Gainclone heaven ?

[juanpmar]

Hi Scroobius,

I´m not a GainClone user but I would recommend a few of high quality speaker cables at a good price.

Copper:

-  Anti-Cables from Paul Speltz. The cheapest ones:http://www.anticables.com/products.html
Good cables at an extraordinary price. The Anti-Cables may be returned up to 30 days after purchase.

Silver:

- Clear Day cables: http://www.cleardaycables.com/
Detailed and smooth, great cables. These are the speaker cables I´m using now in combination with the Grover interconnection cables. You have 30 days to test the cables.

Hybrids

- Grover Huffman cables: made of copper, silver and aluminun http://www.groverhuffman.com/home
The best interconnection cables I´ve tried. Detailed, natural, big soundstage. Great in my opinion to use with the NOS1. I have to try their speaker cables yet. Gover offers 60 days to test the cables and if you don´t like it you can return it. I bet you won´t.

As you see I´m using a combination of copper and silver. I´ve tried also silver for the bass part of the speakers and copper for the mid/highs with good results. At the end all depends on the rest of the system to balance it well.

I hope it helps, Juan

[Scroobius]

Juan - Thank you so much for your help these are really useful links I will let you know how I get on.

All the best

Paul

[Scroobius]

Hi Juan,

This is really interesting I had a look at the AntiCables and as a result tried a temporary home made version bare copper wires of 3sq mm (well 2 x 1.5sq mm in parallel) run well away from each other and away from the carpet etc. So the cables have no insulation which is obviously at this stage just a temporary lash up.

The sound quality is excellent really first class right up there with my existing 48 strand (2 x 24 strand per channel) litz speaker cable. And most interesting is that they sound good straight away no running in needed? (because no insulation ?).

So thank you very much for your help it looks as though there is a (cheap !!) solution to my problem of bi-wiring. More tests to do yet and also the practicality of running the bare cable in an acceptable way in a domestic environment (i.e. acceptable to my wife) but that can be solved I am sure.

Thanks again and it is very interesting as I had always thought that a litz type construction would be needed because of skin & proximity effect. Maybe insulation is a bigger evil - who knows but this solution really sounds great.

Best Regards

Paul

[PeterSt]

I made a couple of anti-whetever cancelling out coax LS cables a few years back, but I had to lay them aside because the sound was awful. Still, theories were good, and I always thought they were too good for my system.

The other day I dug them up again to try on some perceivedbly misbehaving amplifier, and *that* made it misbehave !

I still think they are the best (theory, + feels like that) and maybe I should try them on my normal system from today. This is not easy though, because or they are too long and I miss half of what's necessary (bi-amp) or I must cut the existing ones thus do some work again.
Btw, the real work is about what to connect to what (one cable consists of two coax cables) and the confusing plus and minus at the ends because of the constructrion. Also they must be consistently bound together (not twisted etc.) so it really needs a few hours to do it well.
This, for the expectation that it will sound disastrous again.

Peter

[Scroobius]

Hi Peter,

Well all I can say is that I spent a lot of time making the coax speaker cables and I was careful to make them exactly to the recipe (not twisted at all) and with the centre core of one in parallel with the shield of the other etc. I also used very good quality coax (as good as it is possible to get hold of). But the performance was just poor compared with existing 48 core litz (ptfe coated) copper cable. Very disappointing. No amount of running in would have made up that shortfall in performance methinks.

But what I am listening to now - a temporary lash up of bare copper cable festooned around the room to avoid shorting - sounds extraordinarily good. At first I thought they were close in performance to the 48 strand litz ptfe coated cables but after a very short time it became clear that they are much much better. And that is a very big surprise - I was simply looking for something that would be just good enough to drive the base units in the coming bi-amp set up that would be cheap (cheap is important to me at this time!!). But simple bare wires are much better - really special. It does seem that the lack of wire coating (dielectric) (PTFE in this case) makes a huge difference. So how important is skin effect? - single copper wires should suffer from skin effect to some degree (as opposed to Litz wire which should not suffer skin effect) - Either that or the gainclone amp likes the electrical characteristics of the simple bare wire rather the the 48core litz cable but I am not sure about that.

The problem is that my conservatory now has bare copper wire festooned all over the place and my wife cannot get in - she is not happy - not happy at all (even though she likes the sound of the cables     -  she has only just recently stopped mentioning the colour of NOS1 so I have to be careful - very careful.

But I have a cunning plan !! just hope it works - watch this space 

Paul

[PeterSt]

Put them in a large rain pipe ? hahaha

You don't happen to have a picture of this high current danger ?

But that dielectric ... yes ...

[Scroobius]

Ha Ha Ha  - how did you know that 3 years ago when we made big changes to our house I ran a 6" drain pipe under the floor buried under the concrete just to take speaker cables. Of course then I did not know that it would be for skinny cables with no insulation I thought it would be for big butch insulated cables - I did not know then what I know now  (wish I had).

Pictures attached the wires are only 1.5mm2 so hope you can see then - big enough to trip up any unsuspecting intruder though. Not sure if the strategically placed pieces of "insulating" paper act as a dielectric though ha ha.

Paul

[PeterSt]

LOL

Are you sure there are no shortcuts anywhere ?

Yes, I did the same, though with 1" pipes. All carefully planned. Until I wanted to use them in practice and all of them were too steeply bended in the floor somehow, and nothing will go through them. Well, sh*t happens.

Peter

[juanpmar]

Hi Paul and Peter, I can´t help technically about the advantages of bear cables over the insolated ones, all I can say is that the Anti-Cables are a bargain considering the quality of sound vs the price which is ridiculously cheap. BUT, although they´re good cables even without considering the price, they are not better cables, at least in my system, than the Clear Day or the Grover Huffman, the other two cables that I recommended. The sound is less refined, detailed and less dimensional compared with these latter cables.

Anyway Paul, using absolutely bare cables can be a good investigation idea but in real life it doesn't seem of much utility, unless you want to see how looks a fried cat. As you know, the Anti-Cables are insolated by a very thin red lacquer coat. I used the Anti-Cables as interconnection and speaker cables and both ways, twisted and spaced, as you can read here: http://www.anticables.com/technical.html. I couldn´t tell any difference in sound.

Another consideration about cables. I think, unlike other opinions, that there is a difference in between different power cords using them with the NOS1. I´m going to confirm it using also some Grover Huffman cables that I´ll order next week, but so far, with some power cords that I used it seems to me that yes, there are differences.

Best always, Juan

[GerardA]

Very nice to see some diy-ers around here!
Some 25 years ago I tried the double reverse connected coax with RG213, very tick and strong.
A german magazine advized the RG214 but that was not sold anywhere in Holland AFAIK.
It did not sound convincing so tried a lot after.
Now I use this:

[GerardA]

It is cable used to make trafo's and coils, lackered wire.
Twisted to get low capacitance and inductance.
The number of wires and the radius has some influence on the sound so I made a mix that sounded neutral.
I think it is the same idea as your's Scroobius, but electrically and estetically more correct.

BTW. The double coax I use now for the 220V from wallplug to stereo.
Not reversed but both neutral and life inside and the screen connected to the central city heating.
Wires close to it don't pick up the hum and the amps don't get RFI from the mains.
Of course sounds very good as always with DIY.
Could also be a good method for the earth wire as a third coax, should have very low resistance at high frequencies.

[Flecko]

I have also made experiments with lackered wire. I use them as connection for the tweeters in my DIY speakers. A twisted pair of lackered wire sounds faster compared to a normal cable. In lower midrange and bass they were a little thin. That is why they are on the tweeters only. Using more of them in parallel like GerardA does, seems to be a good idea to overcome the bass lack.
As XLR or cinch cable they were no winner. No screening seems to be bad in this application.

@Scroobius
Is that an experiment cabling? It looks so funny

[Scroobius]

Hi Gerard and Flecko,

Yes the wire is experimental but also doubles as a trip wire for burglars  .   My existing wire is 48 strand litz (PTFE insulated) so no resistance problems (4.17mm2 equivalent per conductor). The surprising thing is that with 2 x 1.5mm2 (so 3mm total per conductor) everything has improved. The most surprising is the base which is significantly better controlled.

So a question for Gerard - what are the sizes of the enamelled copper wire shown in your photograph?

Thanks for you feedback guys

All the best

Paul

[GerardA]

Hi Paul,
I think the bass is 2 times 4 times  1 mm  and mid/high double times about half size but I'll check this if I can find it again.
At the moment listening to James Blake a couple of times with the new trick , load and reboot.
Bass floating around the room in circles, voice sounds heavenly.
Why listen to the moody blues!?

[Scroobius]

Hello Nick, Gerard and Flecko,

I have been trying out speaker cables recently and it has been a VERY interesting experience. I owe Nick, Gerard and Flecko a really big thanks for their help because my system is now very much improved because of their help. I owe you all you guys lots of beer - and I would be more than happy to buy it for you and provide a bed for the night if you drop by!!!

So I started by building a GainClone amp (thanks Nick) and what an eye opener. A BIG BIG improvement on my high spec SET amp. So the next step was to go bi amp (see start of this thread) but I could not afford to double up my speaker cable. How crazy my speaker cost far more than my GainClone. Enter Flecko and Gerard. Thanks to them I first tried simple bare copper wire (see above) that cost me nothing (taken out of some old mains flex) and was astounded that it was far better sounding than my existing (49 strand full Litzendraht cable - but coated in PTFE see below). I really could not believe my ears - but confirmed by my wife and hi-fi friend Dave.

So then I moved on to testing the following:-

Stage 1  Single 3sq mm lacquered cable as used in transformers and coils - result was that this sounded to my ears as good as bare wire. So first lesson a thin layer of lacquer seems to have little or no impact on sound quality.

Stage 2  To reduce skin effect I tried 4 x .8sq mm (ie 8 strands for stereo) for each speaker (2 drive units per speaker) twisted as shown in Gerard photo above. I think that this is  better than 1 above but not a massive difference.

Stage 3  4 x .8sq mm (ie 8 strands for stereo) for the bass units and 8 x .5 mm (or 16 strand for stereo) for tweeters. Connected in bi-wire configuration. I think this sounds noticeably better (but I have to be careful here much more controlled testing needed). A lot of care has to be exercised here because bi wiring can have advantages and disadvantages that are nothing to do with cable so too many variables to draw a full conclusion.

It is important to realise here that for my home made cables it was not practical to wind a full Litzendraht winding so I did the second best thing by simply twisting the wire as Gerard shows in his photos above. This is a compromise compared with the full Litzendraht plait (note that twisting cable reduces inductance which is a good thing but increases capacitance which is a bad thing). So if my home made cables sounded better it could not be because of the twisting (inferior in the home made cables) or the number of conductors to reduce skin effect (substantially less in my home made cables) so technically my home made cables should have sounded worse apart from one thing the home made cables did not have any ptfe coating. So it would seem from all of this that ptfe (and probably all plastic coatings) have a VERY VERY BAD effect of sound quality.

I do not understand the reason for this. On the face of it I find it hard to believe that it is directly due to the increase in capacitance due to ptfe. I say this because according to my calculations the increase in capacitance due to ptfe coating is less than that due to winding the cables together (I could be wrong here and probably need to check the calculations) but anyway is there another factor involved?. Comments very welcome. All I can say is that from what I hear ptfe / plastic coating is a VERY BAD THING.

Please Note - if you want to try the above I am sure that you will find it very interesting but be warned that the amount of work involved in twisting long length of speaker cables (6 metre runs in my case) is likely to be much more than you could ever imagine - it is a serious amount of effort.

So now the road is clear for me to try the next step which is where this thread started. I am building my GainClone amp with 4 amps this week so I can use my new 4 way speaker cable (that cost me very little  ) in bi amp configuration. I will post a note soon with the results. But the important point is that so fas I have had a very unexpected but VERY VERY big improvement in the performance on my system for very little outlay. I started this looking for cheap cables that were as good as my existing cables but ended up with cheap cables that were far better.

Nick, Flecko and Gerard I cannot thank you all enough for your help.

Very Best Regards

Paul