has researched high and low frequencies as a sort of "audio warfare". Frequencies so high they make you sick or so low they cause other things (think brown note
I'm curious how this all affects me playing Rush on my Altecs.
Low Ohms........................ Jeff Medwin
Very interesting link, GM! But my mind will not completely wrap around the implications, so I have to agree that a chart of some sort is called for! Nonetheless, now I know what "skin effect" is.
GeeDeeEmm
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